p2pnet news | RIAA news:- The Big 4 organised music cartel’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is going flat out in a campaign to terrorise American students into buying Big 4 product.

Staffs at universities across the country had been cowed into acting as unpaid copyright enforcers for Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG.

But not all of the schools are cooperating.

The University of Kansas is refusing to forward RIAA so-called pre-litigation letters to students on the grounds that doing so could be an invasion of student privacy, says the Daily Kansan student newspaper.

The settlement letters are in fact dangerous self-incrimination documents. Students pay $3,000 or so in the hopes of being let off the RIAA sue ‘em all hook with no guarantee that, having freely handed over personal data, they won’t once again appear on RIAA hit list some time in the future.

“Jenny Mehmedovic, coordinator for information and technology policy and planning, said under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the University has no obligation to forward the letters to students,” says the story, going on:

It also will not release any identifying information without a court order or subpoena.

Mehmedovic said the University operates by an internal process of response when it receives a complaint. It sends the appropriate user a letter from the University notifying them of the problem.

In past years, the University operated a “three-strikes” policy, in which students were alotted three warnings about their illegal activity before getting their Internet privileges revoked. This fall, the University is enacting a zero tolerance policy, where students lose Internet access on the first notice of copyright infringement.

Todd Cohen, director of University Relations, said the first responsibility of the University is to protect the privacy of its network users and notify users of the problem and the rules, adds the the Daily Kansan.

In a recent poll, “Have the RIAA sue ‘em all lawsuits persuaded you to stop sharing?” - p2pnet asked.

Of the 1,077 readers who responded, 94.1% (1,013) said No!

Slashdot it!

Also See:
campaign to terrorise - RIAA student victimisation campaign, July 21, 2007
Daily Kansan - University won’t release names to recording industry, July 25, 2007
p2pnet - p2pnet RIAA poll: final results, April 23, 2007

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 8:41 am and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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