Cyberexperts: Fight the RIAA!

Harvard academics warn against fostering student settlements

By Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 6/1/2007

Two academics at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society have called for the university to resist the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) legal blitz against college students, saying such cooperation undermines the “educational mission,” chills innovation, and compromises students' rights on campus. The editorial, by Berkman Fellow Wendy M. Seltzer and codirector Charles R. Nesson, was published last month in the Harvard Crimson.

It came as the RIAA is sending thousands of “settlement letters” to IP addresses allegedly linked to illegal downloading at colleges and universities nationwide. The letters ask university administrators to identify voluntarily the user associated with the IP address and to forward the letter. The letters threaten a lawsuit unless the accused student decides to settle by immediately paying a reduced sum, on average more than $3000 each.

Seltzer and Nesson characterize the settlement letters as a way for the RIAA to “outsource its enforcement costs,” by “forcing our librarians and administrators to be copyright police.” Rather than assisting the RIAA, they argue, universities “should be assisting our students both by explaining the law and by resisting the subpoenas that the RIAA serves upon us.”

The RIAA's efforts, meanwhile, are beginning to have a visible effect on campuses. At Ohio University (Athens), which has reportedly received the most “DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] notice and takedown” letters from the RIAA, the administrative burden of policing its network proved so great that the university recently enacted a ban on using peer-to-peer (P2P) software on its network.