Students sued for running Napster-like service on campus

According to the RIAA, the targeted systems operate similarly to the pirate peer-to-peer network Napster - the popular service that shut down due to the costs of legal action. However, instead of being open to anyone with access to the internet, they reside on a college's internal network.

The RIAA, representing the US music industry, said the students made use of software known as Flatlan, Phynd or Direct Connect to offer access to nearly 2.5 million files. All of them, says the RIAA, work much like Napster, centrally indexing and processing search requests for music. They permit users to download any of those works from another computer.

However, the RIAA's assessment of this software appears to be misleading. The programs being targeted do not in fact operate like Napster.

Two of the students were from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, one from Princeton University, and another from Michigan Technological University. The RIAA is seeking $150,000 for each copyrighted song traded over the networks.

Internet music broad broadcasters yesterday agreed terms with the record industry for royalty payments for broadcasting music over the internet, or webcasting. The deal is still subject to approval by the US Copyright Office.

The Copyright Office had said in June 2002 that large webcasters must pay 70 cents for each song heard by 1,000 listeners, to be paid retrospectively from 1998. Under the new deal, 4% of a webcaster's songs will be royalty-free and webcasters would have an option to pay royalties as a percentage of revenue or at an hourly rate.