Last Tuesday, the Recording Industry Association of America announced that it would be filing copyright infringement lawsuits against over 400 students at 18 universities across the country the following day. The Motion Picture Association of America also filed copyright infringement suits the following day.
In all, court exhibits filed last Wednesday in the U.S. District Court Northern District of New York and obtained electronically by The Polytechnic identified 29 RPI Internet Protocol Addresses. There were a total of three separate suits filed that listed the defendants as “Does 1-25,” “John Doe,” and “Does 1-3.” The plaintiffs are not the MPAA and RIAA, but rather, they are the individual record or motion picture companies who own the copyrights to the files that were allegedly shared.
According to the complaints, the defendants are identified in the corresponding court exhibits by IP address along with the date and time of the alleged infringing activities. The exhibits list copyrighted items that each individual was allegedly sharing. The plaintiffs in these cases ask the courts to subpoena user identities from the Internet Service Provider (RPI) based on listed time-stamped IP addresses.
Dean of Students Mark Smith said Tuesday that the 25 IP addresses cited by the RIAA suit had been traced to 24 individual students. He said his office would be notifying them Tuesday by e-mail. He added that as of present time, the identities of the students have not been released.
Smith stated during the interview that RPI had not yet received the list of IPs cited in the motion picture suits. The list of four RPI IP addresses obtained by The Poly from court documents that were enumerated in these motion picture suits can be viewed in the table below, along with timestamps.
IP Addresses listed in motion picture company lawsuits
