RIAA files a 2nd lawsuit round against Internet2 music sharers

May 28, 2005

The Internet2 is a research network that connects around 200 Universities with a vast performance improvement over even the fastest current standard Internet connections. As students love to download and share out content, this becomes a major headache for both the movie and music industries as music and videos can be exchanged over the Internet2 up to as quickly as it takes to copy files across the local area network (LAN).

About a month ago, the RIAA filed its first around of lawsuits against 405 students covering 18 universities, for using an application known as i2hub to exchange music over the Internet2. This time they are suing 91 students, but covering 33 college campuses. They are still continuing their existing lawsuit campaign with a further 649 lawsuits against regular Internet users who were found to be exchanging music unlawfully.

According to the RIAA President Cary Sherman, whether the user is sharing copyrighted material on a home PC or in a college dorm room, it is the same theft. Sherman previously compared the lawsuits as educational tools to remind music fans about the law as well as encourage universities to provide legal alternatives. Thanks to H3rB3i for spotting the following news:

The Recording Industry Association of America announced Thursday it has filed a second wave of copyright infringement lawsuits against students swapping files on the Internet2 network. The group added 20 new universities to its list of targets, specifically suing 91 students across 33 college campuses.

Internet2 is the name given to the next-generation network that links colleges and universities, which is intended for research of new technologies.

The RIAA also filed 649 "John Doe" suits against individuals sharing files via peer-to-peer networks including KaZaa, LimeWire and Grokster. Such John Doe suits involve cases where the RIAA does not know the identity of a file swapper, only the IP address used.

Despite their non-stop lawsuit campaign, it is already having far less effect than when they first started suing people. Going after college students is definitely not the way to go since a $3,000 average settlement for a student has a much more severe impact than the same settlement for the average worker. In fact, those who are wealthy would not even think of the settlement as much worse than a parking fine to average income worker and thus may be back online sharing once again.

Feel free to discuss and find out more about the legal isssues of file sharing along with legal alternatives on our Music Download, Peer to Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues.

Source: BetaNews