NC State Stands Up to RIAA

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Technician Online at North Carolina State University reports that its Director of Student Legal Services, Pam Gerace, has advised students to remain anonymous, and has indicated her office's willingness to challenge the RIAA's subpoenas. What's more, the newspaper urges students to take Ms. Gerace up on her offer. The fighting spirit of Jimmy Valvano lives on."

Class action lawsuit?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the RIAA spokesperson, of the 400 students who the RIAA sent settlement letters to nationally, 198 of them agreed to it.

198 too many! This proves that the MAFIAA extortion is working all too well.

I work for NC State

[RaigetheFury]

I love NC State's policy toward the RIAA's stalin like tactics. While they do punish students on their own accord the entire legal department is against the RIAA's method of approaching students. I am very proud to work for a university that values copyrights while at the same time education it's students about their rights and current law.

On top of that then steps up and practices what it preaches.

Re:Get some sense?

[CowTipperGore]

I wonder if the RIAA will ever stop and realize that if they'd just fought this war fairly, most people would have been understanding with them. That if they'd did all the legal work they should have, and caught people with fair tactics, that jurors and the general public would be on their side. Because it IS against the law to download Intellectual Property you don't have rights to.

I'm not sure that they could have attacked it straightforward. They have no real means of doing good police work against people sharing files, unless you know of some other means to legally and accurately collect:

• A list of copyrighted files being shared
• The IP address of each file sharer
• The real name and address of each file sharer
• Evidence that conclusively proves each point

Sure, they could have been much more deliberate in their searching and verified each file downloaded, but they knew this would never even ripple the public waters. And, they would still rely on the IP data in the packets, the ISP to provide subscriber data, and finding the same files on a computer at the subscriber's home (all of which have been attacked as problems with their approach).

This is a propaganda scare campaign and nothing more. This was a calculated assault by the RIAA - they decided (probably correctly) that this would be the most cost-effective means of combating wide-spread illegal file sharing.

The RIAA simply stole a page from the corporate dinosaur playbook. Those of us into satellite "testing" saw the exact same ploy used by Dave a few years ago. They raided the offices of several large resellers of hacking equipment then used the seized shipping records to send letters threatening lawsuits to anyone who purchased smartcard programmers. Nevermind that these are completely legal to own and have plenty of legitimate uses outside of satellite television hacking. However, just like with the RIAA, plenty of scared people paid their blackmail and disposed of the "contraband".

Very nice, but lasting?

[redelm]

This looks like a very nice stand by a mid-level adminstrator. People in universities usually get a lot of freedom, a carryover from acedemic freedom (allowed to teachers, not students!).

Unfortunately, if the university's adminsitration isn't behind her (and they might well be, viz acedemic freedom), she could get reversed and reprimanded. Worse since the Regents ulimately report to the NC Legislature. Still, acedemics _can_ be cantankerous. And are expected to be or tenure would not be granted.

Re:Hypocritical to the extreme

[Mr. Underbridge]

NCSU has a chancellor that writes open letters to the students telling them to "respect the DMCA" and NCSU's stance on student's intellectual property is to take it away from them and claim it belongs to the university. This one instance does not make NCSU grand or great and I will not applaud them until they do the right thing elsewhere within the University as well. Before anyone responds with "That's how it is in real life" or some other bullshit answer I encourage you to go look around at both employers and other universities practices in regards to employee/student developed IP. Most universities have started giving that IP to the students and do not keep it for themselves as NCSU does.

I'm pretty sure you're absolutely full of shit. Most Universities (and all that I've been a part of), and pretty much every company on the planet require grad students/employees to sign over rights to what you create. If you're talking undergrad - where you pay the university - that might be different, but unlikely even then if you developed that IP with university property. For grad work, where the university pays you, the university keeps the rights. Sometimes there's a royalty sharing agreement, but you don't get to negotiate it.

As for companies, if you find one that lets you keep IP that you create as an employee, stay there. I've never seen such a company.

In downloading the copy is made by the server

[anandsr]

When you do the downloading, the server copies the bits and sends it over to the internet. When it has arrived on your system then you are simply saving it into a file. If you went into the ridiculous definition of ram copies, then you could not even play your Media on a computer. Those are just incidental copies.

So rule (1) does not apply on the downloader. Yes, RIAA could still make it stick, if they found a judge who doesn't know computers (the vast majority out there and so a near certainty).

Re:NC State Graduate, class of 2001

[MMC Monster]

True. I can't believe that people here are actually condoning breaking the law. Many people at colleges are downloading songs illegally. The number is up for debate.

What should be done is change the law and boycott the RIAA/MPAA. Why aren't we seeing more demonstrations on college campuses?

Re:No Student Responses?

[c_forq]

If they protest correctly it is a lot easier to get people to join in. There was recently an "anti-war" demonstration across the street from my apartment (I live on a university campus). I say "anti-war" for while the majority of people there were against the war there were also significant amounts of gay-rights and other causes protesting. Why the organizers allowed this I can not figure out, as it alienates some people who would otherwise join in. The other thing that made it have a very low turn out is they just yelled, drummed, and waved signs at passing traffic while standing in the median of the road. The state capitol is a 30 minute walk from their location, and the school administrative offices is a 3 minute walk away, but rather than try to appeal to those with some power over policy they just played in drum circles in the middle of the street. If drumming with a bunch of stoners somehow constitutes a rally, than I don't think I want my generation to rally.

So by that logic...

[Junta]

DVRs/VCRs are illegal because you are copying data from somewhere onto media?

At first I thought downloading would cut and dry be against copyright law, but now I'm not so sure. I don't think the obligation to determine if the source is a legitimate distribution system should fall upon the user. By 'common sense', currently most P2P networks today with obviously copyrighted materials is a legally questionably thing to do (since you are definitely becoming the source), but what happens when a source with an air of legitimacy starts up a P2P based service that turns out to be illegal? Should users be penalized just because they were frauded and allowed their upstream bandwidth to be use by the company to commit copyright violation without their knowledge?

From a legal perspective, I'm actually finding myself thinking the only sane entity to chase would be the one who initially injects the content into the P2P network (i.e., the person who posts a torrent to a tracker). The second logical place would be the tracker itself if they have a demonstrated history of ignoring copyright notices, but the users, it's hard to say. Forget the technicality of whether the protocol borrows some of their upload, their action isn't really as different from using a DVR as one might think.

Also

[Belial6]

You had better also read the agreement carefully. When DirectTV was pulling this stunt, they were including a blurb where you admitted to having committed copyright violation. Given that there are now criminal penalties on the books for copyright violation, you could very well be paying $3000 for a nice vacation to 'pound you in the ass prison'.

Re:NC State Graduate, class of 2001

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact remains that these students probably *DID* do what they were accused of doing.

Hmm, yes, likely.

But I also know that my company has received letters from the BSA (Business Software Alliance, or whatever), that informed I may not have enough Microsoft licenses for my company. I'm fairly certain it came about because I filled in a bunch of surveys and put my organization size at 50-100, when it's a actually a three (sometimes four) person Linux shop (the only Windows licenses are pre-installed on our laptops). They take that, cross-reference it somehow, and automatically send out threat letters. It's another "spray and pray" tactic a la spammers and door-to-door flyers and broadcasts..

Re:Not State, but State University.

[tiltowait]

Hmm, does that mean that the RIAA is willing to take on the 11th Amendment and go through state government to sue students? Something tells me the campus lawyer has this ace up her sleeve when advising students to refuse settlement offers.