RIAA legal attacks on students

[Adam Back]

Here's some more detail about the RIAA legal attacks on four students
recently:

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/05/06/191207.shtml?tid=188&tid=141&tid=99&tid=123

and some more on one of the students web pages:

http://www.chewplastic.com/

In fact it turns out that he was just running a search engine that
indexed any files available on windows shares on the local network.
You could search for any type of file; as you might expect some of the
files users searched for and downloaded were mp3 files.

But I don't see how they can claim he is guilty of contributory
infringement anymore than google!

Jeeze.

So in the previous slashdot thread on the same topic, there were a
number of people calling for a fund to be setup that people could
donate to to defray the legal expenses and settlements.  (The
settlements were between $12k and $17kk).

Do any of our legally qualified list members know if it is legal to
collect money to reimburse a defendant against a settlement in a
politically unpopular case.  The students apparently admitted no guilt
if it helps.

I'm thinking all it takes is a paypal account, and a post to slashdot
and their expenses would probably be covered.  The remainder if any
should got to the anti-RIAA lobby; ie whichever of the online rights
lobbying groups that is mostly robustly defending against DMCA
excesses.

Adam