Across the country students unite to fight filesharing laws

In October the New York Times published a great article titled File-Sharing Students Fight Copyright Constraints. I really appreciated the views that the students voiced in this article as well as information the article provided on the Students for Free Culture organization. The first part of the article in posted below and the rest of the article can be linked to at the end of the post as well as a link to the organizations page. I think that it would be great if SEU started a chapter. What do you guys think?

When Zachary McCune, a student at Brown, received an e-mail message from the university telling him he might have broken the law by downloading copyrighted songs, his eyes glazed over the warning and he quickly forgot about it. “I already knew what they’d say about file-sharing,” he said. “It’s become a campus cliché.”

But the next day, he realized the message had an attachment from the Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group that is coordinating legal efforts by record companies to crack down on Internet piracy. The attachment told Mr. McCune he faced a lawsuit with potential fines of $750 to $150,000 for every illegally downloaded song.

“I was stunned by the extremity of the punishment for taking songs I could have bought for a few cents,” he said. “It seemed grossly out of proportion.”

Twelve Brown students received these letters; Mr. McCune ended up paying $3,000 to settle the claim. But the experience made him interested in changing intellectual property regulations. Last spring he co-founded Brown’s chapter of Students for Free Culture, a national organization sprouting up on college campuses that advocates loosening the restrictions of copyright law so that information — from software to music to research to art — can be freely shared.

“The technology has outpaced the law,” said Mr. McCune, who is now a sophomore.

Established at Swarthmore College in 2004, the group has chapters at more than 35 universities across the country. “We will listen to free music, look at free art, watch free film and read free books,” reads its manifesto, posted on its Web site, freeculture.org. “We refuse to accept a future of digital feudalism.”

Members assert that the Internet has made it necessary to rethink copyright law, and they talk about the group’s goals with something like the reverence that earlier generations displayed in talking about social or racial equality.

“People wonder why college students aren’t rallying more around the Iraq war,” Mr. McCune said. “If there were a draft, we probably would be. Students are so quick to fight for this cause because we’re the ones bearing the burden.”

Full Article

Students for Free Culture

Something Stinks... TV Links Busted

Tv-links.co.uk was a prime example of media distribution over the internet. The site was basically a giant, meticulously organized links page that pointed to hundreds of popular TV shows and movies.

Here's how it worked: Upon arriving at the TV Links homepage, you'd see a list of dozens of popular TV shows such as Friends, the Office, the X-Files, and even old classics like the Twilight Zone. When you clicked one of these links, you were presented with a list of the episodes available for viewing.

But at the top of the page, there were also other categories of media you could choose from. If you wanted to watch a popular film, you clicked on movies. If you wanted to revisit fond childhood memories, you clicked on cartoons and got everything from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the latest episodes of Southpark. Music videos and documentaries were also available.

TV Links was undoubtedly a cool and useful resource. But it sounds pretty risky for the site's moderator, right? I mean, he or she must have been hosting an enormous amount of copyrighted material.

Right?

Wrong. TV Links merely posted links to videos they encountered on other, less organized video-sharing mediums such as YouTube, Google Video, Daily Motion, and Veoh.

So then the moderator must be safe from any charges of copyright infringement, right? Because he or she wasn't actually responsible for posting the questionable material on the web.

Right?

Wrong again. Mere days before OiNK bit the dust, TV Links became another file-sharing casualty at the hands of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). And not only was the site removed from the internet, the site's moderator has been arrested.

So how does FACT justify pursuing someone who posted links to copyrighted material rather than busting the actual infringers themselves?

According to the Guardian article, a little change in rhetoric is all it takes: "'Sites such as TV Links contribute to and profit from copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organising, and indexing links to infringing content found on the internet that users can then view on demand by visiting these illegal sites,' said a spokesman for FACT."

Ah, so apparently anti-piracy organizations are no longer interested in busting copyright infringers, but rather those who identify links posted by copyright infringers. So if I tell you that you can go find genuine X-Files clips on YouTube, I am "guilty by identification."

Something stinks. And it's not those torrent-site homeless OiNKers, either.

This TV Links incident only serves to prove that anti-piracy organizations are not actually interested in busting copyright infringers. They are intersted in preserving ancient business models because they are too lazy to do anything else. And if one of their own (such as YouTube or Google Video, both owned by Google), fouls up by becoming guilty of piracy, the corporations will just continue to cover their own behinds by prosecuting the lowly innocent while letting the true infringers run free.

What a shame.

News without censorship

Cambridge University Professor Ross Anderson "By the year 2010, file-sharers could be swapping news rather than music, eliminating censorship of any kind"

He envisions a peer to peer network that would allow users from all over the world to anonymously post news stories about issues that the mainstream media ignores.
According to the BBC article "File-sharing to Bypass Censorship" Anderson believes that in today's media "only news that's reckoned to be of interest to Americans and Western Europeans will be syndicated because that's where the money is."

His vision is for people all over the world to be able to find news that is important to them that they might otherwise not hear about. If people from all over the world could post the events going on in their community or country on a world- wide network focused on broadening the worldview many issues, events and viewpoints that are commonly ignored could take center stage. These new technologies could potentially provide everyone a voice in the news.

Anderson believes that certain material, like child pornography, should be censored. He believes that Internet watch groups are more than capable of handling this type of material. But he states that no material that a government finds inappropriate will be censored.

Another Anti-Piracy Casualty: OiNK.cd

Torrent site OiNK.cd (formerly oink.me.uk), an incredibly popular private filesharing source, has been shut down and its administrator arrested.

OiNK hosted thousands of albums, audiobooks, eBooks, and computer applications through its vast community of users. OiNK was known for its stringent standards for audio quality and for obtaining music days and sometimes even months before it was released in stores.

Sure, there are other torrent sites. Demonoid and Indietorrent have plenty to offer. But none are as expansive, reliable, and cutting edge as OiNK when it comes to music.

This is yet another sad day for filesharing and the global community, but the battle is far from over. When are these anti-piracy organizations going to work on embracing this market instead of engaging in the futile process of shutting it down? If users can't get their music through OiNK, they're going to find or create another source. OiNK started out as a modest network of shared files between friends, but it grew into a force so powerful that it took two anti-piracy organizations to take it down. Who knows what the global community will create next in an effort to stay connected?

May OiNK's Pink Palace always have a place in our hearts.

YouTube Adds Copyright Filter

On Monday October 15th after threats and lawsuits from content owners YouTube released its video content identification system.

The new system works by requiring copyright holders to submit copies of material that they want protected. YouTube then scans that material and uses it to block the upload of clips or videos that contain any of the copyrighted material.

According to an article published on the ars technica website "So far, the company is offering few details on how this works, its accuracy, and what limits it adheres to in order to allow fair uses of copyrighted material (it did say that a couple seconds of matching video would not be flagged, but offered no more details).

YouTube believes that the new system will put the copyright owners in control. Not only will content owners be able to block videos but they will also have the ability to make their material public.

The article goes on to say that "YouTube is aware of the problems that widespread filtering can cause, and it pledges that the new system won't "impede the free and fast communication YouTube has enabled-whether it be political debate, underground marketing, or the latest in dorm-room comedy."

It will be very interesting to see what effect YouTube's decision to filter content will have on other internet mediums.

A blow to the global community

The Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) won the first file sharing lawsuit to ever make it all the way to court.

At 31 years old, single mother Jammie Thomas now owes the RIAA $222,000 for downloading 24 songs. And that doesn't even include court costs, which could total more than $60,000.

More than anything, I'm shocked. I can't believe that an organization as powerful and wealthy as the RIAA, which represents an enormous group of powerful and wealthy artists, would turn a woman's life upside down over 24 songs. This type of controversial and heavily publicized action can't be helping the image of the RIAA. In the eyes of the public, surely this makes them seem like a heartless, greedy, and fear-mongering organization.

But I'm also dismayed. The RIAA is the most powerful force behind one of our most beautiful forms of culture, yet instead of adapting to the new mediums which facilitate its spread and development, they are fighting change to the death. They are choosing to live in the stone age. They are choosing to fight a force of progress that is unstoppable and unreasonably punish their potential base of customers.

Jammie Thomas has announced that she will appeal the verdict on the grounds of some definitions set near the end of the trial which, if redefined, could possibly (but not likely) exonerate her.

But the most important issues here are the ones that must be resolved out of court. They are the ones that the RIAA must figure out for themselves. The internet is not going away. File sharing is not going away. Most of all, the global community's desire for easy access to new and diverse music is not going away. The RIAA needs to figure out how to adapt to this medium of music exchange on reasonable terms that are attractive to the global community. They need to find something to offer the paying customer that neither record stores nor peer to peer networks have.

Sure, it will be difficult. It will require some thought -- more thought than it takes to simply engender fear through life-shattering lawsuits against single mothers. But if the RIAA can find a way to tap into the potential file sharing market, it will be more profitable than the old methods of music business ever were. This goes not only for the RIAA, but for the actual artists who produce the music and the fans of that music.

Let's just hope they realize this before they financially devastate more victims.

The RIAA cracks down on file sharing again...

The start of the new school year in September was also the start of the eighth wave of pre-litigation settlement letters sent to college students nation wide by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

The letters were sent to 22 universities across the country. Each letter informs the school of a forthcoming copyright infringement suit against one of its students and requests that university administrators forward the letter to the appropriate network user.

Some of the Universities targeted include Arizona State, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Purdue, and the University of Pennsylvania.
According to the RIAA the letters are meant to give students the opportunity to resolve copyright infringement claims against them at a discounted rate before a formal lawsuit is filed.

A survey conducted last year by Student Monitor found that more than half of college students admit to downloading music and movies illegally.

Of the 22,000 claims the RIAA has filed today marks the first time any case has actually made it to court. Jury selection and opening statements began this morning in Duluth, Minnesota in the Capitol Records, et al v. Jammie Thomas suit.

The RIAA has filed an additional 24 copyright infringement lawsuits against recipients of letters who ignored the option to settle out of court.

St. Edward's university has forbidden the use of p2p downloading programs on the schools server. The university experienced problems in the past that ranged from a slower network due to the amount of bandwidth being occupied by students downloading to viruses being spread throughout the network by corrupt files.

It makes since that the school does not want to encourage the use of illegal file sharing on campus but it is very strange that they are able to determine what programs a student is allowed to use on their own personal computers on campus.