p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA was last year voted the Worst Company in America.

That may have been one of the reasons RIAA spinster Cary Sherman reckoned his employers were being demonised with “false and incendiary rhetoric” as he put it.

He’s also on record as lamenting, “Years ago, college students were our best customers,” but now, “they’re among our worst customers.”

Hmmm. Wonder why that is. Could the fact the RIAA is blackmailing them with extortionate ‘’settlement’ letters be anything to do with it, do you think?

Starting in February last year, “the RIAA began targeting institutions of higher learning, sending pre-lawsuit notices to universities to turn over the names of students-identified by their IP addresses-who illegally downloaded music,” writes Christine Hall in Duke University’s The Chronicle.

Duke’s VP for student affairs Larry Moneta, you’ll recall, recently told Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA, to put up or shut up.

This was in reference to RIAA “pre-litigation” letters.

“The letters offered a settlement to students who contacted the RIAA within 20 days, usually of an amount between $2,000 and $4,000,” says Hall, going on within a year the RIAA sent out 5,404 letters to college students from more than 160 schools across the US.

“Universities nationwide, including Duke, have had to grapple with how to address the illegal activity of student downloading,” says her article, but, “do these policies protect students from the RIAA’s interference with Honor Codes and community standard policies? Where do universities draw the line between privacy and piracy?”

Actually, there is no ‘music piracy’ at universities, or anywhere else. Piracy a term used for robbery on the high seas. And whether or not file sharing is an offence is still very much an open question.

However,  one thing is certain: people who share music purely because they want to pass their enjoyment to others are neither criminals nor thieves, as they’ve been falsely labelled by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG and their RIAA.

However, the Big 4 spin organisation has done a great job elevating an innocent pleasure into crime on a level with rape and murder.

It claims files shared equal sales lost, but has never been able to prove the contention.

A number of authoritative academic and other studies have, on the other hand, proved there’s no basis for the claim, and it’s also been suggested file sharing might in fact constitute an invaluable form of viral marketing.

‘ … if I asked any further questions they would have to take me to court …”

The extent to which the RIAA has been able to twist and warp perceptions is illustrated by a Duke student Hall quotes in her post, saying »»»

Jackie Thompson, a junior, was one of the students at the University contacted by the RIAA after illegally downloading music and violating copyright laws. Thompson, who asked that her real name not be used, started downloading music in high school.

After hearing about a number of people being fined, she deleted her P2P program and stopped downloading music illegally. During her sophomore year at Duke, however, she resorted to downloading two songs from LimeWire that she was unable to find in the online iTunes store. Because she did not exceed bandwidth limits set by the University, she never received any bandwidth violation notices from OIT.

But within a few weeks, the RIAA sent her a pre-litigation notice.

“I did feel guilty for downloading the songs, so you can imagine how freaked out I became when I received the e-mail,” she says. “A few weeks later, I received a settlement notice from the RIAA of $3,000. When I tried to call the phone number for the RIAA lawyer listed, they told me that if I asked any further questions they would have to take me to court.”

Scared of any more financial retribution, Thompson spent the next 30 days saving money to pay off the settlement bill, including sacrificing her study abroad fund. She ended up taking out a loan to pay off the settlement fee but argues that the punishment did not fit the crime.

“I am a college student that has to take out two work-study jobs to pay for my expenses,” Thompson explains. “I certainly could use the money a lot more than [the RIAA]. It makes me sick that the money that I have been saving from babysitting jobs, waitressing and work-study is used to pad the pocket of a government bureaucrat. That money means little to them, but means a lot to me.”

Canadians can freely download music for their own pleasure, although the Big 4 are spending a lot of money on lobbying Canada’s corporate friendly Harper government into changing Canadian laws.

But in the US, Thompson  and millions of other innocent people have been carefully brainwashed into believing the act is a terrible crime.

The Chronicle adds »»»

Duke’s recent policy change came about when administrators realized that the RIAA often served notices without sufficient evidence that students had actually violated copyright law.

The process by which the RIAA obtains information about the illegal activities of students is still not widely known-even by University officials, says Stephen O’Donnell, senior communications strategist at OIT.

“The RIAA does not share their processes,” he says. “We are not sure what types of tools the RIAA or other copyright owners use, or how they determine what users or service providers to contact.”

For security purposes, Duke stores IP addresses for two weeks. After those two weeks, a record of what registered computer was using bandwidth under what IP is history that cannot be retrieved.

Moneta says that although some students assume the RIAA notices are a result of the Duke administration reporting student activity to record companies and the government, that claim is untrue.

“Duke has two first principles here. On one side, students have a right to privacy. We have to protect that, so we don’t give out your IP addresses willy-nilly or reveal you or your activity to the RIAA,” Moneta says. “But on the other end of the spectrum is a deep respect for copyright holders. As a research institution that values intellectual property, how can we not respect that right? Those are the two real ethical principles we are trying to balance.”

Some peer institutions across the nation do have stricter judicial repercussions for illegal downloading. Stanford University started charging students for each complaint received from the RIAA-the first costing $100, $500 for the second and $1,000 for the third, according to Stanford policy published on the Residential Computing Department Web site. The University of Wisconsin’s student newspaper, The Spectator, reported in November that students have been forced to drop out due to exorbitant pre-litigation settlement fees.

Most universities fall closer to the middle, with policies similar to Duke’s previous policy, where pre-litigation letters are forwarded to the student, even if there is a lack of sufficient evidence.

But with a step-by-step guide to running P2P applications (available online from OIT) and one of the most liberal policies regarding suits, is Duke encouraging illegal activity that is in direct violation with the Duke Community Standard? Does the University promote these illegal practices while simultaneously complying with RIAA notices and fines against students?

No, say University official s.

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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Worst Company in America – RIAA NOT world’s biggest liar, November 17, 2008
demonised – SoundExchange / RIAA thing SUX, July 20, 2007
false and incendiary rhetoric – Cary Sherman RIAA rant, November 13, 2006
best customers -  Students ‘worst customers’: RIAA, March 23, 2007
The Chronicle – The truth about Duke’s downloading policy, December 3, 2008
put up or shut up – Duke University to RIAA: put up or shut up, November 14, 2008
“pre-litigation” letters – When the RIAA comes a-knocking …, November 17, 2008

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 11:48 am and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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