Six Brunonians are among 496 college students across the country being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for copyright infringement.
The music industry trade association identified the students using their Internet protocol addresses but has yet to subpoena Brown for the individuals' names. The students themselves have been notified by the administration, which would not release their names to The Herald.
In April, the RIAA announced it was suing a first round of 405 students at 18 colleges, but warned it had also notified 140 other schools of illegal activity at their campuses. The Brown students were included in a second round of RIAA lawsuits against users of the i2hub file-sharing program, which runs on the high-speed, private Internet2 network and was thought by many students to be either untraceable or beyond the RIAA's legal reach.
"There was a common misperception that i2hub was safe from the prying eyes of copyright owners, that you could engage in infringement without impunity, and I think that misperception was clarified very suddenly when those lawsuits were filed," RIAA President Cary Sherman told The Herald.
The RIAA began issuing lawsuits against individual file-sharers in fall of 2003 and has filed 12,500 lawsuits since. Defendants found guilty can be held liable for damages of up to $150,000, but most cases have been settled out of court for an average of $3,500. Sherman said the success of these lawsuits in curbing illegal activity has only been anecdotal.
Wayne Chang, the 21-year-old creator of i2hub, said the RIAA's focus on his program this time around confuses him.
"I don't see a reason why the RIAA or MPAA are targeting our services, because they're very similar to AOL chat rooms or something like instant messenger," Chang said. "It's a real-time social collaboration network."
Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that file-sharing services could be held liable for facilitating and encouraging copyright infringement, Chang said no legal action has been taken against i2hub. Chang said he is not aware of illegal activity conducted using his program, but he is currently developing new software that will be encrypted and decentralized. "It will be more anonymous," Chang said.
Connie Sadler, director of IT Security, said she had not heard of i2hub until the University received a letter from the RIAA in April. The letter identified seven IP addresses and accompanying evidence - 12 files total - of their illegal file-sharing activity on i2hub. A similar letter was received from the Motion Picture Association of America, citing nine IP addresses with a list of 283 files that had allegedly been downloaded illegally using i2hub. At least one student was referenced in both letters, Sadler said.
"We really have no insight into how the RIAA or MPAA gets these IP addresses," said CIS Lead Communications Specialist Stephanie Birdsall.
Although the MPAA has not given any further indication that it will pursue legal action, the RIAA sent Brown President Ruth Simmons a "courtesy letter" May 13. It alerted the University that a subpoena "will be delivered soon" requesting the identities of six users.
The six students were forwarded the courtesy letter, which warned against destroying any evidence - those files they had downloaded illegally on i2hub - but suggested they uninstall any file-sharing software.
Sadler said that peer institutions' experience indicated that the University could expect the subpoena to be served in one month. Nearly two months have passed since, and the University has had no further contact from the RIAA, she said.
Although Brown will comply with any RIAA action, CIS officers said they do not distinguish between legal and illegal activity - that is up to the individual users and mandated in the University's acceptable use policy. Sadler said CIS's priority is managing the network as a resource, and that policing only occurs in the instance that an individual has been using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth.
"We work for the Brown students and Brown community, not the RIAA and MPAA," Birdsall said.
Although Birdsall said students are informed of the acceptable use policy at orientation and should already be aware of what activities are illegal, she acknowledged a need for further education on the issue.
"We know we can do more on that front," she said. "We're happy to work with anyone on campus to make sure students are aware of the risks of this behavior."
Sherman said the RIAA does not dictate guidelines to universities, "but we are urging universities to be more proactive about (infringement) rather than just wait for the lawsuits to arrive."
Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services David Greene said a legal music downloading service, possibly in place this fall, might provide a viable alternative to illegal file-sharing.
Greene said the University is still working to form a partnership for a one-year pilot program, but that the search for a legal file-sharing service was already underway before the RIAA announcement.
Sherman said the RIAA is "delighted" that universities are pursuing legal alternatives, but that the organization will continue its fight against copyright infringement on college campuses, including on local area networks like Brown's residential network.
"People feel like if it's not happening on the broad internet itself, but it's just at a university among 10,000 students that somehow it's less detectable or less illegal," Sherman said. "It is certainly not any less illegal, and we get information about these things from a great variety of sources."
"Nobody who goes to a college today would be under the impression that a little bit of plagiarism is okay, but there are a whole lot of students who are under the misguided impression that a little bit of copyright infringement is okay," he said. "And we think that is not the sort of message that higher education ought to be sending to its students."
