University expects subpoena Monday

The Office of the General Counsel expects to receive a subpoena Monday from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) asking the University to disclose the identities of 25 students accused of music copyright infringement, University spokesman Eric Quinones said.

As part of its latest campaign to curb piracy on college campuses, the music association filed lawsuits Wednesday against 25 University students — and a total of 405 students at 18 colleges — accused of illegally downloading music on the Internet2 network.

"The judge who received the filing from the RIAA issued an order granting the RIAA's request to deliver subpoenas to the University," Quinones said.

The industry trade group had notified Princeton in late March that it planned to sue 39 students, but RIAA president Cary Sherman said in a conference call earlier this week that no more than 25 lawsuits would be filed against students at any one school.

One of the 39 originally notified Princeton students, a junior who asked not to be identified, said Thursday night that he still did not know if he would face litigation.

The University will wait for the RIAA subpoena to arrive before it notifies the 25 students, Quinones said.

The RIAA's lawsuits targeting Princeton students — collectively known as BMG Music et al. v. Does 1-25 — were filed Wednesday afternoon in New Jersey District Court. The case was assigned to Judge Stanley R. Chesler and referred to Judge Tonianne J. Bongiovanni.

Since the suits were filed using the IP addresses of 25 "John Does," the names of the individuals being sued are not identified. The RIAA must subpoena the University to obtain the students' identities.

The Daily Princetonian obtained the names behind the IP addresses Thursday night through ordinary Internet tools.

A tool known as "reverse DNS lookup" allows Internet users to determine the network name of a computer identified by an IP address. That typically corresponds with a student's NetID.

This process gives information only about the computer's registered owner, not about the person using the computer at the time of the alleged illegal activities.

The identity of one of the students could not be ascertained since the individual was using a wireless connection, but it was determined that the others targeted were 14 males and 10 females, including 4 freshmen, 10 sophomores, 5 juniors, 4 seniors and 1 graduate student.

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The suits also include the time of the alleged infringement and the songs involved.

John Doe #15, for example, is accused of violating copyright law at 6:12 p.m. on March 24 for sharing Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself," Ace of Base's "All that She Wants" and Ben Harper's "Oppression."

On Tuesday, RIAA president Sherman called on college administrators to address file-sharing on their campuses.

"University presidents can take action to stop illegal file-sharing related to not only i2hub but also other internal university networks," Sherman said. "We are asking university leaders to explore technical measures such as filtering and to consider legitimate [music] alternatives to offer to students."

Quinones said the University is open to the idea of a filtering mechanism, but that such a device could not interfere with legitimate Internet activity.

"Generally, we're not aware of any effective technology that is out there that would block someone from sharing copyrighted material but that at the same time would allow legitimate material that would be used for academic work," Quinones said.