February 6, 2008
Student Questions How Recording Industry Identifies File Sharers
In its campaign to stop the illegal sharing of music, the Recording Industry Association of America may want to reconsider with whom it associates. A student at Boston University, who was sued by the industry association for purportedly trading music files online in violation of copyright law, says the group’s procedure for singling out certain students is shady.
The group has been relying on MediaSentry to find copyright violators. The business scours peer-to-peer networks for the Internet-protocol numbers of students swapping music, downloads some songs, and takes a snapshot of the students’ music files. A lawyer for the student, who is identified only as John Doe, claimed in a court document filed Monday that the State of Massachusetts had issued a cease-and-desist letter against MediaSentry “for conducting private investigations of students without a private investigator license.”
The student’s lawyer, Raymond Sayeg, wrote that the court should consider having MediaSentry hand over a copy of the cease-and-desist letter before allowing its evidence to become part of the suit.
Meanwhile, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that promotes civil liberties in cyberspace, has come to the defense of the student and 20 other students at Boston University whose names the Recording Industry Association of America is trying to learn.—-Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Wednesday February 6, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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The approach the RIAA has taken is such that it can expect its targets to explore every possible option and pursue every possible legal device. Although the RIAA is probably within its legal rights, the way it has gone about trying to enforce them has made it a lot of enemies across the US.
— Al Feb 6, 05:34 PM #
The only problem I have with the way they are going about locating and identifying people sharing and downloading is that they are spending too much money on catching them and not enough on securing the music itself. While it’s a never ending challenge because as fast as they come up with way to prevent duplicating the songs via whatever medium they may decide to use. After a while most people would give up on it because it’s easier to turn on the radio, stream on line or like my wife just pay a small monthly fee for a pay music service such as XM Radio. Yes most college students don’t have a lot of money so when they have to pay for a program to decrypt the music they may stop trying. By having several different encryption types to use on different or the same CD so that they have to get more then one program or just changing the encryption used every so often so they have to pay for a new or updated decryption program they could severely reduce the amount of people pirating it. In other words, maybe if they stop trying to hurt they’re customers and just stick to making it cheaper and easier to pay for it they might stand a better chance of winning the battle.
— John Straub Feb 15, 11:37 AM #