The war over Internet piracy: fearing lawsuits, college officials crack down on illegal downloading of music and videos on campus

Black Issues in Higher Education, March 11, 2004 by Peter Galuszka

The war on music piracy, meanwhile, has hardly been resolved. For example, while deals such as Penn State's and the University of Rochester's might sound good to college administrators, down at the student level, there are lots of questions. "Would I use Napster legally and for free?" says one Virginia State junior who is majoring in political science. "I guess, but it would depend on what kinds of songs they offer. I'm not sure they'd have everything I or other people would want." The student, looking out over Virginia State's hill-top Georgian-style campus buildings, admits that she downloads illegally from a university-owned apartment. She says she's not too afraid of getting caught.

In the end, the dollar incentive also might be too much to wean students away from legal, campus-sponsored downloads--be they music or video. As Ferguson notes, people can buy big packets of blank CDs at discount stores at a rate of several for the dollar. If pirates download and mix tunes students really want and sell them for $5 each, the margins are just too terrific for many to ignore, he says.

Criminal Penalties

It's been a tough day in class and you're back in the dorm room. You flop your books on the bed and flip on the computer. There's an instant message from a friend with the latest song you love. Excited, you IM a dozen of your buddies, copying the song so they can enjoy the music, too. Or, you flip on the computer and someone you don't even know is giving you music you like. You then share it via the Web with you r friends.

Are you violating federal law? Yes, indeed. You could face criminal penalties of up to five years in prison or $250,000 in fines under the federal No Electronic Theft (NET) law. Or you could be the defendant in a civil case seeking $150,000 in penalties for each song you have shared illegally.

At the minimum, you could find yourself cut off from your university-owned computer system for weeks, if not months. Under the federal 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, an online service provider such as the school must take punitive action against such abuse to limit its own liabilities.

So, what's legal and what's not? According to MusicUnited, a lobby of musicians, artists and recording companies:

* It's legal to download music from approved sites.

* It is not legal to download music from pirate or "peer-to-peer" sites such as Kazaa, Grokster, Imesh, WinMX, LimeWire, Bearshare, Aimster, Morpheus or Gnutella.

* It's legal to copy music onto an analog cassette as long as it isn't for commercial purposes.

* It is not legal to share unauthorized music with others or put it on the Web through "peer-to-peer" systems.

Is it legal to burn CDs from music you have downloaded? This seems to be a legal gray area. But MusicUnited says that if you burn a CD and keep it only for personal use, there should be no trouble. Once you share it, though, you are breaking the law.

--By Peter Galuszka

Fear of the Law

A new nationwide phone survey of 1,358 Internet users from Nov. 18-Dec. 14 by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows the percentage of online Americans downloading music files on the Internet has dropped by haft and the numbers who are downloading files on any given day have plunged since the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began filing suits in September against those suspected of copyright infringement. Furthermore, a fifth of those who say they continue to download or share files online say they are doing so less often because of the suits.