RIAA attacks UC Berkeley
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- Not content with quite literally ruining the lives of thousands of American families, Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG and their RIAA are also hell-bent on seriously disrupting studies at you at US universities across the country.
As part of their bizarre campaign to try to sue people into becoming compliant consumers of corporate product, they’re targeting students, using school administrations and staffs as copyright enforcement cops.
Now, "Starting this fall semester, the Recording Industry Association of America is bringing their war on pirated music and videos to the residence halls of UC Berkeley," says KRON at Berkeley, going on:
"The university is warning students that if they use campus computers to illegally download copyrighted music and videos, they will lose in-room internet connections for a minimum of one week."
Just to make sure, "It’s our job to make sure students who live in the residence halls fully understand the consequences of illegal file-sharing," story has Dedra Chamberlin, mManager of residential computing services at the university, saying. "We don’t want students to end up facing a lawsuit or $3,000 fine saying, ‘Why didn’t anyone warn me about this’?"
And to be doubly certain students are thoroughly intimidated, "Officials for the school expect around 6,000 students to attend orientation workshops on Sunday where they will show video segments depicting the consequences of illegal file sharing," adds KRON.
Meanwhile, "The scene at RIAA headquarters this week must have been fascinating," says Ars Technica, going on:
"The group yesterday announced that it has finished sending out a new batch of 503 "pre-litigation letters" to 58 different universities around the US, generously offering to let students settle copyright infringement claims "at a discounted rate" before those claims go to trial. The letters blanketed the country, going everywhere from the University of Hawaii to Swarthmore, from Boston College to Tulane, from Emory to UC-Chico.
Also See:
thousands of American families - RIAA named in first class action, August 16, 2007
KRON - Students at Cal Facing Stricter Piracy Regulations, August 16, 2007
Ars Technica - RIAA faces possible class action over suing the innocent August 17, 2007
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
August 17th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
The RIAA is right to continue to dig their grave.
They have to make sure that it is deep enought so that no piece stick out ans smell once they are in.
Thank you RIAA and have a rotten time in hell!
August 17th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
It is my job to make sure that the parasite at the RIAA understand the full consequence for persecuting the US citizen in the exercise of their constitutional right.
August 17th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
If you are a student at Berkley do not settle! never settle never never settle! Give them hell instead!
August 17th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
don’t claim victory to early!
Remember guys what a RIAA/IFPI insider has said some time ago;
“I am not concerned that people decide to take out law-suits against our organisations; we have the resources to deal with that.”
http://newmusicstrategies.com/2007/06/14/an-ifpi-bpi-board-member-writes/
August 17th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Well, with each set of lawsuits aimed at universities, we have an increasing amount of people blocking the lawsuit. The RIAA has accomplished making there presence more known at the universities, and with that more people are understanding the legal rights they have when targeted.
August 18th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
The RIAA is on a collision course with its own stupidity. The cultural backlash will only get bigger and the legal bitch slapping will be heard around the world. By the time they’re done they will be standing, pantless, powerless and utterly humiliated in the town square. Never give in to their extortion tactics. Go to EFF.org and find out how to defend yourselves and fight back. They are lying scum and their resources are nothing compared to the will of people enraged in the face of injustice. They are a dying, gasping, grasping dinosaur. Cheers.
August 21st, 2007 at 12:35 pm
1. there is NO LAW on the books in America (possibly any country) that says “downloading song files is illegal” so just laugh at the idiots at the RIAA when they make stupid comments that contain “illegally downloading music”. Nor is there a law against “making available” — whatever that is supposed to mean.
2. the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has stated that if there are substantially non-infringing uses for a technology it can not be made illegal to use that technology.
3. universities need to be careful to not perform “prior restraint” (a legal term for making something illegal that they had been doing before there were rules against doing it) on their students: unless you know the INTENT of the person downloading a song file, you can not know if the purpose was legal or not! Duh!!
A journalist doing an article that compares and contrasts two singers has EVERY RIGHT to download two song files for purposes of comparison, and can even take excerpts from those songs and make them available as part of their article! And that is just a single example of a legal purpose for downloading/uploading songs. Obviously if you take it to an extreme you run afoul of the “reasonableness factor” so always maintain culpable deniability…