Riaa targeting Universities

AP: Recording Industry Targets Colleges


The past few years the RIAA has been targeting individuals for pirating music. Many people were sued and settled out of court. I believe that this has done almost nothing to stop the pirating of music. In fact, I would say that it has increased the amount of pirating for several reasons.

First off, it makes pirating music highly publicized, and everyone sees that only a tiny fraction of people are getting sued. Making it more likely that people will pirate. Secondly, all of these lawsuits have put a stain on the RIAA's reputation. Now people view the RIAA as a money-grubbing evil corporate empire. Lastly, the RIAA has fallen behind in this new technological age. Instead of finding new ways to deliver music and albums to people they are stuck trying to keep people using CDs.

People want music on their IPods and other portable devices. With services like Rhapsody and ITunes leading the way in delivering music on computers. These types of services are what the RIAA should be trying to start, not holding back technology for their profit.

What could be to come as universities and other organizations that provide internet to the masses get sued is for the RIAA to take is battle to a higher scale. Leaning on universities might only be a start. Soon ISPs, Apartment complexes with frequent pirating, housing complexes, etc.... might receive summonses. This would be a more powerful message, but at what cost to their reputation?

2/14/07 blog

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/business/14google.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

This article is important to all of the internet, especially reguarding copyright laws. This might start a trend, or even an industry standard where companys and people can sue google for linking and showing copyrighted material improperly.

I believe that companies should be embracing google in technology rather than fighting them. Google is a huge internet entity, they have all the legal clout in the world. Can some of the smaller companies win monetary gains and a little press? Sure, but working with Google News would probably of been better for the companies. Take for example that a small company's copyrighted material is illegally displayed on Google News, instead of sueing Google, they could work with them. Make google show extra links to their site, increase viewers of their websites and their services. Fighting Google on issues like this will probably end up blacklisting their site from the Google search engine. Which in the long run will end up as a net loss for them.

I do not know the entire story behind this, and it would be hard to find out because i don't speak belgian. But, if google.be was actually displaying copyrighted material and doing it without a care intentionally, this could be the beginning of a series of suits from other people with displayed copyrighted material.

These issues could eventually make their way over to America. Every other search engine and other sites that index websites could have suits to follow.

Thepiratebay trying to purchase Sealand

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/12/pirate_bay_buys_island/

The legality of the file sharing program/file type known as "torrents" has been under fire recently. Torrents are a new phenomenon of file sharing. Most file sharing networks use a host and downloader format like file sharing networks such as limewire, napster, and soulseek. In these programs someone has a file and another person wishes todownload it and the information passes through the network. In these types of programs a central server that the program uses can be sued because that is where all the information is hosted. Torrents are a different story, because there is no central server where the information is hosted. The users download a program such as bitcomet or azureus and goto a site that has a list of torrents that have been uploaded. While the users download the torrent, they are also uploading bits of the file to other users.

The problem with this is it is hard for law enforcement to shut down every torrent uploaded and every user uploading information. Thus, they attack the sites that show lists of torrents. One of these such sites is www.thepiratebay.org . Many sites before it have gotten shut down, but thepiratebay escapes this because it's server is located in Sweeden. But the site has come under fire recently. To escape legal pressure, it is trying to buy the man made platform called Sealand.

Hosting a server on Sealand is an interesting topic. It could be considered a soverign nation and be free from persecution. Sealand is currently on sale for 950,000,000. Thus far thepiratebay has raised ~$50,000 from online donations from users of the site. While it is highly unlikely they are going to be able to purchase Sealand. However, if they do this will be an interesting topic to stay current with

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