University Bows to RIAAs Demands for Student Names

jcgam69 writes "Hours after a federal court judge ordered Oklahoma State University to show cause why it shouldn't be held in contempt for failing to respond to an RIAA subpoena, attorneys for the school e-mailed a list of students' names to the RIAA's attorneys. But now that the RIAA has what it wanted, the group is unsure about how to go about sending out its pre-litigation settlement letters. Some of the students are represented by an attorney, meaning that the RIAA is barred from contacting them directly."

The bully's fear

[kshrop (1054972)]

A person who isn't all alone and easy to scare. Whatever should they do if someone has a defense and won't give up thier lunch money so easily?

Re:The bully's fear

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

That analogy works well with slashdot anti-RIAA sentiment, but it's not completely accurate.. the RIAA isn't just some big stupid bully, it has the full support of United States law. It sees a multibillion dollar cash cow and it's milking it- this is not the RIAA's fault, it's the government's for allowing it to happen.

Re:The bully's fear

[Grimbleton (1034446)]

Who said he wasn't referring to the government?

Actually, they are a big stupid bully

[gnutoo (1154137)]

and they are violating multiple laws [slashdot.org]. We shall see how this comes out for the 11 students, and society will make even better laws to stop this kind of harassment. The recording industry is simply wrong and people know it.

Re:

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

Depends on your point of view. IMO it's the fault of the people who voted into office the legislators that made it illegal.

Re:The bully's fear

[kegger64 (653899)]

it's the fault of the people who voted into office the legislators that made it illegal.

Which candidates did you vote for that oppose copyright?

Re:The bully's fear

[eiapoce (1049910)]

An insightful reply demands a informative one:

http://moneyline.cq.com/pml/home.do [cq.com]
http://opensecrets.org/ [opensecrets.org]

Please check your candidates this time.

Re:

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

Your question is invalid., The important issue is whether I did vote for (and thus legitimize the power of) the current leaders who support copyright, which I did not.

Re:The bully's fear

[prod-you (940679)]

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke

Re:The bully's fear

[guruevi (827432)]

They (RIAA) are being sued for what they do, so don't come with that. However, as an association backed by large music companies, they have more money and thus can stand (delay) longer in court before giving up even though what they are doing is illegal and unethical, it's the corrupt system that allows them to do that.

On another note, what the University did here might be illegal too. They are giving probably without a court order, a LIST of students' names to a third party. The RIAA is a PRIVATE organization, not a government or public benefactor and a judge can't order something that is against the law (that's what the RIAA is trying to force though). I know where I work (University) that would be against New York State, HIPAA and internal policy and if somebody in my group were to be sued, I would take it all the way to supreme court before I release anything.

Re:The bully's fear

[melstav (174456)]

On another note, what the University did here might be illegal too. They are giving probably without a court order, a LIST of students' names to a third party.

(emphasis mine)

From the Summary:

Hours after a federal court judge ordered Oklahoma State University to show cause why it shouldn't be held in contempt for failing to respond to an RIAA subpoena...

(emphasis mine)

In case you are unfamiliar with the definition of a subpoena, it means "a court order". Reference a dictionary or even Wikipedia.

The RIAA managed to convince one judge that they were wronged by someone on the university's network. That judge ordered the university to hand over the list so they could "identify" the specific individuals. They initially refused. When the judge said "Explain to me why you think you shouldn't have to comply with the court order," the university said "Oops. sorry. our bad. here you go."

Whether you agree with the reasoning behind any of the events, or even the right/wrongness of them, that truly is a summary of what had happened.

And, somewhat ironically, my captcha (since I don't stay logged in to SlashDot) is "freedom".

RTFS

[way2trivial (601132)]

s=summary...

"failing to respond to an RIAA subpoena"

see that last word in the quote above?
that is a court order, of a type that can be challenged
see the summary
"Hours after a federal court judge ordered Oklahoma State University to show cause"

see, 'cause' would be the challenge. The judge demanded a challenge or submission to the request.
the university submitted a response to a cort order, so the entire second half of your comment is moot.

Re:The bully's fear

[Dr_Ish (639005)]

While I am a little uncertain whether the University would be liable under the things cited here, there action almost certainly violates Federal law. The Family Education Rights Protection Act (1974, if I recall correctly), or FERPA [cornell.edu] to it's friends, makes revealing almost any information about a student impermissible. Literally, I have had to refuse to talk to a judge about their child, due to FERPA. I wonder whether the Feds will get huffy about this, or whether they can be bothered (or perhaps they like the RIAA?). It sounds like this story could get fun.

Re:The bully's fear

[mlwmohawk (801821)]

It isn't at all the fault of the people who actually broke the law?

Depends, they have the right to due process. They have the right of a fair trial.

These people distributed copyrighted material that they had no right nor authorization to distribute. Representatives of the copyright holders found out about it, and are suing. Unless the representatives found out about it in an illegal way (read: non-admissible in court), they are fully within their rights to sue.

These people are SUSPECTED of these actions. It is not clear that there is sufficient proof or any viable proof at all.

But let us not forget that that there is evidence that the people being sued have broken the law and that the plaintiffs are completely within their rights to sue, and to use the facilities granted to them by law (i.e. warrants and subpoenas).

Yes, and lets look at that evidence. It is a witch hunt.

Re:

[oyenstikker (536040)]

It is not a witch hunt. A witch hunt is going after people who have not committed a crime and no crime has been committed. This is going after people who broke the law. Yes, they may have gone after a few innocent people, which is why we have a court system to determine if the defendants are guilty or innocent.

The laws may be bad. The courts may be broken. The judges may be corrupt. The juries may be ignorant and stupid. The plaintiff may be abusing the system and bullying. The lawyers may be . . . lawyers.

Re:The bully's fear

[Applekid (993327)]

It isn't at all the fault of the people who actually broke the law?

With what proof? An IP address? The RIAA lawsuit carpet-bombing are civil issues and simply don't have to hassle with the burden of proof a criminal case would have.

In fact, with the exception of one high-profile slam-dunk case for the RIAA with a judgment of a quarter million dollars for the guilty music pirate, they have dropped every single other case that actually gets beyond a settlement phase into the bonafide legal system. And even then they drop the cases after shaking them down with subpoenas and discovery and other abuses of process with the hopes to bankrupt them and teach them a lesson.

RIAA shouldn't have the power to demand a list of students with certain IP addresses for what they think is happening any more than I have the right to demand the name of the person using the IP address who I suspect was cheating in my FPS server. The POLICE and other law enforcement are the ones who should have the power to do that, with the burden of criminal just cause to obtain a warrant.

If it's really a matter of law, why not just file a complaint with law ENFORCEMENT? I'll answer: to game the system because they know once casual sharing actually gets tested and appealed upwards then so very many of the copyright and DMCA clauses are in trouble under judicial review.

Re:The bully's fear

[Jah-Wren Ryel (80510)]

It isn't at all the fault of the people who actually broke the law?

These people distributed copyrighted material that they had no right nor authorization to distribute.

Woah boy! Since when does being accused by the RIAA automatically mean someone is guilty?
There have been numerous examples of the MAFIAA targetting the wrong people and even worse, the standard level of evidence they routinely bring to court has been laughably vague. They don't verify that the material being distributed is their material, they just go by keywords in filenames, some of them so general as to be meaningless.

You've made one hell of a leap of logic there and you should be ashamed of yourself for not applying some critical thinking beforehand.

Re:

[vux984 (928602)]

These people distributed copyrighted material that they had no right nor authorization to distribute. Representatives of the copyright holders found out about it, and are suing. Unless the representatives found out about it in an illegal way (read: non-admissible in court), they are fully within their rights to sue.

This would be like you coming home, and finding that someone keyed your car. There aren't any footprints nearby in the muddy ground, but a particular tire tread swerves within a few inches of you

Re:

[MikeyTheK (873329)]

To be fair, the University is "bowing down" to a threatened contempt citation by the court. Actually I believe the wording was that the court was asking the University to explain why it should NOT be found to be in contempt. To this point it looks like OSU was being protective of their students. The whole ex-parte discovery argument is one of those things that legal techies love to debate, but OSU was pretty much out of good options, it appears.

Re:The bully's fear? Bollocks.

[MadJo (674225)]

still a bad analogy. Contrary to what all those 'mandatory viewing' promos and trailers on DVDs say, copyright infringement is not equal to theft. Yes, it's a crime, but it's definitely not theft.

Unless you're in Canada and camming

[phorm (591458)]

Here, while most of the "online" activities are still fairly safe, camming movies in a theatre is now a crime and can net you jailtime. Interestingly, that law was pushed forward by one of our ministers who was fired for sleeping with a US Corp lobbiest, yet nobody ever reviewed the bills that she had pushed forth on their behalf...

IMHO movie cammers are idiots anyhow, but I think that our prison and justice system could be put to better use, and I'd rather not be arrested myself because somebody decided to nab me because my digital camera (which I tend to keep with me at most times) can do (crappy) video and some theatre thug decided it's close enough...

Re:The bully's fear? Bollocks.

[flappinbooger (574405)]

What we need here is a good car analogy. Let me give it a go.

GM makes one, admittedly average, car and it cost them $1,000,000 to make it. They then duplicate the car by the hundreds of thousands, and sell them for $2000 each. The problem is, most people only want the doors or the wheels which are the only appealing part of the car, and millions of people in the world have the ability to exactly copy the wheels and doors, even the entire car if they want, for $50, using similar technology to what GM uses to copy the original car. So, GM is upset by that and starts suing people that copied the car, even though nothing was actually stolen from GM.

How'd I do?

Re:

[Chabil Ha' (875116)]

It's all based on your point of view. They see it as theft because pirates are depriving them of money that would otherwise have been in their pockets from the result of a sale.

The error in this assumption, which the MPAA suffers from as well, is that all other things being equal, a pirate likely would not have payed for the copyrighted work *anyway*, even if the work was not available to 'steal'! That's what is ridiculous about the whole affair.

Re:The bully's fear? Bollocks.

[Epsillon (608775)]

we may not like the **AA here on /.

Quite, but the reasons for disliking them are legion. My own distaste comes not from the fact they sue people making available copyrighted works. Rather, it's the fact that they keep trying to shift the blame for decreasing revenue from their members churning out crap to the Internet generation and the freedom of information that brings. That they also rarely seem to get the right person to sue and their methods seem to be a technical version of map+pin+blindfold don't help their image, either. I'm yet to see someone in court ask for the RIAA's investigators' ntp logs (admittedly, I haven't looked too hard) to ensure the IP address they request information on is actually accurate at that time, but I'm sure it'll happen once people eventually get their heads around dynamic IP allocation. Can't prove your timestamps are accurate? Off you go, try again and, this time, do it properly. And no, we won't accept your stratum 16 internal server as proof of clock accuracy. External, independent strat 1 or 2 reference or bugger off.

Of course, their whole modus operandi right now relies on the fact that civil cases don't require quite as much "beyond reasonable doubt" proof as criminal cases do. Then, of course, there is the whole "punish the entire Internet" because some clown just HAS to have the latest Britney crap. No, the Recording Industry Ass. of America has nobody to blame but themselves for the way the general public see them and, by association, their members.

Good

[by Anonymous Coward]

Sue the future consumers into oblivion.

Re:Good

[billcopc (196330)]

That's precisely why things will be much more interesting over the next 15-20 years. What better way to enter a business relationship than to kick your client in the teeth.

What I'm curious about, is how does an RIAA lawsuit affect a student's ability to pursue their education ? Is the cartel destroying someone's future career over a few hundred overplayed pop songs ? What does that say about the future of the nation ? We all agree that piracy is a crime, but does the punishment fit ?

Corporate America's obsession with instant profits will inevitably have a deleterious effect on tomorrow's economy. It's bad enough that students get pelted with dozens of credit cards and start their life in the red, now we're trying to tack on another few thousand dollars in RIAA settlements. The people who actually wind up paying for this are you and me. We pay when professionals increase their hourly rates, when basic food staples jump in price, heck we're paying it right now with the time spent debating these vengeful issues. Inflation is not an ethereal process that happens on a spreadsheet. The more we screw each other over, the stronger the elastic bounce-back to recover what was ours.

Greed begets greed.

Hmm..

[wellingtonsteve (892855)]

every time we have a story like this it is assumed that the University should help protect students from the consequences of their (potentially) illegal actions.. err.. why?

Re:Hmm..

[AvitarX (172628)]

I think it is more a matter that the University is entrusted with a lot of your personal data (all network traffic, your social security number etc.). The University should fight to not release that information unless they are compelled, otherwise they are not being a good custodian of your information.

I would hate for a list of every dirty website I went to in open court only to be deemed innocent in the end.

Re:

[sm62704 (957197)]

The University should fight to not release that information unless they are compelled

I think the one thaing that would compel me would be a judge saying "do it or be cited for contempt". Like the Who song the RIAA label holds copyright to says, the RIAA has "a gun that fires cops".

That said, the university should fire its legal team and hire a competent one. Its students should find a more reputable university. Columbia WAS reputable, but its reputation is now that of a coward.

It seems since 9-11 cowardsce

Re:

[jank1887 (815982)]

"unless they are compelled," But they were compelled, by a legal subpoena, issued because of evidence of illegal activity taking place. So how is what the University did wrong? They held out as long as they legally could, but you can't expect the University to take a contempt charge over students' illegal activities.

and unless you visiting all those dirty websites was somehow illegal, the university would be under no obligation to divulge any of that information. a legal subpoena would have to be base

Re:

[Nursie (632944)]

Well, the RIAA's actions are very borderline in terms of legality, and IMHO it would make a good law school project.

Also, universities ought to be complying with the law and I was pretty sure that, in a couple of cases, it had been demonstrated that names did not have to be handed over by ISPs...

Re:

[oneiros27 (46144)]

Because the judge forced them to. (that's what the issue of 'contempt' is -- being arrested for not following the judge's orders)

However, if you read the article, you'd see that the RIAA still can't contact _any_ of the students, because they don't know which ones have an attorney, and they're not allowed to contact those who have an attorney. Not being an attorney, I don't know what use having the names actually does the RIAA in this state. (they could try dragging the names through the mud, but then th

Re:

[Dunbal (464142)]

it is assumed that the University should help protect students from the consequences of their (potentially) illegal actions

So according to you, Universities should hand over lists of their students to anyone on demand? How about banks - I'd like to know how much is in your account. If you have too much money then you must have earned it illegally. Hey maybe I should have a look at your medical records too while I'm at it. Our studies show a positive correlation between piracy and type

Re:Hmm..

[bconway (63464)]

So according to you, Universities should hand over lists of their students to anyone on demand?

How about to court orders? Like, you know, in this case.

Re:

[downix (84795)]

Nothing of the sort. Rather, the case is, should Universities be used as an internet police force for their own students or not. If the Universities did not fight such actions, then they could be held responsible for illegal internet activity that happened to occur under their watch. So, a hacker rootkits a students windows box to spread the Storm Virus, they'd be liable despite not owning the box, nor even having the person responsible being a student at their university (possibly not even being in the

Re:

[jmnormand (941909)]

Because innocent until proven guilty is the foundation of the american justice system, and the universities are the back bone of that justice system (teaching future lawyers, judges, politicians, ect.). The universities, perhapse even more than the average american or coorporations, have an obligation to fight what it views as a potentially unjust action, until such time that they are conviced the action is warrented.

makes sense

[JasonEngel (757582)]

I see no reason why universities should fight to protect the privacy of it's students in circumstances like this where a judge has pretty much given the approval for the plaintiffs actions. I would not want a uni to cave just because the MAFIAA contact them, but if a judge has reviewed their requests and then tells the uni to cough up the details, I tend to feel more comfortable with it.

Re:makes sense

[zappepcs (820751)]

I have to agree... The universities should be acting as common carriers, no matter how involved they are in the lives of the students. The school's infrastructure should be seen as no different under the law than and ISP's infrastructure. With judicial review of the legal actions, it is as fair as it will ever get under the current system. I feel confident that there is a way to structure their Internet services so as to qualify as common carrier-ish.

I hope that the student's lawyer is better than good.

That said, there is little outside the Terms of Service an ISP can do to stop each individual from acting as a common carrier. If you open your WiFi for all to use, current trends are to hold you responsible for how the Internet is used. Emphasis is put on filtering/regulation rather than individual's use of the services.

I was going to think of a car analogy, but water is a better likeness here. If you get your water from the city, and let your neighbors use it, are you responsible for them watering their lawns outside of prescribed watering hours? The basic legal interpretation of what Internet access is, is being treated the wrong way, or thought of in the wrong way.

Access to weapons does not make you a killer. Access to P2P sites does not make you a copyright thief. Selling guns that get used in bank robberies or murders don't make the manufacturer guilty of said crimes.

If all students were on WiFi connections, each infringement issue would involve possibly hundreds of students. While that sounds like I'm supporting wild flouting of the law, it's not. I simply do not support the way the law has been used to harass and bludgeon citizens for nothing more substantial than supporting the failed and woefully unrepentant business model of greedy bastards who mistreat customers and clients alike.

The attorney is Marilyn Barringer-Thompson

[Cougem (734635)]

Interestingly, this is the same attorney who back in 2006 won a case for Debbie Foster vs. the RIAA. A good choice.

i dont understand why...

[theheadlessrabbit (1022587)]

I don't understand why universities dont just 'loose' these records. Is there a legal reason why records of student's online activity must be recorded? My university had a massive drive where all students could temporarily store their data. the drives were wiped clean every Friday. why not just wipe the students internet usage records every week or so?
I can't see what use that information is to the University, aside from handing it over to RIAA lawyers to screw over the very students who pay to go to that university.

you can't hand over evidence you don't have.

Re:

[IBBoard (1128019)]

you can't hand over evidence you don't have.

Tell that to whichever torrent tracking website was (within the past few months) told that although they didn't store visitor logs on disk then they were still in memory at some point and so they had to hand over lists of IPs of visitors.

You'd think it was that simple, but the law tends not to allow it as it means anyone could 'play innocent' by having a 'routine' of wiping details every X days, even if they're doing it purely to cover illegal activity.

Re:i dont understand why...

[badfish99 (826052)]

It was TorrentSpy. The judge told them that they had to start keeping logs, so they did do. But they couldn't be prosecuted for not keeping logs before they were told to do so.

So, if the university had a policy of not keeping logs, their students would be safe up to the point when the RIAA got a court order to force them to start logging. Then the university could simply say to their students "we have been forced to start logging: stop your filesharing now, because the RIAA are watching".

The reason that universities don't do this is that they want logs for their own purposes, for example to track down infected machines, or people posting rude messages about the vice-chancellor.

MAC spoofing

[Skapare (16644)]

And no one told them that MAC addresses can be faked? What the know is that their equipment is getting ethernet frames with the expected MAC address once the student has logged in.

I've done such faking several times. I even have a couple computers that regularly run with a faked MAC address (for development testing purposes at work, using Intel ethernet chips). All someone needs to do is figure out a working MAC address of some other student that regularly turns off their computer, ping it every now and

They mailed a list of names...

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

They might have mailed a list of names, but the important thing here is, are they the right names and were these the people actually sitting at the terminals requested at the time?

University Bows to Judge Order

[IceRa (844639)]

...would be a headline which boils it down correct.
Wheter the judges order was ok in the first place is a diffrent story.

IT'S A TRAP

[downix (84795)]

Funny how the RIAA got what it wanted, only to them find themselves facing something they did not expect, a prepared defense with direct experience against their tactics. One could almost say that they've fallen into a classic military maneuver, put a small token defense up first to bring the enemys offense to the front, to have it fall back, leading the enemy onto terrain of ones choosing, where you then spring the trap. Classic Sun Tzu.

I see Xerxes vs 300 Spartans in a legal sense here, so long as the defense does not leave the goat path to open up their backs they will do well.

What happens when the RIAA goes after the Pentagon

[gelfling (6534)]

Surely there are large numbers of DoD employees and Federal employees generally who are illegally sharing too. The Federal government's networks are famous for a lack of policing. It will be interesting to see what happens when the RIAA goes after millions of attorneys who are paid to be a lot more ruthless than the RIAA.

Personal Opinion Follows

[RockedMan40 (1130729)]

And no - this is not a cheap attempt at starting a flame war. I really do think the treatment of *most* individuals by the *IAA is pretty shabby, and in some case questionably legal. *IAA just has the financial backing to try, and the publicity mostly helps them, does not hurt them in a meaningful way. Since they *want* to be perceived as relatively evil group that you as the 'average joe/jane' are powerless against.

Now - the opinion part. I do hope they persist in this tactic. I recently have been turning to indie music in various forms and ya know what - found some *really* good material! Stuff I am happy to throw out a few $ to the artist, especially if they are getting a large cut of the money. And when I say really good - I mean excellent. Outstanding. Prime stuff. I haven't turned on my radio in vehicle or home since I started.

So - RIAA - keep it up. Indie music is my new crack - and their tactics are only ensuring a greater supply chain to me!

Alma Mater

[halber_mensch (851834)]

D'oh!

Cowed to court order, We'll curse your name;
Oklahoma State, We hold you to blame.
RIAA will find us-and we'll be sued.
Thanks to our Alma Mater, O...S...U.

How is this possible?

[Captain_Chaos (103843)]

Can somebody explain to me how this is possible in the US legal system? How can a university be obligated to provide information like this when it has nothing to do with the case, which is purely between the record company and the student? I can understand how a cowardly university board might cave to pressure, but this seems to be a judge ordering them to provide the information, without any evidence against the students other than a list of IP addresses, which is no evidence at all.