RIAA Sends Barrage of Copyright Notices to Colleges as Graduation Gifts

- Image: Discovery Education

Wired is reporting that there has been a 20-fold increase in the amount of copyright notices being sent to American universities in the last couple of weeks. Nothing says graduation gift like a notice that you are being pursued legally by the RIAA.

Typically these notices include a direct reference to an ip address and the file in question. Many of the notices in this new barrage have no such references though. So why would the RIAA be doing this?

The RIAA is pushing legislation in numerous states that would allow them to install deep packet monitoring systems on the school's internet and intranet once the school had received a certain number of notices. One can make the logical conclusion that the RIAA is trying to beef up the number of notices they send out to make the problem appear much worse than it actually is to help move the legislation along.

It shouldn't be a surprise that the RIAA had no comment when contacted by Wired for a follow-up response.