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H 76°, L 55°Last spring, the University of Wisconsin took a bold stand against the Recording Industry Association of America, refusing to forward pre-litigation settlement offers on to UW students who had used university Internet connections for illegal file-sharing.
The RIAA would not actually back up its threats with legal action, the thought process went, and so UW — unless forced to do so by subpoena — would not help the RIAA's case by forwarding settlement letters seeking thousands of dollars in damages to students.
It turns out UW was wrong.
The RIAA has, in fact, made good on its threats to pursue file sharers aggressively.
One UW student, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Badger Herald last week that her decision not to immediately settle — acting on UW's legal advice — ended up costing her $1,000 more than the original terms offered by the RIAA.
Though one can certainly challenge the wisdom or efficacy of the RIAA's tactics, it is the actions of UW and its Division of Information Technology that actually concern us more. Despite clinging to an outdated and failing business model, it seems to us the RIAA is on the legal and, indeed, moral high ground. It should not be ignored that the students UW has been fighting to protect did, in all likelihood, knowingly break the law. Although the victim in this case is a giant recording industry and the perpetrator is a lowly college student, and not vice versa, stealing is stealing and should be treated as such.
"Downloading is a nearly universal activity of people under a certain age," DoIT Interim CIO Ken Frazier told the Herald, adding that he thinks it is "ridiculous" for the RIAA to pin the downloading problem on college students.
Statements like these leave us shaking our heads, wondering why DoIT and the UW legal team are expending so much time and effort on protecting students — the vast majority of whom are adults — from the consequences of their illegal actions. UW still, for example, will only forward an RIAA settlement offer on to offending students who explicitly request it.
Despite their misgivings about the recording industry, UW and DoIT should step out of the picture and stop interfering with the judicial process. It's not clear they're doing the offending students any good, anyway.
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It costs university systems across the country literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to comply with RIAA and forward their settlement letters, as has been previously reported here and elsewhere. They might be looking out for the students, but they also don’t want to be footing the bill for the RIAA’s dirty work (whose method has now been both rejected and upheld in various districts).
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Um, this article is completely wrong. If you are going to state that the UW thought that the recording industry was not going to follow the pre-litigation letters with court action you should cite sources that this statement is true. You will find no reliable source with this information, since it is untrue.
The fact that a settlement “cost $1000 more” is purely a statement by the recording industry. Any amount of money they choose to settle for is completely arbitrary and can be altered up until the time the ink is dry.
Statements such as the recording industry is taking the “moral high ground” by asking the university to forward nameless letters to individuals is exactly what the recording industry was attempting to elicit with their campaign. They wanted to create a position where they could play the university and their students off of one another and create opinions like this one.
If this methodology is so moral why does the recording industry not do this with commercial internet service providers? Commercial internet service providers fought the recording industry to the point where the courts to require a judicial order in order to release subscriber information. Since Universities are not making money from their internet service the recording industry knew such fights would not come from this community. Instead they invented this campaign. The UW is correct in saying it is an “end run” around the legal system. It is. There is no legality to a settlement letter arriving at the universities doorstep not addressed to an individual. The statement in the final paragraph that the UW should "stop interfering with the judicial process" is wrong, because the letters the UW didn't forward are not a part of the legal process.
If you believe your copyright has been violated you have a legal right to enforce that. You do not have a legal right to elicit third party assistance with your investigation.
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Your March 22 editorial is titled, “DoIT handled RIAA well.” This one (above) takes the opposite stance. The UW didn’t change its response between March and October. Why did you?
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So, basically, the Badger Herald thinks that whenever any third party shows up, claiming that you broke the law (whether singling you out by name, by number, or by physical description), the University should grant that third party unfettered access to you and forward on whatever threats they want to make? What happened to student privacy? Aren’t there some safety issues here that we should be worried about? And most importantly, when did it become the University’s job to serve as the taxpayer-subsidized detectives for private organizations?
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“stealing is stealing and should be treated as such.” Let’s be clear: Copyright infringement ain’t stealing. See Dowling vs. US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowlingv.United_States
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“It should not be ignored that the students UW has been fighting to protect did, in all likelihood, knowingly break the law.”
Presumed guilty until proven innocent? When will we as a society learn that this is a little backwards. If I were to accuse students of a crime, UW/DoIT should help me in my accusations? Hey good idea….
Badger Herald, I accuse you of of stealing my parking spot. UW, you must help! (Of course if I had proof I’d pursue this in normal legal channels).
It is very wise of the UW and DoIT to let RIAA fight it’s own battles. This is a legal matter between RIAA and the accused. Who is the UW to judge what constituents proof of guilt? And until that’s done, they would only be helping persecute students that should be presumed innocent.
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Wow, this article is wrong on so many levels. Disagreeing with a previous stance, Presumming Guilt, privacy concerns. My opinion of the herald just took another step down. (didn’t think that was possible)
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I understand the basic stance of the opinion board in saying that students were breaking the law and they should be prepared to face the consequences of doing so.
That said, I totally disagree with their opinion that DoIT should be strong-armed by the RIAA into being a proxy enforcer of a legally-questionable methodology. DoIT’s business is to forward Internet content as quickly and reliably as possible to their clients. Thankfully, they are not in the business of policing content, nor are they in the business of tracking down alleged n’er-do-wells and serving them with threatening letters.
Your position on student responsibility is well-taken. Your blaming of DoIT for their refusal to become lackeys of the RIAA is not.
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There needs to be some clarification here: We have been consistent in our editorials.
On March 21st, we published an Editorial called “Suing fish in a barrel.” The last line, if you will:
“While we appreciate DoIT’s good faith effort, students have a right to know what might be coming and are capable of making their own decisions about their futures in court.”
The “editorial” many of you are citing as inconsistent, “DoIT handled RIAA well” was a letter to the editor, not an editorial. We have stayed consistent.
-Badger Herald Editorial Board
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You couldn’t be more off base. You assume that DoIT is to blame, just because the CIO (a position that also functions as CIO of the entire UW system) said he thinks its ridiculous?
Do your research. You really think anybody other than UW Legal made this decision?
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So it must be the Herald’s position that anyone contemplating legal action regarding UW students should contact any possibly related UW department for assistance? Sure sounds so when you state “While we appreciate DoIT’s good faith effort, students have a right to know what might be coming and are capable of making their own decisions about their futures in court.”
I’d also argue that students do know what might be coming…you’d have to live in a cave to not know that downloading music illegally can lead to lawsuits. Maybe the Herald should provide the services the RIAA wants…put YOUR money where your mouth is.
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Just to clarify the response two up from here..
The UW-Madison CIO is the Chief Information Officer of the UW-Madison campus and is also the director of DoIT. He (currently, she, previously) is not the CIO of the UW System. UW System is governed by the Council of Chief Information Officers, made up of the CIOs of each campus.
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Totally preposterous, how could you seek the assistance of a third party which has a duty of not disclosing any private information. I think it is a violation of privacy of the student and UW-Madison is absolutely right in it’s stance to not forward the names of the students who were sent the pre-litigation letters. The badger herald has taken a stance that is totally non acceptable and hope fully this would have changed. According to the FERPA(Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) I guess the school does not have to forward the letters. There might also be the case of multiple students sharing the same IP address in which case it is hard to decide which of them is guilty of the charge. I hope that the Badger Herald gets it’s sources and facts straight before it comments on such sensitive issues which have a huge impact on college life.
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Totally preposterous, how could you seek the assistance of a third party which has a duty of not disclosing any private information. I think it is a violation of privacy of the student and UW-Madison is absolutely right in it’s stance to not forward the names of the students who were sent the pre-litigation letters. The badger herald has taken a stance that is totally non acceptable and hope fully this would have changed. According to the FERPA(Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) I guess the school does not have to forward the letters. There might also be the case of multiple students sharing the same IP address in which case it is hard to decide which of them is guilty of the charge. I hope that the Badger Herald gets it’s sources and facts straight before it comments on such sensitive issues which have a huge impact on college life.