Internet users who download music illegally may receive a warning letter from the Recording Industry Association of America.
Spokesperson for the RIAA Amanda Collins said the RIAA has sent about 100 letters to downloaders so far, reminding them downloading copyrighted music without the artist’s permission is illegal. She said so far users are heeding the warnings.
Collins would not state what further action the RIAA would take if users ignored the warning.
“If they want to squabble over publicly distributed music, the music industry should have dealt with the copyrighted music issue when radio came out,” said Martin Coates, a computer engineering junior.
Blake Williams, a theater sophomore who downloads music, said if he ever got a warning letter from the RIAA he would “laugh at it.”
“It is my opinion that intellectual property is commonwealth,” Williams said.
George Cazacu, a fifth-year Ph.D student in mathematics, said he only downloads Romanian music, and very little of it, and “Music, like anything else, is work and should be paid for.”
“I think the music industry should change with technology, maybe have people pay per download,” said sociology junior Gabrielle Edwards.
Collins said the RIAA sends subpoenas to Internet service providers, ordering them to send identifying information of users who are downloading music illegally.
On Jan. 22, the RIAA won a law suit against Verizon Communi-cations, Inc., forcing the Internet service provider to reveal the name of a user accused of music piracy.
The Verizon customer allegedly used peer-to-peer file-sharing network Kazaa to download more than 600 MP3s in one day.
Based on the judge’s written opinion, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act states copyright owners have the right to access identifying information of people who illegally download their material.
The DMCA was enacted in 1998, and aside from making music pirates’ information available to copyright holders, it also prohibits side-stepping codes and other anti-piracy measures built into most commercial software and bans the manufacture, sale and distribution of code-cracking devices used to illegally copy software.