RIAA

RIAA said Monday that it had sent out 408 letters offering to settle with students from 23 universities across the country. The letter offers those who receive it a discounted settlement for staying out of court.

Among the universities receiving the most letters were the State University of New York at Morrisville with 34; Georgia Tech and Penn State with 31; the University of Central Arkansas with 27, and the University of Delaware with 23.

The letters are a continuation of a program launched by the group earlier this year, which aimed to bring the problem of illicit file sharing on college campuses under control. At that time, the group said it expected to send out "hundreds" more letters.

RIAA said it will give students receiving these letters more time than it had in the past to respond due to the summer session.

"Those who continue to ignore great legal services and the law by stealing music online risk a federal lawsuit that could include thousands of dollars in penalties," RIAA general counsel Steven Marks said. "With so many simple, easy and inexpensive ways to enjoy music legally these days, why take that risk?"

The group pointed to a study that indicated more than half of pirated music and videos were downloaded by college students. At the same time, this group is responsible for more than 1.3 billion legal downloads.

Since the beginning of the program in Feburary, 2,423 letters have been sent to college students who download illicit music and movie files.

I also read that the recording industry has made 3 times as much money as they did 2 years ago and illegal downloading is at the high.

my question is, one do you think if they used peerguardian ect. would they been busted? I'm wondering if they where using torrents or lime wire or a program like that but I can't ifnd much info other then bassically their getting sued over the matter.

...the riaa doesnt care about artists rights or anybody else...
...it only cares about making money...
...tehy didnt expect and cant handle the shift in media the internet has brought about...
...and so now they are trying to get latigious...
...fighting a losing battle as to what they think they can still control...
...im reminded of governor tarkin...
...the more they tighten their grip, the mroe the industry will slip through their fingers...

They were using a government owned computer on government property with government employees everywhere and thus they were easily caught without infringing on any contitutional rights

Trying to catch a Private user on their private comuter in their home with their bought account from their ISP provider presents all kind of legal issues such as the government trying to get records from the Private ISP provider to tap private users account violating the rights to privacy without due proccess and a warrent, and even then do you know how many users are on the Internet and how hard it would be to spot a P2P program in action unless you are standing behind one of the users?

The fines can't justify the Costs to catch even 1% of the Violaters at large so the best advice would be to NOT USE A UNIVERSITY OR PUBLIC COMPUTER for "grey area" downloading...lol

I've never used anything like PeerGuardian. I've been using bittorrent for years and was a WinMX junkie before that (anyone recall the beauty of WinMX?).

... and never in all the stuff I've DLed (I stick mostly to TV shows I miss or don't get on basic cable... kind of "TiVO the hard way" - I have certain standards and don't believe in stealing music. Yes, I am a hypocrite. I'm stating this in case anyone wants to flame)

My opinion is that these kids must be doing a LOT of pirating. And since ISPs share info, I don't know if there's much they could do on a user's end to prevent it. I would think if a computer was sucking max bandwidth 24/7, it would be flagged, wouldn't it? Regardless of whether or not their IP was blocked.

My two cents for what it's worth.