chron of higher ed: riaa lawsuits

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhall () astron berkeley edu>
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2003 08:52:16 -0800 (PST)
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: chron of higher ed: riaa lawsuits


[Dave, Declan: this appears to be the first lawsuit against students
directly. And the RIAA seems to have royally pissed off the
universities as well. The damages seem to be large:"The lawsuits ask
for $150,000 for each of the dozens of recordings, listed by title in
the complaint, that the students allegedly used illegally."]

Friday, April 4, 2003
http://chronicle.com/free/2003/04/2003040401t.htm

Recording Industry Sues 4 Students for Allegedly Trading Songs Within
College Networks
By SCOTT CARLSON

The Recording Industry Association of America filed lawsuits on
Thursday against four college students who allegedly were offering
access to copyrighted music files within their institutions' networks.

Joseph Nievelt, a student at Michigan Technological University;
Daniel Peng, a student at Princeton University; and Aaron Sherman and
Jesse Jordan, both students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, were
named in separate suits filed in federal district courts in Michigan,
New Jersey, and New York. The institutions were not sued.

According to the complaints, the students have "taken a network
created for higher learning and academic pursuits and converted it
into an emporium of music piracy." In a news release, the recording
industry alleges that the students were engaging in copyright
infringement, each offering from 27,000 to more than a million songs
to other students.

The lawsuits ask for $150,000 for each of the dozens of recordings,
listed by title in the complaint, that the students allegedly used
illegally.

The students could not be reached for comment.

Bob Gilreath, the telecommunications engineer at Michigan Tech, was
shocked and angered by the lawsuits. His university has a long record
of cooperating with the recording industry, he said. The institution
runs copyright-education programs and routinely shuts down the
Internet access of students who share copyrighted material. He said
that the recording industry had never notified the university about
Mr. Nievelt's alleged infringement.

"We have had this relationship with them for years, and for them to
come in and do what they are doing here -- taking a different route
without going through our channels -- is basically flabbergasting,"
he said. He added that the lawsuits will "send the wrong message to
colleges and universities" that are trying to help the recording
industry stop file sharing. "In these tight budget situations,
[colleges] are going to say, Why should we spend time and money on
this when they are going to go ahead and sue anyway?"

Officials at Princeton offered similar complaints. "We have been very
responsible in terms of not allowing illegal sharing on campus," said
Lauren Robinson-Brown, the university's director of communications.
"We have a procedure, and it would be encouraging if that procedure
is followed."

At all three institutions, the students named in the lawsuits could
face disciplinary hearings.

The action by the recording industry differs slightly from the
organization's past complaints about programs like KaZaA, which allow
users to share files internationally. The new lawsuits are aimed at
users of file-sharing programs that limit searches and users to
computers within a specific network. A student user of such a program
might be able to swap songs or videos only with other students on a
college's residential network, for example. One such program, Phynd,
has operated not only at RPI, but also at the University of
Connecticut and the University of Maryland at College Park.

Cary Sherman, president of the recording-industry association, did
not respond to calls from The Chronicle. But in a letter mailed on
Thursday to Graham B. Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State
University at University Park, Mr. Sherman complained that "as
Internet bandwidth becomes increasingly congested and slows to a
crawl, students are likely to turn to on-campus systems instead."

"It is this specific problem that these lawsuits are intended to
address. ... [Students] have taken a network created for educational
purposes and converted it into a convenient mechanism for music
piracy, where copyright infringement is as simple as clicking a
computer mouse," the letter states. "We filed these lawsuits to make
clear to everyone that such conduct is blatantly illegal and can
result in serious consequences."

Mr. Spanier is the founder of a committee of university
administrators and entertainment-industry officials formed to study
the file-sharing issue. In his letter, Mr. Sherman wrote that he
hoped to "make clear that our actions against these egregious
infringers should in no way interfere with the ongoing and important
efforts" of the committee.

In an interview, Mr. Spanier supported the recording industry's
action. "It appears that the infractions involved here are so
egregious that they go well beyond what we typically see on college
and university campuses," he said. "This is a type of activity where
I understand why RIAA would be so concerned. Students have set up
their own services to transmit millions of files of pirated material."

Earlier this week, administrators at Penn State sent a stern e-mail
message to the university's students, warning that file-sharing could
lead to massive fines and jail time (The Chronicle, April 2). Mr.
Spanier said he did not know about the impending lawsuits when that
message was sent.

Other university officials wondered about future relationships with
the recording industry, which lately has been moving aggressively on
issues related to file sharing, copyright, and the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act.

"On the one hand, the RIAA has asked us to work with them on this,
and many people have been doing so," said Tracy B. Mitrano, director
of the program in computer policy and law at Cornell University. But
on the other hand, she said she could understand the unhappiness of
officials at Princeton and Michigan Tech.

"Given how much higher education has done to comply with the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act and to educate their communities about these
very important issues of digital copyright, one could expect a
courtesy call or advance information."

But in the end, she said, the decision to sue is the recording
industry's to make. "It's entirely up to the RIAA to bring actions
against anyone whom they believe they have a bona fide legal claim
against," Ms. Mitrano said. "Colleges and universities comply with
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but they are not enforcers of
it."

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education




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