By TED BRIDIS
AP Technology Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The recording industry intends to sue hundreds of college students accused of illegally distributing music and movies across Internet2, the super-fast computer network connecting leading universities for researching the next generation of the Internet, industry officials said Tuesday.

The Washington-based Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the largest labels, said it will file federal copyright lawsuits Wednesday against 405 students at 18 colleges with access to the Internet2 network, which boasts speeds hundreds of times faster than the Internet.

Researchers at Internet2 once demonstrated they can download a DVD-quality copy of the popular movie "The Matrix" in 30 seconds over their network, a feat they said would take roughly 25 hours over the Internet.

Internet2 is used by several million university students, researchers and professionals around the world but is generally inaccessible to the public.

"We don't condone or support illegal file-sharing," said Internet2's chief executive, Doug Van Houweling. "We've always understood that just like there is a lot of file-sharing going on on the public Internet, there's also some file-sharing going on on Internet2."

The recording industry said some students were illegally sharing across Internet2 as many as 13,600 music files - far more than most Internet users - and that the average number of songs offered illegally by the students was 2,300 each. It said it found evidence of more illegal file-sharing at 140 more schools in 41 states and sent warning letters to university presidents.

"We cannot let this high-speed network become a zone of lawlessness where the normal rules don't apply," said Cary Sherman, president of the recording association.

The Motion Picture Association of America also was expected to file federal copyright lawsuits Wednesday against college students with access to Internet2.

"The high performance of Internet2 makes it attractive for a lot of applications, not just file-sharing," Van Houweling said. He cautioned universities against filtering data to block illegal activity in ways that would slow the research network's performance.

"It's possible to attack this problem in ways that do compromise the performance," he said.

The lawsuits illustrate the aggressiveness of the entertainment industry to stifle piracy even on up-and-coming technologies, as it continues to individually sue thousands of computer users accused of sharing copyrighted songs and films over the public Internet.

The recording industry said the lawsuits also pierce the perception by Internet2 researchers that they operated in a closed environment that entertainment groups couldn't monitor.

"We are putting students and administrators everywhere on notice that there are consequences for unlawful uses of this special network," Sherman said.

The RIAA declined to explain how it could detect piracy over Internet2 except to say it acted lawfully. Internet2's corporate members include Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., a leading music label. Even Internet2 officials said they were unaware how the entertainment companies traced the purportedly illegal activity on their network.

"They haven't shared with us," Van Houweling said. "We have provided no special access to any of those organizations that would enable them in some non-standard way to gain access to this information."

The RIAA said the 18 schools include Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Drexel University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Princeton University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of California-Berkeley, University of California-San Diego, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Southern California.
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Further research:
Internet2: www.internet2.edu
RIAA: www.riaa.com

Internet2 officials were at a loss to describe how the RIAA knew its inner workings! What were they thinking when allowing Penn State on its membership group.

On 11th November 2003, the Register UK openly questioned the ethical relationship of Barry Robinson and Penn State;
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/11/penn_state_trustee_and_riaa/

(snip)
Penn State trustee and RIAA legal counsel Barry Robinson has denied having anything to do with the university's recent adoption of the Napster music service. Robinson told the school paper that there is no connection between his work at Penn State and the RIAA, saying he only deals with "day-to-day" legal matters for the RIAA, which include suing college students, children and senior citizens. He did not hear word of the agreement between Penn State and Napster until "36 hours" before it was officially announced last week, according to The Collegian.

The key word here is "agreement" because it's a bit far-fetched to think Robinson had no idea of Penn State's plans. And here's why.

Back in September, Penn State's President Graham Spanier told reporters about his ongoing efforts to build a "music fee" into students' tuitions. Spanier was ahead of his time to be sure, as Penn State now has students fronting part of the cost for the "free" Napster school service.

Spanier also works side-by-side with RIAA President Cary Sherman on the Committee on Higher Education and the Entertainment Industry.

So while Robinson may not have known about the exact timing on the Penn State/Napster "agreement," it seems a stretch to think neither Spanier or Sherman mentioned that such a scheme was well underway. What is even harder to believe is that Robinson did not help spur such a plan on given his uncomfortable role in both lobbing threats at Penn State while being a trustee.

I smell a mole.

"We cannot let this high-speed network become a zone of lawlessness where the normal rules don't apply"

A zone of lawlessness? Wow, how long have they been wanting to use that one?

Deputy Sherman is my hero!

"The lawsuits illustrate the aggressiveness of the entertainment industry to stifle piracy even on up-and-coming technologies"

You're kidding... the RIAA will go after new technologies? No way..

And what is with this:

"The RIAA declined to explain how it could detect piracy over Internet2 except to say it acted lawfully"

For heroes that are so concerned about "ZONES OF LAWLESSNESS!", they sure didn't seem to make any kind of noble effort to explain just exactly what "legal" processes they used. I wonder how hard it is to bribe the FBI.. they already got them to put fancy little stickers on everything.

"given his uncomfortable role"

Tom, you seem to be assuming that this guy has a conscience, which we all know would automatically disqualify him from his position as an RIAA tool.

After this long, we're running out of reasons to question the RIAA's ethics, since they have none. Their so-called intellectual property seems completely devoid of wisdom.

You know, you can't stop P2P networking. You can convince those little following idiots that it's 'wrong' and what's 'wrong' should not be done, but you can't stop it completely. Impossible is all it is. Might as well give up and get those producers to start trying harder, eh? Not like many of them are broke as most of us, They'll survive.

"We cannot let this high-speed network become a zone of lawlessness where the normal rules don't apply,"

What normal rules? Wasn't it said somewhere earlier that the Internet does not follow normal rules of the market place? Oh yes, it was... the Internet plays a different game by directly connecting user to system and vice-versa, usually with nothing in between. Please elaborate on what the 'normal rules' are...

Ah, the old "someone is stealing our stuff" thing. Ok, please continue on this economic terrorism tend. I promise you one day soon, very few will be stealing stuff as they like to put it. Instead they will have to try to give it away.

One doesn't have to wonder too much about those that have been sued. You know they aren't going to want it. Their close friends aren't going to want it either. Each month they add to the total figures of those that will no longer have anything to do with it. Is a matter of figures that there will reach a point where there are more non-customers than there are customers. What then? The majors will be begging someone to steal it just to hear it.

Rules? They have the audacity to talk rules? How were those rules helping anyone but major corporations when the length of copyright was stretched all out of porportion? I haven't seen anything, including Happy Birthday reach public domain.

With the lack of developing a timely internet method of distributing music, over priced offerings that can in no way be justified as to the expense, and poorly supported live performances by "entertainers" that can't pull it off, just were is the product worth it? Simply it isn't. The customer is becoming more and more aware of it too. They are turning to other places for entertainment. Notice I didn't say music. Music is after all just another form of entertainment.

Major corporations have once again been allowed to reach monopoly status and needs the belt tightened on them. A serious look at anittrust laws needs to be revisited. Whenever a major industry can be convicted of price fixing, be found guilty, and even attempt to cheat on the settlement, you know something is wrong. When the prices still don't go down, you know it reeks...

Note to RIAA...you may win a battle here and there....but you will lose the WAR

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3497246
"UPDATED: Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lawyers will file suit against more than 400 college students across the U.S., officials announced Tuesday.

The students from 18 different universities around the nation were using the high-speed Internet2 research network to trade copyrighted music, according to officials. The organization plans to file the lawsuits Wednesday.

The music industry organization said it also has evidence of copyright infringement at another 140 schools in 41 states. Officials said letters have been sent to each of those schools alerting them to the illegal activities.

"This next generation of the Internet is an extraordinarily exciting tool for researchers, technologists and many others with valuable legitimate uses," Cary Sherman, RIAA president, said in a statement. "Yet, we cannot let this high-speed network become a zone of lawlessness where the normal rules don't apply."

Internet2 is a consortium of more than 300 U.S. universities, businesses and the government to develop and deploy advanced networking applications and technologies, such as IPv6 and multicasting.

The consortium also has a network capable of transferring 859GB (define) of data in fewer than 17 minutes. These speeds are not possible over regular Internet connections, and it is a platform that lets "students steal copyrighted songs and other works on a massive scale," officials said.

Greg Wood, a spokesman at Internet2, said RIAA officials contacted the organization Monday to inform it of the impending lawsuits. He also said the higher-education community has been in conversations with the entertainment industry for some time to discuss the issue of illegal file sharing.

Wood said that while the Internet2 consortium doesn't condone the illegal transfer of copyrighted materials, instituting policies is best left at the local level, not the national.

"It makes more sense for the campuses to do this because they are in direct connection with the users," he said. "Technically it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to implement the kind of monitoring or blocking at the backbone level. Those kinds of things are really most effective at the campus level, and that's what our members have been doing."

The RIAA pointed out that much of the file sharing done on the Internet2 network was done using an application called i2hub.

"In order to maintain the gains we've made, we must move quickly to address this new threat emerging from i2hub and similar applications," Sherman said in a statement. "We know that it's very difficult for these legal services to gain real traction on college campuses when pirate services with lightning fast downloads are easily available to students with no seeming likelihood of detection or threat of consequences."

In a statement released Tuesday, i2hub officials said their organization does not condone any activities or actions that breach copyright concerns. The organization, they said, is committed to bringing students together.

"Students around the globe utilize i2hub for many reasons -- help on homework, exam reviews, sharing ideas, and some have even found their significant other through the network," the statement read. "We are a company focused on the college market with products and services that cater to that market."

Currently, the entertainment industry is locking horns with the peer-to-peer (P2P) community before the Supreme Court. At issue in the MGM vs. Grokster case is the contention by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) that P2P software developers should be held liable for creating technology that aids file-sharing theft.

Developers maintain the entertainment industry shouldn't be able to stifle software innovation, and they cite the famous 1984 Sony Betamax ruling regarding videotapes as an example. "

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=8160195
""Internet2 is increasingly becoming the network of choice for students looking to steal songs and other copyrighted works on a massive scale," said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America.

Those targeted in the lawsuits made an average of 3,900 files available for copying over the network, Sherman said on a conference call.

Users logged on to the network on Monday were sharing 99 terabytes of material, the equivalent of an entire video-rental store, said Dan Glickman, who heads the Motion Picture Association of America, on a separate conference call.

The RIAA said it sued 405 students at 18 schools. The MPAA declined to say how many lawsuits it had filed.

Individuals were not named in the lawsuits, but their names will likely be uncovered as the cases move forward. "

Zone of lawlessness -- that would be the zone a musician enters when he/she signs a contract with an RIAA-affiliated label. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

Autodidact — well said!

"The RIAA declined to explain how it could detect piracy over Internet2 except to say it acted lawfully" Ha Ha Ha yeah Right!!!!

Wet1 had a great post:
Major corporations have once again been allowed to reach monopoly status and need the belt tightened on them. A serious look at antitrust laws warrants revisiting. Whenever a major industry can be convicted of price fixing, be found guilty, and even attempt to cheat on the settlement, you know something is wrong. When the prices still don't go down, you know it reeks...

Aol has a poll as to if you oppose or support what the Riaa is doing suing people. 75% are against what the Riaa has been doing when it comes to suing people!!! And what's real funny their about to piss off awhole lot more!!!!

Tomsong wrote: "given his [Penn State's President Graham Spanier's] uncomfortable role..."

George Z. wrote:
"Tom, you seem to be assuming that this guy has a conscience, which we all know would automatically disqualify him from his position as an RIAA tool."

He works with the RIAA; enough said.
So, without compunction of conscience, he could easily be a mole -- and, of course, lie that he's not, right? No problem for him. And no problem for me to figure that out, either.

"After this long, we're running out of reasons to question the RIAA's ethics, since they have none. Their so-called intellectual property seems completely devoid of wisdom."

Perfectly stated.

He's not a mole--he's a skunk. Selling out his students just shows he shouldn't be president of any educational institution. He belongs in the government, and I vote that's where we send him. Some nice dead-end job where he can't hurt any more kids.

I would assume the RIAA found a cooperative university to patch their scanners into - the terms under which Penn licensed the Napster service were never disclosed, and it is widely assumed this is because the terms include some unpleasant conditions that both Penn and the RIAA would rather not have made public. But that doesn't mean Penn is the point of access - there are other universities who have or are eager to get Napster for their students and so avoid the harassment of a stream of C&D and lawsuits from the RIAA.

Why is it I get the feeling that the riaa is going to own internet 2 before you and I get a chance to use it?!

"Penn State trustee and RIAA legal counsel Barry Robinson..."? (WTF!)

Robinson's "uncomfortable" role in lobbing threats at Penn State while being a trustee? (Uncomfortable to someone who has a conscience, yeah, but not for an RIAA tool, as pointed out by George Z.)

Another 'clue': "Spanier also works side-by-side with RIAA President Cary Sherman on the Committee on Higher Education and the Entertainment Industry."

Hmm, let's see. Do we need a Sherlock Holmes to render an opinion on strong suspicion by association (or is it preponderance of circumstantial evidence that leads to a hell of a bit more than a hunch here)?

What do you think the odds are of Penn State being the point of access?
What do you think the odds are of a quacking and waddling animal being a duck?
Answer to BOTH questions: not a lock, but pretty damn good

Irregardless...here's still the best bottom line: Get weaned from downloading RIAA music and get turned on to independent music (if you haven't already).

Where's that edit button that we need??
There's no such word as "irregardless".

"Why is it I get the feeling that the riaa is going to own internet 2 before you and I get a chance to use it?!"

They're likely to try to control it in some way, particulary in regard to what won't be allowed.

It is the RIAA/MPAA/ETC.AA's wet dream to come up with a "faster" internet which they own and control content from the top down. This may be a step in their ploy to get one.

Well, it turns out that the RIAA/MPAA bought i2hub VIP accounts.

There are MILLIONS of i2 users too..

even if they sue i2 users at the rate they sue internet users it would take some 50 years to nab em all... given 4 years of college on average you'd only have about a 1 in 500 chance of being sued..

STILL NOT HIGH ENOUGH TO GIVE A DAMN! HAHA!