RIAA Wins In Court Against UW Madison

Billosaur writes "A judge has ordered the University of Wisconsin-Madison to turn over the names and contact information for the 53 UW-M students accused of file sharing over the university's networks by the RIAA. 'U.S. District Judge John Shabaz signed an order requiring UW-Madison to relinquish the names, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Media Access Control addresses for each of the 53 individuals.' The ruling came as no surprise to the university, which had previously rejected the request of the RIAA to hand out their settlement letters to alleged copyright violators on their campus. The school feels the RIAA will have a hard time tracking down who did the file-sharing anyway, as the IP addresses the RIAA has for the violations may be mapped to computers in common areas, making it difficult to determine just which people may have made the downloads."

No "win"

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't "win in court". They filed suit, which UW Madison said they'd have to do before they'd give up the records.

Moral of the story

[C_Kode]

The school feels the RIAA will have a hard time tracking down who did the file-sharing anyway, as the IP addresses the RIAA has for the violations may be mapped to computers in common areas, making it difficult to determine just which people may have made the downloads."

The moral of the story is if you download illegal music; do it from a university and with a forged MAC. Of course, who's mac is it anyway? Are they going to get a subpoena for every single person that uses the university's network to supply their network cards so the mac address can be examined? That should be fun...

Misleading Headline. Not "Win".Not against UW.

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

It's a misleading headline.

It was an ex parte proceeding. It was not a "win". There was no one else in court. No one to oppose it.

It was not against University of Wisconsin. It's against the "John Does".

Yes and no

[geek]

It's directed more at Universities and parents. They know full well kids wont take the moral high ground and stop pirating. They are aiming these suits at the kids to show parents who the boss is. I know several parents who've taken action against there kids for fear of the RIAA knocking on their doors. My father, when this all began, even took time out to come talk to me about whether or not I was pirating songs on his cable modem (I was 25 at the time and staying with them while in college still).

Lawsuits are rarely profitable on a corporate scale. They are more or less used to scare a certain segment of the population, in this case, parents and gaurdians. This in turn puts pressure on the actual offenders. They aren't looking for compensation for the theft which is what lawsuits were supposed to be for to begin with. Instead it's being used as a message which, to me, is an abuse of the system and the judges and lawyers involved should be taking action to stop it as it significantly reduces the credibility of their own system.

MAC addresses?

[Weaselmancer]

How is that going to help them find anyone?

Hey RIAA - read this first. [irongeek.com]

And everyone else too. Never hurts to know stuff like this, y'know. Just in case. Yeah. That's it.

Re:Same old...

[gurps_npc]

Part of the problem was that while the importation and exportation of slaves was interstate commerce, the existence of slaves already in certain states did not involve interstate commerce.

Re:Moral of the story

[illumin8]

Actually, I'm still waiting for the RIAA to send letters to TMobile asking for user names of those who downloaded files from a Starbucks hotspot.

This would seem to be the best test of that little IP == user question.

Except for the fact that the case you mention might just be the *only* case where they could actually tie your credit card information to the IP address issued to that card-holder thereby proving it was either you, or somebody with access to your credit card that did the downloading... Not the best "test case."

FYI

[Khammurabi]

For reference:

"UW-M" = University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
"UW" = University of Wisconsin - Madison

Whoever submitted the article mistakenly used the wrong abbreviation.

UW vs. UW-M

[proxima]

This often comes up in stories about UW-Madison. The University of Wisconsin is a big system with many campuses. UW-M refers to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. UW alone (pronounced "u double-u") refers to UW-Madison. By contrast, UW (pronounced "u dub", as I understand it) refers to the University of Washington.

Re:Change title

[Anonymous Coward]

Warner (Bros)... as in Time-Warner

Re:Same old...

[Jherek Carnelian]

Part of the problem was that while the importation and exportation of slaves was interstate commerce, the existence of slaves already in certain states did not involve interstate commerce.

Under the current interpretation of the meaning of interstate commerce the fact that the cotton that the slaves picked was sold to a buyer in a different state would be sufficient.

Re:Moral of the story

[WiSparky]

Unfortunately, you need to provide your MAC to the university to register for the network connection in the first place. So they already have it.

Actually, that's only partly true. UW networks that the average Badger (i.e. likely not to know how or why to spoof their MAC) would plug into are in one of three flavors.

ResNet (wired in rooms in older dorms and wireless in common dining areas and new residence halls). ResNet requires every computer connected to it be registered with a campus NetId (http://www.housing.wisc.edu/resnet/netreg.php [wisc.edu]). Those registrations are attached to MAC addresses so that a device may move around ResNet without having to register to every new jack it encounters. Also, so that a quarantined machine stays in the quarantine subnet until it's cleaned. These registrations expire every 120 days, and IP leases roll faster than that, but the address doesn't change very often as you tend to get the same IP on a renew.

DoIT (Division of Information Technology) Wireless, called UWNet, http://www.doit.wisc.edu/network/wireless/ [wisc.edu] is the main campus wireless and is in classroom buildings, the unions and libraries. A NetId is also required to authenticate each time one connects. These IP addresses probably move around faster. I'm sure DoIT complies with whatever policy is in place for keeping these records, but who knows how long that is.

Wired library computers. These are the working girls of the campus network. One needs a student ID number to access them, but finding a lost card or snooping for a number is not hard. Nor is guessing the 1 digit activation code that needs to be added on the end to authenticate. Again, who knows how long these records are kept.

Also, students in the res halls tend to use a certain jukebox program (comes with a popular music player) that advertises its shared library only within that hall's subnet - so no one external to that subnet is able to see that traffic.

Long way around to saying these John and Jane Does are going to be a bit hard to pin down. Should be fun to watch.

Re:Misleading Headline. Not "Win".Not against UW.

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

They were probably not served with the papers. Therefore they would have had no opportunity to oppose it.

Re:"RIAA will have a hard time tracking down..."

[linuxrocks123]

> I thought that when the RIAA comes calling, what happens is that you get a notice saying you've already lost a court case some out-of-state court, because the judge rubberstamped their claim that this IP address is you, and now it's up to you to either a) pay a lawyer, go to court, and try to prove your innocence, or b) pay the nice RIAA their reasonable thirty-five-hundred dollars and get on with your life.

You're 100% wrong. You can't just "get a notice that you're already lost a court case in some out-of-state court". Our legal system requires that one who has been sued be served with notice of the lawsuit so that the sued person can prepare a defense. And then, unless the parties mutually agree on a settlement, there is a trial, where the two parties argue their cases, almost always through lawyers.

The $3500 you refer to is the /settlement/ price the RIAA offers; that is, they offer to drop their lawsuit against against you if you pay them that amount in damages. You could fight them, and possibly recover court costs and lawyers' fees if you won, depending on the jurisdiction. Most people just don't because they're guilty and didn't cover their tracks well, so probably wouldn't win. Another unfortunate factor leading towards settlement is that hiring lawyers and fighting a lawsuit costs money and time, so paying $3500 looks like an easy way out of the hassle.

That said, if the RIAA sued me, I'd fight it. I know what my behavior online is, so I know that they cannot have valid evidence that I have downloaded copyrighted music. And I'd definitely have the opportunity to fight it: our legal system may be broken, but it's not so broken that you can lose lawsuits without knowing about them. I don't know where you got that idea.