Sunday, April 15, 2007

Wolfpack Stands Up to the RIAA; NC State Students to Fight Back (Corrected article)

This is a correction to the story we published. We have been advised by the Office of Student Legal Services that they do not handle federal court cases, and that for the litigation in the "John Doe" case and involving the subpoenas, the students would need to use outside counsel.

Accordingly, I would refer NC State students to my earlier post, Suggestions to College Students.

Following is the story we had found in NC State's student online newspaper, "Technician Online", which we now believe is partially inaccurate:



RIAA files 23 lawsuits against NCSU
Pre-litigation settlements were followed by lawsuits this week for the University's illegal downloaders
Josh Harrell
Issue date: 4/13/07

After the Recording Industry Association of America sent pre-litigation settlements to N.C. State illegal downloaders last month, the company stepped up its game this week.

The RIAA filed 23 music theft lawsuits against anonymous NCSU network users after they refused to take the settlement.

The lawsuits are in the form of "John Doe lawsuits," meaning that the RIAA does not know the names of the people it has filed against.

The users have been identified by their IP addresses, according to an RIAA spokesperson who declined to give her name or be directly quoted.

The same spokesperson said the company will have to wait on a judge to grant the RIAA permission to begin the name-discovery process.

But Pam Gerace, the director of Student Legal Services at the University, is fighting the lawsuits for her student clients. She advises that the students should remain anonymous.

"The RIAA actually said they might have use for the names in the future," Gerace said,

She added that this could prove dangerous for the students, as the RIAA could pursue other legal actions or give the names to record companies.

Complete article


Commentary & discussion:


p2pnet
Editorial in NC State "Technician"
Digg
Wired.com Blog Network
Ars Technica




Keywords: digital copyright online download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs

6 comments:

AMD FanBoi said...

I hope they've been forced to file 23 separate suits here, rather than their usual, single big John Doe suit.

And I hope they've had to file it in the proper federal district under a judge other than the one they've been using in New York. It's very reasonable to believe that they have good enough idea where these students are living to know at this time which court they are using. A different judge might make a good amount of difference.

If either of the above two conditions hasn't been met, it should be thrown out for obvious lack of jurisdiction, or misfiling.

raybeckerman said...

I get the impression that Pam Gerace knows what she's doing and the RIAA's going to have a big problem in Raleigh.

The fighting spirit of Jimmy Valvano lives on.

Alter_Fritz said...

Hm,
"Pam" and "She" indicates the "director" is a female, probably even a mother.

Somehow the RIAA seems to have hard times with the female gender of our species.
Be it fighting soccermoms (Santangelo, Foster..), knowledable Lawers (Barringer-Thomson) or now a smart Director of Student Legal Services (Gerace)

In biology back in school I learned that the most dangerous animal is the feminine one that is caring for their offspring when this female sees you as a thread to them it will fight you no matter what...

Oviously this genetic programming also works in our species.

I applaud those Females for taken a stand against guys like RIAA-Richard and those greedy old Man in the record labels!

Alter_Fritz said...

This is Pam

Alter_Fritz said...

P.S.
but the real interesting part i did only saw after the 3rd reading. Is being a RIAA spokesperson now a bad idea? "[...]according to an RIAA spokesperson who declined to give her name or be directly quoted."
How many "her's" spokespersons that work currently for RIAA do we know, and how many of them are now involved in some political campaign which might be the reason that she does not want her named any longer mentioned in connection with such an awfull entity as the mouthpiece for the labels?

I know only one!
Who could have imagined that 1 or 2 years ago? An employee that is ashamed to be mentioned by name that they work for them!
LOL

r3m0t said...

Yay, less joinder!