Victory For Freedom From Corporatism

A second US university has had the moxy to stand up for its students instead of instanty caving into to RIAA extortion.

Following the path laid out in Oregon, where the state attorney general and University of Oregon jointly told Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA they weren’t going to stand still for blackmail, Marshall University in West Virginia has become the second known US university to attempt to quash an RIAA subpoena.

This won’t come as a surprise, however.

It’s also one of the few universities to point out the RIAA sue ‘em all campaign is having a seriously debilitating effect on universities and their staffs.

“We have to protect our institutions as well as our students, but we have yet to find a solution,” the university’s Jan Fox was last year quoted as saying, reported p2pnet.

We went on that the so-called trade organisation has been successfully using the mainstream media to create the illusion that thousands of people in America, students and children included, have been found guilty of file sharing, never mind that no such crime or offence exists in civil or criminal law, and that Jammie Thomas is the only RIAA victim to have actually been inside a court.

At Marshall, the file sharing issue has been so time-consuming for Fox and her staff, “she fears many employees can’t focus on the real issues that need to be confronted,” Fox told the Parthenon.

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