The Recording Industry Association of America Inc. (RIAA) has sued four university students who allegedly ran file-sharing networks on their school's local networks. The students, two at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and one each at Princeton University and Michigan Technological University, operated "local area Napster networks," the RIAA said in a statement Thursday.
The RIAA had previously identified campuses as a hotbed of music piracy, but the lawsuits are the first the organization has filed against students. Before, the RIAA's legal fire was aimed mostly at companies offering file-swapping software such as Kazaa and Morpheus. According to the RIAA, the students operated Napster-like networks "designed to enable widespread music thievery." The students allegedly used software called Flatlan, Phynd and Direct Connect to index files on the campus network and process search requests, according to the RIAA. In addition to setting up the networks, the RIAA accuses the students of making available hundreds, in some cases thousands, of copyright protected works on the networks. Sources: Recording Industry Association of America Inc. - ITWorld
The RIAA had previously identified campuses as a hotbed of music piracy, but the lawsuits are the first the organization has filed against students. Before, the RIAA's legal fire was aimed mostly at companies offering file-swapping software such as Kazaa and Morpheus. According to the RIAA, the students operated Napster-like networks "designed to enable widespread music thievery." The students allegedly used software called Flatlan, Phynd and Direct Connect to index files on the campus network and process search requests, according to the RIAA. In addition to setting up the networks, the RIAA accuses the students of making available hundreds, in some cases thousands, of copyright protected works on the networks. Sources: Recording Industry Association of America Inc. - ITWorld
