Royal Purple

Issue date: 10/17/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Rose Wolf

Last month, the long arm of the Recording Industry Association of America reached out and pointed fingers at UW-Whitewater, again.

On Sept. 20 the trade group, which represents the interests of major music companies, sent more letters to universities across the country, including 62 letters to the UW System schools at Eau Claire, Madison, Milwaukee, Stevens Point, Stout and Whitewater. The RIAA has asked each institution to forward the letters to the student indicated.

The new flood of letters, which declare the group intends to sue its addressee, came just before a federal jury in Minnesota found a woman liable for illegally downloading music. The damages that Jammie Thomas, 30, had been ordered to pay the six record companies named in the suit total $222,000, "USA Today" reported on Oct. 6.

The letters are a part of the RIAA's latest program, enacted this year, to curtail illegal downloading on college campuses across the nation by targeting students on university Internet networks who it believes are pirating and sharing music on peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa, LimeWire or Bear Share.

The names of students the RIAA intends to inform through the letters are not available to the trade group. However, university Internet networks easily trace alleged illegal downloaders by an Internet protocol address assigned to each computer receiving service through the university. Universities are not required in the pre-litigation letter stage to release the names of the students indicated by the RIAA as in possession of pirated materials.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an nonprofit organization that fights for public interest rights on the digital front, said the RIAA's efforts are ineffective and result in little more than bullying a defenseless group: College students.

"Despite the RIAA's legal campaign, file-sharing is more popular than ever," Fred von Lohmann, an EFF senior staff attorney, said in a press release online. "History will treat this as a shameful chapter in the history of the music industry, when record companies singled out random music fans for disproportionate penalties."

Neither the complaints the RIAA sends nor the pre-litigation letters are formal legal proceses, however, the RIAA claims it intends to follow each letter with a lawsuit if not settled by deadlines.

"The music industry is transforming how it does business," Steven Marks, executive vice president and general counsel for the RIAA, said in a news release. "Those who continue to ignore great legal services and the law by stealing music online risk a federal lawsuit that could include thousands of dollars in penalties."

The penalty became real last semester for UW-Whitewater student Maria Whitman, who paid $4,000 to the RIAA as the result of a prelitigation letter.

However, Rajen Patel, coordinator of residential computing, said dorm residents remain careless as computer users. He also said the campaigns like those conducted by the RIAA do not mandate the policies of ResNet.

"Our policies [provide] blanket protection of intellectual property," Patel said. "We do enough to provide what they call safe harbor- beyond that we don't specifically tailor anything to the RIAA."

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