In 2007 the RIAA began issuing pre-litigation letters to students accusing them of violating the copyright laws. Seventy-eight UT students received the letters in spring 2007. The letters urged the students to make an out-of-court settlement of $3,000 with the RIAA before a lawsuit was filed. The RIAA ranked UT as fourth on its list of institutions at which students were illegally downloading copyrighted material.
UT instituted procedures that significantly decreased the number of RIAA complaints. Fewer than 5 percent of students who received an initial complaint from the RIAA received a second complaint. The procedure involved three levels: the first time a student received a complaint from the RIAA, the student was contacted by OIT, and a representative explained why the behavior is illegal and against university policy. The representative instructed the student to remove the illegal material from his or her computer.
For a second offense, the student’s network connection was disabled until the student removed the illegal content and took the computer to the OIT Service Center to demonstrate the removal. After a third offense, the network connection of the alleged infringing computer was disabled immediately, and the incident was reported to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs.
In January 2008 UT received two waves of subpoenas requiring UT to disclose the names and personal information of 42 students accused of illegally downloading copyrighted material.
In January 2009 the RIAA decided to move from suing individuals regarding music piracy to reaching agreements with internet service providers. The ISPs agreed to a graduated response to instances of suspected piracy, which was similar to UT’s internal program. The UT vice president for information technology and CIO indicated that UT was no longer an institution of concern for the RIAA.