USC students are a bunch of pirates - RIAA

Author: Tim Smalley
Published: 29th January 2007

According to the RIAA, the University of South Carolina has rather serious piracy problems.

According to the RIAA, the University of South Carolina is one of the worst colleges for piracy in the US.

The RIAA sent the institution over 900 copyright infringement notices over the course of the last year. Comparatively, the next highest number of notices received by a college in South Carolina was Clemson, which received only 71 notices in the last year.

It's reported that USC is in talks with the RIAA, discussing changes that it can make to its technology policies. These could include notices to students about illegal file sharing, stricter file sharing limits and university payment to a legal file sharing service that students at USC can use.

"We are 100% committed to obeying the letter and spirity of the law, but we can't be the network police all the time," said Bill Hogue, USC's Chief Information Officer. He claimed that "Trying to police [over 900 infringements] is expensive, time consuming, and the rules keep changing."

"We target the illegal activity, not individual student populations. It's as simple as that," stated an RIAA spokeswoman. The spokeswoman declined to comment on whether USC received the highest number of infringement notices in the US, but she did say that the university was among those who had received the most.

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