File sharing condemned by USU
Despite the agreement to not illegally share files as a condition of receiving Utah State University’s network services, Peer-to-Peer sharing is continuing among students and staff.
Illegal exchange of entertainment files “should not be condoned or tolerated,” Bob Bayn, associate director of network and computing services, said.
“The university, an institution of learning, should help its students and staff to learn about this issue and its consequences,” he said.
Bayn said the university is concerned with its legal liability because as an Internet Provider, it must comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The university receives several DMCA complaints per month, he said.
“Under the DMCA, we are obliged to promptly disable the infringing user’s access and/or have the infringing files removed from the network,” he said.
USU does not currently impose any additional penalties, he said.
Bayn said he thinks some students who obtain entertainment files in violation of copyright restrictions know they are in violation but believe they can proceed without detection.
“Just like students who exceed the speed limit when know they shouldn’t,” he said.
Others don’t fully understand what they are doing when they download free entertainment, Bayn said.
“I suspect that there are many students who think of their network connection as rather like a radio and they don’t pay anyone to listen to the radio,” he said.
Some students also don’t understand that by downloading entertainment, many programs automatically begin to advertise on the Internet that they will share with others, Bayn said.
“In addition to being a consumer or recipient of the entertainment files, they are also becoming, whether they realize it or not, a provider,” he said.
According to an article written by Preston Gralla on the Web site, www.openp2p.com, it is possible to turn off file sharing to other consumers in some programs. Not sharing files can prevent a consumer from getting fined by the Recording Industry Association of America, Gralla said.
Gralla said other ways to avoid being a target for the RIAA include keeping one’s collection small. People with more than 1,000 songs have been sued in the past, he said.
“Cull your collection to only what you really want to keep,” he said.
Another option is to move files out of the shared music folder after they have been downloaded, he said.
Gralla said people who like popular music are more at risk for getting noticed by the RIAA. In the past, the RIAA scanned file sharers’ folders for certain songs, targeting them for further investigation if those songs were found, he said.
Some of those songs include “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne, “Minority” by Green Day and “Hotel California” by the Eagles, he said.
“So, if you share popular music, you’re more likely to be a target. If, on the other hand, you share digital music such as the songs of Brahms and Liszt sung by the baritone Thomas Quasthoff, you’re not likely to become a target,” he said.
Amanda Elzinga, a senior majoring in philosophy, said she thinks it is dumb that Web sites are allowed to offer the music, but people can get fined if they download it.
“If they make it illegal to download, the programs should be illegal,” she said.
Some students questioned if computer registration had a connection to Peer-to-Peer sharing, but registration was prompted by security and network performance concerns, Bayn said.
“Incidents of hacked and infected computers are way down this fall compared to last fall when infected computers could be brought to campus and connected to the network without the precautions required by the registration process,” he said.
USU does not track what a student does on the Internet, Bayn said. Some activities are logged in various places to monitor performance of the network and the servers, but the only place that keeps track of pages a user visits is their personal Web browser, he said.
USU does not read student e-mail, Bayn said. System managers who store the messages can read e-mails, but they deliver more than 100,000 messages a day, Bayn said.
“System managers have more pressing things to do than try to snoop in that torrent of largely uninteresting information. I suppose an insomniac system manager might try reading the e-mail stream rather than counting sheep,” he said.
-ashschiller@cc.usu.edu