RIAA, MPAA Target Campus Networks

The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America have sent letters to the presidents of 40 universities in 25 states, alerting them that students are engaged in illegal file swapping over their internal networks.

According to the groups' claims, students are opting to swap through internal college LANs in order to avoid sharing over the Internet, which carries a greater threat of being caught. Programs such as DC++, along with several other applications, make the seemingly covert file sharing possible.

Illicit file swapping has been an issue on college campuses for a long time, however the trend of swapping files over the school LAN is fairly new. The two organizations say action is needed now before the problem gets out of control.

Although the specific schools have not been named, they are located in states such as California, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and Washington D.C.

"We cannot ignore the growing misuse of campus LAN systems or the toll this means of theft is taking on our industry," RIAA president Cary Sherman said in a statement. "We hope administrators will take this opportunity to fully evaluate their systems and take action to stop theft by all means."

At least one of the parties involved has targeted campus LANs in the past. In April 2003, the RIAA sued the student operators of four campus file sharing networks at three schools. The action resulted in over a dozen servers being shut down after stolen music was discovered on them.

"Campus LAN piracy is not new, yet the problem has taken on new urgency," Sherman added. "We know from past experience that bringing this problem to light can effect real change. We are hopeful that this new systematic program will yield even more positive results."

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