Bill Kibler is the vice president of student affairs at Mississippi State. He can be contacted at [email protected].Because Mississippi State University does value the relationship with and trust of our students, I felt compelled to respond to the incorrect and misleading information in the Jan. 25 Reflector editorial and the Jan. 29 Reflector correction.
The lead sentence in the Jan. 25 editorial included the statement: “The administrators of Mississippi State University neglected student needs and defied their trust when it revealed the personal information of 14 MSU students to the Recording Industry Association of America.”
This statement is false and was corrected by The Reflector on Jan. 29. Mississippi State University never provided any information to RIAA and certainly did not provide student information. I am severely disappointed that The Reflector editorial board would make such a statement, particularly in light of the fact that a Reflector reporter was provided the correct information in advance of the editorial being published.
Although the editorial board did correct that factual error on Jan. 29, they went on to state, “MSU could have done more to protect the students whose names were attached to the IP addresses from the RIAA.”
They further stated that “MSU officials could have waited for subpoenas, even as a simple gesture to show that they can be relied upon for protection of students’ privacy.”
At its very best, this statement is misleading and does a disservice to the readers of The Reflector. How can MSU do more to protect its students’ identities than by not providing the information?
Further, all MSU did was provide a copy of the pre-litigation letters directly to the students whose IP addresses were identified by RIAA as allegedly engaging in copyright law violations. These letters delivered a clear message that it was RIAA’s intent to file a federal lawsuit within 30 days against the students, which would include RIAA’s legal right to learn the students’ identities through court order.
MSU felt it was the “right thing to do” to pass on this information to these students to allow them to know of the potential of federal legal action being pursued against them.
Passing this notice and warning on to our students was intended to provide them an opportunity to discuss and decide their options before facing legal action. Failure to inform the subject students would have been irresponsible on the part of the university. In fact, MSU has learned that RIAA has now filed a federal lawsuit against six of our students who failed to respond to RIAA’s request for a pre-litigation settlement.
In no way did MSU’s action constitute “compliance with” RIAA as The Reflector editorial board suggests. Just the opposite is true. It was MSU’s attempt to be helpful in providing timely information to these students in the light of serious allegations of violations of the law.
Lastly, I believe the irresponsible actions of The Reflector editorial board have done damage to the reputation of the university and unnecessarily turned a confusing issue into a divisive one.