EFF's RIAA v. The People: Four Years Later

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just released a report that takes an in-depth look into the RIAA's activities on college campuses over the past several years, and addresses issues of peer to peer filesharing among students and its implications for copyright law and university policy/norms.  RIAA v. The People: Four Years Later "traces the RIAA campaign from its beginnings in 2003 against a handful of students at Princeton, Rensselaer Polytechnic, and Michigan Tech to the current spate of 'pre-litigation settlement' letters being sent to universities nationwide."

In the report, the EFF recommends that universities address concerns over filesharing on campus through alternative systems of compensation for artists, such as "insist[ing] on a blanket license for their students, collecting a reasonable regular payment -- for example, $5 a month -- in exchange for the right to keep sharing music with their classmates." As this debate is certain to flare up again in the upcoming year, some institutions have preemptively chosen to take action, like Ohio University, which has decided to monitor and block all peer to peer file sharing on its own campus.

Berkman faculty and fellows have actively been involved in resisting the RIAA's imposition on college campuses. This past May, Berkman founder Professor Charles Nesson and fellow Wendy Seltzer published an op-ed in the Harvard Crimson decrying how the RIAA's campaign "impose[s] financial and non-monetary costs, including compromised student privacy, limit[s] access to genuine educational resources, and restrict[s] opportunities for new creative expression." In addition, Professor Nesson and Berkman Executive Director John Palfrey advocate that the RIAA "take a hike" off university campuses in a recent issue of The Filter newsletter.

You can check out the EFF's RIAA paper on their site, where you'll also find all of the other projects they have on their plate.