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Universities Grapple With Napster
Universities throughout the country are split on whether to adhere to the recording industry's requests to block the online song-swapping service Napster, as the legal battle rages in federal appeals court.
And while Napster's lawyers are busy in a San Francisco courtroom, the RIAA is pushing ahead with its Soundbytes anti-piracy campaign, which involves 350 higher education institutions throughout the United States. The campaign originated in 1997, when the RIAA discovered that about 70 percent of questionable downloading activity emanated from college and university networks. The RIAA then formed a pilot program with 10 universities — including Carnegie Mellon, the University of Washington and Cornell — seeking input on how to work to discourage student music downloading activity.
"There was a need for education, not just the students, but the faculty," as well, RIAA Anti-Piracy Director and Senior Vice President Frank Creighton said in an interview. "It's a very cooperative relationship." He said that by 1998, the number of infringing site activity dropped 30 percent.
RIAA Team Takes Action
The RIAA has been sending letters to colleges where downloading is taking place, asking them to remove infringing material, and sends them information packets on piracy. The RIAA has a staff that monitors MP3 search engines, interactive juke boxes, Napster and other sites for infringing activity and that tracks automated Web crawlers. Sites like MP3.com have a database of songs — or downloadable MP3 files — users can copy and listen to. Napster's software does not have a central database, but acts as the vehicle for users to share songs without going through a central server.
An RIAA report released Sept. 19 stated that the number of U.S. commercial sites generating notices for infringing upon the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) in the first six months of 2000 increased by more than 200 percent over the number of notices sent in all of 1999.
"There are a myriad of things we need to take a look at on a daily basis," Creighton said. "It's a huge task…it's kind of like taking away their MTV-don't take away my Napster."
Schools Search, Seize Student Files
The anti-piracy effort has resulted in students having their computer equipment confiscated. For example, one student at Oklahoma State University had his computer, printer, two CD recorders and scanner confiscated after the RIAA contacted the school about his alleged distribution of music from his computer. Creighton said the RIAA targets all activity, large or small, and that this particular student was not targeted because of the size of his activity, but that "he just happened" to be at one of the 40 to 50 schools that received notification letters at that time.
"If we get a legitimate complaint from a legitimate group, like the RIAA, or a software company…we look into that, and if it appears there's some wrongdoing going on, we'll investigate it," OSU spokesman Nestor Gonzales said. "The university is the network administrator, and we're responsible. I don't think anybody on the administrative side of things wants to make students into felons."
Gonzales said helping students understand that copyright infringement activity is a serious matter has been a priority. The Pew Internet and American Life Project released its Online Music Report Sept. 28. It found that 78 percent of Internet users who download music and save it to their hard drives don't believe they're stealing, and 68 percent said they don't care about the music's copyright protection.
"They've (students) been doing it, they don't think it's a big deal," Gonzales said. "The Internet has been sort of like the Wild West for a long time — I think the Wild West is starting to get tamed."
Carnegie Mellon conducted an MP3 sweep last semester. When a "larger than average" number of reports from the RIAA on dorm residents sharing music were received, campus officials went through the networks and shut down certain sites. John Lerchey, the school's computer and network security coordinator, said officials randomly searched dorm rooms, looking for shared folders saved on computer hard drives void of passwords — a telling sign that the contents were downloaded from a music-sharing site. Those students had their computers shut down for a semester, unless they wrote a short paper or e-mail to the dean of student affairs, saying they understood their wrongdoing.
"I've been told students would rather fail three classes than lose their connection," Lerchey said.
Students Cry 'Invasion of Privacy'
Students have complained that the raids were an invasion of privacy. But their computers are on networks owned by their school — networks that get bottled up with downloading, which takes up an extreme amount of bandwidth.
"The machines are on our network — they had folders set up to be obviously intended to be shared with other people," Lerchey said. "If you put a sign on the front door that said ‘hey — the key's under the mat, come on in and have a sandwich,' it's kind of hard to say you weren't invited."
Lerchey said OSU requires all freshmen to take a computer skills workshop that includes an ethics unit where copyright protection issues are discussed. The school also includes a talk with campus police on security measures — in which copyright infringement activity is included — in its freshman orientation program.
It's a "pretty strong word of mouth campaign," Lerchey said. "If we find out there are violations going on, we pull the machines and defer further action" to student or legal affairs boards. "Typically, we're not going to take action unless we have evidence" like file logs or paths to specific machines, he said.
But colleges and universities like the Georgia Institute of Technology, Michigan State, Stanford University, Princeton and Duke, have refused industry lawyer requests to block Napster in the name of ensuring unfettered access to information to college network users. But when universities like Indiana, Yale and Southern California reacted similarly, the RIAA slapped them with lawsuits, which were dropped after they agreed to block access.
"I think it's in everyone's best interest to do it that way" and cooperate with the RIAA, Lerchey said
Computer Hackers Protest Student Treatment
No way, say some groups. Angered by the industry's effort to shut down Napster and similar sites, a group of computer hackers last month organized a boycott of a competition to win $10,000 for hacking new copyright-protection software being developed by the record labels.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other open-source software advocates are protesting the Secure Digital Music Initiative after RIAA members tried to woo them into helping build a program to defend copyrighted material against hackers. The boycott's backers say it limits consumers' "fair use" right to the music they buy, such as making personal copies for car stereos or laptops, or making copies for educational purposes.
Capitol Hill Gets Involved
Napster and MP3.com also are getting a helping hand from Capitol Hill. MP3.com's high-powered lobbyist Billy Pitts, a former strategist for Walt Disney with 20 years of Hill experience, made a move that encouraged Rep. Rick Boucher, D-VA, and three Republicans to introduce the Music Owners' Listening Rights Act of 2000, which legalizes the MP3.com service.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT, sent a letter on Sept. 14 to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. He said that a brief filed by the Justice Department and the U.S. Copyright Office siding with the recording industry against Napster did not represent the opinion of the entire U.S. government.
"Given the importance of the issues to be decided, I thought it important that the court be under no misapprehension that the [DOJ] brief necessarily expresses the view of Congress in this matter," Hatch wrote in the letter, obtained by Reuters. Hatch is chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. The previous Justice Department brief filed attacked parts of Napster's defense against the record industry's claims that its song-swap service facilitates copyright piracy. "Indeed, Congress has recently held hearings into the matter and is engaged in ongoing deliberations about its merits as the events unfold in the emerging online music and entertainment market," Hatch wrote.
Hatch also called Napster founder Shawn Fanning to testify on the potential of peer-to-peer computing at a hearing in Utah Monday.
A panel of judges heard the appeals of Napster and RIAA lawyers last Monday, but has yet to rule on whether to uphold a previous injunction against the company.
- by Liza Porteus
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