RIAA Files Suit Over Student-Run Networks

In a first, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) yesterday (April 3) filed civil lawsuits against the student operators of four Napster-like services on campus Intranets that the trade group claims distributed millions of copyrighted tracks without authorization.

In the suits, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., the RIAA alleges that the four operators at three schools have engaged in wholesale copyright infringement using software known variously as Flatlan, Phynd, or Direct Connect. The systems are similar to peer-to-peer network Napster, but instead of being available to anyone on the Internet, they reside on a college's internal network. Named in the suit are two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, one at Princeton, and one at Michigan Technological University.

Says RIAA president Cary Sherman, "This is a particularly flagrant way to illegally distribute millions of copyrighted works over the Internet. The people who run these 'Napster' networks know full well what they are doing: operating a sophisticated network designed to enable widespread music thievery."