14 Mississippi State University students will be receiving Christmas presents in the form of “pre-litigation” letters from the Recording Industry Association of America. The letters were dispatched to students allegedly implicated by the RIAA for illegally sharing music files over the Internet.
MSU Vice President for Student Affairs Bill Kibler e-mailed students Dec. 6 in order to make them aware of possible litigation from the recording industry and the dangers of sharing copyrighted material over university networks.
“The first wave of pre-litigation letters has been sent to MSU to pass on to those who had shared music, and Mississippi State University now has many individuals who have been caught by the RIAA and are being sued,” Kibler said.
“The students have until Jan 5, 2008, to respond to the letters,” MSU Associate Dean of Students Thomas Bourgeois said. “We are not involved in that decision so we have no way of knowing what course of action they decided to take. We simply passed on the letters to the students.”
The fines levied against students average about $750 per file shared, with total costs approximated at anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000. If the cases proceed to court, costs can rise to $50,000 per song, Kibler said.
“The pre-settlement averages are based on what we have gathered from other universities who have told us what their students paid to settle early,” added Bourgeois.
Though this marks the first time the RIAA has targeted Mississippi State for illegal filesharing, several other cases nationwide have made students pay tens of thousands of dollars.
“A federal jury in Duluth, Minnesota decided in favor of the six record companies who had filed the suit and ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay a total of $222,000 in damages for music files that she was found guilty of sharing through the peer-to-peer file-sharing program Kazaa,” the e-mail statement said.
University officials said they warn students about the implications of music piracy.
“This activity is stated as a prohibited action in our university computer policies,” Bourgeois said. “I also talk to parents and students at our summer orientation programs to warn them of these type of activities.