Wednesday, April 04, 2007

UC Santa Cruz Passes Along RIAA Demand Letter to Students, Suggests to Students "You May Want to Seek Advice from a Private Attorney"

We have obtained a copy of the RIAA's settlement demand letter sent to the University of California, Santa Cruz. The school has passed along the letters to students, but advised that

-the University of California has made not determination that you have engaged in copyright infringement or that you should enter into an early settlement with the copyright holder;

-It is solely your personal decision whether to avail yourself of the "early settlement" procedure;

-You may want to seek advice from a private attorney. For your information, the State Bar of California has a lawyer referral service -- please see http://www.calbar.ca.gov/state/calbar_generic.jsp?cid=10182

A copy -- with identifying information redacted -- of the complete set of what students received, is as follows:

University of California, Santa Cruz, Set of Letters*

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

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

10 comments:

Alter_Fritz said...

are these HRO letters in the name of big music now considered to be pollution?
Or why is the lady that write them a specialist for this kind of stuff?

Katheryn Jarvis Coggon is special counsel who joined Holme Roberts & Owen LLP in 1995. She is part of the firm's environmental practice group.[...]
RIAA's toxic specialist

;-)

Anonymous said...

Perhaps they should refer their students to Mr. Ledford (http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/#8555433126591377562).

Megan said...

UC Berkeley has followed suit. An email was sent to the student body stating that the RIAA letters would be passed along, but that no information would be provided to the RIAA sans subpoena.

I don't know if this will be standard policy throughout the UC system, but it wouldn't surprise me if the varioius campuses consulted each other and came to an agreement on how to handle the situation.

AMD FanBoi said...

Are you required to preserve evidence on the theory that a lawsuit MAY be filed against you, or only after it has and you've been properly served?

Also, can the RIAA shove through their illegally-joined ex parte John Doe suits fast enough for those who don't settle for the Universities to still have the relevant IP logs?

Also, when they absolutely KNOW you live (in this case) in California at this time, can the RIAA still file their JD suits in New York as they've done in other cases, or must they file in a California court near to the campus where they've identified the aledged infringers to supoena the user information?

Jadeic said...
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Jadeic said...
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Alter_Fritz said...

Jadeic, I must disagree with you.
I don't see how a story can be called "decent" if it shows the same manipulative set of words that the PR firms invented for the corporate Musicindustry. Not only those old ones, but also the new ones!!

OK, "piracy" did made it (unfortunately!) in the last few years into the general vocabulary, even if the acts it is atributed to now have nothing to do with those atrocious acts that the word described originally. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy )

But sentences like: "[T]he RIAA sent out 17 “pre-lawsuit” letters to UC Santa Cruz students who were caught illegally trafficking music. shouldn't be part of a decent report. Such a choosing of words is clearly a sign of sloppinessly taking RIAA press releases for your own pieces.

For example did Jesus back these days engage in fish and bread "trafficking" or did he engage in fish and bread "sharing"?!!
the word trafficking has a bad conotation; child trafficking, drugs trafficking ect. it was the RIAA PR that started some time ago to atribute the sharing of files with this bad conotation word!
Mindfull editors (specially if the speak english as a first language and do have a greater vocabulary and better understanding of the meaning and conotations of words) shouldn't fall for RIAA PR yet with another word.
It is bad enough that it has happend with "piracy" and "stealing" as substitutes for "non commercial copyrightinfringement".

That of course not students were "caught" but devices that had IP adresses assigned to, is just another tiny sidenote which makes the story everything else but not decent.
(what the hell happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?)

decent wording should have been more something like this "RIAA sent out 17 “pre-lawsuit” letters to UC Santa Cruz students from whom the RIAA believe they were engaged in sharing copyrighted music without a proper license to do so"

Don't let the RIAA PR guys "steal" another word to taunt a behaviour that is good for society as a whole (sharing) as something that is bad for society (trafficking of drugs, children [or now music])!
American students should be mindful about their mother language

And remember guys I do not even really speak the language I write in here, So grammar errors are definetly excusable in my case!

raybeckerman said...

Good points, alter_fritz.

By the way copyright "piracy" is a specific and well known term that has been around for decades.

It refers to making large numbers of identical copies for commercial resale, without a license.

Needless to say, the RIAA's "investigation" has never caught a copyright pirate, and never will.

The RIAA's use of the word "piracy" is part of its campaign of deception and distortion.

Jadeic said...
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