The University Of Wisconsin has reportedly refused to cooperate with the Recording Industry Association Of America in their previously reported stepped up bid to combat file sharing at US colleges.
The RIAA has always tried to pressure American colleges, who often act as ISPs for their students, to take a role in combating illegal file sharing by their students. The trade body sends the colleges letters for the students who it believes are guilty of illegal P2P usage (the RIAA, of course, can only identify the IP addresses of those students) - traditionally colleges were asked to initially warn accused students that their actions were illegal, but more recently the RIAA has gone straight to stage two and asked colleges to encourage guilty students to make out of court settlement with the record companies, compensating them for past file sharing and pledging to not illegally share music in the future.
Some colleges recognise that by passing on warnings, or encouraging students to settle, they are protecting those students (and themselves) from potential litigation from the labels, but other colleges have resisted being turned into the RIAA's police officers. The latest college exec to speak out against the RIAA's campaign, albeit to his own college's student newspaper, is the Communications Manager for the University Of Wisconsin's IT department, who said: "[The RIAA's] settlement letters are an attempt to short circuit the legal process [and] to rely on universities to be their legal agent". The college's Badger Herald says that while the university has warned students that it does not approve of illegal file sharing, and of the possible implications of copyright violations, it has said it will not take any more proactive moves to help the RIAA in their legal campaign against accused students.
Although that stand has not been officially confirmed by the college, a spokesman for the RIAA has already questioned the institution's stand, with RIAA rep Jonathan Lamy telling reporters: "If the University of Wisconsin has adopted this policy - and we have had no direct communication from them to indicate that they have - it would be unfortunate that students would lose the opportunity to settle any future claims against them at a substantially discounted sum and with the benefit of no public mark on their record".