University of Wisconsin-Madison Bucks RIAA 203
stephencrane informs us of an interesting development at UW Madison. The school, along with many others, has been sent "settlement letters" by the RIAA with instructions to forward them to particular students (or other university community members) that the RIAA believes guilty of illegal filesharing. The letters order the assumed filesharers to identify themselves and to pay for the content they are supposed to have "pirated." The university has sent a blanket letter to all students, reiterating the school's acceptable use policies, but has refused to forward individual letters without a valid subpoena. This lawyer's blog reproduces the letter. The campus newspaper has some coverage on the university's stance.
Response to a subpoena (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:well (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What a load of shit.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Response to a subpoena (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Madison is UW, Milwaukee is UW-M (Score:5, Interesting)
In Wisconsin, it is "you-double-you"
In Seattle it is "you-dub"
I have no opinion on why Washingtonians are too lazy to pronounce abbreviations fully.
Additionally, as a proud alum, the University of Washington was still a mud pit when the University of Wisconsin was shaping the minds of influential thinkers.
Re:A good step (Score:2, Interesting)
Given our panache for a Big Brother surveillance society, I fear the notion of having no record of books we have read is already a relic of the history books. We must fight those who wish to record our every movement and action lest we succumb to totalitarianism.
Re:low moral (Score:1, Interesting)
Why does the "Spies like Us" DVD cost $16 when the VHS costs $6? Is the movie itself worth 6 or 16? Which is it?
What happened to lower prices for CD's as touted by the RIAA in the late 80s/early 90's? What occured that a medium that costs lest to produce actually increased in price?
It's too bad that the RIAA has become as greedy as they are. They have no one to blame but themselves for piracy, and nothing you can do will stop it. You can shut down P2P, and people will have LAN parties. Let me ask you this: The parties you love so much, are you paying the RIAA to play the music for a crowd? You or the host of the party should be, but just try to bring that up and see how many people want you drinking their beer. If you attend any party that isn't paying royalty for the music, you are a hypocrite. You are part of the problem, Mr. Holier than thou.
Once people pirate once, they don't think about it much the 2nd time. Make things reasonably priced, luxury or not, and I doubt people will be so willing to break the law.
I used to pirate, but now it's pointless. Most music is crap and I can just use iTunes for the 1 good song on any record. One thing you and the music industry must learn is that a song stolen does not equal a lost sale.
Re:well (Score:3, Interesting)
If they knew the exact students they could have addressed the notices to the students. Most likely the university dosn't want to play detective for free.
Long history of rebellion (Score:5, Interesting)
UW has a long history of being a center of political activism, as far back as I can remember. Some of my oldest memories are the riots in Madison protesting the Viet Nam war.
Another incident I remember is a student body president who raided the student association funds to create a life size copy of the head of the Statue of Liberty and the torch and park it out on the frozen lake one winter. Instead of getting kicked out for wasting funds, they were re-elected by a landslide and followed that trick by covering the commons with pink plastic flamingos. The details are hazy but that's mostly accurate.
This is the school that for years had the Budweiser song as the unofficial school song. They'd play that song before football games and the entire stadium would shutter from tens of thousands of people stomping their feet in time to the music and at the end yelling, "When you say Wissss-con-sin. You've said it all!"
It's the town where a man got arrested for walking naked down State Street at 2 am. In those days he would not have attracted the attention of the police even then had he not been dragging a dead muskrat at the time. The cops said they stopped to ask where he got the muskrat.
The point is if there was going to be any place that would tell the clueless mofo's at RIAA to go stuff it's little surprise it would be UW.
So do people still go to the Stone Hearth (aka The Stone Hole)? Used to listen to this really loud little band there...you may remember then as Cheap Trick.
Re:well (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Response to a subpoena (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately, they don't get to choose which type of subpoena they submit to. If a court ordered subpoena is issued, regardless of what they would like to share they are required to share whatever they subpoena demands (unless the university's lawyer can somehow contest the issued subpoena).
Re:A good step (Score:2, Interesting)
Erase your logs after a short period of time. Don't keep a record of what IP address was allocated to what account at any given time.
Oblig : I am not a lawyer...
I'm pretty sure Europe recently passed a series of data retention laws, forcing any net provider to keep their logs for some period of time. (Might have been something insane and impractical like 7 years... memory not the best right now)
Considering that Europe usually follows America, in its insane IP laws, I'm very surprised America doesn't have some sort of similar data retention law already.
Re:Extortion? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Terror tactics. (Score:3, Interesting)
You are naive in believing laws are made in service of people.
Laws are a product like any other. Laws are commissioned, built and installed by request of highest bidder. Laws are made to protect profits of those who create them. Laws are made to destroy competition. If you blindly follow laws, you're a slave. If you work on changing laws without breaking them, you'll be either of the three: ignored, destroyed, absorbed. If the change you propose is in opposition to interests of these at power, you laws will be made to prevent you from opposing current laws and current rulers, and they will use them to destroy you.
Re:Terror tactics. (Score:3, Interesting)
"How about laws protecting children from molestation?"
A man found guilty and sentenced to 2 years of prison for child molestation, for crime of washing his half-year-old daughter without using a rubber glove.
A vote of an ignorant or an idiot counts the same as a vote of an expert or a genius, but the former are more common than the latter. Therefore laws are made to appeal to ignorants and sound smart to idiots. They don't serve solving problems, they serve reelecting the lawmakers. Noble ideas like protection of children, freeing the oppressed and equality of sexes, religions and races change into empty slogans, facades on law duds intended to look good and bring votes. They make children suffer, they limit freedoms, they create unequality between different groups - but they assure reelection. Look at anti-corruption regulations. They are in fact pro-corruption ones. Look at child protection. They are about running an angry mob against scapegoats, not about protecting children. Look at the wonderful freedom and democracy you brought to Croatia and Afghanistan. That's your law.