It all started with downloading one song off LimeWire.
That one song last semester turned into several hundred songs.
About five months later, those several hundred songs turned into several thousand dollars worth of songs for the Recording Industry Association of America.
It’s a “process that is a huge stress and something no college student should have to go through,” a N.C. State sophomore, who settled for several thousand dollars with the RIAA in June and wished to remain anonymous to protect her identity, said.
The student was among the first group of RIAA copyright infringement lawsuits at NCSU Feb. 28. At that time, the RIAA sent letters to 37 students, giving them the option to settle.
“I didn’t realize I was file-sharing, and I wasn’t familiar with the [University’s] policy,” the student said.
According to the student, she received the first e-mail from ResNet in January, stating that her IP address was connected to file-sharing.
“I uninstalled LimeWire at that point and thought it wouldn’t be a problem anymore,” she said.
The student received another letter from the RIAA in February, which stated that she could settle for several thousand dollars, not wanting to state the specific amount.
“I went to the Student Legal Services and talked to student lawyers about the e-mails,” she said. “I could either settle, or do nothing and just wait until the attorneys subpoenaed the court so they had our names and not just IP addresses.”
The student said she chose not to settle after that letter and waited to see if the RIAA would actually get a subpoena.
According to Pam Gerace, director of Student Legal Services, 23 out of the 37 students did not initially choose to settle. She said she is unaware of how many students from the first group ended up settling.
“I just waited a couple of months until I got a call from the student lawyer, and she said that the lawyers actually went through with the subpoena, and they were going to get the names of the students, so at that point I just decided to settle,” the student said. “There was a chance that I was going to get sued for even more money.”
The student said she had to spend her summer working 60-hour weeks to pay off the money.
Meanwhile, in June, the RIAA targeted another group of 43 NCSU students.
According to Gerace, 38 of the students did not initially choose to settle, and the RIAA notified the University Aug. 9 of “John Doe” lawsuits, which could allow the recording industry to obtain names and addresses of the IP addresses.
The University notified the students who were affected, and they have the option to file a motion to quash; otherwise the University must comply to the court order by Sept. 11 and submit the students’ names and addresses to the RIAA.
Gerace said that, to her knowledge, no student has filed a motion to quash or void the subpoena because it is going to be quicker and probably cheaper to settle.
“We’ve been advising students and trying to encourage students to get in touch with a law firm and get a motion to quash,” she said. “If one person did that, either each person could join or wait and see what the court would do, but no one has done that for many reasons.”
The student said she wished she hadn’t downloaded music, and that other students should think before they decide to participate in the illegal activity.
“It’s so unfair that [the RIAA is] picking a random 40 students even though everyone on campus downloads music,” the anonymous student said. “The [RIAA] is so deceiving. Every student should invest in iTunes. Ninety-nine cents is well worth it if you’re going to have to pay several thousand dollars later.”
According to Gerace, the RIAA has been targeting N.C. State very heavily, and according to an article she read this week, the recording industry will send even more letters to NCSU students very soon.
“N.C. State is on every list that comes out with letters, and the RIAA says the reason they do that is because we have one of the highest incidences across the country for illegally downloading,” Gerace said. “We’ve been hit with every wave; I’m expecting another round of students very soon.”
According to Gerace, the RIAA also would not include a confidentialityclause in the release of their letters to the students, which she said isimportant so that neither party will release any of the terms of thesettlement or lawsuit.
“We got in touch with the record industry because we were really concernedbecause we wanted one in there,” Gerace said. “They told us to send themone, and we did, and they promptly told us ‘no.'”
Gerace said this caused a problem for the students because they now haveto face the possibility that if they settle, the RIAA may releasetheir names and IP addresses to other record companies that aren’t part ofthe settlement.
“So students were stuck between a rock and a hard place,” she said. “Ihave not been real pleased with how they’ve conducted this anyway, so Ihonestly can not say at this point that I would trust them not to [releasenames].”