Students were disappointed and even angry when the College shut down Dartmouth's Direct Connect peer-to-peer file sharing network in early February. But last week the operators of similar networks at three colleges across the country had a more serious reason to be upset when they were sued for copyright infringement and damages by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, one at Michigan Technological University and one at Princeton University received word last Thursday that they were being sued by the RIAA for penalties of up to $150,000 per infringing song allegedly found on the campus network they were operating.
Just like the Direct Connect network that was active at Dartmouth before the College demanded it be shut down, all of the networks operated by the defendants work similarly to Napster except that they are limited to their colleges' local area networks.
"This is a particularly flagrant way to illegally distribute millions of copyrighted works over the Internet," Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, said in an online press release. "The people who run these Napster networks know full well what they are doing operating a sophisticated network designed to enable widespread music thievery. The lawsuits we've filed represent an appropriate step given the seriousness of the offense."
The RIAA frequently issues "cease-and-desist" orders to students or college network operators who are found to be illegally distributing individual works of copyrighted material, but the large-scale lawsuits filed against these students represent a much more aggressive action.
"I get one or two notifications each week from organizations that claim to have discovered shared copyrighted material on our network," Director of Network Services Bill Brawley said earlier in the year.
When the College receives such notifications, it is responsible for passing them on to the student and insuring that the infringing material is removed from the network.
"The College must terminate service to anyone found to be a repeat offender," Dartmouth General Counsel Bob Donin explained.
"If we as the [Internet service provider] intervene in a timely way we can get some protection from liability," Brawley added.
In the lawsuits, the RIAA contends that the network operators were fully aware of the copyright infringement that their networks were facilitating. Each of the lawsuits claims that the network operators were sharing copyrighted materials themselves and were advertising their networks with features such as lists of the top 20 most searched items or the last 100 searches on their web sites.
In the case of one of the students at RPI, the lawsuit also alleges that the student was selling his software, named Flatlan, to other potential network operators interested in setting up a network on their college's LAN. The lawsuit accuses him of making a profit off the distribution of copyrighted materials.
The lawsuit against the Princeton student even cites an article written in the Daily Princetonian about the student's network as evidence.
In each of the cases the RIAA is suing on behalf of 17 record labels, including BMG Music (Christina Aguilera), Capitol Records (Beastie Boys and Norah Jones), Interscope Records (Eminem, Dr. Dre, Limp Bizkit and No Doubt), Sony Music Entertainment (Bruce Springsteen) and Warner Bros. Records (Madonna and Linkin Park).
According to an RIAA press release, each of the networks was found to be illegally sharing between 27,000 and 1 million music files.
In addition to the damages of $150,000 the RIAA is suing for, copyright infringement also caries criminal penalties under the federal No Electronic Theft Act, according to Donin. Depending on the amount of copyrighted material exchanged, penalties for a first offense can be as high as three years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Donin also noted that at Dartmouth violation of the Copyright Act through the use of College facilities also constitutes a violation of the College's Standards of Conduct for students. Consequently, a student found sharing copyrighted materials would be subject to College disciplinary action.
"I believe the recording industry filed these lawsuits to make it clear that Napster-like systems are illegal and can result in serious consequences," Donin said.
