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RIAA Adds 23 Colleges to Hit List, Avoids Harvard
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has added 23 new colleges and universities to its hit list, but deliberately omitted Harvard, apparently afraid of the reaction it's likely to get there, having been told by 2 Harvard law professors to take a hike. 'Under the new scheme, the RIAA sends out what it calls 'pre-litigation' settlement letters. Actually, they're self-incrimination documents and they're designed to extort preset amounts of around $3,000 from students with the empty promise that by paying up, they'll remove the threat of being hauled into court on charges of copyright infringement. In reality, all the students are doing is providing the RIAA with personal and private information which can conceivably be used against them ...'"
This is nothing short of extortion. I never download music w/o paying for it, but now this just makes me want to bleed them to death by a thousand cuts--or megabytes.
I work as an undergrad for the IT office of one of the universities near the top of the hitlist, and I've personally read the letters that they send. To actually read the letter in person really gives you the feeling like "Holy Hell, they're actually doing this." The letters are such bullshit, and it is obviously just a scam to save them the legal fees of taking people to court. The sad thing is that its working for them, and for backwards reasons; In the first batch our school received (which was about 30 letters), only one student didn't respond to the letter. They got sued, and i assume had to pay up in the end. The RIAA got 30 people's worth of payout from the cost of one court battle. Even if they lost that case, they still wound up with 29 payouts for the cost of 1. I'm sure if no one responded that some people wouldn't be sued, but who wants to take that risk? While i have a problem with the strong arm court tactics they've been taking in the past few years, at least the "sue everyone" tactic was still properly using the legal system to resolve their disputes. However, these letters are extortion, and its that simple.
Elsewhere on the website, Mike O'Donnell, a University of Chicago law professor, gives a good discussion of why the RIAA's policy of identifying people solely by their "unique" IP address is a load of crap. I'm honestly surprised more people haven't used this kind of a defense when the RIAA targets them. Maybe it's because it's not well-known knowledge yet?
In any case, I'm glad that I'm living off-campus next year as my university is on that list and is now notorious for its one strike policy. WTF is up with the idiots in Kansas anyways?