CURRY CHANDLER
Staff Writer
The Recording Industry Association of America has included some Pepperdine students as part of a new wave of threatening “early settlement” letters to campuses nationwide accusing them of illegally downloading music. It represents only the latest efforts in the organization’s continuing campaign of addressing the unauthorized distribution of music through shameful threats and extortionate lawsuits. It is unfortunate that the association continues to follow this failed approach.
The RIAA is a trade group and lobby organization representing the United States recording industry. According to statistics on the organization’s Web site, the RIAA is involved somehow with 90 percent of legitimate music recordings sold in the United States. Members of the group include record labels, distributors and individual artists. The group’s activities include producing varying formats of music recordings and distributing royalties to recording artists and labels.
In recent years, however, the RIAA has been preoccupied with digital music files and copyright infringement from file-sharing on the Internet. Members of the music industry have blamed file-sharing for declining CD sales and thousands of layoffs in the industry. The weapon of choice in the recording industry’s crusade against piracy has been the lawsuit.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed in 1998 criminalized the act of circumventing copyright protection measures. In 1999 the RIAA sued Napster, calling its file-sharing service “piracy of music on an unprecedented scale.” Napster went bankrupt while the case was being tried. The organization’s practice of targeting individual copyright infringers arises from a 2003 appeals court ruling that the DMCA regulations only applied to data hosted by an Internet service provider, rather than data on the computer of a service provider customer.
This strategy of superfluous litigation has proven to be futile and absurd. Among the more extreme examples, in 2005 RIAA lawyers filed suit against an 83-year-old woman who had died months earlier. A 2003 suit against a 65-year-old grandmother was dismissed because the woman didn’t own a computer capable of the music piracy for which she had been accused.
There are also examples of the association’s legal teams targeting minor children, sometimes as young as 10. In March, the group brought suit against a Michigan man, despite the fact that he had suffered a debilitating stroke the previous year and relies on disability compensation as his sole source of income. It remains unclear what constructive purpose the recording industry believes these lawsuits fulfill.
The letters sent from RIAA lawyers to Pepperdine students are part of the group’s recently-initiated campaign focusing on college campuses. On Feb. 28, lawyers for the organization began asking college and university officials to forward “pre-litigation” letters to students accused of copyright infringement. According to the Electronic Freedom Foundation, an Internet advocacy group, the letters offer a “discounted” settlement fee if students settle within 20 days after getting the letter. The letters also ask students to preserve evidence related to the claims made against them.
These “pre-litigation” letters are troubling for a number of reasons. Essentially, the RIAA is having colleges and universities do its dirty work. Eager to distance themselves from litigation and liability, school administrators have complied with tracking down accused copyright infringers.
Some schools have rightfully asked the RIAA for something in return for their cooperation. In March the RIAA sent settlement letters to 36 University of Nebraska students. School administrators processed the letters but technical hang-ups prevented them from finding the majority of the accused. However, officials at the school asked the RIAA to reimburse them the cost of tracking down the targeted students. University officials estimated the cost of processing each complaint at about $11.
While this may be considered a small step, it is certainly an important one. RIAA lawyers are asking state funded institutions to devote time and resources to match students with IP addresses. Why should taxpayer-provided money be used to assist RIAA lawyers to file more frivolous lawsuits? The RIAA has targeted colleges hoping students and their families can be frightened into quickly settling. Such practices have been employed by the organization for many years to no avail, and no amount of lawsuits can substitute for a rational and reasonable assessment of online file-sharing and the future of the music business.
One would hope that an entity as large as the recording industry could find viable strategies for adaptation and convergence rather than resorting to bullying college students.
11-15-2007
