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BY RAMYA GOPAL

In print | March 22, 2007

Swarthmore has recently been threatened with a possible subpoena alleging two students’ infringement on national copyright laws through file sharing. The Recording Industry Association of America notified Information Technology Services about the alleged illegal activities of the students.

The first notice was received on Jan. 25 about file sharing that occurred on Jan. 18. The second was received on March 5 about file sharing that occurred on March 2.

The college has received many similar notices — 115 from this year alone — from various companies including Paramount Pictures, HBO and NBC Universal. However, this has been the “first time the college has been put on notice” of possible legal action, Director of Computing and Communication Services Judy Downing said. Downing is acting as the liaison between the copyrighters in Washington, D.C. and Swarthmore College.

According to Downing, students are usually caught by random scans, so the organization knows the students’ IP addresses but no other identifying information. The letter from the RIAA said, “in advance of serving a subpoena on you, our outside counsel will e-mail to you an early settlement letter that we ask you to forward to the user, customer or subscriber.”

In theory, if the students failed to respond to the early settlement letter, the RIAA would then subpoena Swarthmore in order to compel the college to release the names of the students.

Both students declined to comment on their planned response to the early settlement letter.

At this point, the college has yet to receive the early settlement letters. An out-of-court settlement could cost the students up to $4000 altogether or $750 per file. If the cases proceed to court, the students could accumulate fines of up to $50,000 each.

These two cases reflect the new aggressive policy stance that the RIAA has recently decided to take against college students. On Feb. 28, the RIAA distributed a press release detailing its new stance.

“The recording industry today launched a new and strengthened campus anti-piracy initiative that significantly expands the scope and volume of its deterrent efforts while offering a new process that gives students the opportunity to avoid a formal lawsuit by settling prior to a litigation being filed … The illegal downloading habits of students [on college campuses] remain extensive and disproportionately problematic,” the release stated.

According to the press release, the RIAA had sent out 400 litigation letters to 13 different universities in addition to launching a new website, http://www.p2plawsuits.com, that allows people to settle lawsuits or find information about file sharing and downloading.

“This is something new for the recording industry to be aggressive,” Dean of Students Jim Larimore said. “What we’re seeing is a series of announcements to go after students at major universities.”

Downing emphasized the college’s commitment to protecting students from the legal repercussions of downloading.

“We spend a lot of time trying to protect students, although [file-sharing] is not smart and illegal,” Downing said. The college initially implemented a comprehensive policy in June 2000 to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act enacted in 1998. In previous cases of copyright infringement, the notices gave information on the specific files shared and the downloading providers used, such as Limewire. In these two recent cases, this information was not provided.

According to Downing, Swarthmore’s policies are lenient in regard to such file sharing, compared to other colleges and universities. “We have very liberal penalties for students,” she said.

Among others, Downing cited several examples of stricter policies, such as Haverford’s. “Other schools remove net access immediately. Haverford imposes a fine of $75 for the first [violation],” Downing said.

“It is not our job to police what students do on a network. We provide the network as long as it’s not corrupting the facility,” Downing said.

Her other reason was that students are “smart and know how to respect the resource and fellow students. This [case] is an opportunity to remind students that there is a price to pay.”

Larimore discussed the case in terms of the relationship between students and the college.

“The challenge for me is to protect students’ privacy, but not [to provide] a sanctuary from the law. When we have notices, decisions have to be made,” Larimore said. He also noted that students had their own personal justification for illegal file sharing, but “it doesn’t change the fact that the law is established. The highest order of ethical decisions is more than just complying with a mandate,” Larimore said.

Larimore said he plans to respond to the notice by sending “information to students to raise awareness, let students know what they can do [to create a] greater awareness and not put themselves at risk,” Larimore said.

An awareness campaign would provide students with information about the support the college can provide in the event of legal action against them. Larimore would rather develop a consensus on mutual monitoring of ethics rather than “move into disciplinary nature.”

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