RIAA notices on the rise at Luther College
p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- The caption to Meg McCormick’s pic on the right reads:
“You’re being watched. Mark Knowles (’10) browses Loafy for the latest free music. Recording industries have stepped up efforts to stop illegal filesharing issue, resulting in a five-fold increase in file-sharing and warning notices and many more quarantined computers.”
It comes in Danny Wilcox’s story in Chips, the student newspaper of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa
Published today, it goes on, “For music lovers at Luther, changes at the infamous Recording Industry Association of America have resulted in more illegal file-sharing warnings and quarantines on campus than any year before. Last year, Luther received notice of 32 cases of illegal file-sharing on the Luther network; this year there have already been 162.”
Apart from the fact there’s no such offence as illegal file sharing, the news is passing strange considering Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA, say they’ve all-but abandoned their sue ‘em all campaign.
So how come RIAA there’s a rise in warning notices at Luther?
“It’s probably because the RIAA has faster servers and technology to search the internet and find illegal file-sharing,” explains Chris Barth, executive director of Library and Information Services, in the story. But they’ve also, “been targeting higher education,” he correctly points out.
To bolster the statement, Chips quotes the RIAA site, which declares, “the piracy habits of college students remain especially and disproportionately problematic, despite real progress by the music industry on other fronts. As a result, we have stepped up our efforts to address college piracy across the board.”
The story goes on »»»
The nature of college networks, however, requires a certain degree of cooperation between the RIAA and college administrators.
“We don’t actively seek out this behavior on Luther’s network, but the students are visible on the internet when they share files,” said Barth. “When the RIAA finds an illegal file they contact us with the address and we deal with the problem.”
Barth also stated that Luther would never give out the identity of a student without a subpoena, meaning the incident stays within the bounds of Luther’s penal system.
When a student is caught sharing files for which they don’t have a license, the RIAA contacts Luther with the IP address. From that point, Luther finds the owner of the address and sends that student a warning. If the student gets caught again, he or she will be quarantined from the network and readmitted only after talking to Barth.
The ‘right to punish those that are illegally file-sharing’
The “collaboration between the RIAA and Luther helps to keep students from being sued by the RIAA,” says Chips, continuing »»»
As of right now, Luther doesn’t monitor the type of traffic on its network nor limit bandwidth to any certain program (i.e., file-sharing programs such as Loafy and Limewire).
While some students agree that Luther has a right to punish those that are illegally file-sharing, they aren’t expecting file-sharing to go away any time soon.
“It is wrong, but it’s annoying how they charge a dollar for each song. And most of the money doesn’t even go to the artist, so I don’t feel motivated to pay for it,” said Jameson Moore (’12). “I just don’t think students will stop file-sharing. If I got caught, though, and quarantined, I would probably stop.”
For now, though, students complying with Luther’s policies face little possibility of being sued by the RIAA. No Luther student has yet been sued for illegal file-sharing; with the current Luther policy and legal code, no student’s identities can be leaked out to the RIAA or any other non-Luther organization.
Barth, though, “isn’t planning on using that legal guard to let students off the hook for illegal activity,” warns the post.
“If we are notified of fraudulent acts committed on our network, we can (and will) track who was responsible for the activity and hold them accountable for that activity.”
Chips – File-sharing cases increase five-fold, February 19, 2009
sue ‘em all campaign – Student threatens suicide over RIAA lawsuit, February 16, 2009
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It`s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
