p2pnet.net news:- Another American University has decided to put the interests of the Big 4 organised music cartel in front of those of its students

In a variation of the campaign started in 2003 to blackmail ‘consumers’ into buying product, Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG have been cowing school administrators into acting as unpaid corporate copyright enforcers.

Ohio University offers the most infamous example, but it’s far from being alone.

Now, the University of Washington says it has no plans to actively protect students from RIAA lawsuits, but it will actively, “track them down and serve them the legal papers”.

“Eric Godfrey, vice provost for student life at the UW Seattle campus, informed students of the policy Monday through a campuswide e-mail,” says the News Tribune. “It said some students have letters on the way, but he was unable in a later phone interview to say how many.”

The university will identify students named on the RIAA hit list and inform them of their “settlement options,” the story has Godfrey stating.

This means students will be told to use the RIAA ‘incriminate yourself‘ site to to pay $3000 to get the Big 4 enforcer off their backs.

Students admit they’re guilty of file sharing, a crime which doesn’t exist, pay the extortion money and provide private information. Then the RIAA will leave them alone. For now. Because there’s absolutely no guarantee it won’t use the information to revisit the cases at some later date.

Meanwhile, Godfrey says university’s decision is meant to help students, not harm them

“This isn’t a matter of the university cooperating with the recording industry,” he says in the News Tribune. “We all concluded that to not pass these along to our students would be unacceptable and more costly to them.”

The story quotes UW spokesman Bob Roseth as saying he isn’t aware of UW students who’ve been prosecuted for illegal file-sharing.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
infamous example – Ohio U failing students in RIAA attacks, May 25, 2007
News Tribune – UW will abet file-sharing lawsuits, it says, June 26, 2007
incriminate yourself – RIAA college settlement plan, February 28, 2007

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 12:47 pm and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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