RIAA targets 395 more college students

Pre-litigation settlement letters sent to 19 different universities in this latest crackdown on P2P and file-sharing programs on college campuses.

The RIAA has begun a new round of campus piracy crackdowns with 395 students at 19 different universities being sent pre-litigation letters.

This is the latest installment of its “education and deterrence campaign” that the RIAA launched earlier this year that focuses on P2P and illegal file “trafficking” on college campuses (I still love how they refer to it as trafficking and sharing).

These pre-litigation notices also offer students the continued chance to settle out of court at a “discounted rate” using their p2plawsuits site.

Each pre-litigation settlement letter informs the school of a forthcoming copyright infringement suit against one of its students or personnel and requests that university administrators forward that letter to the appropriate user on the campuses network. Some schools have willingly offered up the students user info and delivered the letters and others thankfully have not.

In this fifth wave of “settlement letters,” the RIAA sent letters to the following schools:

• North Carolina State University (43)
• University of California – Davis (34)
• University of Nebraska – Lincoln (33)
• University of California – Los Angeles (37
• Drexel University (26)
• University of California – Irvine (23)
• Wichita State University (22)
• Stanford University (19)
• DePaul University (19)
• Rochester Institute of Technology (19)
• University of Chicago (18)
• University of Oregon (17)
• Northwestern University (16)
• Western Washington University (15)
• University of California – Santa Cruz (15)
• Dartmouth College (13)
• University of California – San Diego (9)
• Texas Christian University (7)

Being the nice guys that they are though, and having such a big concern for the burdens of higher education, they have kindly decided to extend “…the amount of time that the recipient of a pre-litigation letter has to contact the organization’s legal representatives to work out a settlement” since the Summer Schedule can be so hectic and confusing.

I guess instead or working over the summer to save up money to go towards books, room and board, tuition, etc., they can now instead save up to pay record execs instead.

In announcing this latest round of lawsuits, one of the RIAA’s lead lawyers chimes in about how how risky piracy is that it should be unthinkable when the music industry is “embracing” digital music distribution all over the place.

“The music industry is transforming how it does business and embracing digital distribution models of every kind,” said Steven Marks, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, RIAA. “For students, many of these high-quality digital music options are available at deeply discounted rates – or even free. 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. With so many simple, easy and inexpensive ways to enjoy music legally these days, why take that risk?”

Did he say every kind? How about the DRM-free kind, or the kind where I don’t have to have an iPod to play it on? How about the kind that is affordable and lets me control how and where I listen to it?

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