Recording Industry Suits Hit UC Berkeley

The Recording Industry Association of America unleashed a second wave of lawsuits against 532 song-swappers nationwide last week, including a handful of students at UC Berkeley.

The student file-sharers, who have yet to be named, are among 89 students from 21 universities accused of illegally sharing songs.

"We felt we could not stand by and watch while an entire industry, the most vibrant music industry in the world, was being downloaded to death," said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, in a press conference.

The lawsuits are part of a industry crusade to end music piracy. The association is targeting what they believe is a file-sharing haven: universities where students take advantage of high-speed Internet access.

In some universities, more than 60 percent of their networks are consumed by file-sharing, according to Sherman.

"Obviously, college students are a big part of the problem, and therefore it was only a question of time before university users would be named defendants," Sherman said.

UC Berkeley officials have declined to comment until they see the subpoenas.

The lawsuits could arrive within weeks if a federal judge approves them, said Jonathan Lamy, the association's spokesperson. Lamy declined to comment on how many of the lawsuits are directed at UC Berkeley students.

Students found pirating songs could face civil penalties ranging from $750 to $150,000 per downloaded file.

Sherman said the industry is randomly targeting schools for subpoenas. The number of lawsuits in each university is also by chance, Lamy said.

But the association chooses people to sue based on the "egregiousness of their infringing activity," Sherman said. The average number of files shared by the defendants in this round of lawsuits was 837.

The association has settled more than 400 cases so far, with an average settlement of $3,000 each.

"This is not a revenue-generating exercise," Sherman said.

The lawsuits against anonymous users is a tactic called "John Doe" litigation, which is used to sue people whose names are unknown. The file-swappers can be traced only by their Internet protocol address, an online signature unique to every computer.

Instead, subpoenas are issued to the Internet service provider including universities that support massive high-speed networks. The campus can then be forced to reveal the file-sharer's identity in court.

As illegal downloading has thrived, the recording industry has lost about one-third of its sales in the last three years, with record stores near college campuses suffering from sizable losses, Sherman said.

But Amoeba Music on Telegraph Avenue has not seen a drop in its record sales since the downloading boom hit UC Berkeley, said Allen Lewites, the store's manager.

"As much as we feel people are looking at other ways to get music, like burning and downloading, we have been pretty solid," Lewites said.

Many universities have since launched their own music subscription services to combat piracy by partnering with legal online music services. Pennsylvania State University recently struck a deal with Napster II to allow students to share legally.

Sherman said even after these lawsuits are settled, his mission to bring people back into the legitimate music market is far from over, and that other universities can expect to see lawsuits in the future.

"So many college students are concerned about the aggregate impact of development in Brazil, or sulfur from power plants, because they recognize that the actions of one person contribute to a global problem with adverse global consequences," Sherman said. "It's no different with respect to illegal file-sharing."

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