Gathering the Info

Over the weekend I have been researching the issue of peer to peer file sharing on college campuses and collecting online sources with a particular focus on locating the beginning of the RIAA’s efforts to curb this form of copyright infringement. One particularly promising blog, Ars Technica, has covered various aspects of the issue for several years at least. Relevant postings feature links to other Ars Technica articles, available primary documents if possible, and links to other related sites like the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s blog. It has also been following the RIAA’s movements. Attorney Ray Beckerman maintains a site called Recording Industry vs. The People, and provides information and updates about the various legal measures the RIAA is taking to dissuade mass file sharing, including the filing of thousands of copyright infringement lawsuits around the country.


Although my focus has been to determine where this battle began, I have not yet found it. The RIAA seems to have lobbied Congress in 2002 to pursue criminal prosecutions under the No Electronic Theft Act passed in 1997 by former President Bill Clinton. Despite a letter sent to Attorney General John Ashcroft dated July 25, 2002, bearing the signatures of numerous senators and representatives, no prosecutions took place. By 2004, the RIAA was sending subpoenas issued under a provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act requesting that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) turn over identifying information from their records when an IP address had been pinned as facilitating massive file sharing. These seem to be the beginnings of the RIAA’s efforts, but further research is needed to more accurately fill in my timeline.


To be continued…


Sources:

Anderson, Nate. 2009. RIAA v. U: the state of P2P file sharing on campus. Ars Technica. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/08/raa-v-u-on-campus.ars (accessed on June 28, 2009).

Beckerman, Ray. May 3, 2009. RIAA keeps on filing new cases. Recording Industry vs. The People. http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2009/05/riaa-keeps-on-filing-new-cases.html (accessed on June 28, 2009).

Electronic Frontier Foundation. Sept. 2008. RIAA v. The People: Five Years Later. http://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-years-later (accessed on June 28, 2009).

Introduction

Since March of 2007, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has officially attempted to recruit the assistance of universities and their information technology experts in cracking down on campuses as a facilitator for student peer-to-peer file sharing of music, movies, and other copyrighted materials. After the initial round of mass mailings from the RIAA about their new campaign, university officials have taken diverse stances on what measures they will take regarding peer to peer applications on their network, including everything from uniformly blocking such applications from all users including faculty to official policy changes to resisting cooperation and shielding students from pre-litigation notices in the interest of promoting a creative educational environment (Bangeman, 2007).

In light of these recent initiatives, I would like to explore the issue of peer to peer file sharing on university networks dating back to when the phenomenon became popular up to the current status of RIAA efforts to quash online copyright infringements. Ultimately I will develop a timeline of events beginning with when the issue started being addressed in an organized way by the RIAA with their DMCA notices and pre-litigation letters to individual students from, notable university-level reactions like bandwith management hardware or email notifications, and their effectiveness on cutting down file sharing. Finally I would like to analyze some of the more sensational instances where litigation has been followed through on and where the current status of the situation is today. What responses/actions from universities have been successful and which have not? Are universities cooperating with the RIAA? Are students? What are some of the legal and legitimate uses of peer to peer file sharing applications in a university and why is it important to keep them? What are the implications of p2p on copyright, access to information, and libraries?

These are just some of the copyright issues regarding the popular practice of file sharing I would like to explore.



References:
Bangeman, Eric. 2009. RIAA launches propaganda, lawsuit offensive against college students. Ars Technica. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/03/8953.ars (access June 27, 2009).

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File Sharing on Campus: Enforcing Copyrights by Lisa M. Winkler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at lmwinkler@wisc.edu.