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File-sharing student faces the music

By Shaun Bishop

Oct. 10, 2005 9:00 p.m.

She’s a self-described music lover.

A fifth-year electrical engineering student, she has been a
member of Random Voices, an all-female a cappella group, for three
years. She plays the piano.

At one time, she downloaded music on the Internet.

But this summer, Diana Li found out she was being sued by the
Recording Industry Association of America for sharing copyrighted
music online.

“You don’t think it really happens until it happens
to someone you know,” Li said.

“I just think I’m an average person … which I
am,” she laughed. “I don’t think I’m a
lawbreaker.”

Li was one of five UCLA students sued by the RIAA in a round of
lawsuits filed May 26 against users of i2hub, a file-sharing
program which uses the high-speed Internet2 on many college
campuses.

A round of lawsuits filed Sept. 29 by the RIAA also targeted one
UCLA user of i2hub.

All lawsuits against those using UCLA’s network have been
“John Doe” suits, meaning the RIAA refers only to the
IP address of the alleged infringer and must ask the university,
via a subpoena, to reveal the person’s name.

That anonymity was shattered for Li when a Federal Express
package arrived at her quiet apartment on Veteran Avenue in late
July. Enclosed was a letter from UCLA notifying her of the
lawsuit.

That was the most frightening time of the whole scenario, she
said.

“It slowly started sinking in. … What did I do? What
does this mean?” Li said. “It was scariest when I
didn’t know what they were going to do.”

After discussing her options with some friends, Li decided to
tell her parents about the suit. She said her family came to her
rescue and quickly hired a patent lawyer, who negotiated a
settlement by late August.

Counting the settlement and lawyer fees, the incident cost
around $4,000, she said.

She saw few options at the time, and with a sense of relief in
her voice, said those first few days were “very emotionlly
draining."

“There’s no way to fight it. … They know
everything,” she said.

It could have been worse, Li said ““ federal copyright law
provides for damages as high as $150,000 per infringement ““
but still she is not completely satisfied with how the situation
unfolded or the penalty.

While she won’t ever share copyrighted music online again
““ “no, definitely not, no,” ““ Li believes
in the concept of being able to trade music online, and buys CDs
more often than most of her friends.

She also believes the consequences were disproportionately
severe. She said she was sharing a few hundred files, far fewer
than some of her friends.

The industry has said in previous statements that those being
sued are among the most egregious sharers of copyrighted music.

Jenni Engebretsen, a spokeswoman for the RIAA, said the
association does not comment on specific cases, but reiterated the
recording industry’s position that “this is theft, you
can be caught, and there are consequences for those
actions.”

Some time after the settlement, Li’s friend James Szeto
suggested she make a Web site to ask for donations to help her
recoup some of the financial losses.

He helped her create it, and the site has generated $1,000 to
date from a few dozen donors, according to the site’s
counter.

“I just wanted to help her in any way I could,” said
Szeto, a fourth-year computer science student.

Li also recorded an original song written by a friend from
Random Voices, called “Weakness,” with her singing and
playing the piano, as an offering to those who visit the donation
page.

Szeto helped Li record the song and said they thought it would
be appropriate to offer a free, legal, non-copyrighted song for
those who donate.

The song’s opening lines seem appropriate to the context
in which it was recorded.

“Sometimes I wish I had just turned away …” Li
begins.

She admits the RIAA’s legal campaign to curb illegal file
sharing is effective, if harsh.

“It’s working, but at the great expense of me and my
family,” she said, adding that most of her friends have since
stopped sharing files online.

Li said she was not disciplined by UCLA for file sharing and
that after the initial letter, the university had little to do with
the process.

Judy Lin, a UCLA spokeswoman, said that because of privacy
rules, the university could not comment on whether students had
been disciplined by the university for illegal file sharing.
Breaking local, state or federal laws is a violation of the student
code of conduct.

Li’s warning to others who share copyrighted files is a
predictable one: It can happen to you, too.

“Everyone kind of knows, but we still fileshare anyway.
It’s just something you do in college,” she said.
“I just didn’t know how dangerous it was. I just wanted
to download music just like everyone else.”

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