 "Photo: Jackie Poinier")
When the Recording Industry Association of America sent letters to 37 Syracuse University students last month offering them out-of-court settlements for alleged copyright infringement, it was part of the first wave in a new initiative by the RIAA to try to end the illegal online file-trafficking problem.
The RIAA's initiative is just a small part of the association's efforts with colleges and universities to discourage illegal downloading on college campuses.
"This is an effort that has been going on for a number of years, working in a very collaborative manner," said Jenni Engebretsen, spokesperson for the RIAA. "We do consider our work with the university community to be a partnership, and we are engaged in a number of different efforts. It takes a multi-faceted approach to address illegal file-trafficking on college campuses."
Since the initial wave of 400 letters to universities on Feb. 28, the RIAA sent a second wave of 405 letters on March 21 to 23 universities nationwide. The letters are pre-litigation settlement opportunities for students, allowing them to settle out of court for $3,000 without any mark on their personal record before facing a lawsuit from the RIAA, Engebretsen said.
The RIAA's wave of letters, however, seems to have done little for its reputation as a playground bully picking on American college students.
Jon Weinstein, one of the 37 SU students targeted by the RIAA, said he thought the RIAA's recent actions toward students were an example of a corporation being corrupt.
"I think they should have given some kind of notice," said Weinstein, an undecided freshman in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. "It just really f*cked my life up, like bad. I had to pay for this. My parents aren't paying for it."
Weinstein is just one of thousands of college students directly affected by the RIAA's efforts during the past few years. The association has filed thousands of lawsuits, sent countless more warnings and plans to continue to do so, hoping to end what it views as a "serious problem" before it becomes unstoppable.
A history of action
The RIAA filed its first lawsuits against individuals for copyright infringement in September 2003.
The association's first lawsuits against college students followed six months later. Between March 2004 and last month's wave of letters, the RIAA filed just more than 1,000 lawsuits against students, Engebretsen said, adding the association's recent actions have the potential to be as effective as its efforts during the past three years in a much smaller amount of time.
"I would note a significant escalation here in the volume of legal action we are initiating," she said. "Over the past three years, we have filed about 1,000 lawsuits against university network users. Under this new initiative, we will be seeing approximately that same number in just three months' time."
Lawsuits filed by the RIAA are from $750 per illegal song downloaded to $150,000, penalties that are laid out in U.S. copyright law, not decided by the RIAA. Lawsuits filed by the RIAA are just one of the association's tracks of punishment for copyright infringement. The recent wave of letters sent to college students is an extension of the RIAA's lawsuit efforts.
"We're putting a step on the front end of that process so it gives those students a chance to settle those claims against them before an official lawsuit is filed," Engebretsen said.
There is no minimum number of files for a user to have illegally downloaded before being targeted by the RIAA. Weinstein, one of the targeted SU students, said he had 630 songs illegally downloaded on his computer when he was contacted by the RIAA but said he knew students who have downloaded thousands more. Another one of the 37 students targeted at SU, wishing to remain anonymous, said she had just more than 200 songs downloaded.
Kevin Moore, professor of music at Onondaga Community College, said he thinks it would be more effective for the RIAA to target users with the most illegal songs.
"You've got a million students illegally downloading," said Moore, who has taught music industry law and ethics courses at SU. "You can't sue every one. They're basically using the most egregious examples as examples, public examples, to try to stifle it."
The RIAA's other enforcement track is copyright infringement notices, which are letters sent to universities, leaving disciplinary action in the universities' hands. These letters identify an Internet Protocol (IP) address on the campus' network that is alleged to have illegally downloaded files.
The RIAA was sending approximately 25 of these letters per month to SU at the time, according to an article published in The Daily Orange in April 2004.
These notices are a logical first step for the RIAA, because colleges and universities need to monitor illegal activity on their networks, Moore said.
"The college has a responsibility to find out if this is happening and to stop it," he said. "They can kick a student off the system or internally discipline them, and that's a lot less cost-onerous than a lawsuit."
The RIAA still sends out many of these notices, even with the association's recent focus on its lawsuit track, Engebretsen said.
"The volume of notices that we are currently sending is three times greater than the number we were sending in the previous academic year," she said. "That was a decision on our part, because the problem on college campuses remains so problematic that we wanted to step up these efforts when it comes to our notices as well. So that program continues."
The RIAA has continued to work closely with colleges and universities through the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, on which RIAA President Cary Sherman serves as co-chair.
The committee is a body that was formed to bring together leaders from the music industry and leaders from the higher education community, Engebretsen said.
Multi-faceted approach
The RIAA's effort to discourage illegal music downloading involves four key aspects - education, offering legal alternatives, technical solutions and enforcement, Engebretsen said.
The association set up a Web site, campusdownloading.org, on which it offers students a list of sites where they can legally download or purchase music and general information on copyright laws and regulations.
The site also features an orientation video, designed for use by administrators to show students as an educational tool and information for parents of college students, Engebretsen said.
Education also lies in the hands of the colleges and universities.
Kevin Quinn, vice president of public affairs at SU, said when the university receives copyright infringement notices from the RIAA, the university's Information Technology and Services department does all it can to educate the targeted students.
"The ITS department had a procedure in place whereby they would educate the users about that activity, about the risks of having that type of software on their computer," said Quinn, adding that students must sign an agreement indicating they would no longer engage in the illegal activity after being shown a video on the dangers of illegal file-sharing.
The RIAA and record companies are doing all they can to offer students viable, affordable and quality legal alternatives to illegal downloading, Engebretsen said. She cited the Ruckus Network, which recently announced it will offer free service to any student in the United States with a valid ".edu" e-mail address.
Technical solutions are one aspect of the RIAA's efforts that is left mainly in the hands of colleges and universities.
"Blocking and bandwidth shaping are just two examples of what universities can do," Engebretsen said. "We see that as the surest and easiest way for administrators to really get to the core of the illegal file-trafficking problem that persists on many campuses."
SU has been hard at work to do just that, Quinn said.
"We as a university take the issue very seriously," he said. "We've instituted a number of policies and initiatives to educate and discourage our network users from taking part in that type of illegal activity. We are taking every step possibly to encourage our users to not take part in that activity."
Enforcement, which involves the pre-litigation letters, lawsuits and copyright infringement notices, is the last step and a last resort for the association if the other initiatives fail, Engebretsen said.
Despite all the curbing efforts, illegal downloading remains a prominent problem, Quinn said.
"It is clearly an issue that virtually every college and university is grappling with," he said.
Failure to cooperate
Although SU has fully cooperated with the RIAA, the association has been faced with the prospect that not all colleges, universities or students will comply.
The University of Maine System refused to forward its pre-litigation letters to its students, according to an article published in The Main Campus, the school's student newspaper.
Phone calls to UMS offices were not immediately returned, though university officials quoted in the article said it was not the university's role to act as a middleman between the RIAA and its students.
A university's failure to cooperate would be a mistake, Engebretsen said.
"If a university were to choose not to forward the letters along to students, it would be unfortunate," she said. "Those individuals would lose the opportunity to settle at a discounted sum and without a mark on their public record."
Not cooperating with the RIAA was never a possibility for SU, Quinn said.
"That would have not in any way protected the users in the long run from facing potential lawsuits," he said. "We've gone out of our way to make sure each of those 37 individuals received the notices in as quick a manner as possible."
The RIAA is facing resistance not just from universities, but also from students.
From the first wave of 400 letters, only 116 students have chosen to settle out of court for $3,000, or 29 percent, Engebretsen said. She added the association was finalizing others and was pleased with the response so far.
At SU, both Weinstein and the anonymous student have settled out of court.
"The lawyer … spoke with said it's not a favorable outcome if you decide to go ahead with the suit," said the anonymous student, a senior English and textual studies major. "And also, I'm a senior, I'm looking for a job, it's kind of time consuming."
A continued effort
With 805 pre-litigation letters already sent to 36 colleges and universities and a persistent continuation of its copyright infringement notices, the RIAA has no plans to let up on its efforts to stop illegal campus downloading in its tracks.
The association plans to send a new wave of letters each month, but said the RIAA could not comment on precisely when letters would be sent or possible universities to be targeted, Engebretsen said.
Last month, the RIAA was asked by the Associated Press to compile a list of the 25 universities with the most copyright infringement notices so far this academic year. Syracuse appeared at No. 12 on the list, but Engebretsen said SU's inclusion in the first wave of letters and any future inclusion is not based on that list.
The only university to be included in both waves of letters so far is the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which was No. 3 on the list.
The RIAA's current efforts - lawsuits and copyright infringement notices - may temporarily decrease illegal downloading, but will not provide long-term relief, said Moore, professor at OCC.
"They're better off using it as a temporary thing to protect their business while they shift their business model," he said. "If they were smart, they'd be doing that."
A more effective business model for the association would be to embrace the download business and provide music listeners with a quality product at an affordable price - like Apple's iTunes has done, Moore said.
For the students who have been targeted by the RIAA, a $3,000 settlement was enough to have a long-term effect. Both Weinstein and the anonymous student said they have stopped downloading music, as have their friends who saw firsthand what can happen.
"The warning was enough for me to stop, so I feel like just a warning would have been good," the anonymous student said. "I mean, $3,000 is a lot of money that I really just don't have to pay them, but I really just don't have a choice otherwise."
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