On 3/29/07, Crosbie Fitch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At this university X: 1) No students shall be decimated for RIAA's pleasure.
I'm not sure you mean decimated -- unless you mean reduced into 10ths. 2) All students will assert culpable use of any individual student's account
at any specific time.
Does this mean ratting out your roommate if they're filesharing? 3) No student is permitted to make any monetary settlement, nor is the
university permitted to do so on their behalf.
I think if a student goes against the RIAA they should be entitled to attorneys fees, at least, and certainly punitive damages if the RIAA has fraudulently filed suit against them. 4) Any court action must apply to all students as a whole or none at all. This is an interesting position, but unless the university is allowed to "forget" which user is attached to what IP, I doubt this would fly in court. 5) All students hold that since no-one has yet been found guilty of
copyright infringement for 'file-sharing' or 'making available', all offers of monetary settlement in lieu of court action constitute extortion.
I have no problem calling it extortion. I dig your intention, but I think there are specific demands we can start making at our universities about how they deal with the RIAA's threats. Namely refusing to forward the insta-settlements, not logging IP addresses, and generally making the RIAA go through the normal legal procedures of serving notice and allowing students to defend themselves. Right now, after the university denies to forward the insta-settlement notices, the RIAA goes ahead and files multiple ex-parte John Doe suits and then offers a larger settlement after the court has decided against the student without them being present. Ray Beckerman has a good open letter explaining this here: http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/03/open-letter-to-universities-whose.html I'd be interested in endorsing, even using this letter, as part of a campaign across our chapters. Thoughts? Fred Benenson President, Free Culture @ NYU _______________________________________________
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