"Here’s your dorm key and your RIAA bill…"

RIAA institutes collective billing practices? –

If you managed to miss this week’s RIAA wrangling, you probably don’t use the internet.  Here’s the skinny: The RIAA has sent 405 so-called “pre-litigation” e-mails in various quantities to a group of 23 selected universities.  The RIAA has asked each university to identify and pass on the appropriate e-mail to the appropriate student.

As I thought about this, a couple questions have come to mind.  One, what is the difference between a letter that specifies a fiscal responsibility and a “bill”?  Two, is a public institution legally allowed to serve a bill on behalf of an outside party?

Is it a settlement, or a bill? –

The RIAA calls the e-mail a “pre-litigation letter”… I call it a “bill”.  There could be a special legal definition here I am unaware of, but to me, it seems like a bill.  You could say that your electric bill is a “pre-litigation letter”… if you choose not to pay, they have the right to sue you.

But if the RIAA notices are a “bill”… that may put the RIAA into a whole new legal frying pan.  It’s one thing to litigate on behalf of a group, it’s another to engage in collective billing.  Does this make the RIAA a company in and of itself?  Who chooses the prices?  How does it pay taxes, etc…

We’ll let the lawyers figure it out.

“I am not pleased that taxpayer money is being used to deliver bills on behalf of the RIAA.”

Compelling students to comply –

Universities have to deal with a little thing called FERPA, or the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.  This is the law that requires institutions to protect student information.  A university cannot, for example, disclose the name of a student who was using a particular IP address at a particular time without a valid subpoena or permission of the student.  Now note, universities have not been complicit in file sharing activities, despite the assertions of the RIAA… they have simply been dealing with the problem as the RIAA sends complaints about specific activity they believe is infringing.  Usually, this results in threats of expulsion for misusing university resources as stipulated by university policy.

This time, however, the stage is set for some unusual legal wrangling.

Let’s say that a university delivers an e-mail from the RIAA to a student.  The letter instructs the student to contact a 3rd party and identify themselves.  They will have the option to pay the “bill” by credit card or other mechanism.  By the university legitimizing such instructions to identify oneself to a 3rd party, it seems reasonable to think that a university would be in a bit of a FERPA quagmire.  Perhaps not in specific breach, but at least in breach of the spirit of the law.

Again, we’ll let the lawyers figure it out.

Doing the right thing? –

Two of the universities on the list have made bold moves.  The University of Wisconsin gave the RIAA the collective finger by choosing to not forward such emails on to the students without a valid subpoena, as has always been the accepted practice.  The University of Nebraska, on the other hand, is exercising its right… nay… responsibility… to charge the RIAA for the processing work incurred by delivering the RIAA’s bills… and has notified the RIAA that it does not keep records of which computer uses which IP address past 30 days.  The assumption, of course, is that if the RIAA’s information is a little stale, most of the e-mails will not be able to be served as there will be no way to identify the infringer.

These two universities, currently, are the exception… but that may change with the first student who receives a notice, particularly if it’s by mistake, and feels that a university has overstepped its bound by compelling them to call the RIAA and identify themselves.

Sympathies, not empathies –

As someone who creates copyrighted content, I am not condoning copyright infringement… I would like to be paid for my work like anyone else.  This position, however, is NOT in conflict with my stance against the practices of the RIAA, which I’m not sure can be characterized in any other way than “anti-competitive” and “extortionist”.  This has resulted in legal actions that aren’t just “innocent accidents”, but some of the most ludicrously moronic abuses of the legal system in this, or any other age.  The RIAA is getting a free ride to harass the public with impunity, where other copyright holders have to meet a higher standard to protect their content.  Getting public institutions to bill for you is just one of the ways this is expressed.

I am not pleased that taxpayer money is being used to deliver bills on behalf of the RIAA.  As such I am pleased with the University of Wisconsin’s responsibility in the matter…. and that the University of Nebraska is making sure there is at least some cost recovery in response to the abuse.

Of course, if you’re really pissed, consider Gizmodo’s RIAA Boycott. 

Should be an interesting couple months.

j.ello on IT Part 7: Who’s dealing with your s***?

Who da man? –

What does it matter that the top IT leaders of today are more and more akin to the Pointed-Haired Boss instead of the Pocket-Protectored Practitioners of the past? An IT department is just a commodity service provided by a collection of people needing to be supervised, so any MBA will do… right?

Well, interestingly enough, the US Dept. of Labor says that while other IT jobs evaporate, IT management continues to grow, and fast, up about 50% the last 6 years. The statistics are based on job description as opposed to title… so it’s not that there are more people carrying the manager title or above, but more people charged with – or as they may say “burdened with” – direct decision making authority within their organizations.

How is that happeing? –

There are several perspectives on why this is: Increased integration of IT within specific business units of an organization requiring management of smaller, more nimble IT groups. Increased variety and complexity of software, hardware and services requiring specialized individuals to make business decisions independently from the larger IT group. Even the effects of outsourcing resulting in an increased need to manage the outsourced relationships.

I agree that all these have impact, but if organizations recognized these roles as “Management”, and were actively delegating such authority, or had any idea that decisions being made at lower levels actually do have significant strategic impact, then the number of management titles would be increasing at the same rate, which is not what’s happening.

“…there’s a natural progression toward hiring the most qualified ineffective IT leadership money can buy.”

Leading from within –

Here’s where the last article fits in. With IT leadership becoming more and more disconnected from the collective IT knowledge base, critical decision making has to occur at lower levels, where the technical knowledge still exists. So, ultimately, it’s not that technologists are being “asked” to make the critical business decisions one would expect IT leadership to make, nor are they expected, as a result of job title, to do so. They simply find themselves in a situation where taking matters into their own hands is favorable to training the supervisor to a sufficient level to get a valid decision on the problem.

Don’t think it doesn’t happen.  Good technologists have no problem making an executive decision when they are faced with an IT supervisor who isn’t technically knowledgeable.

The appropriate Ghostbusters quote is “I guess I’m just saying that shit happens
and somebody has to deal with it.”

“I’ve got a Treo, of course I know technology…” –

I think we can all agree that ideal IT leaders should be technically minded, creative, posses management skills and business savvy. But the fact is that there are far, FAR fewer people possessing all these traits than there are jobs requiring them. No matter what, an organization has to sacrifice some degree of one or all of these skill sets in order to hire a candidate for the top job. I think it’s also fair enough to say that it’s easier to “appear” technically knowledgeable than it is to show leadership qualities when it comes to interviewing with non-IT organizational leaders like CEO’s, CFO’s, COO’s… who are more sensitive to such qualities.  So logically, there’s a natural progression toward hiring the most qualified ineffective IT leadership money can buy.

This isn’t intentional, and again, we’re talking about smart people being lead to a “less optimal” result by applying perfectly valid wisdom that works in other areas of their businesses.  The Peter Priciple brings incompetence up from the bottom, and there is a yet to be named principle that, with the best of intentions, pushes incompetence down from the top. Up until the 80’s, there was a clear favoring of technical prowess at the expense of managerial credential, and while the smallest of today’s organizations still tend toward this persuasion out of necessity, the rest almost exclusively go in the opposite direction.

Intuitively, this seems smart. The simple truth is that if you’re the leader, you have to have leadership skills, no question there. All the bad behaviors indicative poor management apply, and it’s hard enough to find good managers independent of technical competence. 

Foreshadowing –

But as I’ve said before and will say again, computing is art… and in fact, today, within our own IT departments, there’s far more existing technical capability than there is creativity, and therefore leadership, to use it… and that’s a management problem that costs big bucks.

What do I mean by that?  Check in next time to find out.