Sunday, January 06, 2008

Newhouse News Service Article: "How the Recording Industry Squeezes College Students"

Article published by Newhouse News Service:

How The Recording Industry Squeezes College Students
By HART SEELY

Morrisville State College sophomore Kasey Brooks was swept up in a Recording Industry Association of America dragnet.

At first, she didn't believe the letter. It said she had illegally shared 10 songs on the Internet last February and she was in big trouble. The Recording Industry Association of America intended to sue her.

Then came the limited-time offer:

Pay $3,600 in the next 20 days, and her problem would go away.

"I was distraught, and I didn't know what was going on," said Kasey Brooks, 20, a sophomore at Morrisville State College in New York. "Now, though, it really seems like people have been trying to intimidate me."

Actually, a generation.

Complete article


Keywords: digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property






2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pay the industry group about $3,500 — or defend yourself in court and spend far more on a lawyer.

Or get your college to stand up for you like they should in the first place and shoot down the subpoena from the very beginning on the grounds that it is defective, insufficient, and based on illegally gathered data presented in an ex parte hearing that denies defendants their legal rights. That's your third option, and students should be Demanding it of their colleges and universities.

Through a federal law passed in 1999, the record industry can issue anonymous "John Doe" subpoenas, forcing schools to cough up the names of students at those addresses.

That has to be the DMCA that's being referred to, and it seems to me that the RIAA can't -- and tries its best -- not to rely on the DMCA because they absolutely refuse to comply with all its other provisions. Take that Mr. (or Ms.) article writer!

At least two schools nationwide — Harvard University and the University of Oregon — have refused to turn over names of students to the RIAA.

This also seems ill-informed. I don't believe the RIAA has dared tread on Harvard yet.

Kasey Brooks said her downloading days have ended. She's still considering her most recent letter from the RIAA.

That sounds like a confession, and was a stupid thing to let someone print about you.

XK-E

Anonymous said...

Actually, although it would be nice to have the University stand up for you, I still dont understand why EVERY university do at least one thing for its students facing that first subpoena, TELL THEM!!!

I thought the student privacy laws required the school to notify the student if someone was after their records, so that they could go to court to block it if desired. How come the students dont seem to find out until after the RIAA has the names??

Albert