Students help each other defeat RIAA
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- Before 2003, hardly anyone had heard of Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) —- unless, of course, they were among musicians the so-called trade organisation had screwed.
Now it’s a household byword ranking with ’scum’ and similar superlatives.
That’s because it’s tasked by the Big 4 with suing their customers into good (according to corporate perspectives) behaviour, which means buying their product, and only their product.
Suing adults is OK, but the best prospects for the future are students, so that’s where the RIAA is currently focusing its attention, blackmailing universities across America, demanding that schools send extortionate ’settlement’ students.
Pressured by school authorities who are supposed to be acting for the students rather than the corporate music industry, students are tricked into incriminating themselves, paying upwards of $3,000 for the privilege.
They hand over personal information the music industry can later use against them at its leisure.
One of the RIAA’s favourite tactics is to use one or other of the disgraced online scalp hunters such as MediaDefender to pull IP (internet protocol) addresses, and then demand that school authorities hand over student names.
If the universities were follow Harvard’s example, the effort would undoubtedly by now be dead on its feet. However, most schools simply cave in.
But, “You may recall that in Interscope v. Does 1-7, 494 F. Supp. 2d 388, the Newport News, Virginia, case directed at College of William and Mary students, Judge Walter D. Kelley, Jr., rejected and dismissed the RIAA’s application for discovery into student names and addresses,” posts Recording Industry vs The People, going on:
Because the case is ex parte, the students at College of William and Mary do not even know they have been sued.
The RIAA has meanwhile jumped in and made a motion for reconsideration, also ex parte, giving no one any notice of their motion.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, where North Carolina State University students were not so lucky, and the judge signed an ex parte discovery order, in LaFace v. Does 1-38, four North Carolina State University students have joined together to vacate that ex parte order.
Those same students have also made a motion in Interscope v. Does 1-7 for leave to file an amicus curiae brief which supports Judge Kelley’s prior order.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
blackmailing universities – RIAA college settlement plan,February 28, 2007
Harvard’s example – RIAA student victimisation campaign, July 21, 2007
William and Mary students – RIAA fails to get student IDs, July 14, 2007
Recording Industry vs The People – Four North Carolina State students pitch in to help College of William & Mary Students in Interscope v. Does 1-7, file Amicus Curiae motion, October 12, 2007
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