] "MIT recently received a subpoena from the Recording
] Industry Association of America that was issued under the
] terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The
] subpoena requests the name and address of the individual
] whose computer was, according to the RIAA, sending out
] copyrighted songs on the Internet.
]
] "A different federal law, the Family Education Rights and
] Privacy Act, prohibits colleges and universities from
] disclosing information about students except in certain
] situations.

MIT responds to RIAA subpoena

Music Industry Wins 871 Subpoenas Against Internet Users.

...and they are not just going after people offering large amounts of mp3s either...

Notice the slightly conflicting statements:

" The trade group for the largest music labels, the Washington-based RIAA, previously indicated its lawyers would target Internet users who offer substantial collections of MP3 song files but declined to say how many songs might qualify for a lawsuit."

"We are identifying substantial infringers and we're going to whatever entity is providing (Internet) service for that potential infringer,"

[Brain21]So from these statements we think that, as the RIAA said a few weeks ago, they are only going after people who have huge mp3 collections online. However, other statements in the article show that this may not be true:

"In some cases, subpoenas cite as few as five songs as "representative recordings" of music files available for downloading from these users."

"the RIAA asked Depaul on July 2 to track down a user known as "anon39023" who was allegedly offering at least eight songs."

FOXNews.com

] Japanese bookstores are set to launch a national campaign
] to stop so-called "digital shoplifting" by customers
] using the lastest camera-equipped mobile phones.
]
] The Japanese Magazine Publishers Association says the
] practice is "information theft" and it wants it stopped.

Thats how you measure success with communication technologies these days.. If someone points at you and starts screaming "your stealing!", you probably have made a significant advance.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Japan's 'digital shoplifting' plague

] "I would guess that you would then see stories about the
] family faced with economic ruin and the cost of having to
] hire defense counsel, settling for $10,000 or $20,000,
] and the money they were saving for Timmy's college
] education now has to go to Kid Rock," said Philip S.
] Corwin, a lobbyist in Washington for Sharman Networks,
] distributor of the Kazaa file-sharing software.
]
] "That's the kind of stuff that would scare a politician."

Labels May Face Risk in Piracy Suits

] This model predicted the CD sales of RIAA members to
] within thirty million dollars (less than one-quarter of
] one percent) given the performance of the economy in
] 2002, as a function of nineteen other similarly-sized
] corporate sales, and the performance of the RIAA three
] previous years.

In other words, piracy is not impacting sales. (Note: This is extremely unlikely to be a conspiracy theory. The people that run these companies do NOT get this.)

Analysis of RIAA revenue figures versus overall economy

] It has been stated by your office that this is "a bump in
] the road" between the RIAA and Michigan Tech, and that we
] will move on from here. It is unfortunate that you choose
] to trivialize the problem in this manner. It is not a
] bump in the road for Joe Nievelt or Michigan
] Technological University.
]
] Taking all of this into consideration, we realize the
] seriousness of the allegations against Mr. Nievelt and
] will cooperate fully in resolving this matter.

(Decius's Comments)

This is from a day ago, but I think its really important.

1. The RIAA must be laughing its ass off about this letter. He says "this is not a bump in the road" and then he agrees to cooperate fully. Obviously MTU is either unable or unwilling to create any real pain for the RIAA. I would have provided my legal department for the defense and stopped all the measures that I had taken on their behest.

2. The RIAA has no moral character. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. (People seem have forgotten much of this in the past few years, but trust is the basis of business, and strong moral character is a pre-requisite for trust.) These are not good people, do not trust them.

3. What the RIAA is sueing here are campus SEARCH ENGINES. They are not just for MP3s. They weren't built with MP3s in mind. These are for anyfile. There are lots and lots of non-infringing uses. With the proper legal defense, the RIAA will loose these cases. Much like Felton, they may have stepped on another grenade. (Without proper legal defense it will be ILLEGAL to run a search engine on a campus, which is an intolerable result, frankly.)

Michigan Tech Media Relations Story#95 - President Responds to RIAA Suit

] To reward those who can attract a paying audience, and
] the firms that support them, much shorter copyrights
] would be enough. The 14-year term of the original
] 18th-century British and American copyright laws,
] renewable once, might be a good place to start.

The economist presents a radical copyright proposal.

Economist.com | Copyrights

] So out of despair some might see civil disobedience --
] hacking and freely distributing songs and films over
] digital networks -- as the only remaining response to the
] excesses of the copyright regimes and the hold they have
] over courts and Congress.

It is. Has been for awhile now. Its better to concentrate on creating new ways of doing things out in the open though. Be ready to educate your peers about these issues when they start to effect them. Etc..

] While disobedience might be more fun, the power of civil
] discourse remains. In fact, the ruling gives public
] interest activists both motivation and ammunition in the
] continuing battle against the excessive expansion of the
] power to control information and culture.

And thats the key.. These IP issues trample way into the territory of economic policy. The courts and congress are reactive to this type of thing. They will walk right up to the edge of an issue, step 2in back, and wait to see what happens.. Rince, repeat, give a decade or two..

The angry mob is only going to grow..

Salon.com Technology | After the copyright smackdown: What next?

] Public Knowledge is a public-interest advocacy
] organization dedicated to fortifying and defending a
] vibrant "information commons" - the shared information
] resources and cultural assets that we own as a people.

A very slick new public domain oriented political group.

Public Knowledge

] Lobbyists for some of the nation's largest technology
] companies will argue under the new agreement against
] efforts in Congress to amend U.S. laws to broaden the
] rights of consumers, such as explicitly permitting
] viewers to make backup copies of DVDs for personal use or
] copy songs onto handheld listening devices.

More information is starting to leak out about this mornings deal between the RIAA and the tech industry. According to the AP, the RIAA agrees to drop support for the (unworkable and extremely unpopular) Fritz Chip legislation, and in exchange the technology industry agrees to lobby AGAINST consumer fair use rights. I certaily don't wish to take the AP's analysis as the word of god, but they are spinning this as a positive compromise. It sounds to me like the RIAA got a hell of a lot more then they gave.

RIAA, Technology Industry deal looking dirty...