From NYT (11/10/99):
University Cracks Down on MP3 Trade
fficials at Carnegie Mellon University have imposed penalties on 71 students alleged to have posted digitized copies of music recordings and other copyrighted material on the campus computer system.
The university temporarily revoked the students' dormitory-room access to the Internet last month. It also required them to attend a 90-minute class on copyright issues and write an essay about what they learned, or face longer suspension of their in-room online privileges.
Paul G. Fowler, associate dean of student affairs, would not characterize the action as a punishment, in part because there is no record of the action in the students' records. But he said university officials believed they had to take steps after discovering that more than a quarter of the computers examined in a random check of 250 student machines last month contained music and other files with copyrighted material. Since they were stored on the campus network, he said, those files could easily be used by the 11,000 people on the network.
"The students were sharing unsecured copyright-protected material within the intranet," Fowler said in an interview this week. "It's a violation of copyright law and our computing code of ethics to distribute copyright-protected material."
Fowler declined to disclose the names of the students.
Carnegie Mellon's action applied to postings within the campus internal network, but it points to a problem music copyright holders have been fighting for several years: that some college students, using MP3 technology to compress music into computer files, are freely copying recordings and making them available on the Internet.
Indeed, two years ago the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents major record companies, launched a campaign to curb the practice. The RIAA has since contacted about 300 colleges and universities that it believes have hosted student sites with copyrighted music, according to Frank M. Creighton, director for anti-piracy efforts at the association.
The reasons students are turning to the Internet to copy and distribute music are not hard to figure out, said Joanne Marino, editor in chief of Webnoize, an online publication covering developments in digital music. Music-avid college students often live on campuses offering high-speed, large-bandwidth computer networks ideal for transmitting music files. At the same time, many young people are unaware of the complicated laws protecting copyright holders.
Finally, there is the temptation to try to get music without having to plunk down cash for a CD. "It's free music and everybody is excited about getting something for free," Marino said.
Music is not the only source of problems. "I told some students 'the next wave will be movies," said Rodney J. Petersen, director of policy and planning for the office of information technology at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md. "They laughed and said will be?'"
For several years, Fowler said, Carnegie Mellon has received periodic complaints from the RIAA about student Web and FTP sites containing music files that are hosted on campus networks. Matters took a turn for the worse in early October. In the space of a week, Fowler said he learned of two student Internet sites, hosted on the Carnegie network, "with tons of MP3 files." He also discovered that users of the university's intranet -- its internal system accessible only to members of the Carnegie Mellon community -- were reporting that numerous machines seemed to be sharing MP3 files.
University computer personnel then launched a random check of computers using the system, according to Fowler. "Naively, I expected to find 10 or 15 machines identified," he said. "In reality, it was 71."
Each of computers, he said, held files that were either unguarded by a password, so any member of the Carnegie community could open them, or guarded only nominally by a password easily obtained or guessed. Most of the material in the files was music, but movies and games were also present, Fowler said. He adding that the intent seemed clear: Students had posted the files so they could be used by others.
Students were given a choice: lose dorm-room Internet access for a month and attend a 90-minute crash course on copyright issues or lose Internet access for the rest of the semester. About 50 students chose the course.
Some students were unhappy with the action, according to Kevin M. Babbitt, editor in chief of the student weekly newspaper, The Tartan. For one thing, he said, some students believe the university's investigation of student computer files not clearly marked public was an invasion of privacy. For another, he said, the action seemed at odds with lax enforcement of the internal networks in the past, so it caught students by surprise.
"At first," he said, "students were upset, surprised and a little angry."
Fowler rejects the argument that university officials were invading student privacy. He argued that all the files in question were clearly intended to be easily available to the community.
As for lax enforcement in the past, he conceded that a "culture of complacency" had developed on campus, so that some students believed they could share copyright-protected materials with impunity on the school's internal network. He hopes with the sanctions that the climate will change. Fowler said he did not originally intend to send a message with the sanctions, but, he added, "that certainly was the end state." |
