RIAA Says No Mystery In Rash of College Complaints

Doug Lederman writes "As colleges receive exploding numbers of complaints from recording companies about alleged illegal downloading of music files, theories abound about whether the industry is changing its criteria, aggressively targeting users who merely make downloaded music available to others rather than actual infringers. But after weeks of silence, the president of the RIAA says No: Better technology, he asserts, is merely resulting in better enforcement."

Comments

Re:Missed one;

[Technician]

Really, the RIAA is just casting a wider net. By putting out more notices:

E) Students move from a visable P-P application back to secure sneaker-net trading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

Instead of a dribble of songs from slow university connections, a few DVD's, loaded iPods, and USB external hard drives get lent outside of trackable channels.

For my middle school kids, it's the norm. They have Comcast and no P-P software. It's all sneaker net and iPods. I'm suprised the RIAA isn't bringing up the RIO lawsuit again and try to fight iPods and other external hard drives as massive tools of infringement. After all, in their book, tools for making availiable is a crime.

What's interesting ...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is the number of false positives that are popping up.

I'm responsible for DMCA notices at my campus, and after a 1.5 year lull without a single one, I've received over 2 dozen, none of which are attributable to any IP given out by our DHCP server. One IP was a terminal server with no access to the internet.

(I'm posting anonymously because I don't like the spotlight. Talk to any college staff member and you'll get similar comments about this recent flurry of notices.)