RIAA blocked in war on students

A US court has blocked several record industry subpoenas that are aimed at college song swappers, saying the universities involved are not immediately required to divulge the alleged file traders' identities.

The decision comes after officials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College challenged subpoenas from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), saying the trade group's requests for information had not been legally filed.

The judge's decisions give the universities - and the anonymous students or staff file traders who are the ultimate target of the subpoenas - some breathing room. The colleges were objecting only on the technical legal grounds that the RIAA had filed the subpoenas in the wrong court, which means the trade group still can revise its requests in order to comply with the judge's order.

An RIAA spokesman said: "Ultimately, we will file those subpoenas wherever the courts require us to. This is a minor procedural issue and does not change an undeniable fact - when individuals distribute music illegally online, they are not anonymous, and service providers must reveal who they are."

Critics of the RIAA process welcomed even a limited ruling, however.

Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that has emerged as the chief critic of the recording industry's tactics, said: "I hope this will give other people hope. It will be a lot easier for people to address problems in the RIAA subpoenas if they don't have to go to DC to do it."

The legal skirmishing in Massachusetts is just one part of a nationwide avalanche of RIAA subpoenas that the group is sending as part of an unprecedented campaign against internet file trading on networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus.

Since late June, the RIAA has issued more than 900 subpoenas for information that would identify ISP subscribers or university students who have allegedly offered copyrighted material online.

The requests for information are a prelude to what the trade group has said will likely be thousands of copyright infringement lawsuits filed against individual file traders, beginning later this month.

John Borland writes for News.com