To the Editor:
Providence Business News
January 3, 2008

In his December 31, 2007 article, ("Brown ensnared in national music-sharing dispute"), Providence Business News writer David Ortiz has captured the predicament most institutions of higher education find themselves in when they are asked to be the “copyright police” by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

The RIAA has used its “pre-litigation” letters as a form of extortion, or at the very least bullying, to force individual consumers to succumb to the legal threat of very expensive lawsuits by paying up without the RIAA ever having to produce a shred of legal evidence. The schools feel obligated to inform the students to allow them to make the choice of pay a little now, or face the threat of paying a lot later.

But the RIAA’s actions are those of desperation.

According to an article by Nate Anderson in the online journal ARS Technica (posted January 2nd) the University of Oregon is fighting back on behalf of its students. “Writing in [the]… New York Times, columnist Adam Liptak covered the case and pointed out another school in the state (Portland State) had turned over such information back in 2004, but that it had done so on two roommates since the university couldn't tell which of their computers had been used. The RIAA tried to get the non-offending student to settle-for $4,500. The girl's mother told Liptak that the process was "basically extortion." The lawsuit filed against the girl was later dropped.   Liptak's own take on the situation is worth quoting because of what it indicates about mainstream reaction to the RIAA's legal campaign. "No one should shed tears for people who steal music and have to face the consequences," he wrote. "But it is nonetheless heartening to see a university decline to become the industry's police officer and instead to defend the privacy of its students."

The RIAA has been targeting college students since the days when Napster first arrived on the scene in 2001. In the PBN article, Cara Duckworth, a spokesperson for the RIAA, claims the vast majority of their woes are caused by students who take advantage of robust college computer networks to conduct their piracy.  This is a typical ploy by the RIAA to just loosely follow the facts.  Mr. Ortiz quotes the market research firm of NPD as saying that 1.3 billion songs were downloaded illegally by college students.  He failed to note that according to the National Retail Federation's 2007 Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey less than 20% of college students actually live on campus. So while the RIAA targets students in college residence halls, the vast majority of piracy is occurring over broadband links in people’s homes, not in the dorm room.

In Rhode Island, all college students have the ability to use a legal music download service called RUCKUS.  In the past year over 20,000 college students in Rhode Island have downloaded over 8.6 million songs --- completely legally. Hmm, 20,000 acting legally, and 20 singled out. The RIAA will also sputter about how it is the responsibility of colleges to teach their students about the moral and ethical issues of illegally downloading music.>  A recent survey by Brandeis University of eighty colleges found that over 68% do provide education to their students about copyrights and piracy. A full 57% of those respondents actually block ALL peer to peer network traffic.Yet I have never seen an ad on MTV sponsored by the RIAA educating the youth of America about illegal music sharing.  I find the RIAA’s stance that it is higher education’s responsibility to educate people who are coming to our campuses already well-versed in how to pirate music when the RIAA has no educational effort underway to teach kids before they get to college.

Yesterday The Motley Fool issued a report warning investors away from the music industry, concluding with: "As I've said before, a good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value. If it starts to pursue paying customers -- which doesn't seem that outlandish at this point -- then I guess we'll all know the extent of the desperation."Or as Professor Lawrence Lessig has said; “The milk of innovation does not come from cash cows.”

Sincerely,

George K. Loftus
Executive Director
OSHEAN, Inc.

Please also read this recent article from the Associated Press on how the "MPAA Admits Mistake on Downloading Study."