Piracy Deserves No Privacy

The Recording Industry Association of America ( RIAA ), the music industry\u27s trade and lobbying group, recently initiated a controversial tactic to bring to surface previously anonymous digital pirates of the Internet. This aggressive tactic aims to make safe the digital oceans for copyright and involves identifying and bringing claims against infringing individuals who download, swap, and/or post copyrighted music illegally via the Internet. The RIAA cares not who the infringers are or whether the infringers know the illegality of their actions. Nor does the music industry concern itself with the inevitable storm of backlash bound to fall upon them for suing uninformed or unintentional infringers. Internet users and privacy advocates, however, care all too much. This i-brief attempts to alleviate the fears of privacy infringement by bringing to light certain safeguards built into the Digital Millennium Copyrights Act ( DMCA ) to deal with the possibility of both fraudulent identity subpoenas and infringement into personal privacy. In addition, case law will show that the subpoena powers of the DMCA will not be abused by those who truly wish to enforce copyright laws and legitimate claims of ownership, thereby maintaining the privacy of law abiding Internet users

Hail to the thief: a tribute to Kazaa

THIS PAPER CONSIDERS THE ONGOING LITIGATION against the peer-to-peer network KaZaA. Record companies and Hollywood studios have faced jurisdictional and legal problems in suing this network for copyright infringement. As Wired Magazine observes: “The servers are in Denmark. The software is in Estonia. The domain is registered Down Under, the corporation on a tiny island in the South Pacific. The users—60 million of them—are everywhere around the world.” In frustration, copyright owners have launched copyright actions against intermediaries—like against Internet Service Providers such as Verizon. They have also embarked on filing suits against individual users of file-sharing programs. In addition, copyright owners have called for domestic- and international-law reform with respect to digital copyright. The Senate Committee on Government Affairs of the United States Congress has reviewed the controversial use of subpoenas in suits against users of file-sharing peer-to-peer networks. The United States has encouraged other countries to adopt provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 in bilateral and regional free-trade agreements

The Information Commons: a public policy report

This report describes the history of the information commons, presents examples of online commons that provide new ways to store and deliver information, and concludes with policy recommendations. Available in PDF and HTML versions.BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE at NYU SCHOOL OF LAW Democracy Program, Free Expression Policy Project 161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th floor New York NY 10013 Phone: (212) 998-6730 Web site: www.brennancenter.org Free Expression Policy Project: www.fepproject.or

Spartan Daily, April 14, 2004

Volume 122, Issue 46https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/9980/thumbnail.jp

Musical Copyright Infringement and Policy Implementation at Higher Education Institutions

Copyright infringement through campus networks has become an increasingly troubling problem for higher education institutions across the nation for two reasons. First, the network infrastructure is being abused to the extent that high percentages of the traffic to and from the university are of illegal material. Second, much of these materials are illegal, so administrators must follow procedures and implement policies, which will identify the university when a member of the university violates the law. Throughout the nation, university administrators are taking different approaches to combat this new issue on campuses. In this study, the policies of the one hundred seventeen Division I Football institutions were critiqued. Some schools are taking a very relaxed approach and simply have a cursory statement in their policies mentioning students, faculty, and staff must follow all laws and policies. Others have taken a more active approach. The University of Arizona has the most comprehensive policies. They have included information on the Copyright Act, links to federal regulations, and a link to the university\u27s policies on the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) programs. A great number of institutions are also complying with the Recording industry Association of America (RIAA) and disconnecting suspected violators from the campus network. However, this seems to be contradictory to our nation \u27s constitution which states individuals are innocent until proven guilty. In the current system, which is common across the nation, it would seem as if users are guilty until proven innocent. The availability of these P2P networks has resulted in a tremendous amount of legislation and trials to occur to protect the owners of the copyrights. New legislation or large numbers of suits are filed seemingly every week. Since last August, there have been almost 2,000 suits filed against individuals and several court cases against companies across the nation. In December, federal court of appeals ruled that service providers do not have to give copyright owners the personal information of people suspected of possessing copyrighted materials. This was a huge blow to owners as this was the primary means in which they were able to fight this growing issue. New issues that will face administrators will be very prevalent. One such process that students are beginning to use is called stream ripping. This allows users to tune into several internet radio stations at once and while doing so, a program converts the songs into a music file and stores it on the host computer. What is so different about this program is that it uses legal streams of music and then stores the songs. There is no sharing that takes place and network administrators cannot tell that there is anything illegal taking place. This problem is one that will not be solved soon. The emergence of new technologies and the increasing ability of students to find ways to break protectionist measure implemented by the copyright owners will continue to grow. While this thesis has been a comprehensive study of the legal history, institutional policies, and what might be in store in the near future, there would be aspects of this issue that could not be predicted. This is a very timely issue that will surely see much more spotlight