The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed another round of "John Doe" lawsuits against 745 college students for illegally distributing copyrighted music on the Internet. The lawsuits include computer network users at 17 colleges, and the suits are part of the RIAA's ongoing fight to combat Internet piracy at Universities.
“Theft is theft and should be treated as such,” said RIAA President Cary Sherman. “When college students illegally download, they not only put themselves at risk for lawsuits but also put the next generation of music at risk as well. Our ability to invest in new bands and new music is seriously threatened by online theft.”
The lawsuits filed in this round target students using the file-sharing application i2hub to download and distribute music on the advanced network infrastructure of Internet2. The litigation marks the fourth time the music industry has taken action to combat theft on Internet2’s specialized, high-speed university computer network. Included in this latest round of lawsuits are individuals from Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia, Drexel, Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State, New York University, Ohio State, Princeton, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of California – Berkeley, University of Massachusetts – Amherst, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Southern California.
“Against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in the Grokster case, students and university administrators alike have a heightened responsibility to respond to the problem at hand,” said Sherman. “Students have a responsibility to do the right thing and turn to legal sources of online music. University leaders have a responsibility to acknowledge campus piracy, to take steps to prevent the theft from occurring in the first place and to demonstrate leadership in teaching students that music has value and there are right and wrong ways to acquire it. When college administrators are more proactive in addressing the campus piracy problem, it usually means fewer incidences of illegal downloading on those school networks and less chance that students will get in trouble for breaking the law."
