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Play it smart: RIAA continues to target college students
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By
C.L. Lindsay III
16 April 2007
Dear CO-STAR:
I’ve heard rumors that people are getting sued again for downloading music, that college students are being targeted and getting sued by the hundreds. I’ve got a couple of questions. First, is this true? Second, I’ve got some downloading software on my computer from a long time ago, and some songs I downloaded way back when. Is just having that stuff on my computer illegal? Can they come after me for that?
- Bradley, Sophomore, Private College or University, Washington
Bradley:
OK first things first. What you’ve heard about the lawsuits, or more accurately pending lawsuits, is true. College students have come under fire in an ongoing campaign to stop illegal downloading.
This is all being done by the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA is the same organization that’s filed all the lawsuits you’ve heard about for the last couple years. They started this campaign in 1999 and since then have come after thousands and thousands of downloaders.
So you’ve been at risk for getting served by the RIAA the whole time you’ve been in college. The difference now is: they’re targeting you. Supposedly college students illegally download 1.3 billion dollars worth of music and movies annually. So the RIAA is singling you guys out. In February they sent legal papers to students at 15 schools. At the end of March they went after 405 more students at 23 different campuses. They’ve vowed to serve similar amounts of students each month for the foreseeable future.
Now, will they come after you because you’ve still got Kazaa installed on your hard drive and a bunch of ‘N Sync songs you downloaded in 2000 stowed away in some file? Probably not. What the RIAA is monitoring is current (meaning in the last couple months or so – these suits are moving forward on a rolling basis remember) activity at one of the peer-to-peer sharing sites. So stay off those and you should be fine.
That said, why not get that software (and that awful music) out of you life anyway. It is still technically stolen property. It won’t get you attention from the RIAA. But having it IS breaking the law.
—
C.L. Lindsay III is the founding executive director of CO-STAR, the Coalition for Student & Academic Rights, and author of the book "The College Student’s Guide to the Law: Get a Grade Changed, Keep Your Stuff Private, Throw a Police-Free Party and More!" in bookstores now. CO-STAR is a network of lawyers, professors and students who work to protect academic freedom and constitutional rights at college campuses nationwide. If you have a question for CO-STAR, log on to their Web site at www.co-star.org.
The material in this column addresses general legal issues only; is not legal advice and should not be relied on as such; and may or may not be appropriate to a specific situation. Laws and procedures change frequently and are subject to differing interpretations. This column is not intended to create, and does not create, a lawyer-client relationship and is not intended to be a substitute for legal counsel in the relevant jurisdiction.
—
© 2007, McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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I can empathize with your new client. As a child, as for many years as an adult, I had no real confidence in myself, regardless of accomplishments. When I was a child, my parents tried to teach me the lesson of the ‘Little Engine That Could.’ As you recall, it could because it though it could. Whenever they told me that, I say: “but I don’t think I can”, as that was a far as it ever went.
When I was in college I read a science fiction novel in which the main character (if I recall, I don’t really remember the details) was consumed by fear. So he learned this small poem, which I memorized and said it over and over to myself:
“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.”
Recently I looked it up. It is from a book by Frank Herbert in the Dune series. Regardless of its origins, it really helped me; it helped that I memorized it and repeated it to myself a million times a day.
Well, there are other things that helped my in conquering fear and in ability to be confident, but that was one of the first steps.