Over the past 9 years, the RIAA has refined how they go about enforcing their copyrights. During this time the technology used for detecting and tracking file sharing has improved and become more accurate. Basically, the RIAA’s focus began with file sharing services like Napster, then shifted to ISPs, then individuals, and is currently in the middle ground between individuals and ISPs. Universities were targeted as another ISP, and through technological measures, education, and policy changes, have mostly cooperated with the RIAA. A few others have not, like Jammie Thomas-Rasset, Tanya Andersen, Harvard, and the University of Oregon. Their collective resistance has caused some complications for the RIAA, which has had to argue for the constitutionality of their pre-litigation notices and DMCA subpoenas in court. As far as academic libraries are concerned, the university’s IT people, not the librarians, have had to deal with the RIAA, but libraries provide access to the Internet, which is where file sharing takes place. Once the RIAA has exhausted their efforts against universities, they may turn to lesser hotbeds for file sharing like public libraries. Effective planning and appropriate policy statements will prepare library staff with a course of action in case that happens.
Librarians will need to stay tuned into developments in litigation as more of the ambiguity of copyright law pertaining to peer-to-peer file sharing is clarified by our court system. This concludes my research for LIS 855, summer 2009.
Lisa,
ReplyDeleteYou chose an interesting and timely subject and handled the large amount of information that must be available very adeptly. By choosing to discuss P2P in chronological order, you gave your readers an organized framework for understanding the issues, major litigation and outcomes surrounding your topic. Your overview of P2P would help anyone not familiar with it to have a solid working knowledge of your main points and you obviously have a firm grasp on the issue. What a lot of articles you cite!
I find the suits against individuals most interesting since they seem so punitive. I would think that going after the services that facilitate the file sharing would be more productive and “kill more birds with one stone,” so to speak. It is an interesting strategy that the RIAA is pursuing and as you wrote, must be a public relations nightmare. I think the various university responses are also fascinating since they run the gamut from almost ignoring them to total crackdowns. It really rankles that the mere threat of litigation causes some universities to cut off even legal uses for large bandwidths and file sharing activities.
While I work in the public library sector, I can see where your topic is particularly relevant to universities and academic libraries, but I would have liked to have had a few more very clear conclusions drawn about how this impacts libraries directly. Do libraries need to do anything more than keep an eye on current and future RIAA litigation? Are there steps they should be taking to protect themselves? Is there any legal precedence for action against libraries? (I would assume not, since you didn't mention it.) Is there any inkling that the RIAA or any other enforcers of the DMCA have libraries in their cross hairs? What are your thoughts and opinions? Some of your opinion comes through, but I would have liked to know a little more what you think after completing all of your research. Another minor improvement would be to have the sources hyper-linked, so that readers could easily jump to your articles.
Overall, this is a strong project with TONS of synthesized information on a relevant and timely topic. I learned a lot about P2P, RIAA, DMCA (when we graduate, they should award us an MLS in acronyms!) and think that anyone who wants a succinct overview of the current status of P2P would benefit from reading your blog.
--Carrie Zamorano