3 students busted for illegal downloads

Three IU students were named in a lawsuit filed Thursday by the Recording Industry Association of America, according to a news release. The students are accused of copyright infringement stemming from use of peer-to-peer downloading programs on the IU network.\nSophomores Sydney Russell, Christopher Vines and Tabi Berkey were all sued for violating copyright laws, according to court summonses obtained from the U.S. District Court. Each summons lists some of the songs the students shared on peer-to-peer programs, as well as the program they used.\n“Just as we hold accountable the sites themselves for encouraging this illegal activity, we must also hold responsible the individuals who disregard the law,” said Steven Marks, executive vice president and general counsel for the RIAA in the news release. “Because of the multi-billion dollar decline in music sales due to the theft of music, the record labels’ ability to invest in and promote new artists is seriously compromised. Given the growing number of legal services in today’s digital market that offer high-quality, hassle-free and affordable music, the message to music fans is simple: don’t risk it, pay for it.”\nLawsuits were filed Thursday against network users from 16 other colleges and universities, including the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin and Purdue University.\nRussell, Vines and Berkey were each offered pre-litigation settlements in the spring. The RIAA started an initiative in February designed to offer student offenders a pre-litigation settlement at a discounted rate, and only defendants that did not accept the settlement were named in the new lawsuits. According to the court summons, Russell used a peer-to-peer program called Ares to share a total of 341 audio files, Vines used a program called Gnutella to share 1,172 files, and Berkey used Gnutella to share 600 files.\nThe RIAA is a trade group that represents recording companies in the U.S. Its membership includes most of the major music labels, including Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Bros. Records, and Interscope Records.\nNone of the students named in the lawsuit were available for comment by press time.