RIAA threatens music piracy lawsuits

Twenty-five Tech students have been caught up in the latest wave of an intiative by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA): they have received pre-litigation settlement letters informing them that they risk facing an expensive lawsuit for copyright infringement unless they pay a settlement that can cost upwards of $3,000.

Every month since February, the RIAA has been sending approximately 400 of these letters to between 13-23 universities, though in August they ramped up their efforts in sending 503 letters to 58 universities. The letters sent to Tech were part of the July 18 wave.

The letters detail observed illegal downloading activity that corresponds with an IP address belonging to a university, such as a dorm connection. After submitting the letters to the universities, the RIAA then requests that the schools identify the individual who was using the IP address at the time of the alleged offense and forward the letter to them.

Evidence against the student is included in the letter, such as the file-sharing network which their IP was found sharing files on and the number of infringing songs. It then gives them a choice: call a RIAA hotline or visit a website, identify yourself and admit guilt, and then pay a reduced fee, or the student's identity could eventually be found by subpoena, leading to a lawsuit brought by one or more of the record companies with minimum damages of $750 per infringing recording, plus the possibility of having to pay legal fees.

"Georgia Tech is considered an ISP to its students so we have to keep some record of who is issued an IP address here," said Victoria Anderson, associate director of information security at OIT. For dorm connections, this is accomplished by forcing students to register on the START authentication site before they can surf the internet.

"Once they [register on START], all their information is kept in a database so that at any given time we know who is using a Tech IP address, so when we receive a list of IPs from the RIAA or anyone else, all we do is look in the START database and we're able to provide them with the subscriber information," Anderson said.

"A lot of times the [RIAA letters] will come in but the activity happened months prior to receiving the notification. We've never had a problem in identifying a student from the time we received the letter back to when the activity started," Anderson said.

The student has a limited window of time after the date of the letter in which they may accept the settlement offer before it expires. It is for this reason that Tech administrators found it important to pass the letters on to the students right away.

"We usually cooperate with the [requests to forward the letters] because we think it's in the best interest of the students,"said Randy Nordin, chief legal advisor.

Besides federal laws against copyright infringement, Tech has its own policies against illegal downloading activity. These include a warning from OIT on the first instance that a student is found infringing on copyright; network access being suspended and the student being forced to come meet with OIT to discuss the issue on the second instance; and disabled network acess plus a meeting with the Dean of Students for the third instance.

The vast majority of notifications sent by copyright owners to OIT are simple warnings and it is in response to them that OIT penalizes students.

"We do not monitor [student connections] for content. Students' privacy is at the top of our list. We never go and look for any of this information unless we have a subpoena or the prelitigation letters," Anderson said.

"We can't stop people from using the [file-sharing] software, but we can do everything we can to educate students as to what some of the possible penalties are. The settlement letter is a potential penalty, as we've seen, but also disciplinary records in our office if it does become a third time case, which would have sanctions that could affect their status as a Tech student," said David Dial, judicial coordinator in the Office of Student Integrity.

Among those efforts to educate students is a new tutorial at sideways.gatech.edu, in which Sideways the dog guides students through OIT network policies and the possible penalties of illegal music downloading.

"$3,000 is a lot of money-it's a lot of CDs that you could buy. Our office encourages students to use Ruckus because Tech has already paid a license fee for students to be able to use it, so that's a legal way to download songs," Dial said.

Of the many schools receiving these letters, the overwhelming majority have passed them along to their students without incident, with a few exceptions. In March the University of Wisconsin-Madison refused to pass along its 15 letters until it was forced to do so by court order the next month. The University of Kansas and the University of Maine system refused to forward them to the students as well, and the University of Nebraska, after identifying nine students out of the 36 addresses for which it received letters, demanded an 11-dollar processing fee to pass each letter to the offending student.

MUSIC PIRACY BY THE NUMBERS

Legal action was taken against more than 10,000 uploaders in 18 countries in 2006, including Brazil, Mexico, Poland and Portugal for the first time. (IFPI Digital Music Report 2007)

The RIAA has sent 2,926 pre-litigation settlement letters to American university students since February 2007. (RIAA)

55% of adults age 18-29 believe there is little or nothing the government can do about unlawful file sharing. (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2005)

CD sales went down 12.8% in 2006, overall digital sales rose 74.4%, and overall music sales fell 6.2%. (RIAA)