RIAA Targeting Colleges

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The RIAA is at it again, this time around they are targeting the most heinous criminals of all…college students. In all seriousness, the RIAA has kicked their campaign into triple overtime, filing more than 15,000 complaints against students at 25 schools.

"It's something we feel we have to do," RIAA President Carey Sherman said. "We have to let people know that if they engage in this activity, they are not anonymous." The top five schools are Ohio, Purdue, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Tennessee and the University of South Carolina. The RIAA complained about almost 15,000 students at those 25 universities, nearly triple the number for the previous school year.
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Sucks to be one of them right now.

I wonder when they are going to raid elementary schools?
 
While it is easy to hate the RIAA for suing old people, little people, children, the deaf, dumb, blind and computerless... this part of the article doesn't gain any sympathy for the students:

At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst - which received 897 complaints - first- and second-time offenders receive escalating warnings about piracy. After a third complaint, the school unplugs a student's Internet connection and sends the case to a dean for additional punishment.
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Say what!?!?! How many times?
 
Ockie said:
I wonder when they are going to raid elementary schools?
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LOL!!!

(They actually STARTED with elementary schools, Remember Briana LaHara 12, being sued a couple years back. We got everyone together and paid her $2,500 fine.)
 
If your favourite artist is a member of RIAA, don't buy their music. I used to purchase anywhere from 1 to 3 music cd's per week. Now I don't purchase any. If the person you're buying goods from is going to sue you or some 12 year old, then why support them? :D

Just my 2 cents...

Anyhow, those students that received even two warnings, had it coming!
 
Steve said:
While it is easy to hate the RIAA for suing old people, little people, children, the deaf, dumb, blind and computerless... this part of the article doesn't gain any sympathy for the students:



Say what!?!?! How many times?
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FYI that's not in lieu of any criminal charges the RIAA can continue to bring, it's just what the colleges themselves are doing. The college might cut off the student's internet but the RIAA can still continue to prosecute on their own. The RIAA actually pushed for schools to immediately and permanently terminate the internet access of accused students... but given the importance of the internet/email in today's schools, the colleges are luckily smart enough to allow 2-3 strikes.

Just so you don't think it's "getting off easy"; I'd wager colleges are actually more likely to respond by cutting off service than most ISPs.
 
I want to see some actual evidence that it hurts record sales. I'm really getting tired of hearing about all this, RIAA will never stop people from doing this.
 
Going to have to agree with an above poster. Stop buying RIAA product.

Support your city's local music scene instead. You might be surprised at how good it is.
 
Steve said:
LOL!!!

(They actually STARTED with elementary schools, Remember Briana LaHara 12, being sued a couple years back. We got everyone together and paid her $2,500 fine.)
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Yeah I remember that, it was a sad day. 12 year olds.


My comment was more meant in sarcasm towards the RIAA's weakhearted methods of operations. Instead of going after the downloaders, rather go after the seeders.
 
This is just my opinion I don't expect everyone or even a bunch of people to agree. The genie is out of the bottle as far as content on demand over the internet. I think maybe the music industry should pull their head out of their rear ends. The people obviously demand music that isn't DRM handicapped at their beck and call. I don't download music illegally. Yet somehow I feel the the intellectual property industry has been ripping off consumers for decades. I know that I can't be the only person here who has purchased movies/music only to have to repurchase another copy. This is entirely due to the fact that for as long as I can remember music/movies has been put on mediums that are prone to high rates of failure. When I purchase a CD/DVD I own a license to that movie don't I? Shouldn't there be an easy way to reaquire the content that I have legally purchased when the medium it happens to be stored on fails? I mean they should by all means be reimbursed for bandwidth and processing fee's but I don't think it should be a pain int the but to get back what I have already purchased. Maybe just maybe the RIAA and the MPAA should be slapped off their high horse with a class action lawsuit. I mean how many of these "offenders" could have been just trying to require content that they already payed for but had no easy means provided by the content providers? These industries should realize the genie IS out of the bottle and make it into a business opportunity instead of trying to fight the technology is all I'm saying. Maybe if you make it easier and cheaper to get legal content than obtain it illegally you could make a buttload more money and not be pissing off your consumers. Ok rant over
 
Aren't most campuses wireless? I would think you could ride any number of anon WAPs and go undetected.

This though is quite saddening. I imagine the people locked in Gitmo enjoy a better view than this.
Hall meets personally with students caught twice and forces them to watch an eight-minute anti-piracy DVD produced by the RIAA.
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Fooshnik said:
Aren't most campuses wireless? I would think you could ride any number of anon WAPs and go undetected.

This though is quite saddening. I imagine the people locked in Gitmo enjoy a better view than this.
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Here at Purdue (woot for being in the top 5), the campus is wireless, yes. But in order to log in you have to provide username and password for your school computer account. Makes it fairly easy to see who is DLing gigs of pirated music.

The other side of the story is, at Purdue we have a nice little dark-net set up so the students can share with each other and connections from outside the school are blocked. Can usually find more on the dark-net and get it quicker than anywhere on the web. IE: movie downloads in 5mins.
 
Hmm, I didn't think the devil was let loose from his 1000 years yet :p I guess we truly are in the end times :eek:
 
The best part is that college students have the LEAST money to spend on cds to begin with. If they didn't steal the music...they wouldn't buy it. So if you look at lost sales, despite the highest 'theft' rate, i bet you the actual lost sales rate is a lot lower than they think. Which, is the reason for this whole thing to begin with, right?
 
havand said:
The best part is that college students have the LEAST money to spend on cds to begin with. If they didn't steal the music...they wouldn't buy it. So if you look at lost sales, despite the highest 'theft' rate, i bet you the actual lost sales rate is a lot lower than they think. Which, is the reason for this whole thing to begin with, right?
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I think everyone they have sued has been people who wouldn't buy it in the first place. Its not that they are "losing" money, its that people are getting it for free and they don't want that to happen.
 
Go Vols!! (University of Tennessee grad here)

And some people think we don't wear shoes in the South much less own a PC:)
 
Here at the University of Idaho, Limewire and torrents don't work at all. Instead they gave us a free account to Ruckus music service (now it's free for all college students). Now we have everyone illegally removing the DRM.
 
Ockie said:
I wonder when they are going to raid elementary schools?
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They won't. It is much more efficient to have the little ones spy on their parents and report them to the GeRiaaPo.

Steve said:
Say what!?!?! How many times?
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I can only say that I am more than surprised at that number. At my current university the first offense leaves you without internet connection or PC access for 30 days. Subsequent offenses will terminate a user's login. It is rather difficult to graduate from college without PC access.

Fooshnik said:
Aren't most campuses wireless? I would think you could ride any number of anon WAPs and go undetected.
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I believe that some schools have adequate network technology to detect ports that are being shared (hubs/ switches/ routers whatever) and disable these ports. My undergrad school had a pretty harsh policy about this, even back in 1999.
 
I'm glad I got out of school before they became the pawns of the RIAA :rolleyes:

How do these universities even know that things being downloaded are illegal? What do they base their warnings on? I thought most torrent clients encrypted their data.
 
Axiomatic said:
Support your city's local music scene instead. You might be surprised at how good it is.
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Now are you talking about like bar bands or So SO Def, cause if you talking about So So Def, they suck and i can't support that crap.
 
Well, in my case, I used to proxy almost everything I did that could be considered "borderline". If they took those precautions, then the schools would have no idea what was passing, just that secured data was being sent, but that could just be from buying from an online store, too.

If they didn't have the sense to proxy when they're downloading a ton of illegal items, then they sorta deserve it. You can't shoot your foot off and blame the gun.

Last thought: they really do need to leave off and chase the seeders and site owners instead.
 
LeTUOtter said:
they really do need to leave off and chase the seeders and site owners instead.
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na thats no fun, sue some geek running a website, or sue thousands of college students who can probably hardly afford their $.15 ramen dinner.... charge them $2500 to go away, so that they have to drop out of school and ruin their entire future, over an mp3!

hurray for the outlook for our contries future!
 
FLECOM said:
na thats no fun, sue some geek running a website, or sue thousands of college students who can probably hardly afford their $.15 ramen dinner.... charge them $2500 to go away, so that they have to drop out of school and ruin their entire future, over an mp3!

hurray for the outlook for our contries future!
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Heh ;)

Thanks for the link to secureix, btw. Very easy to setup! :D
 
U of South Carolina... great.

They have a huge wireless network. I know non students that go there and download from the parking lot. RIAA blaming college students.... Bah! (not that college students are that trustworthy anyway, lol)
Come on. What are they going to do? Hold the university responsible?
Sheesh!
 
havand said:
The best part is that college students have the LEAST money to spend on cds to begin with. If they didn't steal the music...they wouldn't buy it. So if you look at lost sales, despite the highest 'theft' rate, i bet you the actual lost sales rate is a lot lower than they think. Which, is the reason for this whole thing to begin with, right?
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I'm poor too.
 
Sabrewulf165 said:
I'm glad I got out of school before they became the pawns of the RIAA :rolleyes:

How do these universities even know that things being downloaded are illegal? What do they base their warnings on? I thought most torrent clients encrypted their data.
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There are ways to look for it, such as the "hello" command when you start up a torrent. But there was an article here (I think) on a created BitTorrent client that said all these "hellos" and was quickly sent a letter :p
 
rhouck said:
FYI that's not in lieu of any criminal charges the RIAA can continue to bring, it's just what the colleges themselves are doing.
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FWIW the RIAA cannot bring criminal charges. Only a prosecutor can do that. The RIAA operates, in these cases, in civil courts where there is no state provided defense and the burden of defense falls completly on the accused.

It's easy to extort and shake down when the cost of the shake down is less than the cost of a lawyer.
 
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