Monday, December 2, 2002

Recording Industry Plans to Accelerate Complaints About Illegal File Sharing By SCOTT CARLSON The recording industry plans to increase the number of complaints it lodges with colleges when it believes students are using file-sharing programs in violation of copyright law, an entertainment-industry official said last week. Cary H. Sherman, president and general counsel of the Recording Industry Association of America, announced the new push in an e-mail message to the president of Pennsylvania State University at University Park, Graham B. Spanier. The message preceded the first meeting of a committee of recording-industry representatives and university administrators. The committee's members will be trying to hammer out differences on copyright law and develop ways to deter illegal file sharing through peer-to-peer, or "P2P," networks and other means. In his note, Mr. Sherman said that CD sales had dropped because of piracy and that with the arrival of the "critical holiday retail season," colleges and universities would be likely to receive more copyright-infringement notices from his group. "Until now," he wrote, "we've been somewhat circumspect in the number of notices we send and to date have sent a relatively small number of P2P-related notices compared to the large number of infringements we're finding, but we no longer feel that we can afford the luxury of ignoring infringements." At the end of the note, Mr. Sherman encouraged Mr. Spanier to "feel free to forward this information to anyone else in the university community." In an interview, Mr. Sherman said that the recording-industry association had not yet worked out a strategy for the new push to catch infringers and did not know how many more notices would go out. But he said that the industry would not rely on automated notices, as companies like MediaForce and NetPD have in the past. The two companies, which use software that automatically looks for copyright infringers and fires off cease-and-desist letters, have swamped administrators who deal with file sharing on campuses. "The idea is not to inundate universities with things they can't really handle, but to give them notice of things that they can do something about," he said. Mr. Spanier, who called Mr. Sherman's letter a "courtesy," said: "My feeling is that they are looking for people who are massively infringing," not students who download the occasional song. The letter also referred to the planned meeting between the recording industry and university administrators, which will convene on December 10 at Penn State. Mr. Spanier said that the meeting would be an attempt to "explore areas where we have mutual interests" in copyright issues. University officials are concerned about preserving fair-use provisions for libraries and scholarship, he said. Mr. Spanier will head the higher-education side of the committee, which will include, among others, Molly Corbett Broad, president of the University of North Carolina, and Charles E. Phelps, provost of the University of Rochester. For the entertainment industry, Hilary B. Rosen, chief executive officer of the Recording Industry Association of America, and Jack Valenti, chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association of America, are among those expected to attend. Representatives of Educause, the American Council on Education, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges will also be there. Mr. Spanier said the meeting may result in coordinated lobbying on copyright issues. "We can hope to cooperate with each other on legislation that could be very helpful to higher education," he said. "In the past, legislation has popped up, and we've found ourselves arguing with each other about it." The text of the e-mail message follows: Cary Sherman President and general counsel From: CSherman@riaa.com Subject: To: gspanier@psu.edu Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 19:03:58 -0500 Hi Graham. Wanted to send you a note to give you a heads-up that, in the next few weeks, we plan to increase notices of P2P infringement. As you know, the record industry has been facing steadily increasing piracy on P2P systems and other areas of the Internet. We've also seen a dramatic drop in CD sales this year. As Internet piracy continues to exponentially rise with no relief in sight, and with the critical holiday retail season upon us, we are planning to increase the number of notices we're sending on P2P piracy. Until now, we've been somewhat circumspect in the number of notices we send and to date have sent a relatively small number of P2P-related notices compared to the large number of infringements we're finding, but we no longer feel that we can afford the luxury of ignoring infringements. These notices will be sent to the ISP or organization that is responsible for the Internet protocol address from which an infringing sound recording is offered. This will certainly increase the number of P2P infringement notices that universities and colleges are receiving from the RIAA. Just wanted to make sure you were aware of this before we started sending out the notices. If you have questions about this, please let me know. And please feel free to forward this information to anyone else in the university community. Have a great Thanksgiving holiday, and I look forward to seeing you on December 10th. Cary Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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