Universities Bite the RIAA Back
Lately, the RIAA has been on a high-profile campaign to get college students that the RIAA believes have been involved in illegal file trading to settle lawsuits against them at a “discount”. (They must feel bad about asking them to drop out). As part of this strategy, the company has tried to enlist universities to help them identify and turn over the names of offending students. I have a mild invested interest in this, as I work for a University that made the top 25 list of offenders.
But it’s heartening to see that some universities aren’t spinelessly acquiescing to the RIAA’s demands. The University of Wisconsin has told the RIAA that it has no obligation to rat its students out unless it’s compelled to do so by a subpoena. Michigan is following the same path. Meanwhile, the University of Nebraska has told the RIAA that it can’t help them identify many of the students accused of file trading due to a dynamically changing IP system (smooth!). The RIAA is angry about this, and a spokesman for the group criticized universities for not understanding “the need to retain these records”. This is a ridiculous complaint. The university doesn’t have a need to retain these records, and there’s no reason it should do so out of some obligation to the RIAA. If there were any doubt that the university is really irritated by the RIAA’s requests, it has requested that the RIAA pay the university to reimburse its expenses from dealing with this. Rock!
Fear tactics in simple language make it the students’ problem, I suppose. The jury is still out on my workplace, but I hope the powers that be do the right thing. If all of this back and forth sounds familiar, it’s because it very closely resembles what happened a few years ago when the RIAA tried getting ISPs to share data on their users. Fortunately, the ISPs stood up for their users and told the RIAA to get lost- (well, sorta). It’s too bad the group didn’t seem to learn its lesson.
Check the report The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis, about a recent study that noted that illegal music downloads have less than a 1% affect on the sale of CDs. Comical, considering that the RIAA reports that CD sales have plummeted because of files sharing piracy. Considering the high profile case where the RIAA can’t wiggle its way out of paying victim’s legal fees; there actually might be hope that the government, like the people, is set to tell the RIAA exactly where it can stick it’s bullshit campaign to “save” the record industry.
consumerist reports in:
Unlike the University of Wisconsin, which refuses to rat out its students to the RIAA, the University of Nebraska is playing along with the recording industry’s efforts to sue people for piracy. But if the RIAA wants Nebraska’s help, they’ll need to pay up.
The university has estimated that each complaint - basically a warning that a computer on the UNL campus is being used to pirate music - costs about $11 to process, Weir said. So the university wants to be paid for its trouble. Wiltse’s letter to the Denver firm representing the RIAA asked the recording industry to reimburse NU for the cost of finding the offending students.
“We’re spending taxpayer dollars tracking down RIAA problems,” Weir said. “Are we an agent of the RIAA? Why aren’t they paying us for this?”
In response to NU’s request, the RIAA’s Engebretsen said, “It is neither practical nor appropriate for us to entertain a reimbursement request.”
Let’s be clear: UNL *did* play along with the recording industry, and tried to find the pirates in their midst. But their IT system doesn’t keep good records. The university changes IP addresses regularly, and they only keep one month’s records. So they’re unable to help the RIAA, and the university nonetheless runs up expenses.
On the one hand, boo-hiss UNL for dancing with the devil. But good on ‘em for sending the RIAA a bill!
ars technica reports in:
While the RIAA is touting a settlement percentage north of 25 percent with its recent campaign against file sharing at US colleges and universities, the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of students are shunning the insta-settlement approach. According to the RIAA, some 116 students have used their new web site to settle copyright infringement claims, but that means that another 284, or 71 percent of students contacted through the program aren’t taking the easy way out. At least not yet.
The average settlement amount offered by the RIAA is about $3,000, so this latest pre-litigation strategy has drummed up at least $350,000 in revenue by our estimate. That’s no small amount of money, but considering that music sales this quarter were nearly $100 million, one wonders if the haul from this strategy is worth the public image problems that it’s deepening. Then again, public image hasn’t been something that appears to concern the RIAA, but with music sales on the decline, perhaps they ought to be taking this more seriously.
A student who received a pre-litigation letter told Ars that he refused to engage their offer because they offer zero proof of what is alleged. “It’s like receiving blackmail. ‘We know what you did, pay us’ is the message, but they don’t really know me or what I have done,” he wrote. The student wishes to remain anonymous.
He knows that students who ignore the pre-litigation letters are just asking the RIAA to pursue them more, but he hopes that when the RIAA is actually faced with having to produce evidence that they’ll simply come up short. The current approach by the RIAA is to simply tell students that each song shared is a $750 violation, so one’s fine is often calculated based on the number of songs the RIAA says that they’ve shared. Yet the RIAA offers no proof of their claims, while sometimes trying to make students feel like they’re getting a deal.
Despite the low response, the RIAA believes that the program is going well, and they have sent another 405 pre-litigation letters to students at 23 universities. “This is not our preferred course, but we hope that students will understand the consequences of stealing music and that our partners in the college community will appreciate the proactive role they can play,” said Cary Sherman, President of the RIAA, in a statement.
According to the Associated Press, one student received a letter demanding $590,000 in payment. Such letters are apparently only sent to egregious file sharers, for the average settlement rarely tops $5,000. After all, the RIAA wants to offer a good deal, you see.
Mike,
I am sorry but I must disagree with you. The RIAA is completely in the right on this subject and should be allowed to sue people who willingly distribute copyrighted material. Even if some reports say the recording industry is only losing 1% of their revenue because of file sharing it is still illegal. Additionally, the RIAA should probably search everyone’s house for illegal copies of tapes and CD’s. Maybe they should subpoena all major electronics retail stores for contact information of anyone that bought a dual-deck Cassette recorder and some blank tapes. Probably they were up to no good and certainly there is some illegal music exchange going on here.
Unfortunately, what is the real issue here is that the music industry will be shutting down the fastest growing environment where people can go to find new music. That is what’s disappointing.
(had you for a second - thanks)
you did have me there for a second! lol…
and you hit the nail on the head- the industry is working against cultural progress.
RIAA speaks at ASU campus: http://www.geekmethod.com/2007/03/30/riaa-at-asu-campus/
Yesterday, David Hughes, senior vice-president of technology for the RIAA, held an open discussion about digital music and software piracy at Arizona State University.
Clearly the RIAA is out of touch with today. “Education through litigation?” Give me a fucking break.
RIAA Backs Down After Receiving Letter from Defendant’s Lawyer Threatening Malicious Prosecution; Voluntarily Dismisses Case
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/...
You got to read this one.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has been ordered by a federal judge to hand over the names and contact information of the 53 UW students accused of file sharing over the university’s networks. From the Wisconsin State Journal:
On Tuesday, 16 record companies represented by the Recording Industry Association of America filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking the names associated with 53 Internet connections for copyright infringement. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge John Shabaz signed an order requiring UW-Madison to relinquish the names, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Media Access Control addresses for each of the 53 individuals.
UW had initially declined to forward the “settlement” letters to their students, preferring to wait for a court order. The RIAA record companies responded by filing 53 “John Doe” lawsuits against the UW students. “We had every indication that they were going to be going in this direction,” said Ken Frazier, interim chief information officer at UW-Madison. “It’s the step the RIAA would have to take to get the identity of a user of our network.” “We continue to be really concerned for students,” he said. “The prospect of being sued in federal court is a really scary one.”
Looks like the RIAA is winning.