The bogeyman has no shame. UW steps up.

It seems that the RIAA going around scaring children again.

Last summer our university’s CIO wrote a letter against the RIAA “educational” videos.

Harold has written well here on wetmachine (link?) about government and media trying to get away with delegating their dirty work to others (i.e., extorting a third party to try to make them enforce behavior that the government and media could not get away with enforcing themselves).

John has written recently about an RIAA-like organization making up new rules for charging people. (See my counterproposal comment.)

Now comes word that the RIAA is trying again to get the universities to pass scary messages to students, hoping the most vulnerable will cut a “pre-litigation” deal and pay a reduced “fine” by dealing directly with their anonymous Web-site. Hmmm. Forcing others to pass on scary phishing solicitations to children, on activity that they have extra-constitutionally decided that they control. And no court involved. (Not that our courts are very open, honest, uncorrupted, fair, or impartial these days.) Charming.

Anyway, our CIO has sent out a new letter saying that the university will not be a party to this, and will not pass on such threats to the students.

Refs:

• Local press.
• slashdot.
• study of RIAA “intelligence gathering.”