I Own My Music

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently gave a demo of its new method for hunting down people suspected of downloading copyrighted material through filesharing services and other such means. This new method specifically targets students who have been using filesharing services to share music they shouldn’t have been.

The infamous Media Sentry, the RIAA’s partner in tackling filesharing, uses similar software to that which Internet users have access to for downloading music and movies. Media Sentry first scans filesharing networks for copyrighted material.

Media Sentry then matches the files with records of known pirated songs. If files are matched then Media Sentry will try and match the user’s IP address with that of college campuses. If a match is found there then the files are carefully scrutinized before a letter is sent to the campus. It’s a remarkably simple process, but it is catching out hundreds of students across America. It’s strange, however, that the method specifically targets college campuses.

There was no mention of what action the RIAA takes against people whose IPs are not on college campuses.