East Carolinian

Issue date: 4/4/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Erica Chan

Once forerunner in peer-to-peer file sharing, Napster was shut down by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2001. Despite Napster's misfortune, hundreds of other P2P networks emerged within the online world. From there, it was no longer feasible for the RIAA to sue each company, so they began to file lawsuits against individual downloaders instead.

Despite the RIAA's best efforts to halt file-sharing, it still continues to grow.

In their endless quest to counteract illegal downloads, last month the RIAA announced a new anti-piracy initiative, which targets students on college campuses.

This new plan implements a "pre-litigation letter," where they will send letters to colleges and universities and ask that they forward the letter on to students.

Instead of threatening a lawsuit right away, the RIAA is now giving students 20 days to settle at a "discount," instead of going to court where the fees generally range from $3,000 - $5,000.

"This is initiating legal action against individuals who engage in illegal file sharing of copyrighted materials using peer-to-peer systems. Roughly 400 of these actions will be taken against college students," said David Ward, president of the American Council of Education.

To help deter students from illegal downloading, ECU offers students an alternative with the Ruckus music downloader.

Ruckus is a program that targets the college market and serves the needs of students by making available music to download in a legal manner.

"Ruckus is offered to every ECU student for free, there are some charges for additional services like downloading music to an MP3 player or purchasing music," said Aaron Lucier, director of operations and associate director of campus living.

Although Ruckus has been available for a year at ECU, many students still don't know about it.

"I did a search online [for music downloading] and I found it there. I didn't hear about it from ECU though," said Michael Nemesi, freshman Garrett Hall resident. "I don't use Ruckus as much this semester though. I mostly use iTunes now."

For some students the benefits of downloading illegally still outweigh steep RIAA consequences.

"I download music illegally still. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I think that the record industry should have taken advantage of the Internet a long time ago," said an anonymous Scott Hall freshman. "The copyright laws should be revised, they were written for a different time."

This writer can be contacted at news@theeastcarolinian.com.

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