FREEDOM BEAT

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TWO UNIVERSITIES REFUSE TO FORWARD RIAA LETTERS TO STUDENTS

ARS TECHNICA - A pair of state universities in the Pacific Northwest
have refused to pass RIAA prelitigation letters along to students over
concerns that the IP addresses in the letters can't easily be mapped to
actual users of the computer in question. . . Even in student dorms
rooms, it can be hard to know just who is using a computer at any given
time. . .

UW spokesman Bob Roseth told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "What we
want to do is verify that those students were actually (at fault)"
before passing on the letters. The message is clear: the University of
Washington doesn't accept the RIAA's attempt to link IPs to real people
as the basis for legal action.

Similar concerns were raised by the University of Oregon back in
November; the university objected that IP addresses couldn't be mapped
to students with any certainty even in cases where a computer accessed
the university wireless network using a specific user name and password.
Without doing interviews and launching an investigation, the school said
it had no way of knowing who had committed the alleged copyright
infringement.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080102-another-school-
says-no-to-riaa-prelitigation-letters.html


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