Today’s universities have increasingly fast computer networks that supply students with a world of information at their fingertips. This high-speed network, however, also allows students to download music and movies easier and faster than ever before. What students may not be aware of, however, is that their innocent hobby may be violating copyright laws.
The Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and other copyright-owners’ groups sent a letter in October to more than 2,300 colleges and universities to inform them of the legal issues surrounding on-campus file-sharing. The letter also asked for the colleges’ help in their fight against file-sharing and offers ways to stop it.
The University was one such school that received a letter. A study by the Recording Industry Association of America estimates that 2.6 billion music files are downloaded illegally each month, mainly through unlicensed ‘peer-to-peer’ services such as KaZaA, Morpheus, and Gnutella.
The Motion Picture Association of America figures that unauthorized movie downloads number between 400,000 and 600,000 every day.”
The problem is finding a successful way to educate students about copyright laws and the negative effects of web piracy. “We have a lot of work to do to educate students. We’ve only scratched the surface,” said Jill Carr, associate dean of students at the University.
“Students don’t understand that they are serving others too,” said Toby Singer, executive director of Information Technology Services at the University.
The University doesn’t feel that student downloading is its biggest priority at this time.
“Students’ e-mailing and web-browsing abilities are a higher priority,” Smith said.
Bruce Petryshak, chief information officer at the Office of the CIO at the University said that through seminars and information available on the Web, the University is continuing to beef up its educational tools.
“We will continue to find better ways to educate,” Petryshak said.
In the meantime, the University is faced with handling copyright law violations made by on-campus students. Some copyright holders employ Media Force Inc., a company that searches the Internet for illegal downloads and informs the University when they detect a student with a copyrighted item on his/her computer.
Kent Strickland, information security officer of Information Technology Services at the University, receives the warnings weekly through e-mail.
According to Strickland, students are warned by the university first to remove the copyrighted material from their computers. If they fail to do so they will lose network privileges for 30 days. If there is a second offense, students may not get off so easily.
“They may be sanctioned,” Strickland said. “It is a legal notice.” So far, the university has not gone to extreme measures such as blocking Web sites or setting up firewalls. Petryshak believes that as long as students are sure to download legal content then the university should not take away those rights. He said that it is an open facility and they do not want to eliminate the opportunity completely. Right now, it is not a major problem, but should the situation get out of hand, the University is prepared to take action. “We are not there yet, but if it does get to that point, we will have to consider those options,” Petryshak said.
Something else to take into consideration is how much the downloading affects the overall performance of the network system. According to Mike Smith, network administrator of Information Technology Services at BGSU, there are over14,000 computers on campus and 6,000 of those are student owned. It is these computers that harbor the majority of the traffic.
According to Petryshak, BGSU is at the top of the list as far as bandwidth capacity.
“If BGSU increases bandwidth, students who file-share will benefit other students from other schools,” Strickland said. “It would be counter productive to speed things up.”
