RIAA Sends 411 Letters to 19 Universities

RIAA continued its effort to end piracy at college campuses with a new round of 'pre-litigation' letters aimed at using the threat of a suit to settle cases out of court.

Letters were sent to the following schools: Drexel, Indiana, Northern Illinois, Occidental College, SUNY Morrisville, Texas Christian University, Tufts, the University of Alabama, UC Berkeley, University of Delaware, University of Georgia, University of Iowa, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, University of New Hampshire, University of New Mexico, University of South Florida, USC, and Vanderbilt.

Those who receive the letters have the option to either settle their cases online through a special website or need to contact representatives for the record industry to arrange a settlement.

If a recipient of a letter does not respond to the letter, RIAA's next step is to sue him or her in federal court. However the record industry says it will settle out of court for a "discounted rate," typically a few thousand dollars.

Thousands of college students have already settled their claims, with a large majority of them deciding to do so out of court. "While it's undoubtedly our last preference to bring legal action against students, music theft remains particularly acute on college campuses," general counsel Steven Marks said.

RIAA points to a study conducted last year that claims as much as half of all college students still download music illegally. NPD claims that in 2006, more than 1.3 billion songs were illegally downloaded on college campuses.

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

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