Lawsuits to deter illegal file use?

The days of college students downloading illegal files appear to be numbered as the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) is taking more and more aggressive legal actions.

The RIAA is a trade group that represents the United States recording industry. It distributes about 90 percent of all legitimate sound recordings sold in the United States. As of Sept. 30, there have been 762 lawsuits brought against students from 26 different universities, including Appalachian State University, Colgate University and Penn State, according to Jonathan Lamy, a press official for the RIAA.

According to Lamy, the illegal file sharers sued in this particular round were using platforms such as eDonkey, Kazaa and Limewire. He said, "the penalty for illegal downloading, which is in violation of the Federal Anti-Bootleg Statute is a fine of $250,000 or a sentence of up to five years in federal prison."

Although this particular wave of lawsuits is against university students, it is not suing the universities themselves. "The targets are individuals, but not necessarily the ones who download heavy amounts of illegal material," said Dale Hulvey, the administrator of JMU’s Information Technology Center. He said that associations like the RIAA select the numbers of internet service providers — called "IP" numbers — who have the capacities for illegal downloads. It proceeds to subpoena the IPs, requiring them to relinquish a list of names of individuals who use programs like Limewire and Kazaa. It is through this list that the individuals are sued. Basically, a subpoena results in a lawsuit for anyone, anywhere by the sheer chance of which IP number is chosen, according to Hulvey.

Students have concurred with the fact that illegal downloading services do not work as well as the legal ones. "Limewire is the only free [program] I can get to work, but it doesn’t carry a wide variety of music," sophomore Naomh Stewart said.

Other colleges have put out extra fees paid by their students for media providers such as "Rhapsody" to avoid the lawsuits, according to Hulvey. However, he said there are no plans of this sort of situation happening at JMU.