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Cyber-shoplifting on college campuses

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Record labels, through the industry group the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), started a new initiative about a month ago aimed at illegal music downloading by college students. You may remember a few years ago when the labels began filing lawsuits against college students for copyright infringement. The industry took quite a bit of criticism for the tactic. This time around, they have designed a pretty interesting set up. Having identified alleged infringers through ISP addresses, the RIAA is sending letters to individual users through the University where the ISP is located. The University is then asked to pass the letters on to the specific individuals.

The letters are what the RIAA is calling “pre-litigation settlement letters.” In other words, no lawsuit has been filed, but the RIAA informs the recipient that if the claim is not settled, then a lawsuit will be filed. Now here’s the interesting part: a website has been set up where letter recipients can find additional FAQ’s and can even settle and pay up right online.

While the FAQ does advise the recipients that it could be helpful to them to talk to a lawyer about the settlement demand, it also goes on to spell out that if they settle now, there would be no public record of the claim against them, and therefore no one, including their parents, would ever need to know about it.

I’m all for innovative dispute resolution, and I give the RIAA kudos for this system, but I still have mixed feelings about some of it. I think I would feel better if the RIAA had gone as far as to hire an independent law firm to write the FAQ’s for the recipients.


Posted in General on March 23rd, 2007

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