No! 2nd school tells the RIAA
p2pnet.net news:- Another US school has told Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA it’s not prepared to act as a messenger boy-cum-enforcer.
The RIAA is demanding the University of Maine System hand over names linked to IP addresses but, “The only way the RIAA can get that information is if the RIAA takes us to court to get those names,” says system spokesman John Diamond, quoted in the online Maine Campus.
The University of Wisconsin told the Big 4 it wouldn’t be a copyright cop, or act as their runner in extorting ’settlement’ money from students, p2pnet posted eight days ago.
Now, “[The RIAA] have so many lawyers that they can afford to send frivolous subpoenas right and left, and the mere threat to do so has caused some universities to cave right away,” Tony Reaves has Jon Ippolito, a UMaine new media professor and associate curator of media arts at the Guggenheim Museum, stating, going on that the university has taken a “principled stance”.
Ippolito said subpoenaing universities won’t necessarily hold water in court, and was critical of the RIAA’s newest tactics with colleges, a policy he called “mafia-like,” the Maine Campus states.
“They want to bully universities into exposing students and also bully students directly into signing onto a discount,” Ippolito said. “There’s no legal process and that’s the end of the story.”
The RIAA demand for student information asks the system to violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, “which bars the UMS from divulging information not considered public,” says Diamond in the Main Campus, also quoted in Recording Industry vs The People. The site’s Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who defends RIAA victims, has also drafted an open letter to universities being targeted.
In other defeats, the RIAA has been forced to pull out of a case it brought against a middle aged couple, and has been told it can’t personally grill a 10-year-old girl in an alleged file sharing lawsuit it’s brought against her mother.
And the bulk of American students are ignoring RIAA efforts to con them into incriminating themselves on a so-called ’settlement’ web site.
Is this the beginning of a trend? Stay tuned.
Also See:
Maine Campus – UMS refuses to hand student info to RIAA, March 27, 2007
p2pnet – University ignores RIAA blackmail, March 20, 2007
Recording Industry vs The People – University of Maine Refuses To Forward RIAA Letters to Its Students, March 27, 2007
open letter – 405 more RIAA blackmail letters, March 21, 2007
middle aged couple – New RIAA defeat, March 27, 2007
personally grill - RIAA vs Kylee Andersen, 10, March 27, 2007
ignoring RIAA efforts – Take a hike, students tell RIAA, March 26, 2007
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
March 30th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Spammers Needed Here. I know every net citizen hates you spammers so why not get a little respect for your botnet ways and knock this settlement site off the net? I know its the big bad RIAA MPAA but surely one of you guys can pull this off with a few keystrokes of your bot controller software. Even the worst badguy has a little bit of good in him, so DDOS that settlement site into oblivion. Do the right thing attack the SCUMBAGS!!!