RIAA Settles With Students

The Recording Industry of Association of America settled its lawsuits against four college students accused of running file-sharing networks yesterday. Under the out-of-court agreements, none of the four students will admit guilt, but all will pay settlements valued between $12,000 and $17,000 and discontinue their distribution of copyrighted music.

The suits, filed April 3rd, marked the first time the RIAA had targeted individual file-traders, and initially sought billions of dollars in damages. Daniel Peng, a seventeen-year-old Princeton sophomore, Joe Nievelt, a junior at Michigan Technological University, and Jesse Jordan and Aaron Sherman -- two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute -- were accused of running services similar to pioneering file-swapping outlet Napster that together made available for download more than 1 million copyrighted songs.

Peng, whose Wake software browsed the Princeton network for shared files and then collected them, was specifically cited for distributing songs by Bruce Springsteen, Blink-182 and U2, among others. About 300 songs were named in the lawsuit against him.

Nievelt, who ran a service called FlatLan, talked to Rolling Stone at the time of the suit. "I really don't have the kind of money they're looking for," he said. "This is kind of a ridiculously big lawsuit. It's been a really big headache so far."

The RIAA didn't, of course, get their billions. But by suing and settling -- even for tens of thousands of dollars -- the industry successfully made examples of the four students and sent an intimidating message to file-sharers around the country. The association's representatives said that since the lawsuits were filed a month ago, as many as eighteen other local file-sharing services had shut down.

• 
  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
• 
  MOVIES 'Star Trek' Is Crazy Good
• 
  TV 10 Shows to Watch This Summer
• 
  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter