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Recording and Motion Picture Industries Launch New Anti-Piracy Effort Targeting Colleges and Universities

April 27, 2006

Forty universities in 25 states have been targeted by a new anti-piracy campaign launched this week by the Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the two groups announced today.

In letters mailed today, the two industry associations alerted 40 university presidents about local area network (LAN) piracy problems on their campuses and encouraged immediate action to stop and prevent theft by such means.

According to the two groups, the majority of illegal copying and distribution of music and movies occurs over the public Internet on peer-to-peer ("P2P") file-sharing systems.  But students at colleges and universities increasingly have been using programs like Direct Connect (DC++), MyTunes and OurTunes to engage in such activity on campus LANs without using the broader public Internet.  The perceived security and privacy of these campus LANs give many students incentive to engage in activity they have otherwise learned is illegal and unacceptable.

"We are appreciative of our partners in the university community and all they have done in recent years to tackle the problem of digital piracy at campuses across the country," said RIAA President Cary Sherman in a prepared statement.  "Despite the progress achieved by our collaborative efforts, this remains an ever-evolving problem.  We cannot ignore the growing misuse of campus LAN systems or the toll this means of theft is taking on our industry. As we prioritize our focus on campus LAN piracy in the coming year, we hope administrators will take this opportunity to fully evaluate their systems and take action to stop theft by all means."

The universities receiving these letters are located in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Washington, DC. 

In April 2003, the RIAA brought lawsuits against the student operators of four campus LAN networks at three schools.  In the wake of those enforcement actions, university administrators pulled down at least a dozen campus LAN servers where music theft had been prevalent. 

Since then, in addressing university file-sharing, campus LAN piracy is increasingly identified as a key challenge by lawmakers in Congress as well as the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities.