This week, OIT received another fifty of those nasty pre-settlement notices from the RIAA demanding students pay thousands of dollars or be taken to court. Here is an excerpt of a letter from the Dean's office sent to all UT students today:
"As you may have heard, the University of Tennessee yesterday received 50 letters from the Recording Industry Association of America. Each of these letters asked the university to forward an attached letter to an unnamed student. The RIAA is offering a pre-trial settlement to these students before filing suit for potential copyright infringement. The information provided by the RIAA listed only the student's IP address, the time at which the student was allegedly sharing copyrighted files, and a listing of those files.
UT is now in the process of forwarding the RIAA letters to the students involved. It is critical to note that we have not released the students' names or any information about them to RIAA and are serving only as a conduit for the information. UT feels that it is important for these students to receive this information as quickly as possible so that they can make an informed decision, though UT has not made a recommendation to them about how to proceed."
It's strange to me that the RIAA insists on building this perception among college students (aka the next generation of working-class Americans) of being a sue-happy money-grubbing monster. How will they convince these same college students to work for them after terrorizing their pursuit of music? The RIAA sees its diminishing role in the music industry as labels discover new ways to manage relationships between artists and fans, and as technology emerges that allows for better systems of copyright and royalty management.
They have sought to protect an industry of promoters, distributors, and middlemen lining their pockets with artists' hard earned monies. Their plight could be considered an economic "shakeout" of excess baggage from the industry, and they're harvesting profits while they can.
Good luck getting my cash, noobs!