I hate to complain here, but I wanted to get something correct online in hopes that it sticks.

Recently the RIAA has sent threatening letters to between 30 and 50 University of New Hampshire students here in Durham, accusing them of illegally sharing songs over the Internet using Limewire or Gnutella.

Unfortunately, every article that was written by The New Hampshire (including this one) infers that the RIAA is cracking down on students who are *downloading* music. As we all know, that’s a VERY tough case to prove, since the RIAA can’t possibly know from afar if you previously obtained the rights (through purchase) to have a copy of that song. What they can know — and what they’re alleging these students did — is that they illegally uploaded (i.e. shared) copies of these songs. The RIAA can be pretty certain that these students don’t have distribution licenses for that music, and that’s the point over which they would sue them if the RIAA choses that course of action.

Hopefully someone will properly inform the UNH students, because The New Hampshire keeps getting it wrong.

Technorati Tags: new hampshire, RIAA

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 12:47 am and is filed under music, rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.