THE RIAA IS COMING FOR YOU

Inside The RIAA's College Piracy Invasion

The techie and P2P-sympathetic websites are ablaze with details on the RIAA's recharged campaign against illegal downloading on college campuses. According to several sources, the label lobby's ninth round of pre-litigation settlement letters were sent to 411 students at 19 different universities.

The reason for the RIAA's focus on college campuses? An NPD study conducted last year claims that over 1.3 billion unauthorized songs were downloaded on college campuses and that over half of all students continue to illegally download music.

ZEROPAID offered the following list of colleges impacted, with the number of students in parenthesis:

DREXEL UNIVERSITY (17)
INDIANA UNIVERSITY (23)
NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY (25)
OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE (19)
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT MORRISVILLE (18)
TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY (20),
TUFTS UNIVERSITY (15)
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA (14)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY (19)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE (18)
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA (13)
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA (18)
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - ANN ARBOR (20)
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN (13)
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE (30)
UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO (17)
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA (43)
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (37)
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY (32)

TMC.COM found a copy of a pre-litigation letter posted on the website of technology-in-education advocacy site EDUCAUSE.COM. It gave the targeted student 20 days to contact the RIAA and settle for an amount significantly less than they would have to pay otherwise. For "convenience," settlements can be made on a RIAA website.

Apparently they're not kidding, as one student -- interviewed on another website -- claimed that when she passed the deadline, the RIAA increased the settlement figure.