mendoman, GristyMcFisty and Quakester2000 all used our news submit to let us know that the RIAA are suing a further 532 individuals including many students. Up until now, the recording industry have been mainly suing copyright offenders at home, the occasional business and only 4 serious uploader's a while back on a university network. Now they have sued a further 532 individuals of which 89 individuals across 21 different universities were targeted. The RIAA announced that 27 lawsuits in all were filed.
This time the RIAA want to make it clear to students about the consequences of sharing music by P2P without authorisation on a university network. They blame peer-to-peer based piracy for lagging sales in recent years and that performing file sharing as a pastime on a university network only contributes to declining music sales.
To date, the recording industry has sued 1,977 individuals since it began suing individual users last fall and roughly 400 have settled out-of-court. The RIAA gives each victim a chance to settle out-of-court to avoid a more serious and expensive in-court case. Despite the number of individuals already targeted, this only accounts for about 0.04% of the total users running P2P software at any given moment.
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This latest wave of copyright lawsuits brought by the Recording Industry Association of America on behalf of recording companies marks the first time the trade group has targeted computer users swapping music files over university networks. The RIAA filed the "John Doe" complaints against 89 individuals using networks at universities in Arizona, California, Virginia, New York, Indiana, Maryland, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia. Lawsuits against 443 people using commercial Internet access providers were also filed in California, Colorado, Missouri, Texas and Virginia. The recording group did not name which Internet access providers the defendants were using. In all, 27 lawsuits were filed, an RIAA spokesman said. With the so-called "John Doe" lawsuits, the recording industry must work through the courts to find out the identities of the defendants, which at the outset are only identified by the numeric Internet protocol addresses assigned to computers online. The defendants, which the trade group claims offered "substantial amounts" of music files, face potential civil penalties or settlements that could cost them thousands of dollars. Settlements in previous cases have averaged $ 3,000 each. "We are sending a clear message that downloading or 'sharing' music from a peer-to-peer network without authorization is illegal, it can have consequences and it undermines the creative future of music itself," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement. The recording industry blames lagging music sales in recent years on the rise of online music piracy. Since file-sharing emerged as a popular pastime on college campuses in the days of the original Napster, the recording industry has called on university administrators to be vigilant to the copyright infringement occurring over their institutions' networks. Read the full story here. |
The RIAA appear to be unhappy with its progress of teaching about piracy across Universities to start targeting a bunch of University students. While many working home users would find it difficult to pay off a settlement of around $ 4,000, imagine what it is like for students to face this penalty and already be in debt after paying for their tuition fees.
I really doubt that going after students is going to change their way of obtaining the latest hits since many simply cannot afford the official CDs. It may make them think twice about sharing, but may mean finding alternatives to online file sharing such as CD-R swapping.
Source: Star-Telegram
