The US music industry is asking 50 Ohio University students to pay $3,000 each to avoid lawsuits accusing them of pirating songs off the Internet.
The Recording Industry Association of America asked the university in Athens to pass along letters to the students with Internet addresses believed to be used for illegal sharing of copyrighted music. The university notified the students on Monday.
“The downloading has occurred and we can’t change that, but we can let them know what their options are,” OU spokeswoman Sally Linder said Wednesday.
No cases have gone to trial
Patrick McGee, a local attorney the university arranged to meet with students, said $3,000 US is the standard offer, although cases have been settled for up to $5,000. He has represented four Ohio University students in file-sharing lawsuits.
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whats even sadder is that these students arent exactly rich in the first place and u cant take out a stafford loan to funs a legal settlement.
The irony is: College student are stereotyped as generally being “smart”. The smart thing would have been to avoid trouble in the first place and that meant not using a university/college internet account especially when you know it’s being watched for media downloading. The students should not have been greedy; pay for private access cloak your machine’s IP and use a block program then procede.
But since that wasn’t done they are caught between a rock and hard place… It sucks!