Monday, March 05, 2007

Thundering Herd v. RIAA

Hey, Marshall finally made somebody's Top 25 ranking! OK, that's a low blow, but it's true - Marshall has made the Recording Industry Association of America's list of worst 25 universities when it comes to copyright infringement via file sharing on the U's networks. In other words, lots of Marshall students are sharing music, video, etc. that they shouldn't be. The Gazette article mentions "complaints" from the RIAA, but apparently not lawsuits. Not yet, at least. Maybe they should go ahead a crank up a law school in Huntington? :-)

Apropos of nothing except some fortuitous timing, I recently discovered that professor Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture is freely available for download online. I've not worked my way through it completely, but the basic thesis seems to be that the Net requires a paradigm shift in American copyright law, lest modern culture slowly fall into the clutches of massive multi-national corporations. He makes some valid points. Perhaps the Marshall students should take a look.

1 comment:

jedijawa said...

I think that Kent State made it onto that list too. I read an interesting book last year called "The Cheating Culture" that had some interesting things to say about this attitude of everything being free now.