Illegal File Sharers Fight a Losing Battle With RIAA

After a brief cease-fire, the war on college file-sharing is well into its second round, and copyright owners seem to have found a winning strategy.

Beginning in April 2005, the Recording Industry Association of America started targeting students when 25 Columbians were sued in a round of 405 suits aimed at users of i2hub, a peer-to-peer file sharing program accessible almost exclusively to users on college campuses. The RIAA continued to target the program’s users until late 2005, when they forced i2hub. a file sharing program accessible almost only on college campuses, to shut down.

In total, the RIAA sued 635 students, including 39 at Columbia. But following the i2hub shutdown, the suits stopped. For more than a year, the RIAA continued its campaign of suing file-sharers at large—a campaign that after four years stands at about 20,000 suits—but it shied away from specifically targeting students.

Then, in February of this year, the RIAA launched a new campaign against students with methods that have proved far less messy and expensive than previous litigation.

Rather than actually suing students—a costly and potentially lengthy process that could result in a drawn-out court battle—the RIAA sent out pre-subpoena litigation notices. These were threats sent to students whom the copyright protection agency believed to have shared music, announcing that they would be sued unless they chose to settle the claim at a cost of several thousand dollars. If they failed to settle the claim within 20 days, the RIAA promised to file the suit and to up their out-of-court settlement fee.

The campaign has been, by all accounts, wildly successful. After a first round in which they targeted 1,198 students at dozens of schools, the RIAA has issued nine more waves of notices, hitting a total of more than 4,000 students. Just two weeks ago, the RIAA sent pre-litigation warnings to 43 Columbia students. The vast majority have been settled out of court before any suits were filed, making the campaign pain-free for the RIAA. The RIAA doesn’t disclose figures regarding how much money they bring in from these pre-litigation suits, but by a quick estimation, the number must be well in excess of $10 million, without ever having to deal with a court clerk.

Until recently, this strategy had appeared strange to those following the case—out of its 20,000 lawsuits, the RIAA had never taken a single one to court, and several legal scholars had raised concerns that the lawsuits might be illegal, or at least excessively punitive. (The law states that each illegally shared song can carry a fine of up to $150,000, meaning that students accused of sharing 25 songs would face nearly $4 million in costs). That all changed earlier this semester, when a Minnesota woman lost the first ever RIAA lawsuit brought to trial. The court ruled in favor of the RIAA and charged the woman $222,000—$9,250 for each of 24 illegally shared songs.

In part to face the ethical and legal challenges posed by the Internet, Columbia has announced its intent to create a Copyright Advisory Office, an administrative office which will provide educational support about copyright law and which will open on the first of the year under the direction of Kenneth Crews, a widely renowned fair use, copyright, and constitutional law scholar. In addition, the University has already taken a proactive stance against file sharing, making all students sign an agreement stating that they won’t use the Internet to infringe on copyright and holding copyright infringement training during the annual New Student Orientation Program.

Meanwhile, Congress is also getting in on the act. In the markup of the recent “College Opportunity and Affordability Act,” the House Education and Labor Committee approved a measure that, if enacted, would force universities to consider subscribing to legal downloading services such as Ruckus or Napster, and would encourage universities to monitor traffic over their networks. In a most extreme case, if passed, Columbia would essentially receive congressional backing to monitor students’ Internet usage or face the threat of losing federal funds.

Six years after the original Napster crumbled and four years after the RIAA began suing file-sharers, many of the cloudy legal issues about file-sharing are finally being sorted out, and it appears that the law is coming down on the side of copyright holders.

Josh Hirschland can be reached at Josh.Hirschland@columbiaspectator.com.