RIAA suggests college students drop out of school.

[mobrien_12]

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/04/05/1421254.shtml

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V126/N15/RIAA1506.html

RIAA accuses college student of "piracy."   Demands thousands of dollars which she doesn't have.  She tries to negotioate a settlement.  They won't negotiate.

But as much as I tried to argue that I was in as unique a situation as someone with medical expenses, there was no getting through. Bowie even had the audacity to say,

[WMD]

Ha.  Every time I wonder what else they could possibly do or say...they top themselves!

[Orethrius]

She should just throw a chair at the attornies.
Seems to work for Ballmer.

[Aloone_Jonez]

What's the penilty for not paying?

[Dark_Me]

What's the penilty for not paying?

Thats a very good question. If she didn't pay up then they would probably take her to court (civil in this case). I wonder, what would happen if she ignored that as well?

[Jack2000]

how the heck did RIAA
knew she was "pirating" music ?

[Refalm]

They randomly select IP numbers from Gnutella, BitTorrent, etc. and ask the police or ISP's (don't know which) for the persons that use the IP address.
They can do that in the United States, they can't in my country, and I have no idea where this is allowed and where it's not.

[Aloone_Jonez]

It'd be cool if you could configure a filesharing program to connect via a proxy based in China or Korea, that way the bastards will never catch you.

[WMD]

I think Limewire lets you do that, actually.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Seriously, if they have enough evidence (files on her hard drive) then the maximum penalty they impose should be equilivalent to shop lifting (unless she's selling the music), and the music company who she stole the music from should have to press charges not the fucking RIAA.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Freenet may have been a savior:

http://freenet.sourceforge.net/

[mobrien_12]

You know what would be funny...

Sending packets to p2p networks with *AA TCP/IP addresses.  Then they could sue themselves.

[mobrien_12]

Seriously, if they have enough evidence (files on her hard drive) then the maximum penalty they impose should be equilivalent to shop lifting (unless she's selling the music), and the music company who she stole the music from should have to press charges not the fucking RIAA.

Well, the problem with that is when you use a P2P program to "share" copyright-protected files without the permission/consent/licence of the copyright owner, then you are helping other people make copies.  To the RIAA's way of thinking, this makes you a distributor of bootleg copies...

You know, I'm sort  of concerned.  What if they pull random IP addresses from anyone using a P2P program and say that person is a "pirate?"  I use bittorrent alot.  Not for copyright infringement, but for what it was meant for, getting cool stuff that the copyright owners make available free of charge (things like Fedora Core 4 and StarWreck from http://www.starwreck.com).

Could these *AA bastards say "you've been using bittorrent, we are suing you for copyright infringement"??
It doesn't sound like they need any real proof.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Could these *AA bastards say "you've been using bittorrent, we are suing you for copyright infringement"??
It doesn't sound like they need any real proof.

They could ... but they shouldn't ... and you can probably get off by nuking your HDD and getting a good lawyer.

P.S. Starwreck is pretty cool :thumbup:

[Refalm]

It'd be cool if you could configure a filesharing program to connect via a proxy based in China or Korea, that way the bastards will never catch you.

True, but most people (who don't even know what a proxy server is) leave the setings to standard, and keep uploading their downloaded mp3's to other machines, and attrackting attention to RIAA.