UC
Berkeley students hit by file sharing
suit
By Ada Tso
Daily Californian
BERKELEY (U-Wire)—Three unidentified UC Berkeley students are among 64
college students nationwide hit with the latest round of copyright infringement
lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America last Thursday.
Targeting 17 campuses nationwide—including UCLA and UC San Diego—the
suit alleges the illegal exchange of copyrighted music via Internet, a popular
high-speed university computer network.
“
Those sued in this round, as in previous rounds, are those engaged in egregious
levels of file-sharing,” said association spokesperson Jenni
Engebretsen.
The latest round of lawsuits marks the third time this year the recording industry
has taken action against more than 30 UC Berkeley students for downloading illegally
through i2Hub, a file-sharing application.
According to Engebretsen, 38 UC Berkeley students have been sued since the recording
industry began filing lawsuits in 2003 against individuals for illegal downloads.
Twenty-one of those cases have been settled.
College students sued in April shared on average more than 2,300 MP3 files each,
with some sharing as many as 13,600 files, according to an association news release.
“
These lawsuits have helped to arrest the enormous growth of peer-to-peer
networks,” Engebretsen said.
UC Berkeley is scheduled to receive subpoenas requesting the names of the students,
who are currently identified by their unique Internet protocol addresses.
After the university reviews the subpoenas and determines whether they are valid,
it will release the identities of the students to the association, which can
then directly sue those individuals, said Residential Computing Manager Dedra
Chamberlin.
Under federal law, first-time offenders caught violating music copyrights face
up to $250,000 in fines and a possible five years in prison. Most settlements,
however, are generally far less than those penalties, Engebretsen said.
She declined to disclose the figures of actual settlements.
Residents of UC Berkeley residence halls have a bandwidth limit of five gigabytes
for downloads and uploads. Though residential computing monitors the amount of
bandwidth used, it does not control what files are being shared.
“
We provide a limited amount of bandwidth to each resident and what they choose
to do with it is not our business. We cannot control the actions of each
resident,” said Serena Hser, a residential computing consultant at the
Unit 2 residence hall.
Throughout Welcome Week, all incoming students living in residence halls were
warned against illegal file sharing and were encouraged to turn to legal music
downloading alternatives like iTunes and RealRhapsody, Chamberlin said.
“
We’re doing as much as we possibly can to educate students about what they
could face. We don’t want them to face a subpoena,” she
said.
Some students felt the increasing number of suits were an effective tool to curb
illegal file sharing.
“
Even if I wasn’t morally opposed to downloading, I think I’d be nervous
to do it. Still, it wouldn’t stop me. Think about all the people who are
downloading music. What are the chances that I’ll be the one targeted?” said
freshman Megan Geuss.
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