Universities strike back in battle over illegal downloads
With 1.3 billion music files pirated by college students last year, schools are turning to technology to curb the practice. Congress watches with interest.
from the June 18, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
The online music industry has evolved dramatically since Northeastern University student Shawn "Napster" Fanning introduced a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing service in 1999 known as Napster. The RIAA sued soon after, and in 2001 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Napster could not facilitate the trade of copyrighted music. Napster shut down and partially settled in an agreement to pay copyright holders millions.
Since then, other services have provided free, but illegal, methods for P2P file sharing. In P2P sharing, a user establishes an account, downloads music or video files, and lets other users download his or her files in turn. The problem: Copyrighted music changes hands for free, and record labels don't get the licensing control guaranteed under 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Many Napster copycats, including Kazaa, iMesh, Bearshare, and Grokster, have settled with record labels for damages. Kazaa – once the premier P2P service, with 4.2 million users – settled in July, agreeing to copyright filters.
LimeWire is the last P2P giant standing, but several major record labels have a joint lawsuit pending to shut it down. According to the NPD Group, an entertainment research firm, LimeWire accounted for 62 percent of P2P downloads in 2006.
The free and easy access to P2P services has long plagued university administrators. Not only do such downloads take up a lot of "bandwidth," costing campuses thousands of dollars, the downloads themselves are more likely to contain viruses and spyware that can infest the university's system. Spyware, which can transmit a user's Web-browsing habits to advertisers, may even be bundled with P2P software – and linger after the P2P program is uninstalled.
In March, US Rep. Ric Keller (R) of Florida introduced a bill to increase funds for antipiracy.
"For every one Justin Timberlake, there are hundreds of sound technicians, back-up singers, and retail workers who are hurt by illegal downloading," Representative Keller said in a phone interview. "It costs our economy billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and we lose a great deal of tax revenue."
An immunity clause in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 protects universities from lawsuits related to illegal file-sharing on campus networks.
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