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RIAA Sues Students For File Sharing

In its ongoing efforts to prevent Internet piracy, the RIAA filed lawsuits against four college students on Thursday, April 3, charging that they operated separate Napster-like networks that distributed up to one million copyrighted songs on their universities’ local area networks (LANs). Students Daniel Peng, Joseph Nievelt, Jesse Jordan and Aaron Sherman had been sharing songs on the school networks of New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Michigan Technological University and New Jersey’s Princeton University, allowing fellow students and staff to download the tracks for free. “These systems are best described as ‘local area Napster networks,’” said RIAA President Cary Sherman in a statement. “The court ruled that Napster was illegal and shut it down. These systems are just as illegal and operate in just the same manner. And just like Napster, they hurt artists, musicians, songwriters, those who invest in their work and the thousands of others who work to bring musi c to the public.” According to one RIAA spokesperson, the organization’s lawsuit seeks an injunction to shut down the file-sharing systems and may seek monetary damages of up to $150,000 per song, which, for those keeping track at home, could rake in a cool, but extremely unlikely, $150 billion. The lawsuits are the latest in the RIAA’s efforts to stop copyright infringement at colleges and universities; the organization sent over 2,300 letters to school administrators in October, notifying staff of the legal and technological ramifications of file sharing.

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