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March 05, 2007, 03:47 PM ET
Return to Sender
Now that the Recording Industry Association of America has sent hundreds of prelitigation notices (The Chronicle, March 9) to college officials, it will be interesting to see whether those officials do as asked and forward the messages on to students suspected of song swapping.
Already, administrators at the University of North Dakota have said they will not honor the association's request. The RIAA has identified two Internet-protocol numbers at the university and fired off messages stating its intention to sue the students who used them for illegal downloading.
But North Dakota officials told The Bismarck Tribune that they cannot pass those messages along because they cannot conclusively match misbehaving students to the IP numbers. The university only keeps computer logs for 30 days, according to Dorette Kerian, its director of information technology, and the alleged copyright infractions took place more than a month ago.
The case at North Dakota is a noteworthy precedent: If more colleges decide not to forward the prelitigation notices for lack of evidence, the RIAA's new strategy might be fairly ineffective. It is still early in the game, though, and we will have to see how other institutions respond to the notices they get. --Brock Read
Categories: Campus-Piracy, Legal-Troubles
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