Five months after the university topped the organization's list of the 25 U.S. colleges with the most music copyright infringement notices, the recording industry considers Ohio University a success story in its battle against college music sharers.
A list of Five Technological Success Stories
by the Recording Industry Association of America listed OU and four other schools as examples of positive change.
After 100 OU students were sent pre-litigation settlement letters that threatened lawsuits against music sharers if they didn't settle out of court ' at a cost of $3,000 ' the university shut down a file-sharing hub operating within the campus network and blocked peer-to-peer traffic entering and exiting the network.
Chief Information Officer Brice Bible said the university has also tested Audible Magic's CopySense software, a content filtering system, to catch sharers of copyrighted files.
The program analyzes the digital fingerprint of a file and compares it against a database of copyrighted works. If a match is found, the transfer is blocked.
Bible said purchasing the program would cost tens of thousands of dollars and other options are also being considered.
Still, last month the university participated in a congressional survey sent to schools on the recording industry and motion picture industry's lists of universities receiving the most copyright infringement notices.
The survey's questions were widely criticized for their tone and several commentators speculated the recording industry helped craft the survey.
The questions were akin to When did you stop beating your wife? said one university official.
RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy denied RIAA involvement in authoring the survey, but he said that the recording industry has testified before the committee that sent out the survey and has worked to make Congress aware of piracy on college campuses.
It shouldn't be a surprise that they word the questions similar to the complaints Lamy said.
He called OU a success story and noted that the university had shut down a local file sharing hub, the proliferation of which is concerning to the recording industry.
Although he couldn't speak about any specific legal action against local campus file sharing networks, Lamy said the recording industry has targeted them in the past.
Nothing is off the table.
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Dave Hendricks
