The Mad Rants of a Raving Genius

This isn’t really recent news, but after reading an opinion article in the University of Washington’s newspaper, the Daily, I felt I needed to say something. Anyways, over the summer, the university agreed to pass along “pre-settlement” letters from the Recording Industry Association of America notifying students who have committed copyright infringement that they have the option to pay $3000 to $5000 (or more) to the RIAA. If the person doesn’t pay (or doesn’t get the letter), the RIAA will file a lawsuit for even more money.

As you can very well imagine, this produced varied reactions from students when they found out. With the UW being the liberal bastion any major public university is, the reactions were mainly negative. That’s because most students are too stupid to look any farther into the story. All they see is UW forwarding RIAA letters and they scream “Oh noes! Our college is cooperating with the evil RIAA to steal all our money!” Here’s the real story: the university agreed to forward the letters to students when there is reasonable evidence that a student has illegally downloaded copyrighted material. They’re actually doing students a favor. If UW refused to forward the letters (much like the University of Wisconsin did), students wouldn’t be aware of the chance to settle with the RIAA. They’d only find out when the RIAA presents them with a lawsuit for a lot of money with no chance to settle for less. Which is better: paying $3000 or paying $10,000 plus court fees?

What’s more, the university isn’t in any “alliance” with the RIAA. The administration has said it won’t release any information to the RIAA unless there is solid evidence that a student has violated copyright laws or unless the RIAA subpoenas the university for logs. Critics of this decision claim we as students aren’t being protected by the university any longer. But really, why should the university protect us if we’re illegally downloading songs on the university’s network? Internet service providers aren’t going to shield you from the RIAA if you illegally download songs using their services.

When you get right down to it, there’s no reason anyone should be opposed to this. Obey the law and you shouldn’t have any problems. Uh, duh. Since the university won’t let the RIAA hassle you if there isn’t clear evidence of copyright infringement, simply using peer-to-peer or filesharing applications won’t get you in trouble. Downloading Spider-Man or the latest Chili Peppers album, on the other hand, will. So don’t do that. It’s that simple. Pay for songs or find some free ones. It’s not really that hard to find independent artists who release their music at no charge.

Educate yourself about copyright infringement and make sure you don’t do anything that would get the RIAA on your case. Don’t whine about how you can’t get everything for free any more. That makes you sound like a commie emo. (Okay, not really…I just wanted to coin a new phrase.)