RIAA Grabs Student's Life's Savings

[rubenswm]

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/TechTV/techtv_RIAAvsteen030609.html

Posted by CowboyNeal on Monday June 09, @10:20AM
from the only-ending-his-livelihood dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ABCNews is reporting on a 19-year-old college student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. He created a site named ChewPlastic.com where students could search for files on the university network. Mind you, this is not a music file sharing software, this is just a search engine. Presumably, the search engine was being used to search for music files as well. The folks over at the RIAA did not take too kindly to the idea, and sued the student. He settled but denies any wrongdoing. What was settlement, you ask? His life's savings."

From SD

 

Gives me more reason to pirate now.

 

[Dingleberries]

Sada Tay, Sada Tay

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: SammySon
Gives me more reason to pirate now.

lol, same here

 

[RGN]

yup, this is why I made a special point of downloading the new Metallica CD - even though I hate the music.

 

[OREOSpeedwagon]

I saw the story on /. a few minutes ago...

RGN thanx for reminding me to download the album =)

 

[aswedc]

This guy is looking for donations to help him recover his savings - send him a dollar or two through his web site if you have some change in PayPal.

 

[Anubis]

fvck the RIAA. i have stolen over 100$ from then today alone

 

[Atlantean]

RGN thanks for reminding me as well to dl the Metallica album... those stupid asses I have no respect for the whiners. RIAA is sucks.

 

[RossMAN]

Time to do some borrowing

 

[Platypus]

He got caught, should we feel sorry for him? Maybe. Was he wrong? Yes.

 

[aphex]

ChewPlastic.com seems to be down at the moment... Prolly getting hammered.

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

This is his website.

Link

The RIAA sure is making a big point here by ruining poor college kids' lives. I bet they're mighty proud of themselves too. Anyone working there who felt any sort of pride or happiness in this story is deviod of soul and morals.

 

[rubenswm]

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
He got caught, should we feel sorry for him? Maybe. Was he wrong? Yes.

He was running a search engine, very similar to google. What was he doing that was wrong? If anybody was at fault it was RPI for not regulating it's own network.

 

[Hanpan]

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
He got caught, should we feel sorry for him? Maybe. Was he wrong? Yes.

Did you read the article. He wrote a search engine. He did not actually share any files.

I repeat, all he did was write a search engine that let students browse others shared files, he did not share himself.

 

[Platypus]

Originally posted by: rubenswm

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
He got caught, should we feel sorry for him? Maybe. Was he wrong? Yes.

He was running a search engine, very similar to google. What was he doing that was wrong? If anybody was at fault it was RPI for not regulating it's own network.

Here is a search engine to search our entire college network for files. Don't pirate though

Sorry, he knew EXACTLY what he was doing and he got busted for it. The RIAA are a bunch of money grubbing assholes who are ruining music from the inside out, but you cannot tell me you didn't expect some kind of fight. They shouldn't have taken his money but still, the whole "playing dumb" really just isn't going to fly in my book.

 

[Platypus]

Originally posted by: Hanpan

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
He got caught, should we feel sorry for him? Maybe. Was he wrong? Yes.

Did you read the article. He wrote a search engine. He did not actually share any files.

I repeat, all he did was write a search engine that let students browse others shared files, he did not share himself.

Where did I say he was sharing files? Did you read my post before you tried to be a smart ass?

 

[Hanpan]

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation

Originally posted by: Hanpan

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
He got caught, should we feel sorry for him? Maybe. Was he wrong? Yes.

Did you read the article. He wrote a search engine. He did not actually share any files.

I repeat, all he did was write a search engine that let students browse others shared files, he did not share himself.

Where did I say he was sharing files? Did you read my post before you tried to be a smart ass?

Unless I am to take that you think that indexing files has now suddenly become illegal, I can see nothing else that you could possibly hold against him except file sharing.

 

[rubenswm]

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation

Originally posted by: rubenswm

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
He got caught, should we feel sorry for him? Maybe. Was he wrong? Yes.

He was running a search engine, very similar to google. What was he doing that was wrong? If anybody was at fault it was RPI for not regulating it's own network.

Here is a search engine to search our entire college network for files. Don't pirate though

Sorry, he knew EXACTLY what he was doing and he got busted for it. The RIAA are a bunch of money grubbing assholes who are ruining music from the inside out, but you cannot tell me you didn't expect some kind of fight. They shouldn't have taken his money but still, the whole "playing dumb" really just isn't going to fly in my book.

I wouldn't really call it playing dumb. The bottom line in this situation is that he was running a search engine to search for files on a University network. If his intent was to share the wealth of research at RPI or let his friends snag mp3's, we don't know. Quit jumping to conclusions- although that is a good possibility.

 

[BruinEd03]

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation

Originally posted by: rubenswm

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
He got caught, should we feel sorry for him? Maybe. Was he wrong? Yes.

He was running a search engine, very similar to google. What was he doing that was wrong? If anybody was at fault it was RPI for not regulating it's own network.

Here is a search engine to search our entire college network for files. Don't pirate though

Sorry, he knew EXACTLY what he was doing and he got busted for it. The RIAA are a bunch of money grubbing assholes who are ruining music from the inside out, but you cannot tell me you didn't expect some kind of fight. They shouldn't have taken his money but still, the whole "playing dumb" really just isn't going to fly in my book.

He got caught...but exactly of doing what? Was it illegal to write a search engine? Nope. I mean if you want to say he's wrong you might as well sue google because well little kids can search up porn on them!!

-Ed

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation

Originally posted by: rubenswm

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
He got caught, should we feel sorry for him? Maybe. Was he wrong? Yes.

He was running a search engine, very similar to google. What was he doing that was wrong? If anybody was at fault it was RPI for not regulating it's own network.

Here is a search engine to search our entire college network for files. Don't pirate though

Sorry, he knew EXACTLY what he was doing and he got busted for it. The RIAA are a bunch of money grubbing assholes who are ruining music from the inside out, but you cannot tell me you didn't expect some kind of fight. They shouldn't have taken his money but still, the whole "playing dumb" really just isn't going to fly in my book.

Have you ever been to a college campus? A campus search engine can be very useful, especially when it comes to high-demand files which would otherwise take ages to download via the overloaded campus internet connection. I can't think of very many colleges that don't at least have some sort of student system set up; it's the only way to keep from killing the college's external connection, and you get it faster to boot.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation

Originally posted by: rubenswm

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
He got caught, should we feel sorry for him? Maybe. Was he wrong? Yes.

He was running a search engine, very similar to google. What was he doing that was wrong? If anybody was at fault it was RPI for not regulating it's own network.

Here is a search engine to search our entire college network for files. Don't pirate though

Sorry, he knew EXACTLY what he was doing and he got busted for it. The RIAA are a bunch of money grubbing assholes who are ruining music from the inside out, but you cannot tell me you didn't expect some kind of fight. They shouldn't have taken his money but still, the whole "playing dumb" really just isn't going to fly in my book.

i'm sorry, but that argument is just really weak in my opinion. you don't think knife companies know what some people use knives for? you don't think that car companies know that some people use cars to do drive-by's and to transport criminals to and from their hits? are they wrong to manufacture their products?

people are wrong to pirate music, but the RIAA is *JUST AS* wrong to use the legal system to wrongfully intimidate anyone they perceive as a threat to their next dime.

 

He got caught, should we feel sorry for him? Maybe. Was he wrong? Yes.

Read the article before passing judgement.

"The service was no different than Napster," said Amy Weiss, senior vice president of communications for the RIAA. "With one click of a mouse, you can get music, you can get anything you wanted."

So, I guess IRC is illegal too by that definition. Let's just pull that RFC. You can also do that on the web in other countries. So, html, php and many other languages must be illegal. Or mabey they should go after the countries for allowing it to happen. WWWIII, the war over Intellectual Property.

Weiss says the RIAA wanted to send a deterrent message others who had similar services up on their college campuses. "Nobody is above the law," she said. "And that is the important thing to remember here."

Ironic that a corporation says that.

"We don't think it's ridiculous to call someone a thief who is, in fact, stealing music. And that's exactly what his system did," said Weiss.

So, if a system created for one purpose can be used to do something deemed "illegal", then that person is guilty of a crime for creating that system/item for a legal purpose. So, lets ban guns, knives, phones, books, magazines, the internet, could go on for a while.

 

[simms]

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation

Originally posted by: Hanpan

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
He got caught, should we feel sorry for him? Maybe. Was he wrong? Yes.

Did you read the article. He wrote a search engine. He did not actually share any files.

I repeat, all he did was write a search engine that let students browse others shared files, he did not share himself.

Where did I say he was sharing files? Did you read my post before you tried to be a smart ass?

I don't know whether to applaud you for your morals or shun you for your insensitivity.

 

[Platypus]

Don't get pissed off because you all hate the RIAA and you automatically assume that they are wrong in every instance. They have a right to protect their products. I go to a major university. Every person there pirates anything they can. I just will not buy his arguement that it was just a search engine for the network. There was a motive for doing it. Twist my words all you will, there is a difference between google and what he did.