Illegal-music crackdown targets students at WM

By Austin Wright

The crackdown by record companies on thousands of college students accused of sharing music illegally is reaching Virginia.

A federal judge in Norfolk is expected to rule today on whether the Recording Industry Association of America can be given the names of 20 College of William and Mary students so it can seek financial damages for copyright infringement.

Seven William and Mary students have already settled with the association and paid $3,000 to $5,000 each for sharing music without paying for it.

The recording-industry group has said it is seeking settlements from students at three other Virginia schools: Virginia Tech, Virginia Military Institute and the University of Virginia.

A William and Mary student who is being sued said he and others are boxed in.

"They're holding a legal gun to my head," said the student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the industry group does not know his identity.

"I had no intent to make a profit off of it," he said. "What I did was purely for personal enjoyment. It's not like I downloaded it and was selling it."

The industry group's litigation campaign to deter illegal downloading on college campuses began in February 2007 when the group sent 400 pre-litigation settlement letters to students through their colleges or universities. The letters told students that they must pay settlements or face lawsuits.

Since then, the group has sent letters through schools to more than 7,000 college students. The letters are sent through the schools because the group doesn't know the students' names - just the addresses of their computers.

In all, 27 William and Mary students received letters - 15 in January and 12 in April 2007.

"Bringing lawsuits was never our first choice," said Liz Kennedy, a spokeswoman for the industry group in Washington. "It has always been the first choice of record companies to go after the businesses that promote and facilitate illegal file sharing, but there became a point where personal accountability needed to be factored in."

Litigation has been a slow process, especially against college students who download through their schools' Internet networks. The investigative technique used to catch people sharing songs illegally involves identifying them through their computer's code, called an IP address.

Only the network providers - in these cases the colleges - know the name of each code's user. The recording-industry group has been seeking court subpoenas to force college officials to match names of accused students to the IP addresses. In many cases, judges grant the group 's request.

The group also asks the colleges to forward prelitigation settlement letters to the students whose IP addresses appear on them. Kennedy said that half the students who receive these letters typically reveal themselves and settle.

William and Mary officials have not disclosed student names, but did forward 27 letters from the industry group to the accused students.

U.S. District Judge Walter D. Kelley Jr. has previously denied the group 's subpoenas for the names of William and Mary students who didn't settle. Kelley has since resigned, and the group is asking U.S. District Judge Henry C. Morgan Jr. today to overturn Kelley's decision.

William and Mary spokesman Brian Whitson said the school would turn over the names if directed to do so by the court.

The William and Mary student who requested anonymity said the school notified him of the pre-litigation letter on the day the settlement payment was due. He said the letter told him to pay $3,000 or risk litigation. His parents wouldn't let him settle without first consulting a lawyer, so he missed the deadline.

Kennedy said the industry group would have been willing to discuss the situation with the student and might have extended his deadline.

The student plans to pay $4,000 to settle the claim. The group 's letter forwarded to him by the university listed 77 songs that he made available through file-sharing programs. The student said he had about 500 songs on his computer that had been downloaded illegally using a program called LimeWire.

"Do I think what I did was wrong?" he said. "No, I don't. What I did is ingrained in our culture - everyone I know who has an iPod does it."

However, he acknowledged that he has stopped downloading illegally and has persuaded another family member to do the same.

A study released in February by the NPD Group, a market research company, said that in 2007, 19 percent of U.S. Internet users engaged in online file sharing.

A 2006 study by a market research company called Student Monitor suggested that more than half of college students download music and movies illegally.

"A marketplace dominated by piracy doesn't reward the artists," Kennedy said. "And universities have an important role to play in teaching students the value of intellectual property."

She said litigation is necessary to protect a product that is evolving from one bought and sold in stores to one searched and downloaded on the Internet. She cited a 2007 study by the Institute for Policy Innovation, a nonpartisan think tank, that said global music piracy costs the U.S. economy $12.5 billion annually.

Though the industry group 's litigation campaign aimed at college students began last year, the group has filed more than 29,000 lawsuits since 2003 against people it says shared songs illegally.

Austin Wright, (757) 446-2667, austin.wright@pilotonline.com