Source: News.com
The recording industry’s trade association settled on Thursday copyright-infringement lawsuits against four university students, in deals that will see the students making payments to the industry for years to come.
The four students were sued separately last month by the Recording Industry Association of America for running services that searched their college networks or other students’ computers for MP3 song files and that also distributed songs off their own machines. The lawsuits were the first time the RIAA has directly sued students, as opposed to companies, associated with peer-to-peer piracy.
The settlements will see each student making payments to the RIAA totaling between $12,000 and $17,000, split into annual installments between 2003 and 2006. The lawsuits as filed could have entailed damages–in theory–of up to $100 million.
“The record companies indicated right from the beginning that they were amenable to settling this case,” said Howard Ende, a Drinker Biddle, and Reath attorney representing Princeton sophomore Daniel Peng, one of the students sued. “In my view, this was not about Daniel Peng per se but was a utilization of the legal system to make a point essentially to intimidate Internet users.”
The lawsuits–on top of a series of communications that the RIAA and other copyright holders have had with universities over the past year–have led to a crackdown on campus file swapping and the kind of network search tools created by Peng and the other students.
College officials recently reprimanded a large group of students at Pennsylvania State University for using or operating similar services. This week, the New Jersey Institute of Technology banned the use of file-sharing software on its campus, citing the danger of lawsuits, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Also last month, Naval Academy officials said they had disciplined a group of 85 students who were allegedly caught using campus resources for file sharing.
Despite the settlements, the students did not admit any guilt.
“I don’t believe that I did anything wrong,” 18-year-old Peng said in a statement. “I am glad that the case has been settled amicably, and I hope that for the sake of artists, the larger issues can soon be resolved.”
In their suits against Peng and the other students, the RIAA called the services they had created “mini-Napsters.” Ende said that Peng, as well as his attorneys, believed that the service he had run was more like Google than like Napster, since it had simply searched computers that would have been available and attached to the campus network with or without his software.
As part of their settlements, the students agreed not to knowingly infringe the record label’s copyrights using the Internet. They will shut down the services that provided the network search tools. Peng’s attorneys said he will instead provide links to a record industry Web site.
“We believe it’s in everyone’s best interest to come to a quick resolution, and that these four defendants now clearly understand the seriousness with which we view this type of illegal behavior,” said RIAA Senior Vice President Matt Oppenheim in a statement. “We have also sent a clear signal to others that this kind of activity is illegal.”
The RIAA said that any future similar enforcement actions could lead to “stiffer settlement obligations.”
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