RIAA Sues One Harvard Student

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced yesterday the second set of copyright infringement lawsuits against students of 33 schools, including one user at Harvard, according to RIAA spokeswoman Jenni R. Engebretsen.

Students were targeted for using Internet2, a high-speed academic network through which students can upload and download files.

With the addition of 20 new schools having students targeted for Internet2 litigation since the first wave of lawsuits in April, “the RIAA has significantly expanded the scope of its response to this egregious form of music theft popular on college campuses,” according to a press release yesterday.

The April lawsuits were filed against a total of 405 college students at 18 different colleges across the country, including 11 Harvard students.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesman Robert P. Mitchell said yesterday, “Students are given ample warning...about illegally downloading copyrighted information, and are made aware of the fact that they can be sued individually for copyright infringement for downloading or making available copyrighted files—such as music, movies, television programs, or games—without the permission of the copyright owner.”

In the initial stages, the names of students being sued are not known. Only the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of users illegally using copyrighted works on peer-to-peer networks are known.

Once a judge grants the request to start the discovery process, the RIAA can then subpoena the identity of the individual in question. Once an identity has been revealed, the original lawsuit is changed to include the subscriber’s name, according to information sent by Engebretsen.

According to the April 12 RIAA press release, a file-sharing application known as “i2hub” allows students to upload and download files at very high speeds via Internet2. The press release states that “i2hub” is especially attractive to students because they tend to wrongly believe their illegal file-sharing activities will not be detected in the “closed environment” of the Internet2 network.

“Students are also warned that if they are sharing copyrighted files over the internet, they can be sued at any time by the copyright holder, whether or not they have received a warning letter from Harvard,” said Mitchell. “Harvard sends warning letters to students in order to ensure that Harvard complies with the requirements of the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This process does not protect students who use Harvard’s internet connection to engage in copyright infringement.”

In addition to the suits filed against college students, the RIAA press release also stated that new suits were filed against an additional 649 individuals who were illegally distributing copyrighted music via unauthorized peer-to-peer services like KaZaa, LimeWire, and Grokster.

—Staff writer Brett Lindsay Laffel can be reached at blaffel@fas.harvard.edu.