University of Kansas Will Not Forward RIAA Letters

Bonewalker writes "Looks like the University of Kansas may not be as pro-RIAA (or anti-student) as initially assumed last week from our recent discussion. From the Chronicle article: 'Kansas officials told the student newspaper that they will not heed the recording industry's request to pass pre-litigation notices on to 14 students accused of music piracy. Many institutions have forwarded the letters -- which offer students a chance to settle file-sharing claims out of court at discounted rates -- but some have declined to do so, citing concerns over students' privacy.' Of course, this doesn't make that 'one-strike' policy any less flawed, but it shows that they aren't simply throwing their students under the RIAA bus, as one poster put it."

Re:What else do they decide to forward or not?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

The letters are addressed to IP addresses. The RIAA expects the university to do its legwork for them. Next time, read TFA.

Re:What else do they decide to forward or not?

[ecklesweb]

From a short article in the Chronicle that accompanies a copy of the actual letter sent by Cary Sherman to university presidents [chronicle.com]:

5. Some campus administrators already worry that the record industry's pre-litigation notices will leave colleges exposed to lawsuits. If colleges are given the task of passing on the letters, information-technology officials ask, couldn't they end up being sued by students who say they never got the notices -- and, therefore, missed the chance to settle their cases at a discount?

Issues like that have gone largely unresolved. "There are a lot of legal questions out there," says Dick Jacobson, information-technology-security officer for the North Dakota University system, which received 19 pre-litigation notices this month. "And I'm sure if you talked to lawyers in other systems, they'll disagree with the lawyers in our system on some matters."

Re:Makes sense

[zCyl]

If they cutoff only those users they get notices on, then they have a perfectly valid justification for shutting them off.

Sounds like an easy college prank to play on unsuspecting people.

(That's the problem with presumption of guilt upon accusation.)

Re:What else do they decide to forward or not?

[superwiz]

You do realize that students' privacy cannot possibly (even theoretically) be violated by an act of communicating something TO THE STUDENTS as long as the students are the ONLY people to whom anything is communicated. They are not FORWARDING letters that are meant to be communications to the students. That can be done in a perfectly anonymous way. Ie., the letters can be given to the students without letting ANYONE ELSE know who these students are. So what privacy are we talking about here? All the article said is that they are not forwarding the letters.

KU's rationale for One Strike Policy

[Crittias]

As a faculty member at University of Kansas, I had the opportunity to talk to someone involved in the one-strike decision. Here's how he described the process of reaching their decision, paraphrased by me: Originally, KU adopted a three-strikes policy, and a few years ago, it seemed effective, as some students, when confronted with their first or second strike, pleaded to misunderstanding the policies of ResNet regarding filesharing. Basically, the three strikes allowed for learning to occur. Recently, however, the attitude of students when they received their first or second strike was, "eh." Students were aware of the policy, and they were simply ignoring it because they knew they had two "get out of jail free" cards in their pocket. Because no learning seemed to be occurring when implementing a first or second strike, the school decided such warnings were ineffective, and thus the one-strike-and-you're-out policy we have now. I'm not arguing for or against the new policy, but I thought folks would find the rationale KU used to reach their decision interesting.

Re:my letter to the RIAA...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Wow, there are an amazing number of things wrong with your letter.

1. Like many people on /. you seem to believe costs determine price. This is not the case. The justification is that people are willing to pay twice as much for a CD. Also, I tend to get more hours of enjoyment out of a CD than a movie (a good CD at least), because of the replayability.
2. The RIAA doesn't get a percentage of iTunes sales, the labels do.
3. While customers certainly have a right to insist on a price before purchasing, insisting on dividing the revenue up amongst parties seems beyond what customers normally insist upon. Fifty percent to the artists seems beyond excessive. Labels assume a lot of risk and costs as far as bribing DJs to get it on the air, and such. Apple has a massive marketing machine. Most musicians are the least important cog. I'd rather have 2% of a much larger pie than have the 10 people who heard of my music d/l it off my site for a buck a song.
4. If you are in Germany, why would the RIAA care. Yes you are American. And?
5. Why would any part of this be believed? It's not like anything beyond the usual has happened in the past few weeks. Likely, you have been downloading music for a long time, and are claiming a recent start to increase your moral position.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what part of Lawrence you're talking about, but in my experience the cost of off-campus housing was *at worst* on par with the cost of the residence halls. Once I moved to an apt. that wasn't ridiculously expensive, off-campus living cost me about half as much as my time in the dorms. And yes, I'm also considering the cost of utilities, cable, etc.