Metallica Vs. Harvard

King_B writes "Metallica is taking a stand against major universities by requesting a restriction on the use of Napster." I hear They Might Be Giants is gonna respond by going after universities that use NFS.

Re:The arrogance of it all ...

Good point. But students are smart. As educational institutes, the schools should always start with education first. Engineering solutions such as prioritizing network traffic should be employed, in the long term. A short-term solution such as closing down napster for a week might work too to give the students the idea that non-academic activities really should tempered with common sense.

Columbia

This is a copy of the email I just sent to the president of my university.

President Rupp,

It has recently come to my attention that Columbia has or will shortly receive a letter from Howard E. King, attorney for Metallica and Dr. Dre, regarding the fact that Columbia students can access Napster's servers via the Columbia network. I know there are many qualified people in your office and I'm sure that the University will consult with legal counsel before taking any action. However there are a few things I feel should be considered.

First let me say that I do not support the stealing of intellectual property. Individuals (students included) should be held accountable for their actions. It is important to note, however, that caving to the demands of Mr. King sets a dangerous president. First, it suggests that a third party can regulate what information Columbia provides to its students. Second, it is a restriction on resources (like library materials) provided by the university to students. Thirdly, it gives credit to the claim that Napster (and eventually other file sharing tools) have no significant non-infringing uses. To comply with this demand is like complying with a demand by a publishing company to have all photocopiers removed from the libraries because students use them to photocopy magazines, books, etc.

If you wish to discuss my opinions further, you can reach me at this email address. I am also the student representative from FFSEAS to the University Senate and I sit on the External Relations Committee.

Thank you for your time, -Brian London

I sugest others do likewise

NOOOOooooo......

Please don't kill NFS, that's how I get all my TMBG songs! How'm I gonna survive without CD quality copies of "(Going Down to) Cowtown", "Exquisite Dead Guy" and "Number Three"?
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/

Ha, Ha, Ha

Umm, does anyone else find it hillarious that "Metalica" has come to represent the 'Establishment' to the point were they sue those crazy rebels at HARVARD?

-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>

Companys dictating policy?

Ideology aside, forgetting for a moment who is right or wrong, we should be very concerned that a company is dictating policy at a University. If the illegal act of making and distributing files on the Internet is of major social concern, it is the responsibility of the justice department.

Yet, there are no arrests, no fines. No statement saying "What you are doing is illegal and if you are caught, you will be punished." Granted, enforcing the law on a wide and free network is difficult, and we aren't quite sure how to do it effectively yet. However, something that effects all of our rights in a legal sense is being battled by advocates for corporate interests (Napster Vs. RIAA, in this case). The people, on the other hand, have no advocates, even though it directly effects them.

If this trend of determining matters of legality on the Internet by companies instead of law makers, we will end up with a set of 'unwritten' laws developed by whomever has the most persuasive lawyers (read: money) and detach the citizenry from the lawmaking process altogether. The democratic process may be slow, and might not make sense all the time, but at least can be accessed (in theory) by the people.

If a University can be forced to change it's policy by a company for fear of a lawsuit, regardless of the legality or ethics of that policy, we could all be in big trouble.

Missed the point.

Um, dude. That was a cunning oblique referrence which couldn't possibly be misconstrued by any university.

One of the biggest copyright cases in the late 20th cen. had to do with universities providing students with photocopied books or compilation books of photocopied articles, without paying for the rights to republish. Professors were going to their university copy shops and handing them a stack of academic articles or a text book, and saying "Make a copy of this for every member of my 30 person class, and sell it to them when they come in." So in that case, instead of (or in addition to) going to a bookstore to buy a textbook, you go to, say, the campus Kinkos and buy your photocopied book from them.

There was a lawsuit. The universities lost. Universities generally don't pull that stunt any more -- while they may photocopy, they pay for the rights to do so. (If you want photocopy rights, generally one can buy them through the Copyright Clearance Center, and organization which administers rights precisely for that purpose.)

So that line about photocopying was actually an oblique threat: "We won over the wholesale photocopying issue, we can win over Napster."
----------------------------------------------

Someone has the right idea...

From the article:

Virginia has tried to educate students about the copyright issues surrounding Napster rather than block the program, a tactic that many campus administrators say clashes with the freedom-of-inquiry ethos of a university environment. They also say they doubt blocking it will work anyway in the long run. "My biggest personal concern is whether [blocks] will be effective for the goal that they are trying to accomplish," Mr. German said.

I'm glad to see that *someone* at one of the universities is actually thinking, rather than buying into the knee-jerk reaction of just trying to shut down Napster...

Stupid?

Is this band (or more likely their fearless leader, whatshisname) stupid or just plain stupid? Does he have no idea how damaging his (their) reputation would be if they were successful with this?

I've never been much of a fan of Metallica which I found a bit too commercial (how true that has proved to be) preferring the likes of Black Flag, Motorhead, No Means No among others during the glory days of hardcore metal in the 80's, so it's no loss for me. But I suspect there are soon to be ex-fans of Metallica at 11 major American Universities.

As bugs would say, "what a maroon!"

Why universities

Its easy.
1) Broke students (I was a broke student...) who REALLY like free stuff, and have enough time to search for music they want.

2) Big bandwidth (back in my day we had a vax cluster that was neat,and gopher! now I hear they have really really fast interntet, but I digress) by making universities stop allowing napster et al. server set ups you reduce the number of high speed connections to mucic.

3) Single point of responsibility for many people. Let them deal with there students.

Personal responsibility? The law doesn't punish individuals for their violations (yet....) So they're trying anything

Who needs Napster (tm) at a College?

On the topic of napster and schools: With a couple thousand students 1 opennapster server located within the school would suffice for the campus and allow students to transfer mp3 at the speed of the lan instead of wasting net bandwidth. It would please the students and the network admins!

Metallica...scourge of higher education...

I wanted to flame them and say "These guys are just like J.P. from antionline now that they are threatening Harvard with no real legal backing." but I won't say that, even if it is true. :o)

It does seem pretty dumb from a logical point of view, but it falls into the same category as many other lawsuits and such nowdays -- Sue whoever is easiest to get the most money from rather than suing the guilty party.

Nevermind that it is the students at the schools, the majority who are over 18 and thus legally responsible for themselves as adults (In the U.S.) However, we all know this type of stupidity works in the courts. We have too many previous examples of these things already and I'm sure Metalligreed will win if Harvard doesn't bend over for a buttrock band of elderly hicks. After all, Lars' rights are more important than those of a college or the students that don't do anything wrong (both of them.) Nevermind that if there is a big settlement to Metallica, or if they win in a court case, that the schools will raise tuition and make everyone unable to afford school, and drop out, get a job at McDonalds, and listen to Metallica music while complaining about how much life sucks and how they can't make any money...but then again, maybe that's the idea.

BoZ - who would be leaping for joy if a giant meteor was heading directly to destroy the Earth.

Copying in the Library??

"They ought to seriously address this issue of intellectual property. They certainly aren't allowing students to copy books in the university library."

Ok.. So, what are all those photocopiers for?? I take it that these people went to Uni to study something.
If they did, then, I'd hazard a guess they they did copy the books in the library for reference..
I know I did, and so did everyone else on my degree.. And everyone else there!! How else were we to be able to study effectively??
I think they've gone far enough with all this napster attacking. It won't do any more good, apart from to get Metallica's name in the press even more, and increase the disdain felt for them by people who have a reasonably sensible view of life.
The courts are already dealing with this, so why try and pre-empt things with possible hints at legal proceedings in the future? They'll never block everything, and will only waste valuable resources trying to do so.
The world will end up working as it will, despite the lawyers and the nit-picking legislation that's being waved around by the clueless.. So I wish they'd just lighten up and stop trying to stomp on anything and everything they can see...

Reminds me of an old joke:
Q: What do puppies and large corporations have in common?
A: They feel the need to piss on everything just to try and prove it's theirs.


Malk

Re:NOOOOooooo......

TMBG have got it sussed, it's not Napster that's allowing this evil copyright violation, it's the networks.

I've just cut all the network cables in my office anyway, can never be to safe, oh hang on, forgot the modem cab

[Connection reset by peer]

University of Tennessee solution

While on a recent vacation, I stopped in and spoke with some of my old network and computer lab bosses and they filled me in on the UT practice and plans for the future.

Note, I have not seen the written policy, this is what several very knowledgable people told me that they do and are planning on doing.

First, neither Napster, nor anything else, is blocked. Free speech is king, so no filtering is done by the school.

They have had a problem with the dorms eating up so much of the total bandwidth, slowing down staff and administration along with the dorms themselves. So, the plan is to put the dorms on a seperate network and seperate gateway from the rest of the school. Quoting a friend "if the students want to gring their network to a hault trading music and videos, let them, it's fine with us."

I am not sure if Metallica has heard of this yet, but if they decide to force censorship on that university (with 20,000+ students) they will probably have a fight on their hands.

Visit DC2600 [dc2600.com]

Really In Touch

They certainly aren't allowing students to copy books in the university library.

This just shows how in touch lawyers are with the real world. All students copy books in the university library. Professors do it, too. They copy to take pages back to their dorm rooms for studying purposes. They copy to write term papers (who says plagiarism's dead?!). Professors copy entire novellas for the express purpose of handing them out in class (students are notorious for not wanting to go to libraries, and libraries are notorious for never having the book).

Fair use copying goes on every day, and to compare the Internet to a library where nothing gets copied is to completely misunderstand how college libraries are used.

I'll be sending a letter of my own...

I'm a student at Georgia Tech, supposedly one of the recipients of this letter, and I think I'll be sending in a letter of my own. Universities supposedly stand for unbarred access to information, and GaTech has done a good job of running an open residential network (www.resnet.gatech.edu) so far. Blocking Napster would set a very bad precedent, and this must be stopped.

I don't even use Napster (or Scour, Gnutella, etc). A good chunk of my MP3s are from my own CDs, and the rest came from my friends' computers. I don't like Metallica (on the basis of their music), so I don't think I have more than one or two of their songs, and I think I even have a tape with those songs somewhere. They're never going to stop peer to peer trading unless they a) block all incoming ports to each IP, or b) hire packet nannies to inspect every transfer for copyrighted material. But even though a ban on Napster would be easy to work around, I would be deeply saddened if they were to cave in to legal pressure and enact it. If freedom of information(*) doesn't stand at universities, where will it stand?

-John

(* - I don't consider piracy to be a form of freedom of information - but restricting the right to run certain types of software that does have even a slim chance of being used with legal motives is a VERY bad thing)

Don't be mean to TMBG...

TMBG has been selling full albums in mp3 format for at least three years now, and they have a new mp3 album coming out real soon. They've always been at the forefront of the technological part of their industry. It's the record companies that want to hold back mp3 distribution so they can continue to bleed us on CDs. Leave They Might Be Giants alone!


--Brogdon

Re:Really In Touch

Fair use copying goes on every day, and to compare the Internet to a library where nothing gets copied is to completely misunderstand how college libraries are used.

You said the magic words..."fair use copying". People are copying a page or two, not whole books. If people started flocking to libraries and copying whole books (maybe they have free copy day or something that makes it economically feasible) do you think they would just let it happen? Do you think they would allow their resources to be used to copy hundreds of books a day? Not a chance, but because the resource is net access and it's music instead of books it's suddenly okay? If Napster was used for fair use by most people you would have a case. But I would guess that 90% of people use it download music so they don't have to pay for it. It's not stuff they have on CD already, it's stuff they don't have and want without paying for it. LAst time I checked, that's not covered under fair use.

TMBG is Hardcore Geek Music

For gos sake they werte on the frontpage of the onion a couple of weeks ago [onion.com]:

They Might Be Giants Behind The Music Episode Lacks Sex, Drugs NEW YORK--The new They Might Be Giants episode of VH1's Behind The Music is devoid of sex and drugs, sources reported Monday. "Man, we haven't had that much trouble finding something juicy since the 'Weird Al' episode," VH1 senior vice-president Bill Flanagan said. "We can almost always hit paydirt with a band's groupies, but in They Might Be Giants' case, they're all 31-year-old computer programmers." The They Might Be Giants episode largely focused on keyboardist/accordionist John Linnell's harrowing early-'90s addiction to Tetris.

The only problem of TMBG for me is that they remind me of a stupid ex-girlfriend. does anyone get the NFS joke? I don't. Oh yeah... get the full version of TMBG - Boss of me off of napster -- it rules!

Ya know what we need?

We need some artist to sue a university for BLOCKING Napster. I mean, if an artist wants to distribute music via Napster (say because a record company won't pick them up), then they should be able to, right?

Although, I bet I know what will happen, the band with the most money will win.

Demonstrations

I wonder, have there been pro-Napster demonstrations on campuses? When I went to school, people would demonstrate over any damn thing. Certainly stuff much less important than this (er, like sacking the basketball coach?).

Not that I think it would be a particularly intelligent thing to have a demonstration about, but some of the stuff people occupied buildings for at UMass/Amherst was a lot dumber.

-

The arrogance of it all ...

Metallica and Dr. Dre would like to know your position and instructions with respect to access to Napster through your network.

Why should these universities have any kind of position with respect to Napster? These musicians really need to have a larger view of Life, The Universe and Everything.

How about this hypothetical position, Lars. You might not like it, but I think this is one that you would find to be very likely:

The University provides network access to students for the purposes for academic research and learning. Insofar as the frivolous use of the network bandwidth does not exclude other students from academic activities, we will allow it. Insofar as these frivolous lawsuits does not impinge upon the academic freedom of the students, according to our judgement, not yours, we will play nice an pretend that you actually have a case against us. True, the university does not condone copyright violation. True, the university will suspend any student who violates the laws of the country. But your private grieviances have nothing to do with this university and the administration. Please take this up the individual students. To us, napster is just like any other software program - it deserves it's place, as long it by itself violates no law, and does not interfere with our activities. We take no position with regards to the legality of Napster. That is not for us, or you, but the courts to decide.

Re:TMBG is Hardcore Geek Music

I don't know about the early 90's, but I knew John Linnell in the early 80's, and he OWNED Asteroids.

documents on reserve

"Noting that the 11 universities are among the best in the world, he added: "They ought to seriously address this issue of intellectual property. They certainly aren't allowing students to copy books in the university library."

Yes, they do. I went to a small liberal art school that when a book was rare or very expensive, the professor would put a few copies of the book on reserve in the library. What this meant was that the student could check the book out for only 2 hrs at a time and it couldn't leave the library. What many students were encouraged to do was to make photocopies of the pages that they needed to read so that they could take the copies outside of the library, highlight and make notations, etc. (also considered fair use). They weren't reselling these photocopies, but were using the copies because of the restrictive properties of the original (out of print, extremely expensive, etc.)

Doesn't this refute Mr. King's argument?

Isn't paying $18 for a cd a restrictive property of the music industry?

And please don't say that the mp3 version of a song is just as good as the original, we all know that's not true.

Re:Someone has the right idea...

Somehow I doubt that Metallica has better lawyers than Harvard. Call me crazy, but I think Harvard Law may have a decent lawyer or two up their sleeve.