FC: RIAA apologizes to Penn State for confusing Usher with Prof. Usher

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

The Chromatics song that triggered the RIAA's cease-and-desist letter:
http://www.astrocappella.com/swift.shtml

Listen to it here (it's really excellent -- I just ordered the 
AstroCappella CD):
ftp://ftp.swift.psu.edu/pub/Swift/Documents/swift_song.mp3

-Declan

---

http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-1001095.html

RIAA apologizes for threatening letter

By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
May 12, 2003, 3:16 PM PT

WASHINGTON--The Recording Industry Association of America apologized Monday 
to Penn State University for sending an incorrect legal notice of alleged 
Internet copyright violations.

The notice and subsequent apology appears to be the first time a faulty 
incorrect notification has been made public. The incident also shows just 
how easily automated programs that search for copyrighted material can be 
fooled, as well how disruptive such notices can be on college campuses.

Last Thursday, the RIAA sent a stiff copyright warning to Penn State's 
department of astronomy and astrophysics. Department officials at first 
were puzzled because the notification invoked the Digital Millennium 
Copyright Act and alleged that an FTP site was unlawfully distributing 
songs by the musician Usher. The letter demanded that the department 
"remove the site" and delete the infringing sound files.

But no such files existed on the server, which is used by faculty and 
graduate students to publish research and grant proposals. Matt Soccio, the 
department's system administrator, said that he searched the FTP server 
"for files ending in mp3, wma, ogg, wav, mov, mpg, etc., and found nothing 
that would precipitate this complaint."

Except, that is, when Soccio realized two things. The department has on its 
faculty a professor emeritus named Peter Usher and the same FTP site hosted 
Usher's work on radio-selected quasars. The site also had a copy of an a 
capella song performed by astronomers about the Swift gamma ray satellite, 
which Penn State helped to design.

The combination of the word "Usher" and the suffix "mp3" had triggered the 
RIAA's automated copyright crawlers.

[...remainder snipped...]




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