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.

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Song Stories

“My President”

Young Jeezy | 2008

Young Jeezy teams up with Nas on this track, in which he compare his own success with the idea of an African-American winning the Democratic Party's nomination in the 2008 presidential election. "When I pulled up in my car, that s--- was unbelievable to people in my neighborhood because they were like, 'We grew up with him. How the hell did he accomplish this?'" he told Rolling Stone. "I feel like it was the same way with Obama. I grew up all this time, but I've never seen a black man this close to running this country."

More Song Stories entries »

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