Three weeks after the recording industry filed lawsuits against 25 University students, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has launched its own salvo against illegal file-sharing on the Princeton campus.
In a recent letter to President Tilghman, MPAA President Dan Glickman expressed concern about illegal movie downloading on the University network and attached a list of 66 IP addresses associated with alleged acts of infringement, according to University spokesman Eric Quinones.
The letter did not indicate whether the MPAA intends to sue any of the 66 individuals, Quinones said.
"Our OIT office has contacted all of the students associated with those machines where the alleged infringement occurred," Quinones said. "They were notified that we did receive this notice and instructed that if any infringement was going on, it should cease immediately." The MPAA announced in April that it was filing lawsuits against students at 12 universities. Princeton was not one of the universities listed.
At a meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) Monday, OIT policy adviser Rita Saltz said that the movie industry has sent similar infringement warnings — commonly referred to as "takedown notices" — to University administrators for several years.
Saltz said she was concerned, though, that "issues pertaining to the recording industry are in their infancy stage with the motion picture industry."
Recalling her reaction to the news that the MPAA might follow the RIAA in suing students, Saltz said, "My heart and viscera just shrank and chilled."
The 66 IP addresses bring the current academic year's total number of notices received by the University from film and TV copyright owners to 181, according to Quinones. In the 2003-04 academic year, the University received 151 such warnings.
Standard takedown notices had previously been delivered by a copyright holder to Saltz, the University's Digital Millennium Copyright agent, Quinones said.
"This letter was not a typical takedown notice, but rather an expression from the MPAA's president to President Tilghman that the film industry is concerned about copyright infringement at Princeton and on other college campuses," Quinones said.
Students illegally sharing movie files are doing so at their own peril, MPAA spokesperson Anne Caliguiri said in an email Thursday.
"Our message is simple: people who steal movies believe they are anonymous on the Internet and won't be held responsible for their actions. They are wrong," Caliguiri said.
During Monday's CPUC meeting, Saltz was also asked why the University assigns each student a unique IP address. At some other universities, IP addresses are associated with a particular location rather than an individual.
"The decision to associate a name with an IP address is based on history and would take a good deal of reworking and redesign to move away from, but we are looking into that," Saltz said.
Quinones said the current system has been in effect since the early 1990s and prevents students from having to re-register their computers each time they move to a different dorm.
"From an administrative standpoint, this system is consistent, convenient and has allowed for the most expeditious response to network emergencies, such as a virus," Quinones said.
He also said the system does not affect an industry's ability to file a suit against a student.
"The RIAA would have to obtain the identification of a student associated with any IP address from the University in any instance," he said.
— Includes reporting by Princetonian Staff Writer Arielle Gorin.
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