[daddydirt]

http://online.wsj.com/public/article...od=tff_article

In an unusual twist in the fight over online file sharing, several college students who have been sued by the recording industry are asking the creator of a file-swapping service to pay to settle the charges against them.

More than 30 students at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst are demanding that i2hub, which was founded and run by 22-year-old Wayne Chang, pay the $3,750 the Recording Industry Association of America is seeking from each to settle allegations that they traded copyrighted music and movies online.

The students are arguing that if it weren't for i2hub, they wouldn't have broken the law. "Had the UMass students known that i2hub was making their copyrighted information available for sharing over the Internet … they would have likely not used i2hub, opting instead to use legal music downloading services," read a letter sent to Mr. Chang by the university's Student Legal Services Office, which is representing the students. The office is supported by student fees and located on campus, though does not represent the university itself, a university spokesman said.

The letter was sent Dec. 16, and warned that if a reply was not received in 30 days, the group would file a lawsuit under the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act, which forbids companies from engaging in unfair or deceptive practices. On Monday, Charles Baker, Mr. Chang's attorney, wrote in a letter to the group that i2hub "has no intention of making any offer of settlement because it has no liability in this matter." The two sides haven't communicated since.

Lisa Kent, the attorney at the Student Legal Services Office who sent the letter, declined to comment Tuesday, saying only that "the letter speaks for itself." The group said it represents 42 students, but named 31 in the letter. Those students either didn't respond to emails or declined to comment.

Mr. Chang created i2hub two years ago while a sophomore at UMass, then dropped out to work for a software company while he ran the service on the side. The service relied on an ultra-speedy network that links more than 240 universities, corporations and government organizations that belong to a consortium called Internet2. The speed made it easy for students to transfer large video files in addition to music.

Since April 2005, the RIAA has filed 678 lawsuits against individual users on 40 college campuses who allegedly used i2hub to illegally download copyrighted music, according to a spokeswoman. The group has sued 80 students at UMass.

I2hub was one of seven file-sharing companies in September to receive a cease-and-desist letter from the RIAA, asking that the companies stop letting users download copyrighted music. Mr. Chang said he shut down i2hub in November amid legal concerns.

"I'm really surprised that they would do this," Mr. Chang said of the demand from the i2hub users. "I really don't think I'm in the wrong here." He said he was thinking about returning to UMass in the fall, but the letter made him "think twice."

The letter on behalf of the students said i2hub's promotional events on campus and advertisements on university buses implied a connection between i2hub and the university, and gave the service legitimacy. Ms. Kent also argued that i2hub coaxed students to share files illegally by requiring users to share one gigabyte of files in order to use the service.

Mr. Baker, a Houston lawyer who is representing Mr. Chang for free and also represents embattled file-sharing service StreamCast Networks Inc., wrote in his response letter that i2hub never claimed to be endorsed by the university, and that each i2hub user was required to agree not to commit copyright infringement before they were allowed to use the software. He wrote that students "were well aware of the fact that what they were doing was potentially illegal." Mr. Chang, for his part, said i2hub didn't encourage illegal file-swapping.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled that businesses can be held responsible for copyright infringement if their products allow consumers to illegally swap songs and movies, opening the door for record labels and movie studios to sue file-sharing companies. Over the next several months, many of those companies, including Grokster, shuttered their services amid pressure from Hollywood. Still, most lawsuits thus far have been filed by copyright holders, not users of the services.

Karen Frank, an intellectual-property attorney in San Francisco, said the students' case depends on whether they can prove that i2hub misled them and that they weren't aware that their use of the service was illegal. "It sounds like a pretty steep hill for the students to climb," she said. "But it's clever."

some folks just can't take responsibility for their own actions.