by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
The Recording Industry Association of America sent prelawsuit letters on April 11 to 21 schools, including UNM.
The letters are supposed to be forwarded to students who are suspected of illegally downloading music. The letters give students the option of settling out of court with the association before a lawsuit is filed.
"This was a new development," said Moira Gerety, director of ITS. "It was not something particularly welcomed. It has turned out to be an insane amount of work for us to figure out what to do with these."
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Students who receive a letter can settle with the association for $2,500 to $3,500, Gerety said.
"That might look pretty darn cheap per song," she said.
The association sent 16 letters to UNM, according to a news release.
If the students decide not to settle, the association might subpoena UNM for their contact information and press charges, Gerety said.
ITS decided to forward the letters to the students, Gerety said.
"If they do decide to sue, we don't want to hold that information back from students," she said. "We want to give these folks as much information about what's going on as we can."
The association monitors the Internet for illegal music downloading and logs the IP addresses of violators, Gerety said. It has to subpoena Internet providers to identify who the addresses belong to, she said.
"This is their own monitoring that's happening," she said. "This is not something we're involved in, but there's not much we can do about it."
The association began sending similar letters to other colleges in February, according to the release.
Liz Kennedy, an association spokeswoman, declined to comment on the campaign.
Steven Marks, general counsel and executive vice president for the association, said in the release that the letters have made an
impact.
"Without question, this new enforcement initiative has invigorated a meaningful conversation on college campuses about music theft, its consequences and the numerous ways to enjoy legal music," he said in the statement.
Gerety said UNM is unsure whether it would submit to a
subpoena.
"We haven't decided what an official University policy would be if we were subpoenaed by the RIAA," she said. "We have not decided how we would react. This is an unfortunate situation to be in. We hate to be in the middle."
Before the association began sending prelawsuit letters, it sent letters asking the University to disconnect computers that had been used to illegally download music, Gerety said.
"We got tons of those letters," she said. "It had been going on for a long time. We tried to use that as an education moment, to tell people, 'You probably shouldn't be doing this. People are onto you. You should stop.' These new letters represent an escalation."
Gerety said she has no advice for students who receive a letter.
"We really can't give people any guidance here," she said. "We just have to tell them what the situation is. It puts us in a really awkward position between the students and the association."
Richard Mertz, a UNM attorney, said he is not sure what the targets of the letters should do.
"What they say may be true," he said. "It might be cheapest to settle the way they propose in the letters. If you get a lawyer involved, pretty soon you have a lot of money spent that way."
The association's actions should discourage students from illegally downloading music, Mertz said.
"They seem to have targeted UNM," he said. "Somebody who chooses to litigate with them is going down an expensive road. Students should probably think about this as being a far more risky undertaking than it used to be."
