

Last summer he landed an internship at Microsoft Corp., working as a development engineer in the software giant’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash.

The lanky Nievelt started tinkering with computers in the seventh grade and gradually moved on to explore the flexibility of computer networking. “It’s been kind of a bad day, and a bad week and a really, really, really bad month,” Nievelt said from the dorm room he shares with two other students, where the corkboard is covered with exam announcements and fliers touting anti-RIAA rallies. None of them appear to have made any money off the file-sharing systems they operated, which were confined to their campuses’ computer networks. For each of the other three, the settlement translates to about half a year’s worth of classes. Sherman agreed to pay $17,500, and Jordan agreed to pay $12,000.įor Nievelt, who was raised in a Detroit suburb, the payment amounts to nearly three years’ tuition. Peng and Nievelt each agreed to pay $15,000. and Aaron Sherman, a student studying management and computer networks at Rensselaer - agreed not to infringe or support the infringement of the companies’ copyrights.

Jesse Jordan, a 19-year-old freshman information technology student at Rensselaer in Troy, N.Y. In the settlements, all four - Peng Joseph Nievelt, a 21-year-old junior computer science student at Michigan Tech in Houghton, Mich. “They looked to instill fear, but instead they got fear and loathing.” “This case had very little to do with Dan Peng and everything to do with the recording industry’s attempt to intimidate Internet users around the country and college students in particular,” Ende said. But Howard Ende, an attorney for 18-year-old Princeton University sophomore Daniel Peng, predicted that the tactic would backfire.
