Music industry targets hundreds of file sharers

The Recording Industry Association of America has filed lawsuits against more than 250 individuals who have allegedly been illegally sharing and distributing music online, the group announced on Monday.

The litigation is the first wave in what may amount to thousands of lawsuits against major offenders, according to a statement released by the RIAA. Users who will be considered for prosecution are, in general, those who have been distributing, on average, 1,000 files of copyrighted material.

This wave of lawsuits follows suits filed by the RIAA last spring against four college students -- Princeton University student Daniel Peng, Michigan Technological University student Joseph Nievelt and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students Aaron Sherman and Jesse Jordan.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that all four students settled their lawsuits on May 1. At that time, each student agreed to pay damages ranging from $12,000 to $17,500 and to stop sharing music files over the Internet.

In response to the RIAA's actions, colleges and universities are taking a number of approaches to stop file sharing. While some have implemented plans to educate incoming students about copyright violations as part of orientation programs, others -- such as Pennsylvania State University -- have taken more direct approaches such paying the recording industry to subsidize file sharing.

At Penn, however, business is proceeding as usual, explained Robin Beck, Penn's vice president of Information Systems and Computing.

"We have an acceptable use policy," Beck said. "We respect the legality of copyrights, but we also recognize that there may be legitimate reasons that someone is downloading something."

"We have a network capacity that is geared to our needs within the University and our needs to communicate to the global community," Beck added.

She also noted that Penn does not shut down individual students' servers, but that if a particular student is engaging in "massive file sharing and downloading," that student's network would noticeably slow down.

In contrast, Penn State President Graham Spanier is introducing a plan that, in the school's opinion, might solve the issue of file sharing without lawsuits.

According to Penn State spokesman Tysen Kendig, the university will "pay a flat fee to the recording industry to subsidize the cost for accessing music files online." That way, students will be able to download music legally.

Kendig said that the approach is considered "very applicable to universities as a whole" and could likely be adopted by other institutions as well.

"The downloading of copyrighted materials is a concern that the university has," Kendig said. "We've made it very clear that we're not going to tolerate students breaking the law."

The RIAA's statement stressed that all lawsuits have been filed after a "multi-year effort to educate the public about the illegality of unauthorized downloading."

"Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation," wrote RIAA president Cary Sherman in the organization's statement. "But when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action."

"We simply cannot allow online piracy to continue destroying the livelihoods of artists, musicians, songwriters, retailers and everyone in the music industry," Sherman added.

However, despite the RIAA's strong stance on punishing offenders, the association has said that it will grant "amnesty" to peer-to-peer users who identify themselves and promise to stop illegally sharing music on the Internet, as well as delete any music files from their computers that were downloaded illegally.

"We want to send a strong message that the illegal distribution of copyrighted works has consequences, but if individuals are willing to step forward on their own, we want to go the extra step and extend them this option," wrote Mitch Bainwol, RIAA Chairman and CEO.

RIAA representatives did not return repeated phone calls for additional comment.

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