Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ An Analysis of the RIAA's Complaint Against Dan Peng '05

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
This is a detailed analysis of the RIAA case claiming billions of dollars in damages against a Priceton student it alleges "hijacked an academic computer network and installed on it a marketplace for copyright piracy." The analysis is a point by point shredding of the RIAA case, making the strong argument that the student's system was a search engine for shared files and not a file trading service. "The punch line is that search and transfer are distinct. Transfer, which is necessary for indexing and searching, (the converse is emphatically not true) was supplied by the network's users and their computers long before Wake was established. This case differs fundamentally from Napster's, as Napster also supplied a transfer conduit. Wake-like systems merely catalog the information made available in the conduit constructed by Princeton University and populated by Windows-File-Sharing users with software from Microsoft Corporation."

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: May 04, 2024 7:06 p.m.

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