RIAA lawsuits target students

Managing Intellectual Property

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed copyright infringement lawsuits against 757 individuals, including computer network users at 17 different colleges.

The RIAA on September 29 accused the individuals of illegally distributing copyrighted music over the internet via peer-to-peer services such as eDonkey, Grokster, Kazaa and LimeWire.

The Association targeted students using the file-sharing application i2hub to download and distribute music. They used the Internet2 network, a high-speed computer network used by universities.

Students were targeted at top US universities including Harvard, Princeton, Boston, Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

It is the third time the RIAA has gone after users of the Internet2 network, amounting to a total of 560 lawsuits at 39 campuses this year.

Earlier this month, music companies filed 163 lawsuits against individuals, whose names they got from their respective internet service providers.

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