AfterDawn: News

LSU to start fining unauthorized campus file sharers

Beginning at the start of August, Louisiana State University will begin fining students who are caught pirating music and movies on the campus network. The fine, according to the school's newspaper, will be $50 USD.

Says the Daily Reveille: "Sheri Thompson, IT planning and communications officer, said she understands a typical RIAA subpoena to be $4,000. (...) '$50 isn’t $4,000 and isn’t debilitating and going to be the difference between them being able to live their life fully,' Thompson said."

Making the decision somewhat surprising however, is the face that the RIAA decided to abandon the much controversial "mass lawsuit" strategy earlier this year.



The newspaper article also says that the school registered 200 DMCA notices last year, meaning the school could have raked in an extra $10,000 USD.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 20 Jul 2009 1:26

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• 5 comments

• Mysttic

  Yea they "could have ranked an extra $10,000" but thankfully someone was smart enough to see that if you go around charging students for what has become the norm on the net, then a lot of those students wouldn't be able to spend more for coming back, hence the after result would be profit loss. Anyone on a student loan may actually have violated any terms in agreement with a loan, so they too wouldn't be back, hence the university again faces profit loss. And then there is all the students current and potential reading it in the local/global news, or campus news; and if they started to actually put up a whole law suit against them, it wouldn't look attractive for future prospective students to choose that university for their area of study; hence even more profit loss.
  
  Good for the university they found a more reasonable ground for dealing with the situation, the only other issue is what is considered pirate? After all some independent artists use the net a a medium to get their art out, and if that too is labeled piracy, then damn us all.

  20.7.2009 02:45 #1

• emugamer

  Originally posted by Mysttic: Yea they "could have ranked an extra $10,000" but thankfully someone was smart enough to see that if you go around charging students for what has become the norm on the net, then a lot of those students wouldn't be able to spend more for coming back, hence the after result would be profit loss. Anyone on a student loan may actually have violated any terms in agreement with a loan, so they too wouldn't be back, hence the university again faces profit loss. And then there is all the students current and potential reading it in the local/global news, or campus news; and if they started to actually put up a whole law suit against them, it wouldn't look attractive for future prospective students to choose that university for their area of study; hence even more profit loss.
  
  Good for the university they found a more reasonable ground for dealing with the situation, the only other issue is what is considered pirate? After all some independent artists use the net a a medium to get their art out, and if that too is labeled piracy, then damn us all.The $10,000 would have been collected if the $50 fine was implemented last year. $10,000 would have been the more reasonable ground.

  20.7.2009 09:36 #2

• DarkJello

  So LSU gets the money? That doesn't make any sense at all.

  20.7.2009 15:07 #3

• DXR88

  Security tunneler anyone.
  
  sounds like Sheri Thompson hasn't had enough love lately nothing a couple of ebombs cant fix.

  20.7.2009 15:36 #4

• ZippyDSM

  How about camapus start fining IP owners for their distractive content of their students?
  
  either way its ridiculous...

  20.7.2009 20:19 #5