Schools With Sacks

Are Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology the only schools around with a modicum of nads? These other schools seem to be falling all over themselves to kiss RIAA sphincter. BC and MIT, on the other hand, tell the RIAA to piss off:

The schools said the subpoenas, issued by the Recording Industry Association of America, didn’t allow for adequate time to notify the students, as mandated by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.

….Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the RIAA, said the association was ”disappointed that these universities have chosen to litigate this and thus deny us and other copyright holders the rights so clearly granted by Congress.”

Lamy said the association followed federal law when it filed the subpoenas.

”We believe we don’t need to refile,” he said.

….The recording industry association has filed at least 871 subpoenas in U.S. District Court in Washington this month, demanding information from universities and Internet service providers about users of the online file sharing network KaZaA.

….The subpoenas request the names and numbers of one MIT student and three Boston College students who allegedly obtained the music under various screen names.

BC argued in a motion to quash the subpoenas filed Monday that the subpoenas broke federal law because they were served in Boston, more than 100 miles from where they were filed in federal court in Washington D.C.

It also said the subpoenas gave the schools less than a week to produce the information too little time to properly notify the students under the privacy act.

In a statement, MIT didn’t specify why it believed the subpoenas were illegal, but also cited the privacy act to explain why it filed a motion to quash the subpoenas Monday. The school said its decision didn’t mean it was taking sides in the debate over downloading music on the Internet for free.

”But we are required by federal law to disclose student information only if we have a valid subpoena and have given the necessary advance notice,” Professor James Bruce, Vice President for Information Systems at MIT, said in a statement. An MIT spokesman said the school would have no further comment. [AP]

I don’t much care under what grounds they are not complying, just that they are not complying.