RIAA Wins In Court Against UW Madison 200
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."
Re:Where's your 'haha' tag now? (Score:5, Insightful)
A breakthrough in Internet security (Score:5, Insightful)
Change title (Score:5, Insightful)
This may be a stupid question (Score:5, Insightful)
How does monitoring which IP addresses were on these networks necessarily imply that they were trading copyrighted material? The same goes for the 24,977 shared audio files, who can say that those weren't audio recordings of lectures given by professors, or poetry, or local bands trying to get promotion, etc? Hell, for that matter, who's to say they were music/movies at all? Couldn't they have been ISO's of Linux Distro's, JPG's of the topless drunk prom queen, PowerPoint presentations that study groups were collaborating on via the internet?
I realize that probably not everyone is innocent here, but in terms of PROOF, I just don't know about "facts" like these.
Re:A breakthrough in Internet security (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if it came to a civil trial, the standard would be preponderance of evidence. What this is about is making a case before a judge that their opponents should be named, which would be considerably lower than what's required for a conviction. This is just the standard to have your day in court, since you obviously can't even hold the trial without an opposing party. Reasonable suspicion? Perhaps even lower, since more evidence can appear in discovery. Seriously, even the RIAA have a right to their day in court and they have provided enough to get at least that.
Re:Where's your 'haha' tag now? (Score:1, Insightful)
By your reasoning, money is an obsolete way of keeping track of wealth. After all, if I counterfeit money, I'm not hurting anyone, right? People still want music and are willing to pay for it. Copying it because it's easy is no more ethical than counterfeiting money.
Re:Where's your 'haha' tag now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Same old... (Score:3, Insightful)
At some point the citizens of the United States need to accept that, by and large, 90% of their patriotism is being exploited for the profit of a select group of individuals who wouldn't risk a single hair on their heads if the tables were turned. We have to ask ourselves--is this really the government that we want to support with our tax dollars?
Facing reality, though, leads us to the greater question: what can we really do about it? Personally I suggest that everyone quit their jobs and tell the bankers to stuff it.
Re:Where's your 'haha' tag now? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is. Has been for some time now- ever since the US government decided to try to create one world currency only loosely linked to a commodity instead of strongly linked (the fiat petrodollar). Of course, the final thing that killed it is the number of banks that keep extra dollars around that only exist in cyberspace- there are far more "dollars" out there than can be accounted for by the government printing offices.
After all, if I counterfeit money, I'm not hurting anyone, right?
Given that the government has been counterfieting money since the 1930s, how could you?
People still want music and are willing to pay for it.
Now that is a separate issue. The broken business model is the one of artifical scarcity- the music isn't scarce anymore. NEW recordings are what is scarce. Therefore, I'd propose a whole new business model for the music industry- low bandwidth (8 bit, 22khz, mono) recordings for free, higher quality tracks (16 bit 44khz stereo) for $.25 (double what the bands get now from ASCAP/BMI), and all of the money going to the band. Forget the record labels- and if you want a CD, buy the tracks you want off the band's website and burn it yourself. No DRM or copyrights. This encourages the bands to continue to put out new stuff- as high quality bitrate recordings will get out into the wild on the filesharing networks, the sales will drop off for older tracks,so to keep making money bands will have to put out new stuff.
Copying it because it's easy is no more ethical than counterfeiting money.
Wrong end of the stick. Copying it because it's easy means that the copying itself has very low real ecconomic value- it's the creation that should have high ecconomic value. The RIAA is in an obsolete business model, because their business model depends upon getting money from COPYING other people's work. They need badly to become extinct as the buggy whip makers. The artists are who deserve the money, not the RIAA.
Re:Where's your 'haha' tag now? (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt it, this generation has learned the same lesson the Vietnam baby boomers learned. They've learned that you can't beat the man. They will grow up to do the same thing the baby boomers did, sell out and sell out hard.
'As far as outdated business models are concerned, there are legal ways to get this material, so the "outdated business model" argument is no longer valid.'
Are they still charging based upon artificial scarcity and the number of 'copies'? Supply and demand dictates that productions and distribution bottlenecks define costs. The music industry is based around old bottlenecks that no longer apply. Bittorrent and Digital copying means that 1 song is no more valuable than 10,000 songs. You can set up a studio in which to record and cut albums for less than 5k now. There are and always have been plenty of talented artists, they are a dime a dozen (sorry artists, but its true). Music is cheap to produce and in virtually unlimited supply.
Once upon a time when market dynamics changed this drastically companies went out of business, even huge companies, and new ones sprang up that worked differently. Now D.C. has sold out to the point that those companies effectively buy legislation to keep them relevant.
Music was never a good way for an artist to make a living. Most bands sound great when coupled with great recording. Its time for professional music to be about concerts and recorded music to be free promotional material. The recording industry should effectively be artist unions that do just that, offer high quality recordings as REASONABLE prices perhaps even free recording and hosting with union dues.
Re:Isn't this about the same as (Score:4, Insightful)
When you keep asking that question, it opens up opportunities to ask about the processes used to derive the answer. You keep drilling down bit by bit until you know (to a reasonable certainty) whether or not they really know what happened or whether you are being snowed. It all breaks down once you get to the ISP-assigned IP address. Unless the ISP can attest to a certainty that a customer had the IP address, they can't get anywhere. Once the IP is known, present facts (and even demonstrations!) on IP spoofing. Ask if they (the RIAA) can attest to a certainty that the traffic they monitored came, in fact, from the legitimate IP address and not from a spoofed one. They often jump that hurdle, but I don't understand why the courts keep allowing the RIAA to insist that person A was on the other side of an IP or MAC address. They are allowed to present as fact that which has no proof whatsoever. Are our judges so tech illiterate that they cannot understand such simple concepts? Would they be confused if a letter was presented into evidence with a return address of 1313 Mockingbird Lane? Could they not comprehend that anyone can print ANY reuturn address on any envelope, and they can mail it from any city (not necessarily the writer's city of origin)?
I'm just amazed by people who are so dense as to believe the entire snake-oil pitch thrown by the RIAA. Do they have a right to go after copyright violators? Absolutely? Should they be allowed to gill-net entire lakes just to prove the presence of an invasive species? No, no, a thousand times NO!
Re:No "win" (Score:3, Insightful)
So they won in a way that didn't involve following judicial process and was much cheaper in legal bills.
Yea.
Re:Where's your 'haha' tag now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Just because something is obsolete doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore. My parents still have a hand pump in their garden well- but it's rarely used. Likewise, my paychecks are direct deposited, and I spend with a debit card. I rarely even have any coin at all in my wallet anymore- my computer was paid for with bits and bytes, not dollar bills.
Worse yet though is that even those bits and bytes are too large to effectively cover low-ecconomic value activities like copying CDs and DVDs- the actual cost to produce is too small to be counted, which is what we're talking about. The only way the RIAA's business can be supported is with artificial scarcity.
What a load of goofy, leftist crap. Money isn't obsolete and never will be. The capitalist free market is how nature works.
Really? When was the last time you saw a baboon using money? When was the last time you saw a stock market in a beehive? So much for the free market being "the way nature works" LIE, just another "I want to use guns to oppress my neighbors and take their property" argument.
Your "outdated business model" argument is really a red herring to justify piracy so that you feel better about the ethical nature of your activities.
No, sorry- I'm FOR paying the artist and creating a better model to do so. It's really against the unethical nature of the RIAA's business model- charging money for something that can be done for free, that is, the copying and distribution of music.
The rest of your rant fails to take this into account, so I'm not even going to dignify it with an answer. But someday soon you're going to have to face it when a petabyte hard drive, a fast processor, a desktop fabricator, and a bunch of grass clippings will allow you to copy a steak dinner as easily as we copy a spreadsheet today. After all, it's just the ARRANGEMENT of the carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen that makes it a steak and not grass clippings. If you can scan the steak, and rearrange the atoms, you can make as many steaks as you have grass clippings.
Re:A breakthrough in Internet security (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where's your 'haha' tag now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or rather, we consider marketing to be an ecconomically negative activity that destroys efficiency and allows inferior products to outmarket superior products.
and don't understand business in general.
That statement I'll agree with. Why should I trade for something I can do myself?
If a programmer writes the most kick-ass game in the world, and nobody's heard of it, he's not going to sell any copies.
True- but that's where you hand out a lower quality version to friends and then charge for the high quality version. Why should I pay for marketing I can do myself?
A successful business requires a lot of cooperation between a lot of people.
A faith-based idea if I ever saw one. Why does a successfull business need to be any more than a single individual, if technology replaces everybody else?
This argument that only the musicians deserve to get paid is nonsense.
Then prove it's nonsense, instead of making faith-based assertions.
The internet may streamline this process, but in the end, people aren't going to search through thousands of band's websites to find music they like.
True- instead they're going to get it from the broadcasters, just like they always have. No need for a recording company there if you've got a friend who is a DJ with a listening audience, or better yet, ARE a podcaster with a listening audience.
That's what record labels do for them, for better or worse.
If that's all record labels do, then they need to get a new gig- perhaps actually CREATING something of VALUE instead of just faking it?
Re:Where's your 'haha' tag now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dollars aren't worth any more than counterfeit in and of themselves. They are supposed to represent value. Music doesn't represent anything, it has only its innate value. You are right, technology has made it cost nothing to copy something as much as you like and the people have spoken, they don't see anything wrong with using that technology. This has ALREADY devalued songs to the point where they don't have a value worth measuring.
'Ultimately, the more people distribute music for free, the less the song is worth, because a cheaper source exists for free, so you need to charge less to entice people to buy the legal copy.'
Did you even read the post you are responding to. I maintain that free sources of all the music are already plentiful enough that the value is nothing. At least that is the value to the ones receiving the music. The artists can realize greater value from the recorded music by using as promotional material. Those same artists can make a living by PERFORMING music, privately and publically. Those artists can form unions that provide bittorrent trackers and P2P networks to distribute their music. Those same unions can provide recording time at cost, union dues might be enough to cover cost and if not a small surcharge (no greater than cost) would be charged. Either way, cheap equipment and software packages have made professional grade recording affordable for garage bands.
'The value of something is defined by it's demand, not by it's cost to reproduce.'
No, demand is only one side of the coin. The other side is supply. Despite your last statement that demand is the only factor everything else you have said admits that the existing ready supply of free music that is large enough to fill the demand has effectively reduced the value of recorded songs to nothing. The answer is to let the multi-billion dollar industry that revolves around song recording to collapse and let new markets that accept this reality spring up. Not to pass laws to attempt to artificially inflate the value of the recorded songs to something rather than nothing.
In fact, to everyone reading this thread. I know a few local bands. Would anyone be willing to donate bandwidth to host the torrents and trackers so that I can help get a union like this started?