RIAA Wants 50 Ohio Students To Pay Up

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The RIAA is demanding $3,000.00 each from 50 students to avoid being sued for music downloading. The $3,000 amount sounds miniscule when compared to the “minimum” amount of $590,000 the RIAA says they are entitled to for 787 songs one student had on her computer ($750 per song).

The Recording Industry Association of America asked the university to pass along letters to the students with Internet addresses accused of being involved with the illegal sharing of copyrighted music. The university notified the students on Monday.
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They are just gonna have to cough up the money. I still would like to know where they get these dollar figures from for songs that are normally $.99 cents or less....
 
What, the RIAA would rather take $3k than spend more on lawyers during lawsuits?

In this case I'm not giving them the benefit of the doubt. The $3k is unlikely empathy for college kids :(
 
The RIAA is committing High Treason against the american people! This Association is attacking people at will, with no recourse, if they are wrong.

This goes beyond unconstitutional!

With this happening, America must be a Dictatorship government, runned by corrupted individuals!
 
I always like how the RIAA all of a sudden decided to go after students how don't have money to fight back. Since they can't win in court they decide to go after those who can't afford to go to court in the first place.
 
I attend this uni (though I live off campus now), and up until the RIAA released their list of top file sharing school this was pretty much a non-issue. They used to forward a letter to you regarding the fact you got caught (happened to me with the MPAA) and then that was it unless you had the misfortune to get caught twice, in which case they just turned off the internet to your room.

Our school does have a relatively transparent network though, which it makes it much easier to get torrents and file-sharing programs to work as opposed to other universities, so I can see why we'd make it so high on the list.

I just take my laptop to the library and download my torrents in about 10 minutes. The up and down speeds from the university wifi network are outstanding and unless they physically track me down to match my MAC address I doubt they will be catching on any time soon.
 
romeoagogo said:
I attend this uni (though I live off campus now), and up until the RIAA released their list of top file sharing school this was pretty much a non-issue. They used to forward a letter to you regarding the fact you got caught (happened to me with the MPAA) and then that was it unless you had the misfortune to get caught twice, in which case they just turned off the internet to your room.

Our school does have a relatively transparent network though, which it makes it much easier to get torrents and file-sharing programs to work as opposed to other universities, so I can see why we'd make it so high on the list.

I just take my laptop to the library and download my torrents in about 10 minutes. The up and down speeds from the university wifi network are outstanding and unless they physically track me down to match my MAC address I doubt they will be catching on any time soon.
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This post isn't helping you hide. If anything you are asking to be sued and helping them find you.
 
Why don't all these students just band together and sue the RIAA for extortion, class action style? :cool:

Unless all of these students are independently wealthy, they really can't squeeze blood from a stone.
 
Does anyone who reads these forums have a strong background in US or Canadian law?

I would like to have this question answered: Is it legal to sue someone without any reason?

I'm not suggesting that the RIAA doesn't have a reason, but if one of these suits actually went through, and it was proven that IP addresses don't map to specific people, then what evidence would the RIAA have left? Is this why they drop their claims when certain people stand up to them?

Also, has any of these cases actually gone fully through the trial process? If so, what was the outcome?

Here's my opinion: if it is not already illegal to bring suit against someone for no reason, it should be. Individuals who are sued for no reason should be able to counter-sue for damages. Then, it would only be a case of proving that the RIAA has no reason for all these suits, and all that would take is one trial where a judge rendered the IP address to be insufficient cause.
 
Why hasn't anyone stopped the RIAA yet? How many have the sued so far, or have threatened to sue? 12,000? 15,000? I know the number is up there.

How long would it be before the legal system or the government would stop me if I were to go and sue that many people with little or no evidence
 
Well, this isn't a lawsuit....it is worse.

Look kid, I will sue you to death for $600,000.00 ....unless you pay me $3000....a fraction of the going rate for a good attorney....that wouldn't be able to defend you.....because we will sue you in our state, not yours....over the course of a year.... :(

That $3,000 extortion...err....settlement, looks pretty appealing now doesn't it?
 
Ockie said:
They are just gonna have to cough up the money. I still would like to know where they get these dollar figures from for songs that are normally $.99 cents or less....
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When you steal something it doesn't very well make sense to only have them pay the cost of the item does it? Otherwise why wouldn't even more people steal if the worst case scenario is having to purchase the item?
 
Exavior said:
This post isn't helping you hide. If anything you are asking to be sued and helping them find you.
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If they can find and track me from this message board and prove that I actually downloaded some illegal material then I would have to give them the slightest bit of respect. But this computers IP and my username and email for this board in no way tie me to the university, my personal computers, or illegal file sharing so I am not too concerned.
 
Cabezone said:
When you steal something it doesn't very well make sense to only have them pay the cost of the item does it? Otherwise why wouldn't even more people steal if the worst case scenario is having to purchase the item?
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Ummm, that is exactly what you are entitled to.

I had a vehicle stolen, the insurance company paid me the cost of the truck...$24,000. Too bad I only had $4,000 of it paid off at the time...so the $20,000 went to GMC, and I got $4,000. I was SOL and I had to buy another truck.

The guy that stole the truck and ruined it, had to pay restituition for the amount of the vehicle and got probation.


According to the RIAA's logic, if you steal a $5000 car...you owe them $5,000,000 (1000 times the value of the retail product). If they sue you for less than that...or offer you a pre-lawsuit settlement for less....IT'S A BARGAIN!!

;)
 
What? Like anyone has any respect for the RIAA. Someone needs to create a reality TV show out of the RIAA headquarters. A Big Brother, only rename it to Big Bitch.
 
Why not just share amongst your friends? Borrow CD's, small private lans, small private FTP's?

I get confused everytime I see an idiot actually buying a CD in a store. I refuse to do so. That is the only true way to fight back: do not give them your money.
 
romeoagogo said:
I attend this uni (though I live off campus now), and up until the RIAA released their list of top file sharing school this was pretty much a non-issue. They used to forward a letter to you regarding the fact you got caught (happened to me with the MPAA) and then that was it unless you had the misfortune to get caught twice, in which case they just turned off the internet to your room.

Our school does have a relatively transparent network though, which it makes it much easier to get torrents and file-sharing programs to work as opposed to other universities, so I can see why we'd make it so high on the list.

I just take my laptop to the library and download my torrents in about 10 minutes. The up and down speeds from the university wifi network are outstanding and unless they physically track me down to match my MAC address I doubt they will be catching on any time soon.
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You are the reason as to why they are clamping down. Please share your illegal activities on another forum. [H] does not welcome any illegal activity chatter.

Captain Canada said:
I would like to have this question answered: Is it legal to sue someone without any reason?
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I could sue you for this post. I may not win, but I can still try! :)


If you do push through with a attorney and do decide to defend against the RIAA, they will quickly drop their suit saying that it's not worth of their interest to pursue. Perhaps they might make you sign a document of non disclosure or perhaps they might have you forge a contract in return of them dropping the case.

Basically, you would be a fool not to take their offer, unless of course you want to make some statement. IMO if you pirated and you are fined with this easy way out, it's a much better proposition than sinking tens of thousands into a good attorney and having them drop the case... meaning you sit with the nice attorney bill and no real win.

Cabezone said:
When you steal something it doesn't very well make sense to only have them pay the cost of the item does it? Otherwise why wouldn't even more people steal if the worst case scenario is having to purchase the item?
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So kids who steal a lollipop should be slammed 25 to life?

Reasonable reparations or exact value for offense are usually exchanged to a criminal. It would make no sense to charge some one 10,000 in fines for a petty theft, especially when the item isn't truly tangible and can be replicated by the click of a mouse. It's also impossible to prove the loss of a product such as a song vs the loss of something tangible such as say a computer, therefore you can not charge an absurd amount of money more than the products face value.

Thats like you stealing a lb of dirt from my front lawn, I can claim that you owe me tens of thousands of dollars for it, or I can just take it for what its face value is worth... because there is no way to indicate the true loss of value and revenue from said product.


romeoagogo said:
If they can find and track me from this message board and prove that I actually downloaded some illegal material then I would have to give them the slightest bit of respect. But this computers IP and my username and email for this board in no way tie me to the university, my personal computers, or illegal file sharing so I am not too concerned.
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Wow, you are just the hacker to be? Seriously, go somewhere else to boast about your illegal activities.

Steve said:
Ummm, that is exactly what you are entitled to.

I had a vehicle stolen, the insurance company paid me the cost of the truck...$24,000. Too bad I only had $4,000 of it paid off at the time...so the $20,000 went to GMC, and I got $4,000. I was SOL and I had to buy another truck.

The guy that stole the truck and ruined it, had to pay restituition for the amount of the vehicle and got probation.


According to the RIAA's logic, if you steal a $5000 car...you owe them $5,000,000 (1000 times the value of the retail product). If they sue you for less than that...or offer you a pre-lawsuit settlement for less....IT'S A BARGAIN!!

;)
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Exactly, steve said it best.
 
While i am not in favor of the RIAA's actions in lawsuits i understand that stealing is wrong, but the monitary values they place on songs is a bit insane, breaking the law is one thing but claiming the value of 750x the cost of the original product should not be allowed. You would be charged with fraud if you claimed a loss of 5,000,000 on an investment of 10,000. Try and ship a candy bar at ups and insure it for $750 they would never honor that, and neither should the courts.
 
Ockie said:
You are the reason as to why they are clamping down. Please share your illegal activities on another forum. [H] does not welcome any illegal activity chatter.

Wow, you are just the hacker to be? Seriously, go somewhere else to boast about your illegal activities.
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I'm not boasting about anything at all. I am sorry that I thought, being a student of this university, it would make sense for me to post my experience with this. I am not trying to say I'm a l33t h4xxor either, I'm simply saying that I'm not going to get sued by the RIAA for making a post on a message board about it, it just doesnt make sense. I am sorry that I brought up illegal activity at all... but that IS THE ENTIRE SUBJECT of this thread.

thanks
 
romeoagogo said:
I'm not boasting about anything at all. I am sorry that I thought, being a student of this university, it would make sense for me to post my experience with this. I am not trying to say I'm a l33t h4xxor either, I'm simply saying that I'm not going to get sued by the RIAA for making a post on a message board about it, it just doesnt make sense. I am sorry that I brought up illegal activity at all... but that IS THE ENTIRE SUBJECT of this thread.

thanks
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The entire part of this discussion has nothing to do with how good you are at circumventing networks and/or downloading illegal content and being above the law. I believe this is against the hardforum rules.

And FYI, You didn't just say "I'm simply saying that I'm not going to get sued by the RIAA for making a post on a message board about it"

Let me remind you what exactly you said:

I just take my laptop to the library and download my torrents in about 10 minutes. The up and down speeds from the university wifi network are outstanding and unless they physically track me down to match my MAC address I doubt they will be catching on any time soon.
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i did not say anything about circumventing networks or that I downloaded any illegal material in that quote. I said that I use my school wi-fi to get good download speeds for torrents. There is no 'circumventing' going on here, I'm not hacking into the schools super secure mainframe to download scrubs or shit like that. I go and open my laptop and download things... thats it.

My only point to what I was saying is that the school does not really care about this issue, up to this point they have not even released private data on students to whoever was suing them. Also that it is not difficult to perform these activities in contrast to other schools where they do traffic shaping and lock down many ports used for file-sharing.
 
Isn't this blackmail? Unless you pay me $x I'll forget about telling someone y.
 
RIAA can never win, p2p downloading and downloading of music is a world phenomena. You can't stop a revolution lol. They are just sewing people left and right but at the end they will never win. I am a college student also and i know its hard to even afford college let alone 600,000. They are just ruining peoples lives trying to set an example of what will happen to others but they are not looking at the source. You can sue people all u want that are downloading but it won't go anywhere and what it comes down to is how people want to get their music now. Businesses can't choose for the consumer, the consumer changes the way businesses do business. Just like agp bus, the industry wants everyone to go to pci-e but then now they found out 65 of the people still have agp and the demand is high. That just shows a company can't force everyone to go their way. To me the RIAA and the MPAA will get run out of business as future technology such p2p and the internet take over mainstream later on. The faster the internet gets the more possibilities we will have to get our information such as movies, music, games and everything. Thats why p2p got so big as it is today. People don't feel like going to the mall and driving all the way down there when they could just click and download a song in 25 seconds. Thats why RIAA and MPAA are trying to limit and delay internet2 since they know they would become obsolete since we wouldn't need the middle man anymore to distribute our music or movies or anything. We wouldn't need a big company to make our cds as much anymore. They are just a sinking ship right now slowly going down and they are trying to sue everyone trying to get the most money possible before they jump ship and file bankruptcy or lose profits. Someone needs to class action law suit the RIAA for abusing the system so much. What goes around comes around. Sooner or later they are going to pay and the future is what is going to run them out of business. :)
 
This is really ridiculous, but so is jumping on romeoagogo. For all you know, he could be dowloading or seeding torrents for linux. He didn't say this is what I torrent and here is where to get it......
 
Fleat said:
This is really ridiculous, but so is jumping on romeoagogo. For all you know, he could be dowloading or seeding torrents for linux. He didn't say this is what I torrent and here is where to get it......
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True, although unlikely.:)
 
Fleat said:
This is really ridiculous, but so is jumping on romeoagogo. For all you know, he could be dowloading or seeding torrents for linux. He didn't say this is what I torrent and here is where to get it......
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If you were running torrents for legitimate purposes you wouldn't need to run and hide and say:

I just take my laptop to the library and download my torrents in about 10 minutes. The up and down speeds from the university wifi network are outstanding and unless they physically track me down to match my MAC address I doubt they will be catching on any time soon.
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I don't think linux has an issue with tracking people down nor care about what they download, perhaps you care to read the thread a little more?
 
Ockie you sound like you work for the RIAA, step off the soap box. You sound like you have never downloaded anything illegaly.
 
mitcity22 said:
Ockie you sound like you work for the RIAA, step off the soap box. You sound like you have never downloaded anything illegaly.
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The funny part about all of this is if people weren't stealing music noone would have ever care about the RIAA and they wouldn't be bothering people or infringing the rights of legitimate users. So people should be upset at the pirates, they are causing problems for the rest of us.
 
Paul_Johnson said:
The funny part about all of this is if people weren't stealing music noone would have ever care about the RIAA and they wouldn't be bothering people or infringing the rights of legitimate users. So people should be upset at the pirates, they are causing problems for the rest of us.
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Exactly.
 
imo people don't want to pay for a cd or dvd they may hate. Dl it check it out then if you like it buy it. If you're going on to get stuff you know you want anyway you should just ponny up the cash, copy the dvd at home then throw it on ebay if you want to get some money back (assuming there's a market)
 
plus why the hell would you pay for drm? lots of times the videos online are encoded with better codecs and are drm free.
 
Paul_Johnson said:
The funny part about all of this is if people weren't stealing music noone would have ever care about the RIAA and they wouldn't be bothering people or infringing the rights of legitimate users. So people should be upset at the pirates, they are causing problems for the rest of us.
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the pirates have been at this along long time
its that its point and click easy now and every joe sixpack can do it

if that had never happened it dont thing we would be were we are now

want to blame some one blame the napsters and limewires of 5 years ago
 
Paul_Johnson said:
The funny part about all of this is if people weren't stealing music noone would have ever care about the RIAA and they wouldn't be bothering people or infringing the rights of legitimate users. So people should be upset at the pirates, they are causing problems for the rest of us.
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No, the RIAA shouldn't be doing these things anyway. Their take on this is pure bullshit, its only in their interest. I hardly see it in the interest of the artists. 750$ for a song, because of lost sales. How did they figure that up. I remember clearly when they wanted to make it so you had to pay for use of music on your computer. If you bought a CD, they were trying to say you couldn't rip it to mp3. Of course that shit hit the fan when quotes started showing up of them saying one thing and doing another. We can sit here and bicker about right and wrong, the RIAA doesn't care about anything other than their revenue stream. If they couldn't make money off these cases, they wouldn't do it. Its not about protecting anything. $$$$$$$$$$ flow, perhaps.
 
It's about maintaining a business model yet failing to adapt to your customer's needs and wants. Protecting rather than evolving has always proven futile. What once was good will not always be so.

Learn, adapt or get your a$$ kicked is the short story.
 
Counter-Sue RIAA for extortion and blackmail...

...for 750,000 dollars.
 
Im not advocating piracy in any way, but the way the RIAA goes about things, I really cant sit back and say "Oh well doesnt affect me, I dont care". What bothers me, Is the only legal, non-mutilated form of music that can be bought today is on CD. 128/96Kbs digitally-crapafied music off the online stores tied down with DRM making them mostly useless, is not what I want, and I belelive other people feel the same way.

If Im going to spend money on music, I want to be able to :
1) Play it on my computer
2) Play it in the cd player hooked to my amplifier
3) play it in the car
4) play it at work
5) play it at a friends house

Now, as much as I loved the 1980s, Im not really too excited about packing around a dozen CDs with me. CDs snap like gram crackers if someone sits on them, walks on them, they cant be exposed to sunligtht, and can be scratched. A CD player does not fit in my pocket, nor will a half-dozen CDs. An MP3 player the size of my wallet will, and hold several thousand songs. Unless im mistaken and things have changed recently, you still cant download music legally and have the ability to play it elsewhere without trouble.

So when I read about the RIAA suing people that never had internet, or the RIAA suing young kids half my age, or the RIAA suing college students for 3k threatening to sue for more money than they will ever have in their life... Yes, they broke the law... but theres a limit to how far a company should go with lawsuits. Its as if they are some kind of Mafia-like organization, and they want a big cut of the action.

Paul_Johnson said:
The funny part about all of this is if people weren't stealing music noone would have ever care about the RIAA and they wouldn't be bothering people or infringing the rights of legitimate users. So people should be upset at the pirates, they are causing problems for the rest of us.
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Yes, Im sure a student downloading... Excuse me, a student "Stealing" music from a torrent, can ruin everything. Do you happen to mean copyright infringement?
 
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