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January 02, 2008, 11:19 AM ET
Bucking Music Piracy Accusations at the U. of Washington
As part of a December salvo in its war against illegally downloaded music, the Recording Industry Association of America sent letters to the University of Washington, leveling charges of piracy against 16 students and threatening legal action. But the university is refusing to pass the letters along—for now.
UW isn’t sure the students are to blame, a university spokesman told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer yesterday.
The problem is that the letters actually accuse Internet addresses, and students are only guilty by association with those addresses. In other words, a student’s computer may have connected to the Internet and downloaded a music file using one of the addresses, but that doesn’t mean the student was the person operating the computer at that time. It could have been another student at the controls, or even another computer temporarily assigned to that Internet address.
The university says it is going to investigate, attempting to ascertain the real culprits, before passing along the letters, which usually ask for $3,000 to $5,000 from students in order to avoid a lawsuit.—Josh Fischman
Categories: Campus-Piracy, Legal-Troubles
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