The letters are part of a "third wave" of RIAA action that includes 413 letters sent to 22 universities in the United States, according to a press release from the RIAA, an industry group representing the major record labels. The letters inform the students that they will be sued if they do not settle by paying a reduced amount to prevent the issue from going to court.
Since March 6, the University has received eight "preservation notices" from the RIAA, citing illegal downloading from Brown IP addresses, and Computing and Information Services informed the affected students. The eight students whose IP addresses were cited are among the 12 undergrads who will receive the letters announced yesterday.
"Basically what (the preservative notice) obligates us to do is preserve the information associated with this IP address, but we are under no obligation to share any information about anyone at Brown unless there is a legal subpoena," said Connie Sadler, director of information technology security for CIS.
"What the RIAA is asking of institutions (now) is that we forward these settlement letters to the 12 students, which we will do. The Office of the General Counsel is looking over this information right now to verify its legitimacy," Sadler said.
"We are not required to share any information with students. However, we would like our students to know as much as we know, so we did forward the information of the eight preservation letters to the students ... and we will be sending out these settlement letters by (Thursday) at the latest," she added.
The Office of the General Counsel referred requests for comment to Media Relations, which did not respond to inquiries.
According to CIS' Copyright Infringement Policy, first-time offenders have their Internet access revoked until CIS has been notified that the downloaded material has been removed. For repeat offenders, CIS and the Office of Student Life can take further action.
The legal implications of the situation are more serious. According to a sample letter provided by Educause.edu, the RIAA letters state that individuals found guilty of illegally downloading music can be fined minimum damages of $750 per illegally downloaded song under federal law. Such fines become the responsibility of the student - as the Internet Service Provider, the University is merely required to release the name of the student associated with a particular IP address after receiving a subpoena.
Though Sadler said she doubts lawsuits against individual students have effectively curbed illegal downloading, the RIAA has repeatedly expressed confidence that its crackdown on college students has helped slow illegal activity.
"Without question, this new enforcement initiative has invigorated a meaningful conversation on college campuses about music theft, its consequences and the numerous ways to enjoy legal music," said RIAA General Counsel and Executive Vice President Steven Marks in a press release.
Sadler said she sees no evidence that students' practices have changed - only that industry groups are paying more attention to college campuses.
"There is no indication that behavior has changed at all, but we have been getting more complaints - the complaints have at least doubled," she said. "Most of our peer institutions are also getting double the complaints that we all got last year."
Sadler said she thought Brown received an average number of complaints for its size, compared to peer institutions.
Sadler said "other institutions have taken additional action to stem the tide" of illegal downloading. Some have tried to ban peer-to-peer file sharing programs, but those programs are not themselves illegal. Others have established fines as high as $1,000 for a second complaint of illegal downloading. Though Sadler said University officials have discussed implementing a fine, she doesn't expect Brown will adopt such a policy.
"I think what Brown wants to do is more outreach," she said. "We really don't have a sense about how much of this activity is common to students or whether there are some students who really do think that anything they pull down from the Internet is fair game, so we don't know whether more education would be effective."
In addition to costing some students money, Sadler said the recently intensified efforts of the RIAA and other groups - like the Motion Picture Association of America - to combat piracy have cost the University between a half to one full-time employee in staff time in order to deal with the complaints.
"The thing that I find disturbing about this is that it puts us in the middle of this situation," Sadler said. "The RIAA may be using my office and the University to get to information that otherwise they may not be able to get to. I think a lot of folks would say that, 'Yes, education is an easy target.' "
Liz Kennedy, a spokeswoman for the RIAA, said the group does not simply target college students, it goes after non-student violators as well. "The idea is that anyone engaging in the illegal activity runs the chance of coming in contact with our enforcement actions. We are not targeting individual universities, we are targeting users," she said.
