A possible starting point: http://www.google.com/search?q=riaa+letter+college Also: Read, Brock. "Record Companies to Accused Pirates: Deal or No Deal?", The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2007-03-16, p. A31. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i28/28a03101.htm The website students are directed to: http://www.p2plawsuits.com/P2P_00_Home.aspx (and Ed Felton is a professor of computer science, not an attorney) -mz ----- Michael T. Zimmer Doctoral Candidate, Culture and Communication, New York University Student Fellow, Information Law Institute, NYU Law School e: michael.zimmer@nyu.edu w: http://michaelzimmer.org On May 3, 2007, at 8:58 PM, Richard Forno wrote:
Is anyone aware of the effort by RIAA to force college students to pay huge cash settlements of supposed copyright infringement?
Not aware of any legal precedents (yet) but I have heard that some unis have pushed-back and told the RIAA they won't do their dirty work unless the RIAA pays for the staff costs associated with log analysis and such. Others have rolled over and supported the RIAA, too.
There is no actual law suit, just the threat of a suit and a proposed settlement.
That's the RIAA's strategy, such that it is. Unfortunately in it's other non-college cases where they use similar tactics, they're being tossed out of court with growing frequency for any number of reasons -- including for suing the wrong person or having very circumstantial evidence to support their claims.
Is file sharing really copyright infringement?
My own personal view is that the RIAA (and MPAA, by extension) would have the public and courts believe that 'file sharing' is the same as copyright infringement.....and their ongoing public statements over the years continues to strongly-suggest or equate the notion of 'file sharing' with something that is (or should be) a criminal act. It's this belief that has made the entertainment industry so reviled because that "fear of file-sharing" is what's led to things like HDMI, PVP, AACS, DECSS and any number of other technological controls contributing to the creation of a marketplace of barely-interoperable digital entertainment devices and services that increases customer costs and levels of aggravation.
Additionally, ongoing legal woes pertaining to DMCA and the various provisions regarding 'copyright circumvention' --- particularly when DMCA has been used to threaten (and sue) people for reasons that far exceed its original spirit of enactment by Congress -- have raised serious issues about free speech, basic research, and assorted aspects of what constitutes "information" and "knowledge" going back to DMCA's enactment in 1998.
From a more scholarly and legal perspective, Lessig, Littman, Felten, and Granick (attornies all, I think) have written copiously on this topic over the years and would be the ideal starting point for looking at this matter in greater detail. I strongly-endorse any and all of these folks' writings as fantastic primers on these very complex issues at the core of the information society.
-rick
_______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http:// listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/