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MTU President Peeved At RIAA
mcdude writes "The president of Michigan Technological University has responded to the RIAA suit against one of his students, accusing the RIAA of encouraging cooperation with universities but then bypassing those procedures with the current suit. Curtis Tompkins says, 'I am very disappointed that the RIAA decided to take this action in this manner. As a fully cooperating site, we would have expected the courtesy of being notified early and allowing us to take action following established procedures, instead of allowing it to get to the point of lawsuits and publicity.'" Attention universities: lawsuits are your reward for being a "fully-cooperating site". If you missed the lawsuit news, see our earlier story.
This is probably due to the fact that MTU students provide more revenue to the school than the RIAA does; and the fact that MTU doesn't want to see a drop in enrollment as a consequence.
It mostly has to do with MTU's legal role as the student's loco parentis (I think that's the correct term, but it has been nearly 40 years since that was a part of my life). Whether MTU intended to or not, this public letter to the RIAA seems to me to be a good first move in setting the basis for MTU filing a countersuit, or stepping in to defend the student, or both.
MTU is saying that it has a mechanism in place for justly disciplining its "children", that RIAA knew of this mechanism, or should have known of it, and that it is inappropriate for RIAA to involve the US legal system when MTU's judgment and disciplinary process was available and would have dealt properly with the situation, with much less damage all the way around. MTU can also argue, and probably would have to do so, that RIAA has damaged its student's reputation in a way that demands some form of compensation. The courts are generally favorable toward this kind of argument.
RIAA screwed up royally on this one. If they push this, it will blow up in their faces, because no university can afford to back away from this fight-- it challenges the nurturing role of universities and colleges and is an attack on principles of western civilization that were established hundreds of years ago, with the first universities.