“The music industry’s lawsuit crusade against defenseless college students and housewives appears to have hit the skids lately,” Anders Bylund wrote yesterday in a blog post at the Motley Fool.
That might come as news to the Recording Industry Association of America. Sure, the trade group’s “John Doe” subpoenas have been knocked around a bit in court lately. But the industry is still moving forward with its campaign of sending pre-litigation notices to college students: Just last week, 403 settlement letters were sent to 22 universities. Officials at those institutions will now have to decide between passing the notices on to students and waiting for the trade group to come calling with “John Doe” subpoenas.
The institutions receiving letters this month are Arizona State, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Michigan State, and North Dakota State Universities; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Purdue University’s West Lafayette and Calumet campuses; the Universities of California at Santa Barbara, Connecticut, Maryland at College Park, Massachusetts at Amherst and Boston, Nebraska at Lincoln, Pennsylvania, and Pittsburgh; and the University of Wisconsin’s Eau Claire, Madison, Milwaukee, Stevens Point, Stout, and Whitewater campuses. —Brock Read
