IP: Colleges and universities turned into music cops?

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Ari Ollikainen <Ari () OLTECO com>
Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 11:27:55 -0800
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: Colleges and universities turned into music cops?

    What struck me as odd in this story was that University of Buffalo
    took action against its students and staffers as a result of
    contact in the matter by NetPD, an anti-piracy company, located
    in England, on behalf of Sony.



Music cops
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20020302/1002465.asp
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-- The recording industry wants to curb downloading music from the
Internet, so it's asking colleges to police computer use. But music
lovers are staying a step ahead.

By STEPHEN WATSON News Staff Reporter
3/2/2002

Napster is dead, long live the music.

Big-name music companies - which already put the largest Internet
music-sharing service out of business - now are enlisting colleges to
crack down on students who download copyrighted music from new online
companies.

At the University at Buffalo, university authorities notified 25
students and two UB staff members last semester that they had been
caught downloading copyrighted songs from two artists.

And four or five Canisius students also were notified by college
authorities that they had been caught doing the same.

The UB and Canisius students were warned they could face legal action
from record companies. They also were threatened with the loss of
computer privileges and told to remove the music files from their
computers.

The college and university acted after being contacted by
London-based NetPD, which is working on behalf of Sony and two of its
musicians - Michael Jackson and the rock band Incubus.

"We want fans to get music how they want it, when they want it, where
they want it. We just want artists to be paid for their work," said
Amy Weiss, a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of
America, the trade group that represents record labels. "We feel it's
important to educate administrators and students about copy right and
wrong on the Internet."

Students aren't buying that argument.

Kelly Miller, a UB sophomore from Silver Creek, said she downloaded
about 400 songs using Napster and another 150 songs using KaZaA.

"If all I do is keep it on my computer or burn a CD for my use, no,"
it's not wrong, Miller said, referring to the process for recording a
homemade CD. "I think it's wrong how people burn CDs for other people
or try to sell it."

The crackdown represents a shift by the music industry, which
previously focused its attack on companies, such as Napster, that run
these music-sharing sites.

But with Napster put out of business, copycat sites that are only
superficially different - with such names as Aimster, KaZaA and
MusicCity - sprouted up. Given these sites' continued popularity, the
record companies now are going after the users, many of them college
students.

The record company hired NetPD, an Internet policing site that
searches through the millions of music files floating in cyberspace
for an individual track, then identifies who downloaded the song.

NetPD sent violation notices to administrators of the computer
networks at UB, Canisius and other colleges around the country.

Still, this legal effort has raised questions on college campuses.

UB and most other universities don't monitor their students' Internet
use on the university's network. "We can't get into content, under
First Amendment concerns," said Harvey S. Axlerod, UB's computer
discipline officer.

The university takes action only when a potential violation is
reported, such as a student who reports receiving a threatening
e-mail from another student.

Given all that, college administrators have said they feel
uncomfortable enforcing federal copyright laws at the request of a
private concern. But they felt it was their responsibility, after
receiving the NetPD notice, to inform the students that they should
stop downloading the copyrighted music.

The crackdown doesn't seem to be affecting UB's students, several of
whom said they don't think there is anything wrong with what they're
doing.

"It's easier to download a song than to go out and buy a CD on the
chance I wouldn't like it," said Michael Monahan, a sophomore
political science major at UB, who said he has downloaded about 500
songs from Napster, using it as a chance to preview songs from new
albums.

    [...snip...]


Practical concerns

Beyond legal and ethical questions, universities like UB continue to
wrestle with a more practical problem that music sharing creates for
their computer systems.

The music files being downloaded take up lots of space on computer
systems, space that is expensive for colleges to add to their
networks, UB's Lesniak said.

If a large amount of space is used by students downloading music,
that's network capacity that can't be used for research or other
academic purposes. "It's killing the rest of the system," UB's
Axlerod said.

UB and Canisius both have tinkered with their networks to make it
more difficult for students to either bring in music files or - in
the case of UB - to send them out.

But college officials admit that trying to use technology to stop the
flow of music on the Internet is like trying to catch sand in your
hands.

"I think we're always going to be half a step behind," said Cary
Anderson, the dean of students at Canisius.



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