Fergie's Tech Blog

Studios, RIAA Target Student 'Piracy'

Daniel Terdiman writes on C|Net News:

The advocacy organizations for the film and music industries on Thursday unveiled their latest initiative aimed at staunching piracy on university computer networks.

To launch the initiative, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sent letters to presidents of 40 universities in 25 states informing them of piracy problems on their schools' local area networks and asking for immediate action to stop it.

The organizations say that college students are increasingly using programs such as Direct Connect (DC++), MyTunes and OurTunes to trade music across their schools' LANs without having to send or receive files across the public Internet.

According to a release [.pdf] issued by the RIAA and the MPAA, campus LANs provide an attractive way to engage in illegal file sharing without being subject to the consequences that come from doing so across the regular Internet.

posted by Fergie @ 4/27/2006 04:51:00 PM