The start of the new school year in September was also the start of the eighth wave of pre-litigation settlement letters sent to college students nation wide by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
The letters were sent to 22 universities across the country. Each letter informs the school of a forthcoming copyright infringement suit against one of its students and requests that university administrators forward the letter to the appropriate network user.
Some of the Universities targeted include Arizona State, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Purdue, and the University of Pennsylvania.
According to the RIAA the letters are meant to give students the opportunity to resolve copyright infringement claims against them at a discounted rate before a formal lawsuit is filed.
A survey conducted last year by Student Monitor found that more than half of college students admit to downloading music and movies illegally.
Of the 22,000 claims the RIAA has filed today marks the first time any case has actually made it to court. Jury selection and opening statements began this morning in Duluth, Minnesota in the Capitol Records, et al v. Jammie Thomas suit.
The RIAA has filed an additional 24 copyright infringement lawsuits against recipients of letters who ignored the option to settle out of court.
St. Edward's university has forbidden the use of p2p downloading programs on the schools server. The university experienced problems in the past that ranged from a slower network due to the amount of bandwidth being occupied by students downloading to viruses being spread throughout the network by corrupt files.
It makes since that the school does not want to encourage the use of illegal file sharing on campus but it is very strange that they are able to determine what programs a student is allowed to use on their own personal computers on campus.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment