Crackdown on illegal downloading continues
Recording industry proposes tougher penalties for illegal downloads.
March 9, 2007
In continuing its fight against illegal downloads by college students, the music industry is taking new initiatives and getting campus administrators involved.
The Recording Industry Association of America announced Feb. 28 it would launch a better and stronger retaliation against illegal downloading and peer-to-peer file sharing.
"There isn't a college student in America today who doesn't know that the online 'sharing' of copyrighted music is illegal," RIAA President Cary Sherman stated in a news release. "Yet file trafficking on college campuses remains extensive and disproportionately problematic."
Under this new initiative, the RIAA will send 400 letters to students at 13 different universities to inform the universities of an approaching lawsuit against a student or personnel at the university for downloading illegally. The RIAA has instructed schools to forward the letters to the appropriate network user.
"If we hear back from a student within a set amount of time, we can reach a settlement in advance of a lawsuit ever being filed," said Steven Marks, RIAA general counsel and executive vice president. "This means the student gets a discounted settlement and avoids anything ever appearing on a public record."
The new initiative comes in response to the growth of illegal file sharing in the last three years.
Although no letters were sent to MU, Sherman said it is a "future possibility."
In the last three years, the RIAA has filed suits against about 1,000 university network file-sharing users. With this new initiative, the RIAA plans to do the same in just three months.
On the music industry's behalf, the RIAA will pursue similar actions against more university file-sharing users each month.
Although there has never been any legal action taken against MU students, illegal downloading was available until January when peer-to-peer file sharing was banned.
"Our last violation was around the seventh of January, and we officially stopped peer-to-peer sharing on January 10th to great success," said Terry Robb, Information and Access Technology Services spokesman.
Even though there are critics of the file-sharing crackdown, Sherman said most universities have been responsive to the idea.
"Most universities understand their obligations to educate students about the value of intellectual property," Sherman said.
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