It may be illegal
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Ken Frazier is serving as interim Director of DoIT and campus Chief Information Officer. Frazier is also Director of UW?s General Library System. It may be illegal to share your music with other Internet users, but it is incredibly easy to do. My CD collection is loaded on my laptop, and distributing “Ken?s favorites” is as simple as installing some free file-sharing software and leaving my laptop connected to the network. Bada-bing, bada-boom - I'm an Internet pirate.
File-sharing technology seems deceptively innocent and anonymous to network users, because it is so user friendly. But in fact, unauthorized file sharing is almost always illegal and can be traced back to the IP (network) address of the person doing the “sharing.”
Beginning last year, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began ratcheting up the number of cease-and-desist notices sent to universities. UW-Madison now receives, on average, 10 to 20 such letters
per day. The letters identify offenders only by IP address which, in most cases, can be associated with a network user only imperfectly. An IP address sometimes only links to a data jack in a room or to a specific computer.
When the link between an IP address and a network user is fairly obvious, we have cooperated by forwarding the cease-and-desist notice to the person suspected of file sharing. In many cases, that person promptly responds by saying the activity has ceased and that he or she has removed the content from his/her computer.
But now, the RIAA has thrust these cooperative efforts to control illegal file sharing into a disturbing new context by seeking to involve universities in a “pre-litigation settlement” program.
The RIAA is asking universities to forward “settlement letters” to students associated with certain IP addresses, informing the students that they are about to be sued by the recording industry for alleged infringement. The letters strongly presuppose the recipients? guilt and offer “settlement” as the sole alternative to a lawsuit. The “discounted” online settlement fee recently offered on the RIAA Web site was $3,000.
The University has declined RIAA's offer to be a part of its pre-litigation effort. After all, IP addresses cannot always be linked positively to a network user.
With all of its resources, we believe that the RIAA is more than capable of serving subpoenas and settling potential lawsuits without the University's help. Instead, we can better serve our network users by protecting their privacy rights and by highlighting the serious ramifications of infringing on the intellectual property rights of others.
We encourage you to honor and respect the intellectual property rights of the recording and movie industries by not sharing your music and movies with other Internet users. The consequences can be costly to you.