The RIAA one year later
As recording industry wages nationwide war on piracy, OU falls off the map
Published: Thursday, February 28, 2008
Last Modified: Thursday, February 28, 2008, 2:02:37am
David Hendricks / Campus Senior Writer / dh100006@ohiou.edu
As the recording industry’s nationwide legal battle against college music sharers enters its second year, Ohio University — once ground zero in that campaign — is no longer under fire.
Identified last February by the recording industry as the recipient of more music sharing complaints than any other university, OU shelled out more than $75,000 last summer for a device that scans data crisscrossing its network for copyrighted media.
Copyright complaints plummeted from 716 during Fall Quarter 2006 to 77 during Fall Quarter 2007. Threats of litigation from the Recording Industry Association of America, the music industry trade group that coordinated the crackdown, stopped altogether.
“There has been a very dramatic change at Ohio University,” said RIAA President Cary Sherman.That change began last February, when the The Associated Press published the top 25 recipients of the RIAA’s copyright complaints. OU topped the list with 1,287.
“This is not a list any school wanted to be on,” Sherman said, adding that widespread publication of the list put pressure on universities.
Before the end of that month, OU would top another RIAA list, this one more serious.
Six days after the AP article, the RIAA sent 400 letters to 13 universities; one in eight went to OU. In each letter, the RIAA alleged that a university Internet address distributed copyrighted music and asked each school to forward the letter to the person responsible.
Unlike copyright complaints sent under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which warn of potential legal liability for the university, these letters demanded unspecified settlements from individual network users within 20 days. The letters threatened lawsuits if the recipients did not respond or refused to settle.
OU, like most universities, forwarded the letters.
When the University of Wisconsin-Madison refused to forward 15 letters to its students in March, the RIAA responded by upping the number of letters to 66 across the University of Wisconsin system. Record companies filed lawsuits against the unnamed network users and forced the university to turn over student names and other information.
This month, the RIAA sent 401 more letters, none of which went to OU. In all, the RIAA has sent 5,404 letters to universities and commercial Internet service providers nationwide. More than 2,300 recipients have settled. The RIAA has filed lawsuits against 2,465 people who either did not respond, refused to settle or were not forwarded the letter. Of the 100 OU students threatened with lawsuits, 80 settled.
Lawsuit Machine
Thousands of DMCA notices are sent to universities and commercial Internet service providers each month. The notices, which warn ISPs that someone using their network is violating copyright law, are an important weapon in the RIAA’s war on piracy.
Several companies have sprung up to send DMCA notices on behalf of major movie studios and record labels for a fee.
One of those firms, California-based MediaSentry, works with the RIAA to send DMCA notices on behalf of major record labels and gathers evidence for use in copyright infringement lawsuits. Together, MediaSentry and Colorado-based law firm Holme Roberts & Owen form the backbone of the RIAA litigation campaign.
MediaSentry, HRO and smaller, regional law firms that handle cases in each state all referred Post inquiries to the RIAA, which has been tight-lipped about the campaign — refusing even to confirm its widely known association with MediaSentry. Court filings, though, have revealed the basics of that arrangement.
In a sworn statement filed this summer in federal district court, an RIAA vice president explained that MediaSentry combs file-sharing networks for music files copyrighted by RIAA members. When it finds a user sharing such files, MediaSentry downloads them and records the sharer’s Internet provider address.
Any resulting copyright infringement lawsuit hinges on the RIAA’s ability to link that IP address to an individual computer and its owner — something only an ISP, in this case the university, can do.
Those files are passed to the RIAA, which listens to each song to determine whether the file contains copyrighted music, according to court filings. Once satisfied, the RIAA creates a list of about 10 copyrighted songs marked “Exhibit A.”HRO sends Exhibit A, along with a form letter, to the college or university tied to the IP address. The RIAA asks that the college or university match the IP address to the student and forward the letter.
Each letter warns that unless the recipient settles copyright infringement allegations within 20 days, he or she will be sued in federal court. The letter encourages recipients to visit p2plawsuits.com, where they can settle online with a credit card.
Students who settle within 20 days usually pay at least $3,000, Sherman said, adding that the RIAA has not made an exact figure public. After she was sued, one OU student paid more than $10,000 to settle.
“The easier you make (copyright) infringement, the more people will do it,” Sherman said. “The whole program here is deterrence. The more people you can send a notice to … the more likely it is that the people they know will know someone that was sued.”
OU received 100 letters during the last academic year and chose to forward them to students. Of those, 80 settled, according to the RIAA.
One man gave up his truck’s title to pay his daughter’s settlement. Several students interviewed by The Post said they were not sure if they could afford to pay both the settlement and tuition.
Eight students who did not settle were sued in Ohio’s federal district courts after OU was forced to hand over their names during the summer in response to a subpoena. One student unsuccessfully challenged the subpoena; his name was turned over Nov. 30.
Five cases are ongoing. Another student settled and a seventh, who failed to respond to the lawsuit, had a $6,750 default judgment entered against her. Record companies have asked that their eighth case be dismissed. One lawsuit could cost OU its starting varsity baseball catcher.
“I am a college student who is trying to better myself and if I have to pay this I am going to be forced by my father to drop out of school,” wrote Chris Klimko, a junior criminology major and starting catcher for OU’s baseball team since his freshman year. “I do not have their music, and I do not want their music. If they were trying to get people to stop listening to their music, they succeeded.”
Action at OU
OU administrators scrambled to respond after the RIAA figures were released last February.
“Up until now, we filed judicial charges only against students deemed to have engaged persistently in illegal file-sharing over the computer network,” wrote Kent Smith, vice president for Student Affairs, in an e-mail to students. “However, in light of increased reports of the problem, all newly-reported, alleged first-time offenders will be referred to University Judiciaries in a manner consistent with our existing policy.”
Previously, students temporarily lost Internet access and received a warning if it was alleged they had shared media using peer-to-peer software.
Leadership changes in OU’s central information technology division resulted in an abrupt policy reversal.
Shawn Ostermann, then interim chief information officer, did not change the university’s stance on peer-to-peer software during Winter Quarter 2007, despite an increase in DMCA notices. He cited legitimate uses of the software and was concerned that banning a type of traffic from the campus network would damage academic freedom.
OU banned all peer-to-peer traffic the following quarter under its new CIO, Brice Bible. At the time, OU said it would issue exceptions for those with a legitimate need to use peer-to-peer software. That ban would draw widespread condemnation. OU began to look for a better option.
Audible’s Magic Box
Colleges and universities across the country are turning to special software to wipe out, limit or monitor peer-to-peer file-sharing on their networks. OU began testing one of these devices last year and spent more than $75,000 to purchase one.
CopySense, a special computer sold by California-based Audible Magic, uses patented software to create audio fingerprints for copyrighted media. It compares those fingerprints to audio passing over OU’s network and disconnects computers sharing files with matching fingerprints.
OU paid $59,950 for the CopySense device and an additional $15,585 for support, maintenance and a year of database updates, which keep the device loaded with fingerprints for newly released music.
After CopySense was installed, the number of DMCA notices OU received dropped dramatically.
Each notice lists the copyrighted file and how long it was available. None of the 77 files listed in DMCA notices sent to OU during Fall Quarter 2007 was available for more than two seconds. During the same time during the previous academic year, before OU purchased CopySense, some files were available for several weeks.
DMCA notices received during Fall Quarter 2007 were probably generated in the seconds before CopySense disconnected the offending computer from OU’s network, said Sean O’Malley, OU’s information technology communications manager. Record companies have not sued any OU student for copyright infringement that occurred during Fall Quarter.
