It started slow at first, with one N.C. State student in 2004 called out by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegal downloading.
Then things went quiet between NCSU and the RIAA, until 2007, when the war between the two began to rage.
Pre-litigation settlements came in waves to universities throughout the country. And NCSU got its fair share.
The RIAA sent NCSU 37 letters to give out to students in February of 2007, according to the IP addresses the RIAA had found. In summer of 2007, 43 letters were sent out. The RIAA sent out another batch during the fall semester.
Despite the letters, Carrie Levow, Resnet Coordinator, stressed the importance of keeping networks open and not forcing the University to monitor downloads.
“A lot of other schools filter for content,” Levow said. “But there are a lot of downloads that are for educational purposes and we don’t feel we should be monitoring students’ Internet activity.”
So with the lines open and neither side giving in to the other, how long could this go on?
The settlement process
Cara Duckworth, a spokesperson for the RIAA, contends that the pre-litigation settlements are enforcing the company’s rights and that students are aware of what they are doing in downloading illegal music.
“Virtually everyone knows what is legal and what isn’t,” Duckworth said.
The settlement offers typically start at $3,000, but a number of students have worked with Student Legal Services to resist the settlement and wait for the lawsuit.
Eight students filed a motion to quash one of the sets of lawsuits in October in fighting the RIAA, but the motion has yet to be ruled on.
“We really need one case to be tried all the way through, and then you’ll see more of the motions to quash going through,” Pam Gerace, the director of Student Legal Services, said.
The RIAA though, which represents a multitude of music groups, feels it is justified in protecting their clients, noting that there more than 500 other servers that the group has licensed music to for legal use, according to Duckworth.
The federal government has been working with a number of parties to crack down on illegal downloading, especially on college campuses, where the RIAA says most illegal activity comes from.
According to Gerace, a group of Congressmen from California put forth legislation last year that would halt federal financial aid to universities for those schools with a high number of violators.
Though the bill hasn’t received enough support to pass, the prospect is a scary one for a school like NCSU that ranks in the RIAA’s top five.
What the future holds
With the more than 100 pre-litigation settlements that NCSU has received, Gerace points out that UNC-Chapel Hill has only received four letters. Which poses the question: do N.C. State students really download music illegally that much more than our local counterparts?
“To be honest, I think they picked on us initially because we’re a technology school,” Gerace said. “I just don’t know what we’ve done to tick them off so much.”
Educating students about illegal downloading has never been a problem at NCSU, according to Levow. With the amount of material ResNet puts out during the school year, added to the sessions the group holds at New Student Orientation, incoming students are aware of what is illegal and what’s not.
Other universities are monitoring students a bit closer. Gerace pointed out the system to catch illegal downloading that Ohio State University has implemented. The university worked out a deal with the software workers for the RIAA, according to Gerace. It costed $60,000 to lease, then $16,000 each year after that.
NCSU, she added, doesn’t want to do that yet. Which means that the fight could last for a while.
“Some people are winning the motions to quash, but there are just as many that are unsuccessful,” Gerace said. “But they’ll keep doing it until the courts rule against them.”
