Music and movie industry watchdogs are pressuring LSU to stop students from illegally downloading copyrighted material on campus, but University officials admit the school’s policy against illegal file sharing is not always clearly communicated to the students who need to know it.
The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America have been on the attack in the last year tracking down illegal file sharing individuals.
The most notable case is the RIAA’s lawsuit against four college students in April, where students paid sums in the range of $12,000 to $17,000.
But most LSU students have felt invincible to these industry watchdogs and University administrators.
As nearly 4,500 incoming freshmen descended upon campus throughout the spring and summer to attend orientation, two key pieces of campus policy were not discussed – Section 5.2.b.30 of the LSU Code of Student Conduct and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.
In the student code, this section reads that students “using University resources to illegally distribute copyrighted material” will be referred to the Dean of Students.
Those “University resources” include public access computers on campus and the students who use ResNet, the campus high-speed Internet connection for residential housing.
Last year, 3,342 students utilized ResNet, according to Residential Life.
This section of the code and the DMCA warns students that it is illegal to use the University’s high-speed Internet link to download and share copyrighted music files, films and other data protected by law that they did not purchase.
Scottish foreign exchange student Sarah Scott does not know what the big problem is and said she was unaware of such restrictions and was even more oblivious to the LSU policy.
“I just had no idea,” she said. Scott may be one of the few, but most LSU students are fully aware of the law and campus officials are watching.
Terry Doub, University network security manager, said peer-to-peer file sharing is not allowed for faculty, staff or in public access labs.
But Doub said it is allowed for dorm residents because not all file sharing is illegal, and it is impossible to differeniate between legal and illegal downloading.
But downloading copyrighted music and files is illegal, and according to Doub, enforcing LSU’s policy is his main job function.
Complaints from the RIAA and the MPAA, along with other watchdog organizations, are monitored by Doub, and he estimated he received about 200 last year alone.
Doub said when the RIAA or any other watchdog organization sends him a complaint, Computing Services investigates.
If they find an individual has abused his or her Internet privileges, that computer will be taken off the LSU network.
The student then will be required to sign a University sanctioned “DMCA Incident Report,” where students have two options: admit they have a legitimate copyright for the files or certify that they will remove all files in question.
After the second complaint, a student will be sent to the Dean of Students.
But according to Jim Wales, associate dean of students, that has not happened yet.
The University has software that could make it impossible to use file sharing networks like KaZaA or Morpheus, Doub said, and it could do so at any given time.
“We could shut it down, but the students paid for a service, so we don’t want to deny them anything; and I don’t think we will turn it off anywhere in the near future,” Doub said. “Peer-to-peer file sharing used responsibly is perfectly legal.”
While the RIAA has sued individual downloaders, threatened universities nationwide and subpoenaed records of Internet service providers in an effort to protect copyrighted music, Doub said he does not know if LSU ever received a subpoena.
“If we did, I would know about it,” he said.
According to the RIAA that could change as soon as next month.
Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the RIAA, said “in September we will be announcing hundreds of lawsuits against users who are offering a substantial amount of music for downloading.”
Lamy said illegal file swapping has pushed CD sales down 26 percent during the last four years, and hundreds of record stores are shutting down while thousands of people are losing their industry jobs.
“Illegally downloading music is not a victimless crime,” he said. “If you care about music and you care about the health of the industry, then you will not steal copyrighted music.”
The Reveille tried several attempts to get in touch with the MPAA, but were unsuccessful.
Its views toward copyrighted material are similar to the RIAA’s, according to its Web site.
Here at LSU, many students in residence halls still may be unaware of rules against file sharing, but Gary Dukes, information system manager of Residential Life, said he is doing his best to curtail that lack of information.
On Aug. 25, a broadcast e-mail will be sent to all on campus residents that will inform students of LSU’s guidelines on copyright infringement violations.
“We should include this in an orientation, and maybe we will in the future, but for right now all we can do is send these broadcast e-mails,” Dukes said. “This has been a problem for a while and it has been eating up the bandwidth since I first got here four years ago.”
The LSU bandwidth is 155 megabits (155 million bits per second), an extraordinary speed according to Doub.
But spread out between 15,000 users, the speed shrinks considerably lower, and with people tying up the network with excessive downloading, controlling bandwidth becomes a daily problem.
“It’s not our intention to stop it, but we can curtail bandwidth,” Doub said. “We have tools to control this and we are not going to let person-to-person file sharing infringe on the day-to-day operations of the University.”
File sharing is extremely popular with the computer literate – a group that includes most LSU students.
The trend began with Napster and remained popular since then.
In 2001 various record labels sued Napster into nonexistence, but other file sharing Web portals like KaZaA and Morpheus quickly rose to take its place.
According to the RIAA, by May 2003, KaZaA had become the world’s most downloaded software, with 230.3 million downloads.
At any given moment approximately 4 to 5 million people are online offering an estimated 800 million files for copying through various peer-to-peer networks.
Even in the wake of the RIAA’s recent sweep of lawsuits and public condemnation of file sharing, many in the LSU community think it is unlikely they could catch everybody.
“It seems impossible for them to find everybody downloading music,” said Seth Segura, a civil engineering freshman. “But I had no idea there was a University policy.”