Recording Industry To Sue 405 Students Over File Swapping

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The recording industry said it plans to sue as many as 405 students at American universities today for using a closed computer network to illegally send movies and music over the Internet.


The students at 18 schools including Harvard University were sending information over Internet2, a network developed by universities to exchange research, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The movie and music files were distributed through a Web site called i2hub, which calls itself “the world’s largest student network,” the association said.


The lawsuits, to be filed in federal courts across the country, will be the first related to the use of Internet2 to download music, movies and software, the association said, and are part of an effort to curb piracy on college campuses. Worldwide sales of recorded music fell to $33.6 billion last year from a peak of $39.7 billion in 2000, partly due to piracy.


“Unfortunately, i2 is increasingly becoming the network of choice for students seeking to steal on a massive scale,” the RIAA’s president, Cary Sherman, said during a conference call with reporters. The people using the network “mistakenly believe their illegal file sharing activities can’t be detected.”


By using the speed of Internet2, movie files can be downloaded in five minutes and music files in less than 20 seconds, far more quickly than even the fastest broadband service.


The 405 lawsuits against individuals at 18 colleges seek to identify the names of the people who have been distributing the copyrighted files. Compensation could reach up to $150,000 for each file under American copyright law. The RIAA said there is evidence of use of i2hub for illegal downloading at another 140 schools in 41 states.


The suits will be filed today against students at schools including Harvard, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Ohio State University, and the University of California at Berkeley.


According to the i2hub Web site, it was created by Wayne Chang, a University of Massachusetts student who has worked for Napster, Microsoft, and Apple Computer. The RIAA didn’t sue i2hub in this round, Mr. Sherman said, adding that the group has “made no decisions at this time about future actions.”


An e-mailed request for comment to i2hub’s media relation’s office wasn’t immediately returned. In a January article in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, Mr. Chang called the site a “student collaboration service” and said the i2hub has “no control over what students use it for.”


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