Feds Continue Hunt For Evidence Of Wrongdoing By Money Transfer Firms

University Of Maine To RIAA: We're Not Here To Serve Your Legal Complaints

from the we're-not-here-for-your-sake dept

Wed, Mar 28th 2007 4:33pm — Mike Masnick

Following the lead of places like the Universities of Wisconsin and Nebraska, the University of Maine has apparently decided it has better things to do than to act as the RIAA's messenger (via Ray Beckerman) when it comes to the "pre-settlement" offers it's pushing on students. The university will not forward the letters on to students, with a spokesperson saying: "It's not the university's role to, in effect, serve papers on our students for another party." It will, however, let students know that such letters have been sent, leaving it up to them if they want to see them. The spokesperson also notes that the RIAA appears to be asking the university to violate the law in handing over information: "The only way the RIAA can get that information is if the RIAA takes us to court to get those names." Someone should suggest to the university that it should borrow the University of Nebraska's plan to charge the RIAA for wasting employees' time with the requests.

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8 Comments

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teknosapien, 28 Mar 2007 @ 4:58pm

Wow
IT seems as though the tide is turning -- maybe , a little
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Anonymous Poster (profile), 28 Mar 2007 @ 5:07pm

And yet another "little guy" (okay, maybe a university's not so little, but you get my point!) stands up to the big bully that is the RIAA.

I think the RIAA might be starting to figure out, slowly, that the whole "sue your customers into being customers again" approach just isn't working on every conceivable level.
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Ryan, 28 Mar 2007 @ 5:52pm

With every new victory...
comes the chance for another. The last few things I've heard about the RIAA have been losses for them. They will not win this war.
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Erv, 28 Mar 2007 @ 6:37pm

Turn out the lights
The party's over
They say that
All bad things must end
Call it tonight
The party's over
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Mr Textbooks, 29 Mar 2007 @ 6:49am

Just Curious
Is all music automatically part of the RIAA, or is it something a musician joins? Doesn't it seem like if it were voluntary we'd see some publicly non-RIAA artists out there?
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Dewy, 29 Mar 2007 @ 7:11am

nope
The RIAA is a group that represents a large part of the recording industry. They do not represent all music, nor all recorded music.

http://www.riaaradar.com/ is a good site to find out if a particular artist is represented by the RIAA.

http://www.riaa.com/about/members/default.asp is their site actually showing their membership.
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Ancient Meat, 31 Mar 2007 @ 8:38am

Creative Commons is FREE!
The Creative Commons license is FREE, and you should see the thousands of artists works thus unrestricted by the mafRIAA

yeah, you do the google.com search. Or, you could pay me for the URLs.
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Jesus Christ, 31 Mar 2007 @ 9:41am

My children...
The RIAA's goal is to make products that you buy suck so that you remain unsatisifed, filled with jealousy and lust, unenlightened, and continue to buy crappy music about buying products, large wheels that spin, and beating women. The RIAA wants you to think either that this music will teach you how to be a tough criminally insane alpha male, or a woman that likes to dry hump in public. If they sell music that isn't this, it's just another step they've made to get you to this. They want you to buy this music, it's easy for them to make. It doesn't require any creative and artistic talent. So, they can probably sell you over 9000 of these albums a year. Also, this music doesn't inspire computer use, because that's for evil nerds that d/l music.
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