The Recording Industry Association of America sent pre-litigation letters to universities last month, with N.C. State receiving the second most — now it’s the Motion Picture Association of America’s turn.
According to Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the MPAA, 44 percent of the movie industry’s annual financial losses are attributed to illegal movie downloading by college students.
This statistic prompted Congress to ask for a list such as the RIAA one, in which it could track downloads at universities, according to Duckworth.
The list includes NCSU, which received 636 copyright-infringement notices and is ranked 14th on the list.
“The list reflects the amount of infringement notices during the time period of September to December of 2006,” Duckworth said.
The MPAA can track downloads through each universities server which tracks IP addresses of its users. But one of the tips Duckworth gave to avoid copyright infringements is finding legal downloading sites.
One of those is Ruckus, a Web site that the Inter-Residence Council signed with so students may download music for free.
Ruckus is one of several sites that has signed an agreement with record labels to provide legal music to its users.
“Before a program like Ruckus, the options are go broke or break the law,” Ed Cheely, Ruckus’ director of campus sales, said. “It puts together the best legal option for students.”
According to Cheely, 10,000 students at UNC-Chapel Hill have already signed up for the program — students at a university absent from both the RIAA and MPAA’s lists.
Cheely said he hopes to see similar success at NCSU.
But one holdup to this is the fact that the Information Technology Division does not know about the IRC’s deal with Ruckus, according to Carrie Levow, the ResNet coordinator.
Cheely said he isn’t worried about it either, as Ruckus already has a deal with the UNC System.
“Ruckus servers are able to send out to any of the schools in the North Carolina education system,” Cheely said.
But downloading and even the prevention of downloading movies can be a bit more complicated. After House Representative Howard Berman asked the MPAA to compile the list, the group hopes to use it to crack down on university piracy, Duckworth said.
The copyright infringements are a result of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act signed in 1998, which limits the liability of online service providers for the infringements.
Duckworth said there are four key methods for reducing the illegal downloading: creating network filters, finding legit online services, education of the problem and enforcement of the law.
“This problem is causing a loss of $500 million a year, meaning a loss of jobs in the industry,” Duckworth said. “Many of these jobs are ones that graduating students will want to pursue after school.”
