NCSU Legal Services Director Helps Students Fight the RIAA

Cites illegal tactics and arbitrary settlement demands as some of the flaws in the RIAA’s lawsuit strategy.

Pam Gerace, the director of Student Legal Services at North Carolina State University, is helping students take on the RIAA and fight back in a struggle with which they would otherwise have few resources at their disposal.

Unlike the RIAA, with it’s battalions of copyright litigation experts, the NCSU students are of limited financial means as well as of limited ability to even challenge the accusations.

Gerace, as legal service director, has taken up the challenge to defend the student body against the deep-pocketed RIAA and points out a number of contradictions in the very merit of the lawsuits themselves.

Accompanying the initial settlement offers was a listing of what songs students had downloaded.

"(The number of songs downloaded) ranged from 10 to 2,000," Gerace said. "They said it could be $750 per song. The letter said, though, that they could just pay $3,000, which would not be based on the number of songs."

So students who downloaded even just a few songs were penalized just as much as those who had downloaded many.

Of the 24 students who received pre-litigation settlements last month, only one actually came forward to take advantage of the offer, with the remaining 23 now facing actual copyright infringement lawsuits for music theft.

The RIAA has filed "John Doe lawsuits" against the student’s IP addresses and are waiting on a judge to allow them to begin the name-discovery process.

In the meantime they will begin trying to subpoena students to come forward and out themselves.

"They’ll go to the University Council, then [Information Technology Division] and the students will be notified," Gerace said.

"If someone is subpoenaed and they say they don’t want to comply, the subpoenaed party says they can’t come for a certain reason," Gerace said. "Then it goes to the federal court who could take a year to make a decision."

But, if the subpoenas are valid NCSU will have to comply and give out the names of the students.

"When they do the subpoenas, there will be another round of settlements — those will obviously be more than the last one," Gerace said. "It will probably be closer to $5,000."

The worst part in all of this is that even if a student is not guilty, the student will feel compelled to settle because he’s afraid of what impending litigation may do due to his post-graduation career prospects, and also because he is of limited legal resources.

Though Gerace is representing students for the time-being, I doubt that NCSU will be able to afford the costs required to litigate each of the 23 remaining cases.

At some point the stud nets will be left high and dry I’m sure, and that’s where the RIAA shines — targeting the lone, helpless individual of limited financial means.

What’s even more depressing is that of the 400 settlement notices sent out so far, I doubt that a single one will even actually go to trial where I thought all legal disagreements were supposed to be settled. 198 of the students have already taken the $3,000 settlement deal, and the remaining 202 have yet to make any announcements of an intent to fight back in the courtroom. I’m sure the RIAA will show the remainder of "its best customers" who’s boss and prevent a trial as they always do.

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