RIAA Begins 9th Round of Campus Piracy Crackdown

Gives students another reason to live off campus.

Still savoring its win in the courtroom against Jammie Thomas in the first ever file-sharing lawsuit to go to trial, the RIAA announced yesterday that it had begun a 9th round of pre-litigation settlement letters targeting college campus piracy across the country.

This latest round is part of its ongoing campaign against illegal music file-sharing occurring on college and university campuses nationwide.

But, an interesting question that seems left out of the discussion is that are these rounds of lawsuits, or “settlements” as the RIAA calls them, really only a haphazard scheme that unfairly targets only those students who live on campus?

Off-campus students who are of course using an internet connection outside that of their campus network aren’t subject to the same sort of scrutiny by network administrators or RIAA hired guns, and in many cases comprise a majority of the student body. In essence, it comes down to a true minority of students who are the subject of these incessant “settlement” rounds by the RIAA and could serve to be another reason why music fans will boycott the RIAA and the purchase of physical CDs, the bread and butter of the record labels.

I mean isn’t it unreasonable for the RIAA to focus only on dorm residents just because they are easier to locate thanks to being able to use campus resources? Many more people illegally download in the off-campus student community and go unpunished because the RIAA has no means to find them.

Considering the number of students who are able to illegally download because they no longer live in the dorms, it’s uncertain whether the RIAA is going to accomplish anything in the end.

Additionally, the RIAA is basically freeloading off of vital campus resources by making network administrators do all the work and bear all the costs of installing and maintaining anti-P2P and file-sharing measures so that its content won’t be illegally distributed. Rather than have funds that could be made available for additional classes in an popular or overcrowded subject, a school has to instead waste it on making sure that little freshman Billy isn’t trading Bon Jovi’s greatest hits with his buddies.

It’s kind of sad really, but the RIAA loves sad songs – it’s been humming the same one for years now.

Here’s the list of schools targeted in this latest round:

Drexel University (17)

Indiana University (23)

Northern Illinois University (25)

Occidental College (19)

State University of New York at Morrisville (18)

Texas Christian University (20), Tufts University (15)

University of Alabama (14)

University of California, Berkeley (19)

University of Delaware (18)

University of Georgia (13)

University of Iowa (18)

University of Michigan – Ann Arbor (20)

University of Nebraska-Lincoln (13)

University of New Hampshire (30)

University of New Mexico (17)

University of South Florida (43)

University of Southern California (37)

Vanderbilt University (32)

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