Twenty-two Rhode Island College students have been sent pre-litigation settlement letters from the Record Industry Association of America. The letters were sent on the behalf of the major record companies to 407 students and/or faculty at 18 universities nationwide as part of an ongoing campaign against online music theft.
Jonathan Lamy, Senior Vice President of Communication at the RIAA, said that "college students are among music's most tech-savvy fans. The latest legal alternatives now come bundled with fan favorites such as social networking features, music videos, and movies. The many alluring legal options currently available are free or deeply discounted and going legal means that students avoid getting in trouble with their university and the law."
"Bringing lawsuits has never been our first choice," Lamy added. "But for those who continually ignore enticing legal alternatives and plentiful warnings, it's a necessary part of the equation."
When the Anchor contacted the Public Relations office at RIC, it was the first that anyone in the office had heard of the matter. College spokesperson Jane Fusco then contacted the college legal team only to learn that they had not been alerted to the matter either.
At this time, the college has not released a statement on how they will react to the RIAA. In past cases, a major issue has become of how the college reacts. First at hand will be the question of if the college will turn over the names of the students using the computers mentioned in the letters. The RIAA does not know the identity of the downloaders, only the accounts they used. Some schools like Harvard, Boston University and Maine have been very strong defenders of their students while others have not.
It is also important to note that since no investigation is made to ascertain that the defendant is actually someone who engaged in peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted music without authorization, there are many defendants who have no idea why they are being sued. In past cases, defendants have included people who have never even used a computer. In one famous case, the RIAA sued a dead grandmother. Also many people who say they have used a computer have never engaged in any peer to peer file sharing.
The Anchor has yet to learn the identity of any of those named in the suits at RIC. We were, however, able to learn some details about students at Massachsetts Institute of Technology also being sued. One MIT student who has received a letter from the RIAA said that he plans not to settle and that he would fight all of the RIAA's attempts to learn his identity. To date, no MIT students have gone to court to settle.
On top of letters to RIC and MIT, the RIAA sent letters in the following quantities to eighteen schools this week including: Arizona State University (33), Bowdoin College (11), California State University, Monterey Bay (25), College of William and Mary (15), Duke University (16), Mount Holyoke College (15), Saint Mary's College of Minnesota (13), Stanford University (15), Texas Christian University (14), University of California, Berkeley (26), University of California, Los Angeles (26), University of Connecticut (25), University of Iowa (24), University of Nebraska-Lincoln (22), University of Texas at Austin (50), and Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (36).
Any RIC student who wishes to settle will most likely pay $3,000 to $5,000. For any RIC student wishing to fight their lawsuit there are many options. Robert Mitson, an attorney at Mitson Law Associates was unable to return our calls by print, yet he has fought cases with the RIAA in the past.
Many of these college cases have been challenged. The first challenge of which we are aware that has been made by a college or university itself, rather than by the affected students, is Arista v. Does 1-17, where the Oregon Attorney General has filed a motion to quash the RIAA's subpoena directed to the University of Oregon, seeking student identities. The motion argues that the RIAA's identification evidence is flawed, so that the University could not respond to the subpoena without either violating privacy laws by divulging private information about students who are not shown to have committed any copyright infringement, or by conducting an elaborate investigation on the RIAA's behalf.
This developing story will be followed in future editions of the Anchor.
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