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).