RIAA Launches Christmas Piracy Crackdown

The RIAA continues to intimidate the people it once referred to as “some its best customers” with word that it has launched round 11 of its crackdown on campus piracy nationwide.

This time 396 pre-litigation settlement letters were sent out to 22 universities as part of the ongoing campaign against online music theft.

As before, the RIAA is kind enough to allow students the opportunity to resolve copyright infringement claims against them at a discounted rate before a formal lawsuit is filed and bypass the legal process altogether. Each pre-litigation settlement letter informs the school of a forthcoming copyright infringement suit against one of its students or personnel. The letter requests that university administrators forward the letter to the appropriate network user to allow the individuals the opportunity to promptly resolve the matter and avoid having it heard before a judge a jury.

In the eleventh wave of this initiative, the RIAA this week sent letters in the following quantities to 22 schools including:

• Auburn University (13)
• Brandeis University (12)
• Georgia Institute of Technology (16)
• Gustavus Adolphus College (36)
• Indiana State University (18)
• Iowa State University (13)
• Ithaca College (15)
• Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (16)
• Louisiana Tech University (15)
• Mississippi State University (15)
• Morehead State University (17)
• Rochester Institute of Technology (12)
• University of Arizona (14)
• University of California, Davis (14)
• University of California, San Diego (17)
• University of California, Santa Cruz (24)
• University of Dayton (16)
• University of Massachusetts at Amherst (30)
• University of Rochester (15)
• University of Southern California (33)
• University of Washington (16)
• Western Kentucky University (19)

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.

The news comes on top of recent efforts by Congress to Increase Penalties for Copyright Infringemeny. The “Prioritizing Resources and Organization of Intellectual Property Act of 2007” would strengthen civil and criminal intellectual property laws while ensuring that it gets ample attention from federal govt by creating an office of intellectual property within the White House. That’s right, it would create a new federal agency whose sole mission would be to track down on those who illegally share content using P2P and file-sharing services.

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