RIAA contacted my school

[MrYogi]

The provost sent an email to the students today asking them to stop using file sharing programs. He said that RIAA contacted the university authorities about students serving music and software on their computers.

"Computer Services staff members have just finished processing
eight DITs (Demand for Immediate Takedown). Such a demand most often
means that an agent for the Recording Industry Association of America
or some other software association has contacted us after detecting
copyright material being served to the internet from a computer system
on our campus. Our daily average is quickly becoming eight to ten
demands. These demands generally seem legally appropriate and are
delivered to the University?s registered DMCA (Digital Millennium
Copyright Act) agent.

If you are wondering what all of this means and what you should do
about it, one response is ?do not do KAAZA? or otherwise participate in
similar file sharing experiences unless you clearly understand all of
the technical and legal issues and the implications."

PS: I have dialup and do not use filesharing programs.

 

[AZGamer]

DMCA is a piece of legislation - I doubt it "contacted" your university.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: AZGamer
DMCA is a piece of legislation - I doubt it "contacted" your university.

I think he meant the RIAA and MPAA

 

[Krugger]

Originally posted by: MrYogi
The provost sent an email to the students today asking them to stop using file sharing problems. He said that RIAA and DMCA have contacted the university authorities about students serving music and software on their computers. PS: I have dialup and do not use filesharing programs.

yea, when the RIAA sues someone at your school for millions of dollars then it'll be big news... oh wait that just happened here. stupid RIAA and their bogus scare tactics...
-Krugger

 

[ElFenix]

i still don't understand why phone companies aren't responsible for any illegal activity committed over their networks while internet companies are.

 

[MikeO]

File sharing problems?

 

[LordRaiden]

Well, the RIAA doesn't feel that the phone companies have enough money or deep enough pockets to sue them. So they'll go after anyone else they can. The college students are the exception to the rule. They're just doing it for the shock value. They want to make a statement of how stupid and greedy they are.

 

[XZeroII]

Originally posted by: Krugger

Originally posted by: MrYogi
The provost sent an email to the students today asking them to stop using file sharing problems. He said that RIAA and DMCA have contacted the university authorities about students serving music and software on their computers. PS: I have dialup and do not use filesharing programs.

yea, when the RIAA sues someone at your school for millions of dollars then it'll be big news... oh wait that just happened here. stupid RIAA and their bogus scare tactics...
-Krugger

Bogus scare tactics? You realize that they are right...that those people stole products...and if you download music, you are stealing as well? You act like you are Mr. Morality and that stealing music is ok.

 

[SuperTool]

Send your congressman a DIT for DMCA.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: LordRaiden
Well, the RIAA doesn't feel that the phone companies have enough money or deep enough pockets to sue them. So they'll go after anyone else they can. The college students are the exception to the rule. They're just doing it for the shock value. They want to make a statement of how stupid and greedy they are.

no, theres actually a law that says that phone companies are not responsible for illegal activity going on across their networks.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: XZeroII

Bogus scare tactics? You realize that they are right...that those people stole products...and if you download music, you are stealing as well? You act like you are Mr. Morality and that stealing music is ok.

right, and its bogus because they threaten the university rather than those doing the actual theft

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: XZeroII
Bogus scare tactics? You realize that they are right...that those people stole products...and if you download music, you are stealing as well? You act like you are Mr. Morality and that stealing music is ok.

right, and its bogus because they threaten the university rather than those doing the actual theft

The RIAA are a bunch of overpaid middlemen and lawyers afraid of losing the power their little cartel has built up. I don't advocate downloading music on Kazaa but I hope the RIAA gets what it deserves.

For example on a $15.99 CD, the artist's royalty is about $.50 to $1.50. The recording label makes about $4-5 while the distributors and retail stores make about $3-4. The rest goes to advertisement, packaging, shipping, media, etc.

If distributed by the internet, you kill the label's profit, reduce the wholesalers' and retail profits (if the artist isn't distributing the music himself). Packaging and shipping is inexistant. They could mail you album art for next to nothing ($1 or so). Sure they have bandwidth costs and internet costs, let's say $1 per CD. Bottom line, distributing by the Internet could easily cut the cost to consumer in half but it would also put a lot of middlemen out of jobs.

So why is the RIAA using scare tactics? Because they have 2 options, scare tactics or losing their jobs, which one would you pick if you were in their shoes? Which is why I give the RIAA the finger and buy as few albums as I can (I listen to internet radio and real radio whenever I can).

Source for figures Richard Campbell's Media and Culture

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: XZeroII
Bogus scare tactics? You realize that they are right...that those people stole products...and if you download music, you are stealing as well? You act like you are Mr. Morality and that stealing music is ok.

right, and its bogus because they threaten the university rather than those doing the actual theft

The RIAA are a bunch of overpaid middlemen and lawyers afraid of losing the power their little cartel has built up. I don't advocate downloading music on Kazaa but I hope the RIAA gets what it deserves.

For example on a $15.99 CD, the artist's royalty is about $.50 to $1.50. The recording label makes about $4-5 while the distributors and retail stores make about $3-4. The rest goes to advertisement, packaging, shipping, media, etc.

If distributed by the internet, you kill the label's profit, reduce the wholesalers' and retail profits (if the artist isn't distributing the music himself). Packaging and shipping is inexistant. They could mail you album art for next to nothing ($1 or so). Sure they have bandwidth costs and internet costs, let's say $1 per CD. Bottom line, distributing by the Internet could easily cut the cost to consumer in half but it would also put a lot of middlemen out of jobs.

So why is the RIAA using scare tactics? Because they have 2 options, scare tactics or losing their jobs, which one would you pick if you were in their shoes? Which is why I give the RIAA the finger and buy as few albums as I can (I listen to internet radio and real radio whenever I can).

Source for figures Richard Campbell's Media and Culture

right, but what does that have to do with what i wrote?

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: XZeroII
Bogus scare tactics? You realize that they are right...that those people stole products...and if you download music, you are stealing as well? You act like you are Mr. Morality and that stealing music is ok.

right, and its bogus because they threaten the university rather than those doing the actual theft

The RIAA are a bunch of overpaid middlemen and lawyers afraid of losing the power their little cartel has built up. I don't advocate downloading music on Kazaa but I hope the RIAA gets what it deserves.

For example on a $15.99 CD, the artist's royalty is about $.50 to $1.50. The recording label makes about $4-5 while the distributors and retail stores make about $3-4. The rest goes to advertisement, packaging, shipping, media, etc.

If distributed by the internet, you kill the label's profit, reduce the wholesalers' and retail profits (if the artist isn't distributing the music himself). Packaging and shipping is inexistant. They could mail you album art for next to nothing ($1 or so). Sure they have bandwidth costs and internet costs, let's say $1 per CD. Bottom line, distributing by the Internet could easily cut the cost to consumer in half but it would also put a lot of middlemen out of jobs.

So why is the RIAA using scare tactics? Because they have 2 options, scare tactics or losing their jobs, which one would you pick if you were in their shoes? Which is why I give the RIAA the finger and buy as few albums as I can (I listen to internet radio and real radio whenever I can).

Source for figures Richard Campbell's Media and Culture

right, but what does that have to do with what i wrote?

I actually started out wanting to comment on your post but went off on a tangent and completely forgot about it

 

[Krugger]

Originally posted by: XZeroII

Originally posted by: Krugger

Originally posted by: MrYogi The provost sent an email to the students today asking them to stop using file sharing problems. He said that RIAA and DMCA have contacted the university authorities about students serving music and software on their computers. PS: I have dialup and do not use filesharing programs.

yea, when the RIAA sues someone at your school for millions of dollars then it'll be big news... oh wait that just happened here. stupid RIAA and their bogus scare tactics... -Krugger

Bogus scare tactics? You realize that they are right...that those people stole products...and if you download music, you are stealing as well? You act like you are Mr. Morality and that stealing music is ok.

You realize they are NOT right?
read up on this case. read the actual suits online. i'll post the links if you like. these people DID NOT steal anything. at most the princeton student was SUPPOSEDLY sharing a hundred mp3s or so. Mostly, he just ran a search engine, that kept track of the files OTHER people shared on the network. hundreds of thousands of files, not just mp3s, all files. they worked like google works. if other students used those search engines to get mp3s illegaly, then you cant hold the site responsible, much like you wouldn't sue google for sites they link to. SO, that is why i said bogus scare tactics. that and the fact that they've been sued $150,000 PER INFRINGEMENT, which translates to $150,000 per .mp3 shared by other students on the network, which translates to millions and millions of dollars. a simple cease and desist letter to the university would've been more than enough to shut down this website. I said nothing about the morality of downloading music, so tell me where i said it was ok. yes it certainly is stealing, but you have to protect the common man's right to freedom of information. the RIAA is using strongarm tactics and hiding behind the DMCA. If the so-called super dmca is passed, they will have even more ridiculous rights.
besides, there were 3 other similar sites on campus, not to mention various freeware programs that search the network, not to mention XP's native search which can do this... shutting this site down doesn't stop or slow down network files sharing.
He was accused of running a Napster like program/network. The RIAA knows very well this is nothing like Napster, but since they won that case, they're using that as precedent to avoid the facts of the case. i say scare tactics because they don't want this to go to trial. they want to settle, which will give them even more precedent. they want to scare other students and universities into cutting back filesharing.
Acting like Mr. Morality... try to have an intelligent conversation instead of insulting me and assuming things about which you know nothing.
Thanks.
-Krugger

 

[LordRaiden]

no, theres actually a law that says that phone companies are not responsible for illegal activity going on across their networks.

Well then, they need to make a law like that for the internet companies too. IF the phone companies are free of any liability, why can't the internet providers?

 

[flamingelephant]

Originally posted by: LordRaiden
Well, the RIAA doesn't feel that the phone companies have enough money or deep enough pockets to sue them. So they'll go after anyone else they can. The college students are the exception to the rule. They're just doing it for the shock value. They want to make a statement of how stupid and greedy they are.

Actually, thats not true... There is legal precedent that a phone company is not responciable for what happens on its phone lines. The RIAA cant go after the phone company. Internet providers are I believe are untested legal waters....