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By TREVOR MAXWELL
MaineToday Media, Inc. 09/08/2007

MaineToday Media, Inc.

Recording industry heavyweights once again are knocking on the doors of Mainers in an effort to curb illegal sharing of music online.

Eight lawsuits were filed this week at U.S. District Courts in Portland and Bangor. The defendants are seven college students within the University of Maine System and a Biddeford woman whose teenage son allegedly downloaded and shared music on her home computer.

"These are individuals who have not taken advantage of the previous settlement opportunities," Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America, said Friday.

Member companies of the association -- including Interscope, Sony and Warner Bros. -- filed the copyright infringement suits on Sept. 4 and 5. They are among thousands of similar suits initiated across the country since February, when leaders of the RIAA rolled out an aggressive program to rein in file sharing on campus.

Duckworth said college students accounted for more than a billion illegal downloads in 2006, using peer-to-peer systems such as LimeWire. The suits seek damages of $750 per recording, plus attorneys' costs. Some of the suits claim the defendants copied and distributed hundreds of original recordings.

"Just because the Internet allows you to make digital copies of music for free, that doesn't make it right," Duckworth said.

Investigators for the industry monitor peer-to-peer systems, and capture evidence that can be used in a lawsuit, including ISP information, time stamps and the music files shared. Using that data, the RIAA has sent out about 3,000 pre-litigation letters to officials at colleges across the country. At that point in the process, though, the RIAA still does not have access to actual names. Instead, the colleges notify the students whose Internet addresses were flagged. Those students get the chance to call RIAA to negotiate a settlement. Duckworth would not comment on how many college students have settled with the association, and what the average settlement is. "Our offer is dramatically lower than what copyright law allows," she said. In March, the RIAA issued pre-litigation letters to 26 students at five schools within the University of Maine System. Then in May, lawyers for the association formally filed suit against 22 of those students, and sent subpoenas to the schools to obtain their names. "The University System did comply with the subpoenas and provided the names that RIAA was seeking," John Diamond, spokesman for the system, said Friday.

Diamond said the system protects the privacy of its students, but was compelled to release the names by the court orders. Apparently, 19 of the original 26 Maine students targeted by the investigation reached agreements with RIAA.

The seven who did not settle, and were named in the lawsuits this week are Lilianne Berube of Hampden; Colby Dunn of Houlton; Anna Lenentine of Monticello; Samantha McKague of New Gloucester; Carol Laude of Wells; Felicia Libby of Porter; and Christopher Leavitt of Windham. They have 20 days to submit an answer to the complaint. A separate suit was filed against Marie O'Toole of Biddeford. She said one of her sons downloaded music and was not aware he was breaking the law.

"My husband and I don't know anything about the computer," O'Toole said on Friday. "I like it to just make cards and stuff. I don't even bother to use it anymore, because I'm scared now, too."

Attempts to reach the student defendants were unsuccessful.

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