EDUCAUSE | Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Piracy

Textbook Piracy Grows Online, Prompting a Counterattack From Publishers

ckeller — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:12:17 -0500

College students are increasingly downloading illegal copies of textbooks online, employing the same file-trading technologies used to download music and movies. Feeling threatened, book publishers are stepping up efforts to stop the online piracy.

How It Does It: The RIAA Explains How It Catches Alleged Music Pirates

elilly — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:01:26 -0500

"To catch college students trading copyrighted songs online, the Recording Industry Association of America uses the same file-sharing software that online pirates love, an RIAA representative told The Chronicle at the organization's offices during a private demonstration of how it catches alleged music pirates."

Downloading by Students Overstated

ckeller — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:30:03 -0600

"In its campaign urging lawmakers and colleges to take the issue of on-campus illegal file sharing seriously, the Motion Picture Association of America has wielded an array of legal arguments, facts and statistics. It now appears that a central figure in that arsenal was high by a factor of three, galvanizing its opponents who maintain that colleges have been singled out unfairly as havens of downloading activity. "

MPAA Admits Mistake on Downloading Study

ckeller — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:49:47 -0600

"In a 2005 study it commissioned, the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses came from illegal downloading of movies by college students, who often have access to high-bandwidth networks on campus.

The MPAA has used the study to pressure colleges to take tougher steps to prevent illegal file-sharing and to back legislation currently before the House of Representatives that would force them to do so.

But now the MPAA, which represents the U.S. motion picture industry, has told education groups a "human error" in that survey caused it to get the number wrong. It now blames college students for about 15 percent of revenue loss."

Suppression Technologies: Summary Observations from a Common Solutions Group Workshop

ckeller — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:58:13 -0600

In an effort to better understand the technologies available for copyright infringement control, the Common Solutions Group invited leading vendors of detection and suppression technologies to present and discuss the architecture and implementation of their products at an intensive workshop held at Virginia Tech on January 9, 2008. This is their summary report.

An interview with the misguided RIAA

ckeller — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:49:20 -0600

This is an unabridged transcript of Don Reisingers interview with the RIAA.

The RIAA speaks--and it gets worse

ckeller — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:02:07 -0600

The RIAA has quickly become one of the most disliked organizations in the world. Working ostensibly with the interests of the artists in mind, the organization has single-handedly instituted a policy of lawsuits and education in an attempt to curb the piracy of music.

Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video

ckeller — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:14:28 -0600

As online video burgeons, so do questions about what kinds of uses of copyrighted works are legal online. Inevitably, those questions will be settled at least as much by practice and private negotiation as by legal action. Recent discussions of filtering and monitoring practices for platform providers show the importance of identifying lawful uses, while meeting industry concern to limit unauthorized use of copyrighted material. This study showcases user practices in use of copyrighted works within their own online videos at the dawn of this process. It identifies nine common kinds of re-appropriation practices, including satire and parody, criticism, and video diaries. It shows that a substantial amount of user-generated video uses copyrighted material in ways that are eligible for fair use consideration, although no coordinated work has yet been done to understand such practices through the fair use lens.
Thus, a significant set of creative practices is potentially both legal and at risk of curtailment by currently discussed ways to control online piracy and theft of copyrighted works.

France set to cut Web access for music, film pirates

ckeller — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:05:43 -0600

Internet users in France who frequently download music or films illegally risk losing Web access under a new antipiracy system unveiled Friday.

Letter to the Editor: Respect for copyright comes from education

ckeller — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:09:44 -0600

EDUCAUSE Vice President, Mark Luker, responds to Dan Glickman of the MPAA and his piece “Compiling a Sensible Syllabus for Piracy U,”.