The deadline is up for the Communications Committee, the Special Topics Committee, the Government Liaison Committee and Student Legal Services. It's time students know what progress has been made on behalf of students in response to the Recording Industry Association of America campaign.
The RIAA has sent pre-litigation letters to more than 100 students for illegally downloading music this school year and last school year.
The four groups are working on a response packet to help students find information about the RIAA if they are sued or receive a pre-litigation letter.
Student Legal Services has contacted the Nebraska State Bar Association in search of lawyers to represent UNL students who have been sued by the RIAA, said Shelley Stall, director of Student Legal Services, in an open forum at Wednesday's ASUN meeting. Some attorneys from Omaha said they are willing to represent UNL students in court.
Stall said if students were allowed to combine cases, they might be able to split the court fees.
"We're prepared to help in any way we can," she said.
Katie Madsen, an ASUN communications committee member, said the communications committee chose to address students in two phases.
Phase one, she said, would require the communications committee to educate students on campus with posters and literature about the dangers of illegal downloads. Phase two, Madsen said, would involve the communications committee sending out literature every year to students in the residence halls and greek housing.
"Our main goal is curbing people's inclinations to download illegally when they get here on campus," Madsen said. "We want to really change the culture where students think it's an alright thing to do."
Also, she said, the communications committee wants to provide students with a safe alternative to downloading music.
"As much as we educate, we'd like to include other options," Madsen said.
Jana Kortje, member of the Special Topics Committee, said the goal of the committee is to provide students with information about alternatives to downloading music and put the information on the ASUN Web site and in other literature.
"Ideally we were looking to find a music downloading program free to students," Kortje said.
But there aren't any free music file sharing programs that allow students to download music and transfer it to an MP3 player.
An alternative to that, she said, was to search for inexpensive, portable and user-friendly programs.
"We're hoping to, in the next three weeks, have an idea of what we want to put out and make it available by the end of this semester," Kortje said.
Claire Althouse, chairwoman of the Government Liaison Committee, said the group has contacted 27 universities to combine and share information about student-based responses to the RIAA's campaign.
"I'm really excited about the potential for culture change if we can collaborate with these schools," Althouse, also a senior political science and economics major, said.
The Government Liaison Committee is also excited about a new development, Althouse said. The committee decided to inform the RIAA of the things ASUN is doing for its campaign against illegal file sharing.
"The idea is the RIAA has the same goal, which is eliminating illegal file sharing," Althouse said.
tanikacooper@dailynebraskan.com
