U of Michigan in RIAA sights
p2pnet.net News:- Yesterday, Big Music turned the RIAA, its US enforcement unit, loose on a further 532 unidentified men, women and children it accuses of file sharing and copyright infringement.
Included in the line up are 82 students in Arizona, California, Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, DC, and Wisconsin.
Now the the University of Michigan is waiting for RIAA John/Jane Doe subpoenas and assistant general counsel Jack Bernard is quoted in The Michigan Daily here as saying he’s expecting them within the week.
But this isn’t the school’s first exposure to the RIAA.
“U-M has received notice that RIAA wants the names of nine people linked to computers on campus where music allegedly has been illegally uploaded to the Internet via file-sharing programs,” says a January 27 story in Record, the university’s ezine here.
“At least seven of the individuals are students in the residence halls, says James Hilton, associate provost for academic, information and instructional technology affairs.”
It’s been a while since the RIAA singled out US schools. But that may have been because it’s been concentrating on nailing down loose ends at Penn State and the U of R where the record label-supplied Napster II download app, owned by Roxio, is now firmly established.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) plugged Napster II into both institutions. Students who use it to download recording industry ‘product’ avoid ending up in the courts. The fact they’re dragged there by the labels in the first place doesn’t seem to trouble anyone.
As RIAA Spokesman Jonathan Lamy phrases it, and as quoted in the Michigan Daily story, “The goal is simply to send a message of deterrence, that this activity is illegal, that it can have consequences (and) that if digital music is what you want, turn to the great legal alternatives that are available.”
Unless Michigan follows the Penn Stat and the R of U examples, the current “great legal alternatives” are the steadily mushrooming corporate online music sites which sell tired Big Music ‘product’ from paltry catalogues.
Lamy is also quoted as saying, “We want to be fair and reasonable.
“The intent here is not to make money, nor is the intent to win a lawsuit.”
Right.
However, unlike Penn and the U of R, Michigan doesn’t appear to have senior staff positioned on the entertainment industry’s Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment, which it uses to introduce on-campus sales, among other things.
The Michigan Daily goes on, “If the subpoenas are ’substantively and procedurally valid,’ the University will follow the law and release the names of the individuals, Bernard said. Subpoenas compel their recipients to release important information for an intended trial. Since RIAA has presumably filed suit against these users, that information is the student’s name. ‘These are very difficult subpoenas to refuse,’ Bernard said.”
It says the university always disputes subpoenas and unless they’re valid, won’t release information.
“The sued students could either go to court or likely settle out of court,” it points out. “Settlements can vary in size, especially since legal challenges have increased RIAA’s costs.
“But RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said the average settlement is $3,000. This amount is also contingent upon how many files a student shared.
“Recently, the federal court ruled that RIAA had to file its suits individually. It had previously filed collective suits. Whether or not RIAA followed this procedure will affect whether the University will release the students? names.”
Meet the RIAA’s custom IP scanner
“File-sharing programs like Kazaa have an option to disable the uploading of files. But many students, administration officials say, are not aware of this option,” the Michigan Daily states.
Does that mean downloading is OK with administration officials?
Be that as it may, the “RIAA uses a simple technology called webcrawler to scan IP addresses for copyrighted material, but if a student is not sharing or uploading files, then RIAA cannot view the material on a person’s computer,” says the report.
And “RIAA uses Webcrawling software that spreads out across the Internet to identify computers where inappropriate file sharing is occurring,” the earlier Recorder report mentioned above states.
Webcrawler is actually one of the Net’s oldest metasearch engines.
The story continues, “Sharing files online can be legal as long as the material is not copyrighted, but most files are copyrighted.”
Really?
Anyway, “Administration officials said they will strive to protect the rights of its students, but it must do what is legal,” the reports says, adding, ‘We will of course comply with the law,’ Associate Provost James Hilton said.”
