Recording industry cracks down on illegal downloading

The Recording Industry Association of America slapped IU with 28 pre-litigation letters on Wednesday.\nThe letters alleged 28 instances in which copyrighted material was downloaded on the Internet service provided by the University. As of press time, Director of IU Media Relations Larry MacIntyre was unable to comment on the RIAA letters.\nThis marks the third wave of pre-litigation letters sent out to universities by the RIAA, but the first time IU has received any. There were 413 letters sent to 22 universities Wednesday and more letters will be sent out on a monthly basis to universities across the country, said RIAA spokesperson Liz Kennedy in a phone interview.\nThe RIAA does not know which students were trafficking the illegal music, only the IP address is known. The IP, or internet protocol address, is sent to IU officials with the hopes they will forward the pre-litigation letters to the student using the IP address. \nAccording to University policy, the user in question is sent a “First Offense” e-mail that includes a copy of the complaint from the copyright holder. That user is then given 24 hours to complete a tutorial and quiz about copyright infringement and delete all copyrighted material from his or her computer. If these two items are done, no further action will be taken by the University. Still, some students say they will still obtain their music illegally.\nFreshmen Jesse Goldstein and Evan Hirschhorn said they do not download music illegally, but if they did, this RIAA crackdown would be little deterrence.\n“I get music online from www.archive.org,” Hirschhorn said. “Artists put their own music from concerts up for free download.”\nJunior Jade Tirotta said she gets her music from the peer-to-peer site LimeWire for free or she pays for it on iTunes.\n“Limewire goes slow, iTunes is much more reliable,” said Tirotta, who also said the threat of lawsuit would not keep her from downloading on peer-to-peer sites.\nStudents also said they did not know when it is OK to share files and when it is illegal. Kennedy said burning a backup copy of a CD you own is legal, but giving that burned CD to a friend, even without monetary gain, is illegal.\nThe goal of this RIAA crackdown is to teach students that music is “intellectual property” and a copyright is not something to be ignored, according to a statement prepared by RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol and RIAA President Cary Sherman. College students are more prone to illegally downloading music than the population at large, the statement said. College students accounted for more than 1.3 billion illegal music downloads in 2006, according to research done by the market research firm NPD.\nFor more information regarding file-sharing copyrighted material, visit the University Information and Technology Services filesharing Web site, www.filesharing.iu.edu