University of Oregon says NO! to RIAA
The University of Oregon is believed to be the first US educational institution to refuse an RIAA demand to hand over the names of students alleged to have illegally downloaded music. The Oregon Attorney General, working with the University, has filed a motion in court to quash the legal move by the Recording Industry Association of America, which the University says is trying to force the educational institution to perform a legal investigation for the benefit of a private corporation. The agrieved parties ought to perform their own investigation, the University argues.
The motion (pdf) explains that it is impossible to identify the alleged infringers from the information the RIAA has presented: ‘Five of the seventeen John Does accessed the content in question from double occupancy dorm rooms at the University. With regard to these Does, the University is able to identify only the room where the content was accessed and whether or not the computer used was a Macintosh or a PC. A number of the names requested are of students living in University of Oregon dorms, making it impossible to determine which of the students living there downloaded the music, representatives of the school said. The U of O is infamous for its inhumanely cramped dorm rooms, though, making it improbable that one resident could have committed such an act without the other being intimately aware. Finally someone willing to stand up against the tyrant!
Source: Readwriteweb, Slashdot
Comments(34)
wise move id be very pleased to be one of the 5 guys because basically they wud be gettin pretty sued right now..
GO Ducks!!!
mum and dad used a cassette recorder to tape their fave tracks from the radio.
if students get arrested for just being smarter by using new technology, all the old ppl who used cassettes should be arrested too.
artists can only earn money with concerts and merchandise these days. Their music is a promotion! I do not see a single reason why anyone should pay anything for music.
The RIAA knows it’s end is coming soon. The artists will be able to distribute music directly. The RIAA is fighting like a wounded, cornered animal for survival. One thing no one brings up….The RIAA makes money on blank media under the assumption you will use it to copy music. That was a result of the “dual cassette recorders” from the 80’s. This carries on today on blank cd’s. So they still make money. This is sheer greed.
RIAA and similar to them can go and fcuk them self. Free music for everyone.
What isn’t said is how they acquired the music, was it through “your going to get caught” P2P sites, like Kazzaa and E-Donkey? Even these RapidShare Links? Or was it the safer Torrent based approach?
Either way, yes, making copies of audio cassettes, and Video tapes WAS illegal back when our younger selves did it, or for the younger ones, your parents. A lot of us had 2 VCR’s.. and when people got caught, they DID get in trouble. However… It was super hard to actually catch someone unless they went to the video store, got a tape, made 100 copies and started selling them.
These days, well, you have an IP. It is a LOT easier to track it. And you have to admit, the numbers have gone UP SIGNIFICANTLY. Now, you can find ANYTHING, where in the past you were limited to knowing someone that had a copy.
Now, if you say, captured XM Radio or a steam into an MP3 for your own use, I don’t think if would be a big issue. Anyways, just playing devils advocate with you. As far as the RIAA and MPAA goes, all they have done is made it WORSE.
When we look back, the level of MP3 piracy and movie Piracy was pretty low and left to the more experienced users, but once the RIAA and MPAA started making a fuss, people went, wait a second… I can get this stuff for FREE?? Hell yeah! Then the scene exploded and now you have fairly unsavvy computer users downloading torrents.
They (RIAA, MPAA) will never learn, so now we must destroy them for exposing our Internet “cool place” to all the uncool kids.
“Finally someone willing to stand up against the tyrant!”
An over-simplistic conclusion, one that is often seen in many p2p site moderator comments. They didn’t say just NO, they gave a perfectly relevant reason why they said no. They simply CAN’T point out the people who downloaded it due to the medieval conditions at Oregon U. Now it’s up to the courts, and that’s exactly what the RIAA wants (that’s why those organisations have so much people from law-school!).
RIAA and organisations like that are going to win sooner or later. Download while you can!
Good post, the_doctor.
ALLL YOU NEED TO READ ARE THESE TO QUOTES PEOPLE…Enough Said
Bueatiful props to whoever wrote these ..
artists can only earn money with concerts and merchandise these days. Their music is a promotion! I do not see a single reason why anyone should pay anything for music.
When we look back, the level of MP3 piracy and movie Piracy was pretty low and left to the more experienced users, but once the RIAA and MPAA started making a fuss, people went, wait a second… I can get this stuff for FREE?? Hell yeah! Then the scene exploded and now you have fairly unsavvy computer users downloading torrents.
it is pretty obvious also, I mean, how many comments do you see, not just here, but on all other sites where people are asking “how to make a torrent work”, or complaining that it won’t play when they don’t even have the right codecs. We use to deal with this once in a while, now it is non-stop.
know this might be a bit noobish but can riaa and other like riaa storm ur house just like that or are they still focusing on those who are downloading much more like if i would be downloading 200GB of music, video, games and all kinds of crap and my friend would be dl ing just for 2 gb wich oone would they arrest if anyone
They “CAN” storm your house for downloading one song, but chances are they won’t. Even if you download 200GB of music and video. You have a good chance of getting sued. Yet, I wouldn’t worry much as long as you are using torrents. Who they really go after are the sites giving the torrents or direct access to the material out, or the people that download, burn and go sell.
Now, remember, a torrent file IS NOT illegal since it is not copyrighted material, so, like having a torrent here, rlslog can get harassed, but that is about it, well, they can try to get the provider hosting them to shut them down. Now, who they can legally go after is the person that posts the rapidshare links.
So really, you are cool, just don’t make yourself obvious or go somewhere where your IP will be definitely logged, and grab torrents that have a LOT of seeders and peers.
They will arrest your neighbor if you know how to “borrow” their bandwidth to download all those 200 GB of media.
Also, remember that you re one in well millions of people downloading copyrighted material. They could do a mass lawsuit again, but the most they got were people going “I promise I wont download stuff”. What they were doing with the lawsuits were suing people for having copyrighted content, just because they had visited a site that had the ability to offer you music.
So, in order to even really get nailed, they have to PROVE you have the material and PROVE you got it illegally. So, you are safe, The Pirate Bay has them fairly occupied right now, along with other larger sites. So I say the worse you would see is a lawsuit, which you could fight and probably win. Just don’t archive your movies and music in an easy to find place if you have an idea that they might be onto you.
Hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray for the University of Oregan. And can’t wait to see what gonna happens next.
Finally. I mean, giving out IP address is sort of a breach of privacy, unless I’m badly mistaken. Correct me if I’m wrong. Good for UOO. Long live the pirates.
damn straight! makes me proud (there’s an Oregonian here…)! leave it to us Oregonians to stand up. oh, how i love it here.
Feel sorry for you living on the other side of the pond, here you can legally download pretty much everything as long you dont make profit from it
The question isn’t truly about what technology people are sharing their culture, works of art, or even innovation. We all know and have heard many times by others, all our creativity is built upon prior work.
So the real question is, do we really want to create an economic system favoring the RIAA and MPAA distribution corporations, or do we care more about creating the best environment for all to create and share at least within our own society as a people?
What sort of society do you want to live in, to create and know?
I personally don’t think RIAA should be allowed to distribute billions of copyrighted works by individuals soley for them to profit. If anything, those individuals whom contributed in their works of innovation, should be the individuals rewarded, right?
As an artist myself, I am not interested in signing away my rights just to have my work distributed. All societies share, and those that insure the most sharing, among it’s citizens offer the most rewards for new creativity to be built.
Software is no different, just as music or education. Everyone benefits when everyone is included. What can you do without an education? What can you create in software if everything is encrypted for the sole sake of protection to NOT include your rights to understand how said technologies work legally to build upon?
That is why in my opinion, my 2 cents, why there exist in each field a monopoly, such as in the music business with RIAA, such as in the movie business with MPAA, and such as in telecommunications with AT&T, and you know such as with Microsoft for software…
All these businesses have one thing in common mass duplication of innovation for producing profits. That’s our economic system, enforced by intellectually property rights which all business issues are related to political issues, and in the end, every important political and social issue has relevance to business.
Ask yourself, what are you going to do to help create the best environment, as if you don’t, you can be sure these monopolies will continue to insure their profits, outsourcing, lobbying, even hacking end users personal computers all in the name and cause of making a buck to insure the gravy train of money flowing into their pockets.
It’s time to change our economic system for the benefit of our society, the people of the great nation. It’s not great because I say so, it’s great when and if we the people make it to be that ourselves.
We have only ourselves to blame here, not the Chinese, not anyone else. It’s our country, our culture, and we the people, make up our society folks.
I think too many Americans are afraid of their own government to stand up and be heard, to get organized, to care about something more important than just yourself, the me generation.
Flame-baits = Losers!
RIAA = Raping Intellectually Artist Association!
the_doctor,
There’s nothing inherently safer about Bittorrent. When you download, you automatically share what you’re downloading, which qualifies as distribution. Your IP address is out there for the world to see. They then use the argument that since you made it “available” hundreds or even thousands of people might have downloaded it from you.
On the other hand, Rapidshare and Usenet are one-way services. You either upload OR you download, you don’t do both. Nobody can see what you’re downloading except RS or the Usenet server (and your ISP). To catch you, the RIAA/MPAA would have to get a court order to go throught their logs (since they can’t see anyone’s IP address, they can’t sue anyone directly), and even then all they would see is that you downloaded a single copy of an album or movie. I’m not sure how the penalties are figured when no distribution is involved, but I tend to think that it would be much less than for distributing content. It wouldn’t be practical to drag someone into court for making a single copy of something.
The RIAA is just like in many countries a firm that earns money of the artists, when a song gets played on the radio or tv, those stations have to pay royalties to the firms like the RIAA.
But they don’t pay the artist when they get the money, they pay him nearly one year later, so that the money the RIAA got is worth double.
The “suits” of the RIAA see less and less money in their pockets so thats why they sue the little fish who has to really work for its money.
Artist have always earned the most with concerts.
they too have to work for their money.
I’m a musician myself and I tried to get a record deal,
my music wasn’t profitable enough for the recordcompaies so they said
“sowwy dude, your music is not that good”
I’m still a happy person with a steady job
downloading ’bout 100GB a month of movies, music and series
but I keep it for myself, if somebody needs something that I have
I give it to that person for free. I know that is illegal but I don’t give a s**** As long as the persons near me are happy, I’m happy
I forgot to say, I download stuff from the internet, I pay my internetprovider money enough a month.
so to be honest, I don’t do anything wrong!
My internetprovider provides me with the possibilities to download illegal stuff of the internet, so if the RIAA needs money…
Ask my internetprovider for it!!!
@ Honey: I’m with you. Especially that last bit. Americans need to learn that we are (or were) in charge of our own country, that’s the way it’s supposed to be at least. People need to stop sitting on their asses and say something, stand up, pick a fight for a worthy cause that can benefit everyone. If we all did something, we could win. We all know that the MPAA and the RIAA are on the downfall anyway. We just have to make it happen!
@21 – You do make a point as far as the redistribution when using a torrent. I was going down the line that the RIAA/MPAA is going to have a much better chance of getting IP’s from RS than they would off a tracker. More or less, the rapid share link is illegal since it directly gives you copyrighted material, where a torrent file is not, well, the link on the page gives you a non-copyrighted torrent file, and having that file is not illegal, using it is. I would also go off the volume of downloads of a popular torrent vs a RS link. I would assume the torrent is going to be a LOT more people, which is harder to press charges.
Either way, I don’t think anyone has much to worry about, except for the torrent sites themselves, and they just have to deal with crap, since they aren’t actually doing anything illegal.
In either case, you know, I would REALLY like to see profit loss amount due to piracy, real ones. I highly doubt their is that much impact, in a recent survey, I saw that theater attendance had dropped, but that was due to on-demand, DVD & people having Plasma and LCD TV’s, not due to piracy. The ones of us that do pirate movies probably would not be going to the theaters regardless, nor would we be purchasing DVD’s. We might spend $10 a month on DVD rentals… if even.
The only cases I see that take away money are where people really complain about quality, those are the people that would be going to a theatre or purchasing a DVD (you know, the ones that complain even if it is a direct and perfect DVD rip). One thing that I think is going to piss off and encourage the MPAA to really crack down are the HD-DVD & Blu-Ray rips.
Before, one could “try” to argue that the movie download was to “sample” the film before buying an actual DVD, since the quality was never the “best”. However, now rips are stating to far surpass the quality of a store bought DVD without adding new equipment to your A/V system.
I do have to say that it is quite amusing at how we keep aggravating our own enemies.
Actually, perhaps it is good to aggravate them, get them to make more stupid moves to increase the rate of their downfall…
@ 13, hehe doin that right now….
Makes me proud to be from oregon
yes its about time
http://www.eclipsetorrents.org
Go University of Oreogon. Finally someone with the balls to stand up to these scumbags.
Read this article on the future of the music industry. A VERY good read:
http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html
They should have been using an IP filter…
http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php
Cuts your chance of being found from 95% to 0.1% (recent research)
Azureus and eMule both have support for loading these files up!
How pathetic. When “we can’t tell who did this” is taken as “standing up to the man” you know you’ve got an epically losing cause. UoO didn’t ’stand up’ to anybody, they just admitted that both their network tech and housing conditions are horrid, nothing more and nothing less.
The RIAA has already won, in spades. No matter how this case progresses from here, no one at that school with a functioning brain cell will be downloading squat for quite some time to come.
«- The music business is a cruel and shallow trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men lie like dogs. There is also a negative side.»
- Hunter S. Thompson