NewYorkCountryLawyer's Journal: Ohio U. Gets RIAA off its back by paying $60k + $16k a year

Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, has found the key to getting the RIAA to stop inundating it and its students with "settlement" letters. According to the university's student online publication, the university paid $60,000, plus $16,000 per year "maintenance", to Audible Magic, the business partner of the RIAA's all-purpose expert witness Dr. Doug Jacobson, for its "CopySense" filtering software. Once it made the payments, the letters stopped. This of course raises a lot of questions as to the 'disinterestedness' of Dr. Jacobson, whose deposition in the UMG v. Lindor case was the subject of interesting Slashdot commentary.

So...

[davburns]

To get rid of them, do you just have to pay, or do you actually have to let their software snoop all of your traffic (and then phone home "to check for updates")?

And... what rights did the university have to sign to sign away on behalf of themselves and their students?

Re:

[Billosaur]

I believe that since you are paying for the education and have to officially "sign up" with the college/university, thay makes you subject to their rules. If they change the rules after you sign up, you're still beholden to them, despite any objections you may have. If they paid the RIAA to have snooping software installed and have instituted rules against file-sharing on their computer systems (you usually have to sign a separate agreement for the use of a school's computer facilities), then if you do it a

Good and Bad

[jambarama]

So does this actually indemnify the students against RIAA suits? If so, this is a pretty good deal for the students. Now I'm not for paying off trolls, but look at what this buys:

The filter doesn't [eff.org] work [eff.org] well and is relatively easy to bypass. It doesn't touch http/ftp/email traffic (supposedly) so students can route traffic over those ports. It sounds like it works off of a fingerprint system [eff.org](PDF warning) - modify the file and thus fingerprint, and the file shouldn't (theoretically) be blocked. Fin

Payoffs...

[RobertM1968]

It sounds like a payoff... the BSA/MS used to do this all the time (and probably still does).

Sigh

[Rob T Firefly]

"Nice university you have here. Shame if something were to happen to it.."

On an unrelated note, sorry I missed you on Friday. I didn't know you were around until the fellow you had been talking to told me you had left.

Re:

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Hi Rob..... yeah had a nice chat. Looking forward to seeing you at the next one.