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UCLA: Editorial: RIAA finally makes a good move
(U-Wire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge)
UWIRE-01/06/2009-UCLA: Editorial: RIAA finally makes a good move (C)
2008 Daily Bruin via UWIRE
By Editorial Board, Daily Bruin (UCLA)
LOS ANGELES -- After more than five years of pushing legislation
against college students who are found illegally downloading music, the
Recording Industry Association of America has effectively ceased action
against universities, reports the Wall Street Journal.
In recent years the music industry began falling victim to the Internet
thanks to the surge of Napster, Kazaa and other similar sites and
programs. Young users and college students specifically were the RIAA's
first and largest group of legal targets.
"We are discontinuing our broad-based litigation program against
individuals," said Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA. The
association still plans to take action against customers who are found
guilty of repeatedly downloading music illegally.
The big difference is that rather than go through colleges such as UCLA
and unfairly targeting college students, the RIAA now hopes to work
with commercial Internet-service providers to track down guilty
individuals.
Colleges across the country, such as Cornell University, applauded this
drastic change. This was especially important following years of
stories about students across the country who were hit with thousands
of dollars in fines from the recording industry and sometimes were
subsequently forced to drop out of school to pay these fines.
UCLA, for example, tried to push a legal music-sharing campaign called
"Get Legal" that offered students a way to still participate in the act
of sharing music with fellow students.
Although pushed heavily by UCLA in 2007, Get Legal could not match the
popularity of its less-restrictive predecessors. Get Legal's programs
only offered streaming music rather than music files available for use
on portable music devices such as iPods.
Thus, they did not meet the needs and desires of a younger generation
that instead turned to cheaper � usually free � music downloads of
poor and illegal quality.
Since then, UCLA and others were forced to act as mediators between
record companies and guilty students rather than focusing on more
important matters such as administration and education.
Because record companies were only able to find the IP addresses of
illegal downloaders and not names of particular individuals, they could
not press charges.
The university, however, requires a log-in for the wireless network and
records IP addresses with the names of users. This system gave record
companies an easy way to track downloading on college campuses.
Illegal downloading should not be condoned, but starving college
students should not be the main target of such prosecution. Rather, the
sites that provide the platform for music sharing should be at fault as
well.
Not only does this move benefit universities, but this change of focus
should benefit the RIAA's efforts to fight illegal downloading in the
long-run. Going through Internet service providers should prove to be a
much more direct, as well as less-criticized, method for finding
suspect and guilty individuals.
The current state of the economy as well as the continuing prevalence
of portable music devices such as the iPod, means the days of illegal
downloading are far from over.
However, leveling the field for finding guilty parties is a huge step
forward for college students everywhere.
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((Distributed on bahalf of U-Wire via M2 Communications Ltd -
http://www.m2.com))
((U-Wire - http://www.uwire.com))
Copyright ? 2009 U-Wire
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