Continuing its action against illegal file-sharers, the Recording Industry Association of America filed at least 871 subpoenas in Washington, D.C.'s U.S. District Court this month, according to various news outlets nationwide.
Unlike a set of April lawsuits directed at four students who were operating illegal Napster-like peer-to-peer file-sharing networks on college campuses, these subpoenas seek information from Internet service providers and universities about users of the Napster-like Kazaa file-sharing network. According to a Boston Globe report, the subpoenas seek the names and contact information of not only more prolific file-sharers who may be sharing in the gigabytes of music, but also small-time downloaders as well.
RIAA spokesperson Amanda Collins would not comment specifically on the subpoenas themselves, but did say that the "filing of subpoenas is part of the evidence-gathering process, as was announced June 28," and that the RIAA would be "filing lawsuits against the most egregious offenders."
However, "it is definitely illegal to make even one copyrighted file available," Collins said.
Some schools, such as Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have combated the subpoenas they have received -- at least temporarily. As the subpoenas were filed in the incorrect U.S. court district, they are therefore invalid, the institutions claim.
Dartmouth has not received any of the RIAA subpoenas, according to College General Counsel Bob Donin.
However, BC and MIT's objections are merely a speed bump for the RIAA, which can correct the problem by reissuing the subpoenas in the correct court -- in their cases, the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts.
"These universities have chosen to litigate this in an attempt to deny copyright holders the right so clearly granted in Congress," RIAA spokesperson Jonathan Lamy said.
"We will address the issue with them and it will be resolved one way or another," Collins added. "But ultimately, the identities of the infringers will be turned over, as the law requires."
In the subpoenas, the RIAA provided the Kazaa screen name and Internet protocol address of the offender, as well as a list of the songs that were shared, and a time and date if possible. The subpoena asked the Internet service provider -- which on a college campus is the college or university itself -- to provide the name and contact information of the offending file-sharer whose name is associated with that computer or IP address.
Many of the nation's largest Internet service providers received subpoenas as well. While most, like Comcast, have said they will comply with the subpoenas, Verizon Communications Inc., has publicly said that it will only release the names and addresses after exhausting all legal challenges.
Donin was unable to speculate as to how the College would react if served a subpoena, but said that "if the subpoena is valid and enforceable, then the service provider [or Dartmouth] would be required to provide the requested information to the party serving the subpoena."
However, even if the College were to make all efforts to comply with a subpoena, it is possible, according to Director of Network Services Bill Brawley, that it would be unable to provide such information because of the nature of Dartmouth's dynamic IP network.
"Because of the prevalence of laptops, the wireless network and the frequent movement of students from one part of the network to another it has proven very difficult to follow people across the network," Brawley explained. This is because the IP address of a campus computer is reassigned every time a student changes network locations. In addition, even the desktop computers connected to a constant hard-wired connection have their IP addresses cycled every two days, which makes it very difficult to connect a name and an IP address with 100 percent results.
"There are so many computers competing for addresses that we've had to cut down the time each computer gets a certain address" before being reassigned, Brawley said. "This makes a wrong identification more likely."
Donin recognized that the dynamic IP addresses could make the identification process difficult in the event Dartmouth was served with a subpoena, but said that the College is obligated to do its best to provide the information requested if subpoenaed.
"If you have the information, you would have to supply it," Donin said. "If you don't have it, you can't."
