Suits alleging copyright infringement filed at 18 colleges across the nation.
By: David Campbell
The Recording Industry Association of America this week filed federal copyright infringement lawsuits against 405 students at 18 colleges across the country including 25 students at Princeton University in response to what the association called an "epidemic" of music theft using a speedy, advanced network called Internet2.
The lightening-fast network, used primarily by participating colleges and universities for academic research, is the next generation of the Internet that, when used for legitimate purposes, offers an exciting tool for researchers, RIAA President Cary Sherman said. "Yet we cannot let this high-speed network become a zone of lawlessness where the normal rules don’t apply," he said.
Through the use of a file-sharing application known as i2hub, students are "hijacking" Internet2 to illegally download copyrighted songs and other works on a large scale, Mr. Sherman continued.
Downloading from i2hub on Internet2 is extremely fast, in most cases taking less than five minutes for a movie and less than 20 seconds for a song, according to the RIAA. Mr. Sherman said students find i2hub appealing, because they mistakenly believe their illegal file-sharing activities can’t be detected in the closed environment of the network.
"We are putting students and administrators everywhere on notice that there are consequences for unlawful uses of this special network," the RIAA president said.
Mr. Sherman said only the most "egregious" offenders are being targeted in this round of suits, and, when asked, wouldn’t disclose the RIAA’s methods for tracking the alleged illegal activity by targeted students. "We don’t give out that information, because our investigative techniques wouldn’t be as effective if everybody knew what they were," he said.
He said there has been a "significant" downward trend in illegal file-sharing on systems that RIAA has targeted in the past with legal actions, but said it has gone up on networks believed by illegal sharers to be safe, like i2hub.
In addition to the 18 campuses where students are being sued, the RIAA said it has evidence of improper activities using i2hub at 140 other schools in 41 states. Letters are being sent to the presidents of these schools alerting them to the illegal activity occurring on their campuses, the RIAA said.
The RIAA said it has opted to limit the number of lawsuits to 25 per school at this time. Some users sued this week allegedly have shared as many as 13,600 MP3 files and as many as 72,700 total files files containing audio, software and video, according to the RIAA.
In March, the RIAA reportedly notified Princeton officials of its intent to subpoena the school for the names of 39 students who the association alleged committed copyright infringement through online music sharing.
Eric Quinones, a spokesman for the university, has expressed Princeton’s willingness to cooperate with the RIAA and affirmed the school’s commitment to honoring intellectual property rights.
He said Princeton has sought to make students aware of copyright-infringement issues. He said the university would not be party to any lawsuit, but said it could provide students with a list of local attorneys. He said that if students are found to have engaged in any activity that infringes copyright-protected materials, they would be subject to disciplinary action.
Mr. Quinones said Thursday that the subpoenas are expected by the university on Monday.
The i2hub server bills itself as "an organization by students for students," according to its Web site. It employs university-based high-speed academic networks to link college users, a statement on the Web site said.