p2pnet news | RIAA News:- [Revised] When p2pnet first wrote about the sudden upsurge in DMCA notices seen at universities across America, we couldn’t name the schools involved.

Now, however, Wired has followed the story up citing Indiana University, the University of Chicago, George Washington University and University of Cincinnati as four of the schools affected.

Ars Technica added two more (Update) and we supplemented the list with another 12  (Update II).

“A significant number of senior US school and universities are noticing ‘an enormous spike’ in Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices,” p2pnet said almost a week ago, going on:

“Does this mean students are ramping up their file sharing activities?

“No, says a reliable source, stating, ‘There’s no identifiable spike in bandwidth usage at the campus level.”

Now, “Universities are getting as many notices from the RIAA in one day as what they would typically get from all content owners in a month,” Wired has Educause vice president Mark Luker saying.

We were been asked not to name the major universities singled out for the attacks, but to give an idea of their severity, we posted this >>>

• university A this week received hundreds of notices, and all from RIAA, when the usual volume is 70-80/month)
  
• university B says last year’s volume has been trebled.
  
• university C reports receiving more the DMCA notices this week and throughout all of last fall
  
• university D’s ‘intake’ has soared from between five and seven notices per week to 120 this Monday and Tuesday.
  
• university E as similarly seen a “huge increase” this week
  
• university F’s volume has trebled over last year’s volume
  
• notices sent to university G are “significantly up” since January
  
• university H says there’s been a noticeable increase this week
  
• university I is now receiving 20-30 notices a day
  
• university J says it’s getting 30-40 per day
  
• university K states there’s been a “sharp” upswing since Tuesday.

Indiana University says starting on April 21, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) began sending 80 legal notices a day to the university, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, says Wired, going on:

“Typically, the university handles less than 100 such notices a month from the RIAA, the Motion Picture Association of America and HBO combined.”

The University of Chicago also had a recent surge, its CIO says, the story continues, stating, “Meanwhile, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported Wednesday that George Washington University and University of Cincinnati are also reporting spikes beginning two weeks ago.”

University of California at Berkeley’s chief information officer Shel Waggener confirmed he’d heard of the spikes, “and suggested there was a political purpose driving them,” the story continues, saying the RIAA denies there’s anything new to the letters.

But the RIAA’s position is, “difficult to believe,” Luker says in the story: “It is for us hard to accept that students are multiplying their infringements by 30,” Luker said.

And, “The RIAA says it is not new, but clearly it is,” Bruhn says.

============

UPDATE >

Thanks, Teacher.

St. Cloud State and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been added to the list by Ars Technica, which also has RIAA mouthperson Cara Duckworth saying the group hasn’t made any changes in procedures, “but does hint that the record labels are now better able to detect infringement”.

That can only mean they’ve fired Doug Jacobson and MediaSentry, the so-called RIAA private eye banned from operating in Massachusetts by the state police, but which nonetheless apparently continued its “investigations”.

The Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG extortion unit is, “constantly striving to improve upon our technological ability to detect theft,” says Duckworth, according to the story.

============

UPDATE II >

The list below, from public sources, brings the number of schools hit by the DMCA to 16.

University of Louisville
Northwestern University
Middle Tennessee State University
George Washington University
University of Cincinnati
University of Northern Iowa
University of California, Riverside
North Carolina State University
University of Toledo
CA Polytechnic State University
University of Alaska – Anchorage
Pennsylvania College of Technology

“Clearly something has changed, and we don’t believe it’s a sudden massive spontaneous nationwide coast-to-coast spike in file-sharing activity,” Steve Worona, director of policy and networking programs and founding director of the Educause/Cornell Institute for computer policy and law, told p2pnet when we asked him if he knew what was behind the notices.

Nor, he said, have the RIAA or MPAA  had anything to say beyond what’s being reported in various media.

Stay tuned.

. .Stumble It!

first wrote – Sudden ‘huge’ spike in school DMCA notices, April 25, 2008
Wired – Universities Baffled By Massive Surge In RIAA Copyright Notices, April 30, 2008
Ars Technica – Campuses swimming in flood of infringement notices from RIAA, April 30, 2008

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 7:03 am 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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