BRITTANY YEAROUT
Perspectives Editor
Pepperdine students are targets of the music industry’s latest attempt to stop unauthorized downloading of music.
The university received pre-litigation letters. These letters state that students accused of downloading music from popular sites like Limewire, MyTunes, Kazaa and Bearshare, have 40 days to avoid a lawsuit by paying money to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA,) the music industry’s watchdog group.
RIAA did not respond to the Graphic’s request for more information, and the university administration will not identify the names or the number of students who have received the pre-litigation letters.
“They have targeted us, yes early settlement letters have been sent to Pepperdine and those students have 40 days to respond,” said Dr. Kim Cary, associate director of Information Security.
One student targeted by the pre-litigation letters finds fault with both the RIAA’s accusation and Pepperdine’s handling of the situation.
Jessica (name is changed here to remain anonymous) received a letter on Sept. 17, but denies illegally downloading music.
“It sucks because I am in a situation where I didn’t do it,” Jessica said. “My attorney and Pepperdine both know that I didn’t do it, and I am stuck in a situation where I might be in a lawsuit and am now paying for an attorney, all of this because RIAA thought I was illegally downloading music.”
The purpose of a pre-litigation settlement letter before a lawsuit is for RIAA to give the students an opportunity to settle for a lesser amount than if the case was taken to court.
However, Jessica received her pre-litigation letter from Pepperdine with only seven days left to respond.
“The pre-litigation letter came with an attached letter from a member on Pepperdine’s general council that advised me to get an attorney and said to call him if I had any questions,” she said. “Once I got a hold of him, he said that Pepperdine didn’t send the letter earlier because it was their first case and they didn’t know what to do about it.”
In addition to not sending the pre-litigation letter early enough, the member from Pepperdine’s general council told Jessica that Pepperdine was only the middle man and couldn’t help or get involved.
“I asked him for the date that I was supposedly illegally downloading music and he said it was in March. Then I told him that I didn’t illegally download,” Jessica said. “He told me that it is probable and that it could have been anyone in the hall because the IP address is temporary and dynamic.”
The attorney given to the accused student charged $350 per hour for service, which she could not afford. So she randomly searched online and called an attorney in Chicago, who after hearing the story agreed to help for a flat rate of $500.
Jessica and her attorney decided not to pay the pre-litigation settlement of $3,000, which included illegal distribution of 141 audio files.
“I definitely think Pepperdine should have helped me more, I was so lost and confused at the beginning and the only thing they gave me was an attorney’s number,” Jessica said.
Students who have not received settlement letters also have mixed feelings about RIAA’s initiative.
Since the start-up of the deterrence program in February, the RIAA, which distributes 90 percent of all sound recordings produced in the United States, has sent out 3,740 pre-litigation settlement letters, as of Oct. 18, to universities, including Pepperdine.
In what the company calls its “ninth wave initiative,” RIAA has also filed copyright infringement lawsuits, according to its latest press releases.
In its Oct. 18 press release, RIAA refers to NPD, a market research firm, which reported in 2006 college students illegally downloaded $1.3 billion worth of music.
“The music market place is a rapidly expanding landscape with legitimate new digital services emerging on almost a daily basis,” said Steven Marks, executive vice president and general counsel of RIAA, in the Oct. 18 press release. “These services offer music fans of all ages affordable and convenient ways to get their favorite music. While it’s undoubtedly our last preference to bring legal action against students, music theft remains particularly acute on college campuses.”
Senior Dorian Beaney, who lives on campus, said he has illegally downloaded before through Limewire, but has recently stopped.
“It is definitely getting more serious. I respect what they are doing and the artists should have the right to get all the profits, but I don’t think suing students is necessarily the right way to go,” Beaney said.
Senior Greg Simonian doesn’t live on campus, but said he wouldn’t stop illegally downloading music if he did.
“I think that these record labels are making a killing selling CDs, they are really cheap to produce, why don’t they just lower the price and then more people will start buying again?” Simonian said. “It is nice to have a CD collection, I would if they weren’t 20 bucks each.”
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 made it illegal to circumvent digital content and products. DMCA exempts online service providers, like Pepperdine, from liability if they give certain notice and take procedures toward stopping such usage, according to the UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy.
Pepperdine has since been legally required to respond to DMCA take-down notices from the RIAA. In other words, Pepperdine’s Information Technology (IT) takes the student’s computer off the network until he or she removes the copyrighted material from distribution, Cary said.
“The whole idea of contacting the networks and telling them to have the user take the files off was not working, because he or she just did it again,” Cary said.
Pepperdine continues to get DMCA notices and in response has blocked 45 IP addresses this fall.
However, now it also complies with preservation of evidence letters, which means keeping logs of network trafficking in case of legal action, and passes on early settlement letters to students. No name can be released to the RIAA without a subpoena.
“In a certain sense it is not Pepperdine’s responsibility, but I think we are doing our diligence and notifying people,” Cary said. “We want to make sure students are aware that this is going on so that they don’t get surprised by it.”
According to the RIAA Web site, people should remember that anyone illegally downloading music is at risk of a lawsuit.
A Minnesota woman named Jammie Thomas was found guilty Oct. 15 for sharing 24 songs over the Kazaa file-sharing network. Thomas, who makes $36,000 a year, asked the judge to overturn the verdict, according to foxnews.com.
When Pepperdine found out about RIAA pursuing lawsuits it immediately used WaveNet, fliers and the main Web site to inform the community.
The RIAA wrote on their Web site that suing individuals was not their first choice, but that education wasn’t enough and too many people were not changing their behavior because there were no consequences.
“When record companies are deprived of critical revenue, they are forced to lay off employees, drop artists from their rosters, and sign fewer bands,” according to RIAA’s Web site. “That’s bad news for the music industry but ultimately bad news for fans as well.”
Go to www.musicmediaentertainmentgroup.com to read about what artists have to say about downloading music illegally.
11-01-2007