RIAA To Schools: Can I Add You To My Circle?

Filed in archive RIAA, IFPI on March 9, 2007

Recently RIAA contacted ISPs to seek their help and act as copyright infringement notification and enforcement agents. Now RIAA has added colleges to its program to co-opt other businesses as their private cops. RIAA has doubled the number of alleged infringement notices by students sent to colleges.

Colleges have been a difficult area for music industry enforcement. Students are excellent music fans but have little available income to spend on legitimate music purchases. They are technically proficient, have access to computers and fast Internet connections, are strong consumers of digital content on portable players and PCs, and are big P2P and IRC users.

College-oriented music services, such as through Ruckus unlimited subscriptions, have been met with limited success in both adoption by schools and purchase by students. Only a few schools have been responsive to RIAA requests to police its students.

Purdue University has received over one thousand RIAA complaints, up from 37 in 2006. They rarely notify or take action in response to RIAA complaints. Purdue official Steve Tally said "In a sense, the (complaint) letter is asking us to pursue an investigation and as the service provider we don't see that as our role. We are a leading technology school with thousands and thousands of curious and talented technology students."

While colleges are obligated to stop offenders they have the same problem that RIAA has with its direct consumer lawsuits. The IP address identifies only an Internet access point, not an offender. In the case of schools the address can be associated with an entire building or dorm.