RIAA Cracks Down On Colleges... Again

2007-09-27 10:34:22.943,
Story by: Michael Gonzalez

The Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA) will continue their fight against illegal downloading with the release of 403 pre-litigation settlement letters to 22 different universities. The letters, which are sent to the universities and forwarded to the appropriate network users, inform the school of a forthcoming copyright infringement lawsuit against one of its students or personnel. This marks the eighth wave of letters during the new block of enforcement actions that the RIAA, on behalf of the major record companies, has been taking over the following months. Arizona State University, University Of Massachusetts and University Of Wisconsin are among the top schools served with pre-litigation letters.

According to a statement released by the RIAA, they feel they've made great progress in the three and a half years since taking legal action against individuals for illegal file-trafficking and have witnessed an immense growth in national awareness of it. They also call legal action against students "unfortunate but necessary," sighting statistics that state college students alone accounted for more then 1.3 billion illegal music downloads in 2006. There are some, whoever, who feel the students are a scapegoat and the RIAA isn't getting the larger issue.

"RIAA is definitely missing the point on what's going on with illegal downloading. They aren't exploring the reasons why so many students download music this way," says Nate Honoré, general manager at WSUW Whitewater, one of the schools at the top of the list. "Who can afford [buying CDs] anymore, especially with rising cost in tuition? These pre-litigation letters are not the solution to this so-called 'problem.' Can so many people be wrong about this?"

Source: CMJ.com