Progress Made against University Music Pirates, But More Said Needed
Universities are starting to collaborate with music and movie industry groups to block piracy and educate students to be conscientious Internet users, experts told Congress Tues. But many in higher educational don’t do their share, RIAA and MPAA told a House Education Competitiveness Subcommittee hearing. Chmn. Keller (R-Fla.) urged a “three strikes” law for repeat infringers as a drastic remedy.
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Keller showed how easily even a “42-year-old congressman” can download songs via P2P. In less than 2 minutes, a Kenny Chesney track was booming through the chamber courtesy of Lime Wire, one of the few remaining P2P download services (WID Aug 8 p5). “The university environment,” with its tech-savvy denizens, “creates a perfect storm for piracy,” he said.
“There is a growing awareness of the problem within higher education,” U. of Md. Chancellor William Kirwan told members. “Intellectual property is one of the coins of the realm of higher education and we want to raise a new generation that values intellectual property.” Music piracy gobbles server space and introduces spam and viruses, he said. To battle back, U. of Md. deploys Internet-use best practices, requiring Internet ethics courses and offering Ruckus and other legal alternatives at its residential campuses.
U. of Ill. achieved some success after asking RIAA for help when Cheryl Elzy, dean of university libraries, started fielding 20-30 copyright complaints a day, she said. The resulting Digital Citizen Project merges education, research and a coming intra-network download service -- Bird Trax -- costing students $20-$30 a year. The goal is to eliminate “all known avenues for illegal downloads” on campus, she said.
Institutions may hesitate to crack down for fear they will stifle legitimate uses of P2P, said William Fisher, dir.-Berkman Center for Internet Law & Society, Harvard Law School. U. of Cal.’s Digital Library Project and the National Cancer Research Institute both use P2P. “We do need to be sensitive to very legitimate uses of P2P file sharing. P2P technology is not inherently pernicious,” he said.
But institutions aren’t doing enough to promote legal alternatives and block piracy, the RIAA and MPAA said. “Many universities are not responding as quickly as we would like,” said MPAA Chmn. Dan Glickman. “There is a far greater number of schools that don’t understand… academic freedom is not the freedom to steal,” Cary Sherman, RIAA pres., said: “When a school fails to act it is teaching… it sends a message and it’s the wrong one.” But RIAA and MPAA don’t want schools invading students’ privacy, either, they said. “We are not asking schools on spy on contents of students communications. We don’t expect schools to be the music industry’s police,” Sherman said. RIAA has brought together technology vendors and universities to fight the problem, sometimes even meeting with university presidents, who are often unaware of the problem or unwilling or unable to act, RIAA said.
Universities do “students a disservice” by not guarding them from legal action, as has befallen students at 132 schools who have been sued for infringement since March 2004, Sherman said. Students need a combination of piracy blocking software, education and legal alternatives, Fisher said. “Suppressing illegal activities will never be fully effective unless good alternatives are available,” he said. Students shut out of campus file sharing services turn to improvised dorm-based networks, he said. Glickman agreed: “The pursuit of hassle-free, reasonable cost alternatives is important. It’s pretty darn hard to get a creative individual to go the road that costs them a little bit of money when in fact they can get it for free.”