[DMCA-Activists] Mich Tech Prez Letter to RIAA

[Seth Johnson]

(Forwarded from Boing Boing Blog.  Full text of letter pasted below.  --
Seth)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Boing Boing Blog] President of MTU's open letter to RIAA
   Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2003 08:34:12 -0700
   From: "Cory Doctorow" <address@hidden>
     To: address@hidden


A lot of people have been trying to figure out why the RIAA decided to bring
an infringement suit against four college students for hundreds of billions
of dollars. Clearly, a suit worth 10 or 20 times the recording industry's
gross annual income won't actually be paid off.

What's more, the universities have procedures in place for dealing with
cases of infringement. If the studios believe that a student is breaking the
law, they can send a DMCA notice (something that they have highly automated,
so that they can send out thousands at a time) to the university and the
university will take down the offending material.

It's clear to me that the reason for going after these students is to
intimidate anyone who runs campus-net search tools. Most American colleges
had campus-net search-engines (that students used for lots of purposes,
including research, sharing free software, and exchanging other legitimate
info) before this action; now they don't. 

But the RIAA's actions did more than intimidate students. By ignoring
procedure, they've declared war on American  universities. And college
adminstrators, who can never have been very comfortable with acting as the
recording industry's  cops, are wondering why the hell they've been bending
over backwards to assist the RIAA. 

The President of Michigan Technical University is steaming mad, and has
written an open letter to the RIAA: 

    You have obviously known about this situation with Joe Nievelt for quite
some time. Had you followed the  previous methods established in
notification of a violation, we would have shut off the student and not
allowed  the problem to grow to the size and scope that it is today. I am
very disappointed that the RIAA decided to take  this action in this manner.
As a fully cooperating site, we would have expected the courtesy of being
notified early  and allowing us to take action following established
procedures, instead of allowing it to get to the point of  lawsuits and
publicity.

    It has been stated by your office that this is "a bump in the road"
between the RIAA and Michigan Tech, and that  we will move on from here. It
is unfortunate that you choose to trivialize the problem in this manner. It
is not a  bump in the road for Joe Nievelt or Michigan Technological
University.

Link: http://www.admin.mtu.edu/urel/news/media_relations/95/
Discuss: http://www.quicktopic.com/boing/H/YbAHyUEGCyw3Y
(via /. [http://slashdot.org])

--

Posted by Cory Doctorow to Boing Boing Blog at 4/9/2003 8:30:51 AM

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> http://www.admin.mtu.edu/urel/news/media_relations/95/


President Responds to RIAA Suit
For more information on this story contact:
Email: Dean Woodbeck (mailto:address@hidden)
Phone: 906/487-3327 


April 4, 2003

Mr. Cary Sherman
Recording Industry Association of America
1330 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036

Dear Mr. Sherman:

In response to your letter of April 3, 2003, I offer the following comments.

Michigan Technological University has been a partner with the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA) since the inception of the
Soundbyting campaign. We have used your materials, methods and procedures to
help educate our students on all aspects of copyright law.

We have programs in place to help educate our students on their responsible
use of the Internet and its technologies with respect to intellectual
property issues.

Our orientation sessions, freshman hall programs, and acceptable-use
policies all cover the copyright issue. We also understand that no matter
how much education we provide, people will still break the law.

For this reason, we have procedures in place to deal with situations when we
are properly notified through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
We cooperate fully with all DCMA requests by suspending the connection of
the offending machine and moving the offender through a disciplinary process
in the Office of Student Affairs.

This process includes a one-hour presentation on copyright law with respect
to the Internet. Students are then required to clean up their machine and
compose a letter to the company filing the DMCA stating that they have
attended the presentation and complied.

In your letter dated April 3, 2003, you refer to a letter of October 3,
2002, sent to all university presidents. Your last line in that letter reads

"We stand ready to be of assistance in any way you might find helpful."

Our Information Technology department, upon receiving this letter, contacted
your office twice by phone (leaving messages for Jonathon Whitehead) and
three times by e-mail in an effort to update our reference materials and
procedures with you.

Your organization responded to none of these messages.

I believe that we would not be facing this situation with Joseph Nievelt
today had we been able to gain your help in providing additional information
to our student body. We have cooperated fully with the RIAA, but in recent
months, have not seen the same from your organization.

You have obviously known about this situation with Joe Nievelt for quite
some time. Had you followed the previous methods established in notification
of a violation, we would have shut off the student and not allowed the
problem to grow to the size and scope that it is today. I am very
disappointed that the RIAA decided to take this action in this manner. As a
fully cooperating site, we would have expected the courtesy of being
notified early and allowing us to take action following established
procedures, instead of allowing it to get to the point of lawsuits and
publicity.

It has been stated by your office that this is "a bump in the road" between
the RIAA and Michigan Tech, and that we will move on from here. It is
unfortunate that you choose to trivialize the problem in this manner. It is
not a bump in the road for Joe Nievelt or Michigan Technological University.

Taking all of this into consideration, we realize the seriousness of the
allegations against Mr. Nievelt and will cooperate fully in resolving this
matter.

Sincerely,

Curtis J. Tompkins
President 

-- 

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