Despite Recording Industry threats, downloading on campus has increased.
By Sarah Carillo
Assistant News Editor
When will students learn?
Despite the Recording Industry Association of America targeting college campuses and hundreds of people across the country being charged with file sharing, Pepperdine students don’t appear to be changing their downloading habits. The problem actually seems to be getting worse, according to Kathee Robings, chief operations officer of Information Technology.
Robings said she has received substantially more letters this semester from music and software companies notifying her of copyright infringers on campus. These letters, called Digital Millennium Copyright Act notices, give the username of the violator of copyrights. Robings said in the summer, when few students were on campus, she received about 50 of these notices. Since the semester has started, Robings has received an average of 20 to 50 notices a week.
“It’s clearly the students that are doing this,” Robings said. “There is still a tremendous volume (of file sharing) still taking place.”
The amount of software file sharing is also increasing, with people sharing firewall and security software.
Not all file sharing is illegal, however. File sharing for academic purposes is allowed and even programs like KaZaa could potentially be used to legally share academic materials. However, Robings said there are not many tools available to differentiate between legal academic file sharing and illegal music and movie file sharing. Because it has been found that many students are practicing illegal file sharing, Robings said Pepperdine might be forced to block all file sharing.
“We don’t want to get to that extreme (blocking all file sharing), but if we don’t get a hold on it we may have to,” Robings said.
Some schools, like the University of California Santa Barbara, have already started to block file sharing, Communications Manager Cam Freedlund said.
“The solution (to illegal file sharing) is not to disconnect from the system, the solution is to educate,” Robings said.
The IT department has already started to educate students. Information about the school’s policy on downloading music can be found on the PepXpress Web site and in the Seaver handbook, but Robings said the department will now take further measures to ensure students know the legal consequences of file sharing. The department plans to issue formal letters to each student detailing Pepperdine’s stance on downloading and file sharing.
“I think there are students who don’t really understand that this is illegal,” Robings said. “I think as we educate students they’re going to do the right thing.”
Robings said in previous years the IT department has been somewhat lenient toward copyright infringements but will now be moving away from that policy.
When the IT department receives a DMCA notice, a network engineer will track down the IP address of the infringer and disconnect the computer until the person is notified of the violation. After the first offense the person will receive a warning but following the second they will be referred to Sharon Beard, judicial administrator, for disciplinary review. In past years students rarely received disciplinary action for file sharing.
Robings said the school must take action against copyright infringing because otherwise the school could be held liable.
“If they (recording and software industries) are going to hold us accountable, then we’re going to hold the students accountable,” Robings said.
In addition to educating students about the dangers of illegal downloading, Robings said she feels recording companies need to provide more legal alternatives to downloading.
“We need to educate students that there are ways to get songs (without buying CDs) legally,” Robings said. “My guess is we’ll see more i-tunes look-a-like sites soon. We have the technology to support it, the songs are out there, there just has to be more and better ways to get music legally.”
September 25, 2003