Mississippi State University was one of 22 schools that received pre-lawsuit letters from the Recording Industry Association of America in December.According to an RIAA press release, the letters are the eleventh initiative in the RIAA’s campaign against music theft on the Internet.
Out of the 396 December letters, MSU received 15.
Associate Dean of Students Thomas Bourgeois said this was the first time the university has received pre-settlement letters. Thirteen students received one letter and one student received two.
Security and compliance officer for Information Technology Services for MSU Tom Ritter said prior to the letters, the university received about 200 takedown notices between January and December 2007.
Takedown notices alert the school that someone has been downloading in large quantities using the school network, Bourgeois said.
When the school receives this notice, the individual’s computer is quarantined, he said. In order to get network access restored, the individual must meet with Bourgeois and review the university’s computer policies for using the school network.
Pre-settlement or pre-litigation letters notify an individual that he or she has been caught downloading illegally but allows the individual to settle the case early instead of proceeding to court.
In an e-mail sent out to the student body Dec. 6, Bourgeois said settling early could save students money.
“It is our understanding that the early settlement costs the students $3,000 to $7,000 altogether or $750 per file. If the cases proceed to court, the students could accumulate fines of up to $50,000 for each song,” Bourgeois wrote.
He also wrote that the university could not be responsible for illegal file-sharing among students.
“MSU does not scan the network for illegal traffic in copyrighted material and cannot protect you from the legal recourse that exists for copyright holders, who do scan the network,” Bourgeois wrote.
Prior to receiving the pre-settlement letters, Bourgeois said the RIAA sent the university a preservation notice telling them to save their computer logs.
Knowing that the RIAA was investigating users on the university’s network, Bourgeois sent out an e-mail in October reminding students of campus computer policies.
He sent another e-mail Dec. 6 alerting students of the RIAA’s specific focus on the university.
The pre-settlement letters were sent to the university from the RIAA, but the RIAA did not know the names of the students, Bourgeois said.
“At this point, they [RIAA] do not know who the students are,” Bourgeois said.
The RIAA used computer Internet protocol addresses to identify the students and sent those addresses to the university with the letters. Bourgeois said it took one or two days to match the addresses to students.
Bourgeois said he met with the 14 students to alert them to the issue and to advise them.
“Some universities have thrown these letters away, saying it’s not their responsibility [to distribute the notices],” he said. “All we’re doing is providing the students with all the information.”
Had the university refused to give the letters to the students, Bourgeois said that the RIAA could have taken further action.
“The RIAA would have to gone to court for a subpoena, forcing us to turn over the identities of the students,” he said.
After the meeting with the 14 students, Bourgeois said he has heard back from two or three of those were settling their cases early.
Freshman international business major Lauren Lassabe is one of the students who chose to settle early.
She said she did not remember receiving the October e-mail from Bourgeois but heard friends talking about the need to delete peer-to-peer programs.
Lassabe said although she deleted Limewire from her computer, it continued to run in the background.
“I thought I had deleted it but I hadn’t actually uninstalled it,” she said.
Lassabe said she does not turn off her computer, so while her Internet connection was open Limewire continued to run on her laptop.
Although she was not downloading music, her Limewire “shared” music folder was open for others to download from it, Lassabe said.
She said she received her pre-settlement letter from the RIAA Dec. 5, which told her she could settle early.
“It told me that I didn’t have federal charges against me yet,” Lassabe said.
At first, she did not completely understand the ramifications of the letter, she said.
“Initially I was worried. It took talking to three attorneys to get to understand what the procedure would be,” she said.
Lassabe said she transferred her rights to her father and he called the RIAA, settling the case in 30 to 40 minutes over the phone.
Lassabe’s settlement was $3,000, but she said with a payment plan it will cost $3,300 at $550 per month for six months.
Lassabe said she and her father felt as if the case was expensive and her father asked the RIAA why the cost was so high.
“They [RIAA] felt like $3,000 was a reasonable amount of money for a full-time college student to have to pay,” she said.
Had she chosen to go to court and lost her case, Lassabe said her case would have been more expensive. With her 396 songs, she said she could have paid $297,000 if charged $750 per song.
“He [my father] thought $3,000 was expensive but compared to $297,000, it wasn’t,” she said.
Lassabe said she wanted to tell students about her case so that they could be informed.
“I just want a lot of people to know so no one makes that mistake,” Lassabe said.
Ritter said that the takedown notices include a time stamp and a date.
“Those takedown notices tell us that someone is sharing,” Ritter said.
Ritter said the university received over 200 takedown notices from January through December 2007, a significant increase from previous years.
“They [RIAA] asked us to forward the settlement letters to the students,” Ritter said.
Ritter said the letters from the RIAA included IP addresses, dates and times and files shared on those IP addresses.
Using that information, multiple members of ITS were able to match students, Ritter said. Because of the sensitivity of the issue, more than one person looked at the data to verify the students, Ritter said.
He said that the RIAA does not know the names of the students.
Ritter said the university does not monitor what students download. The problem occurs when students illegally share copyrighted material that they have downloaded.
“We don’t care what you download. When your PC is a server to the rest of the world, that’s a problem. That’s when we quarantine,” Ritter said.
He said students should remember that they are not invisible on the Internet.
“They can be found, they’re not anonymous. On the wireless network, they’re authenticated,” Ritter said.
Junior biological engineering major Davis Ware said he understands why college students would download music illegally.
“Music is pretty necessary for basically every human; it’s basically the most convenient form of art.”
Hypothetically, if he had to pay any of the fines like those mentioned in the cases, he said he would have to quit school and work to pay off everything.
“Suing one person for even 10 songs can jeopardize their life in college and for a few years after that,” he said.
Bourgeois said fines could be financially devastating for some students.
“This issue’s not going away,” he said. “Technically, it’s $50,000 per song max that they could charge. That’s serious money.”
Since campus networks have high-speed connections, it makes it easy and tempting for students to download materials illegally, Bourgeois said.