The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has decided to escalate its campaign against illegal peer-to-peer file sharing through the aggressive use of pre-litigation settlement offers.
Unveiled in an announcement late last month, these letters will offer students who have illegally shared music the choice to either pay a settlement fee within 20 days or face legal action. There is a financial incentive to settle because the students convicted in court face higher fees than those who pay in response to the letters.
Around 400 settlement offers, each containing a specific Internet Protocol (IP) address, were sent last month in the first wave of letters to administrators of colleges and universities across the country, who will then be responsible for distributing them to the appropriate students.
"Potentially, it is dramatic for the Tufts community and can end [with] some students in legal difficulties with [the] RIAA," Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said of the new strategy.
Previously, the RIAA had relied on lawsuits to accomplish a similar purpose. These lawsuits, which come in the form of subpoenas for information about the offenders, are called "John Doe" suits because at the time of the subpoena, the RIAA only knows the IP addresses and not the identities of the violators.
The suits have more legal force than pre-litigation offers and require a response from students. Although the letters do not mandate any action from students, failure to settle can still result in a lawsuit.
"The settlement offers are not issued as a subpoena, but merely inform the universities that there could be a subpoena on the way should the user not comply and pay a fine," Tufts OnLine Supervisor Judi Rennie said in an e-mail to the Daily.
As a result, they are more convenient for the RIAA, which now only has to send out a letter requesting payments, which violators can make online, and can avoid filing lawsuits in many cases. "They've provided a transactional Web site and a way to avoid the litigation and just pay up," Reitman said.
In the era of "John Doe" lawsuits, Tufts has faired well. Some students had suits filed against them in 2005, but not since then, Reitman said. After hearing about the suits, he said that all of the students decided to settle rather than risk litigation.
"They never went to court. There were no criminal charges filed. But I'm told they paid as much as $5,000 apiece to resolve the infringement complaints prior to charges being filed," he said.
With the start of the new campaign, Reitman said that enforcement by the RIAA will likely increase. "We've been told that all schools are going to get some [letters]," he said.
According to Rennie, the escalation is a response to a growing amount of illegal sharing by students. "There's no doubt these measures are aggressive; I think they want to prove that they're serious about the issue," she said.
Although the campaign will bring in money for the RIAA, Reitman said that the new efforts may be more about startling people into rethinking their downloading habits than seeking compensation for pirated music. "I think with all of these cases, [the RIAA is] trying to make a point more than it is in essence trying to collect money for sales of the songs," he said.
If Tufts gets a batch of letters, Reitman said that they will be distributed to the appropriate students, who will then choose if they want to settle at a cheaper cost or face legal action. "Tufts is not telling students what to do with these letters, but rather providing more time and options for how to resolve the complaint," he said. "And I think part of our advice would be to consult an attorney."
Rennie said that illegal file sharing is a highly discussed topic in the higher education community and that the RIAA's new plan did not come as a surprise. "[The RIAA] is taking it to the next level and that was expected," she said.
Although Tufts does not "actively seek out" students who are illegally sharing, she said that the RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America, among other groups, have complained to Tufts about sharing done by students.
After receiving a complaint, Tufts gets in touch with the offending student. First-time violators are suspended from the university's network until they complete a class that Rennie teaches on digital copyright laws. If Tufts receives a second complaint about a specific IP address, Rennie files a complaint with the Dean of Students Office and the student receives probation level 1.
She said that it remains to be seen whether the RIAA's new plan will be an effective way of discouraging violations. "It will be interesting to see how successful this approach is at reducing file sharing," she said.
In the meantime, some Tufts students will likely experience the effects of the new campaign. "That's my expectation," Reitman said.
