|
Feb. 22 - RIAA announces top 25 universities for copyright infringement complaints for the school year. UNL ranks third with 1,002. March 1 - RIAA issues 400 pre-litigation settlement letters to 13 universities nationwide. UNL receives 36 letters. The offending students have 20 days to settle or be brought to federal court, provided they can be found. March 19 - At midnight, the deadline for settlement passes. Only 13 UNL students were located and received letters. The RIAA says 116 of the 400 students reached settlements. March 21 - RIAA sends out a new wave of letters. 405 letters are sent to 23 universities, including 25 more letters to UNL. |
And once again, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is among the universities targeted by the vanguard of the major record companies.
On Wednesday morning, the RIAA announced it would send 405 pre-litigation settlement letters to students at 23 universities. The students have the option to settle for a reduced fine or face legal action in federal court.
"It's fair to say the more illegal file trafficking occurring on a particular campus, the more likely those students are to cross paths with our enforcement efforts," said Jenni Engebretsen, a spokeswoman for the RIAA.
The RIAA reached settlements with 116 students and is finalizing details with an undisclosed number of others from the initial 400, Engebretsen said. She said the RIAA was "very encouraged" by the results.
Although the recording industry is targeting 25 students at UNL, chances are not all those students will find themselves on the receiving end of litigation.
Of the 36 students targeted in the first wave of letters, UNL officials were only able to track down and pass the letters on to 13, with the other 23 dodging the bullet by disappearing into the anonymity of cyber space.
"We had no problem finding some of them," said Kelly Bartling, an employee of the Office of University Communications. "We had a little bit of a problem finding others."
UNL's network keeps a log of activity for only 30 days, meaning anyone singled out by the RIAA for activities beyond that is off the hook.
"We don't know who they are," Bartling said.
For now, university officials are dealing with the new wave of letters, but Bartling said administrators are looking at options for preventing future run-ins with the RIAA.
She said putting limits on bandwidth or implementing new technological measures are a possibility, but administrators are also looking at how other universities are dealing with the situation.
If they're looking for a solution that most students would probably support, they might take a look at what the University of Wisconsin-Madison is doing: nothing.
Brian Rust, the communications manager for the UW division of information technology, said administrators at the UWM discussed the problem with legal advisers after being told by the RIAA some of its students were being targeted in the second wave of letters.
The university concluded it was not legally obligated to assist the RIAA in out-of-court settlements. So until UWM is legally obligated to act, Rust said, it will not.
"We do not want to be the middleman or an agent on behalf of the RIAA to pursue these out-of-court settlements," Rust said.
He said UWM officials sent a mass e-mail to students and staff reminding them of the law and that anyone engaged in illegal behavior on its network, including but not limited to illegal file sharing, would face repercussions.
But, Rust said, UWM is not going to take time from its regular network work to concentrate on RIAA activities.
"None of this costs the RIAA a nickel," Rust said. "For the price of postage, they basically are trying to get a settlement. All the PR, all the investigations, all the analysis falls on our shoulders."
