RIAA Massively Ramps Up Warning Notices To College Students Over File Sharing

from the last-throes... dept

While the RIAA has been sending threatening notices to colleges about student file sharing for a while now, it seems to have recently stepped up the attack. Various colleges are reporting a rather massive increase in these notices, despite no discernible change in file sharing activity. In some cases, they're suddenly getting as many notices in a day as they used to get in a month. Some universities are also pointing out that they don't see any corresponding activity in their log files that would indicate that industry insiders had actually checked to make sure these files were infringing.

One interesting theory is mentioned in the Wired article above. The RIAA has been using the number of such notices as some sort of indicator of how much piracy is occurring -- and even lobbying for laws that would require any university that got over a certain number of notices to install special filtering/monitoring software. So, by showing an increase, the RIAA can try to show how "necessary" this is, even if the notices are totally bogus. As one person points out in the article, it does not seem at all reasonable to judge how much piracy is occurring (or what actions need to be taken) based on an arbitrary number that is totally under the control of the RIAA.
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Filed Under: notices, riaa, universities
Companies: riaa


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 May 2008 @ 5:06pm

    Some one

    please snipe one of these dudes out for us all.. Thanks.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    steveballmer, 2 May 2008 @ 5:54pm

    They need to stop!

    Stop stealing, stop using Macs!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 May 2008 @ 6:00pm

    no more easy street ?

    Have they sent any to Harvard yet ? Gutless wonders.
    Yeah, looks like the schoolyard bully picking on the easy targets.
    The RIAA has had their asses handed to them by several institutions of higher learning. Have they gone back for more ? See how they are avoiding those that defend themselves ?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 May 2008 @ 6:18pm

    What is forgotten

    is that eventually these college students will be in power making laws while RIAA is rocking away in the old folks home.

    Hopefully they are good laws, and don't mandate elderly euthenasia. Mandated elderly euthenasia for RIAA guys would be sad.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    John Duncan Yoyo, 2 May 2008 @ 7:45pm

    RIAA the latest spammers

    Lets call a spade a shovel. The RIAA are spamming colleges and then claiming that they students are crooks because they get the spam.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Been There, 2 May 2008 @ 8:29pm

    Reasonable Judge ....HA!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 May 2008 @ 9:02pm

    I am SOOOOO Sick of this - If the RIAA counted all the lost $$ from sending out letter, going to court and the like, they would have saved millions, What fawking RETARDS!

    FAWK YOU RIAA, KISS MY ARSE!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Narcuru, 2 May 2008 @ 11:04pm

    My school

    I work as a network tech for my school (U of I at Urbana) and my school's IT department got an increase from roughly 2 a week to 100 a day for a bout a week. Our job lately has been to tell the other students how to deal with the subsequent shut-offs, and to be honest its extremely annoying. I'd much rather fix people's computers and network problems (our real job) rather than tell half my dorm what they did; it's a heck of a lot more interesting.

    I do not doubt they are doing this as a way to show how important it is to combat the "piracy" that is going on. It's gotten to the point where our overarching campus IT guys are overwhelmed (where people get shut off, go through the process, get turned back on, and then get turned off again within 10 mins because of a subsequent request that they didn't get to because of the backlog.) and frankly its rather ridiculous.

    It almost makes me want to go and fire up Limewire for the first time in 3 years.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    just me, 3 May 2008 @ 7:36am

    anybody

    any idiot can posted cements on here

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Mike, 3 May 2008 @ 7:50am

    Re: anybody

    Apparently

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    Peter, 3 May 2008 @ 8:06am

    anybody by just me on May 3rd, 2008 @ 7:36am

    any idiot can posted cements on here

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 May 2008 @ 8:16am

    Re: My school

    Limewire, What's That :)? Torrents rock, gotta go buy more storage, filled up 2TB going for a hat trick.

    Fuck **AA, got 20 movies and who knows how many songs just last night.

    HA HA HA...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. identicon
    tearbd2, 3 May 2008 @ 6:45pm

    Re: They need to stop!

    > Stop stealing, stop using Macs!

    Ubuntu looks great! Holy cow.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ

    link to this | view in thread ]

  14. identicon
    Overtkill, 4 May 2008 @ 8:18pm

    Bah!

    Saber rattling losers. Screw you RIAA! I hope you lose in court against that poor mother and the others on the class action!

    USENET for the w1n!!!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  15. identicon
    bored, 5 May 2008 @ 5:47am

    Re: Some one

    Just one??? Come on, take'em ALL out.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  16. identicon
    RH SEabrook, 5 May 2008 @ 6:09am

    RIAA turning into Spammer?

    With all the notices going out, and as indicated in the article the numbers are totally in the control of the RIAA, does this mean that they could be held liable as a spammer because of the flood of messages that are bogus and specifically for their own personal gains as SPAM is created to do?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  17. identicon
    KD, 6 May 2008 @ 12:09am

    How many colleges are there?

    How many colleges and universities are there? A few thousand? How many RIAAs are there? One. Hmmmm. Seems to me that if the colleges and universities would get together, a fairly small contribution from each could fund a LOT of opposition to the RIAA. Sort of like a SLAPP in reverse.

    Are there any legal restrictions on such a group effort?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  18. identicon
    Jon Curtiss, 10 Jun 2008 @ 1:55pm

    Re: Some one

    Not sure what you and your commenting buddies are angry about. Is it the legal tactics of the RIAA that has you steamed or is it that the entertainment industry is acting aggressively to defend copyright? Making a digital backup of one's own purchased content for oneself is legal, sharing copies of those works on the internet w/o compensating the copyright owner is not. So what's the problem?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  19. identicon
    bible college, 3 Aug 2009 @ 4:29am

    Thanks for sharing comments and post.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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