Would you steal a car!? If it was as easy as downloading a movie, yeah.

There is a big difference between piracy and stealing. The biggest problem with piracy is how easy it is to do it. There is also relatively low risk of getting caught due to the high number of individuals who do it. Also, there is isolation when you commit this “crime”. The RIAA might find out that someone from your house downloaded an illegal song, but they cannot definitely find out who. This is a big legal black hole, especially in most western countries where civil liberties are kind of a big deal (America may have gone to far west that it is now hitting Soviet Russia).

The big difference which makes it easier for people like the RIAA to sue you is that in American civil court you just need to found likely to have committed the act. This is opposite American criminal court where you have to be found guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

In the end it is a bit absurd that making a copy of something has such high legal ramifications. Someone stole my CD player from inside my car a few years ago. F them, now I don’t have a CD player. If they just stole this paragraph, I still have the paragraph.

[Source: Law and Order]

Inspiration:

[Source: Digg]

College Being has just gone over the 200-article barrier. This will be the 202nd article on our site. I hope you guys have been enjoying all the totally awesome things we write about.

Here are ten of our top articles thus far (Note: Our About Page, Home Page, and RSS are the most viewed):

10. No Sex Tonight
When one man gets frustrated at his girlfriend’s metaphorical castration, check out what he does!

9. What can make-up do for you?
A great post by our author, Grady Hua. Shows you the difference between some women with and without makeup. It is truly remarkable. Reminds me of a certain Dove commercial.

8. Couples Cheap on Each Other with Each Other
That has got to be a one-in-a-million chance!

7. Teacher Teaches Kid a Lesson
A funny prank a teacher plays on an annoying student. It is a bit long, but read it all. It is funny.

6. Harvard v. RIAA
A news story about Harvard’s current stand-up against the RIAA. Finally someone does it!

5. Grandma, what’s a dildo?
An old lady talks about sex toys… If you can get past the uncomfortable weirdness, it is super funny. This video is not safe for work!

4. Black Sheep: The Greatest Movie of All Time
A hilarious article by Nick Bernard about what seems like a hilarious movie.

3. 50 Hottest Student Bodies
I think this story only became popular because of the words “hot” and “bodies,” but even so, it is very informative. Check out if your school made it.

2. Death Prank
One of the funniest pranks I have ever seen! A Canadian television show, Just for Laughs, makes people think that Death, the person, is right next to them.

1. Lower Back Tattoo Remover
A fake commercial about a lower-back tattoo remover. Very funny!

Bonus: Here are some of our popular Top 7 lists:

7 Porn Movies that Should Have Been, Vol. 1
Let’s just say I got really bored one day and wanted to edit some pictures. Unfortunately, volume 2 never came out. Maybe, some time in the future. This one is also NSFW.

7 Ways to Get Your Roommate to Leave You
If your roommate bothers you more than normal, why not just make him quit being your roommate. Here’s how.

7 Ways to Get Kicked Out of Class
I don’t know exactly why you would like to be kicked out of class. I usually just don’t go to class, but if you want the experience, this one’s for you.

As Chris just reported, the Nine Inch Nails album released independently via download has garnered $750,000 so far. A similarly released Radiohead album made about $10 million recently. The recording industry is unsure what to do, but thus far has mostly seemed to ignore these successes and continued to focus on music piracy, which they blame for loss of profit. To combat piracy, they’ve taken measures such as encrypting CDs with Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, which in Sony’s case included a rootkit, which presented serious computer security issues to users. However, as of last year, all major record labels had dropped DRM due to its cost and ineffectiveness at preventing piracy. Why the record labels are on their way down, after the jump.

The DRM fiasco, not to mention the well-publicized lawsuits against file-sharing college kids, show the full lack of a clue that the RIAA has with regard to the Internet. They seem to believe that information and digital media can be regulated, that the Internet will eventually bow to corporate demands, lawsuits, or legislation. One glance at popular BitTorrent website The Pirate Bay’s legal threats page is enough to show that the old techniques of copyright protection no longer work. Even if the Pirate Bay’s Swedish servers are shut down, file-sharing sites will pop up in even less regulated countries.

The RIAA claims that downloading music is the same as stealing (according to those ads we’ve all seen, it’s apparently the same as stealing a car) and should be prosecuted by the law. When, where, and under what circumstances that’s actually true is debatable, but in the end it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s illegal. Music is no longer simply a product. It’s not something that can be created, polished, marketed, sold, and merchandised by a handful of corporate executives. The minute any sort of digital media is released, it’s available for download via BitTorrent and other file-sharing services. Even if the corporate lawyers somehow manage to shut these down, something new will pop up. Remember how the RIAA was all happy when the first iteration of Napster got shut down, thinking they had gotten rid of illegal file-sharing forever? Yeah, not so much. Unless they can shut down the entire Internet, file-sharing will never stop. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, and people realize that there’s no reason to pay $18 for an overproduced CD when they could just get the music for free, the days of traditional CD releases are numbered.

So what can the record companies do, given this new environment? The short answer: Pretty much nothing. The longer answer: their only shot is to attempt to adapt to the Internet. It used to be that all they had to do was find, polish, and market an artist that the market research indicated would be successful. This stifled creativity; when success in the music business relies on an artist being similar to one that’s already successful, it’s no surprise that nearly everything released on a major label sounded the same as something else released on a different major label. They could print and package CD’s, deliver them, and make obscene profits on what is basically a piece of plastic with digital information etched onto it. Now that’s changed. Music itself is no longer (or at least, will soon no longer be) a profitable product. The record companies now have two choices: They can adapt–perhaps giving the CD away free or giving a download code with the purchase of merchandise, in order to encourage a profitable fan base that is willing to purchase actual physical products in lieu of spending exorbitant amounts to something that’s available for free with a couple clicks–or they can die out. Unfortunately for them, they all seem to be stuck about twenty years back, thinking that releasing a Torrent is somehow akin to, and as localized as, making a copy of a tape and giving it to friends. In all likelihood, the executives won’t bother trying to change until it’s far too late–which it may already be, given that bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have shown that even major artists can cut out what is essentially an expensive and domineering middleman–and they will fold.

However, this is actually good news for consumers. We will be able to return to an equal playing field where musicians are judged on talent rather than on their ad campaigns. In addition to allowing consumers to download music for free, it allows us to easily find new artists that suit our tastes, purchase concert tickets, and buy merchandise. No-talent ass clowns like Ashlee Simpson or Nickelback will see an end to their corporate-sponsored careers, and for the first time since the development of record companies, the free market, talent, and consumer taste will dictate successful acts, instead of some executive’s market research. I for one welcome the new order.

Recently, we announced Nine Inch Nails released their newest album for free. Since then and solely due to our endorsement, Trent Reznor, who released the album without any major record label supporting him, has made $750,000 (it will probably be a million in no time… trust us). How does someone who releases an album for free, uploads the album to popular torrent websites like The Pirate Bay, and has one $300 package available make that much money in three days? Well, Reznor sold out all CDs, including 2,500 of the $300 ones. It just goes to show those a-holes we like to call the RIAA what someone with real business skills can do.

[Sources: ars technica, Torrent Freak]

I am concerned not many people know what DRM is. DRM really stands for digital rights management (not delirious RIAA material) and it is a way for people to control how and when you can listen to music you have already bought the rights to.

The problem with DRM is that it only hurts people who download music legally and forces more of those people to obtain DRM-free music by downloading them off peer-to-peer networks like Limewire, Kazaa, Bit Torrent, etc.

iTunes just recently went DRM-free for all of EMI’s (a major record label) music. I will now finally be downloading some music legally and giving a little bit of money back to the artists instead of just Limewiring them.

Below is one of the best “ads” I have seen about anything related to this subject. It was made by Clayton Mograf and the awesome song is called Century Train by Presteign. You can download it for free on their MySpace page.

[youtube ryXDhXqR-SE nolink]

Yesterday, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School released a statement to all other schools. It was entitled “Universities to RIAA: Take a Hike.”

For those too pure to know what the RIAA is, let me explain. The Recording Industry Association of America is a company that works all kind of lawyer-magic and shady deals in order to stop the illegal sharing of the music owned by their members. Pretty much any popular music artist belongs to the RIAA. The RIAA boasts having 90% of all legitimate music sales in the U.S. If you have ever been sued or heard of someone being sued for downloading music, these were the guys behind it.

Jump to find out what Harvard is saying.

What is Harvard saying? In the recent statement Charles Nesson and John Palfrey say,

Harvard and the 22 universities to which the RIAA has sent “pre-litigation notices” ought to take strong, direct action…and tell the RIAA to take a hike.

What the RIAA do is through various, questionable methods obtain the IP address of the person illegally downloading music. This IP address is a unique address to access and communicate with the internet. The RIAA, then asks universities to give them the names of the people based on their IP address (the IP address will let the RIAA know which university the infringer is sharing from). Many times these universities will give-up the names of their students without any legal obligation. This is just wrong and Harvard asks that it stops. The main argument is as follows:

The university strives to create knowledge, to open the minds of students to that knowledge, and to enable students to take best advantage of their educational opportunities. The university has no legal obligation to deliver the RIAA’s messages. It should do so only if it believes that’s consonant with the university’s mission.

Hopefully, someone with more power than I have will take this Harvard letter seriously.

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