Universities get miffed with RIAA

THERE ARE GROWING signs that US Universities are getting fed up with RIAA demands that they sort out piracy on campus.

The RIAA has been running a high-profile campaign to get college students that it thinks have been involved in illegal file trading to settle lawsuits against them at a "discount".

The plan depends on the RIAA getting the Universities to identify and turn over the names of offending students so that they can send them the threatening letters.

However it seems that two universities are telling the RIAA to go forth and multiply.

The University of Wisconsin has told the RIAA that it has no obligation to grass up its students out unless it is ordered to by a judge.

The University of Nebraska has told the RIAA that it can't help them at all because it changes computer's IP address each time its turned on. It says it only keeps this information for month. After that month, the school has no way of associating an IP address with a computer or its user.

This last excuse has the RIAA fuming because it believes the University should keep its records longer. Of course the University does not have to keep records just to satisfy the needs of the RIAA, and just to indicate how cross they are that the record companies are about bothering them, they have sent them a bill for wasting its IT department's time.

More here. µ