No one from Pepperdine has been charged, but if required, school will cooperate.
By Sarah Carillo
Assistant News Editor
Downloading songs off the Internet used to mean access to free music. Now it may also mean a lawsuit, five years in jail and a $250,000 fine.
Record labels filed lawsuits against 261 people Monday for file-sharing music and movies. And some think Pepperdine students may be the next to be hit.
These suits mark the first time the Recording Industry Association of America is focusing specifically on individuals and, according to the RIAA, are the first of thousands of more suits to come. However, the RIAA has offered amnesty to file-sharers who turn themselves in to authorities.
In April, four college students from Princeton University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Michigan Technological University were sued for sharing songs on campus file-sharing networks. Each student paid about $12,000 to $17,500 to settle claims that they violated copyrights.
The first federal criminal prosecution of someone for online piracy occurred Aug. 21. Mark Shumaker, the leader of the Apocalypse Crew, a group that distributes pre-release CDs online, pleaded guilty to violating copyright laws and could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Colleges and universities are the RIAA’s next big targets. RIAA representatives said in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education on Aug. 21 that they hope that a series of high-profile lawsuits will make students and others think twice about file sharing. Subpoenas have already been issued to UCLA, University Southern California and Loyola Marymount University, among others, requiring the schools to provide information about possible violators of copyright laws. Pepperdine had not been subpoenaed as of Wednesday.
“College campuses may become one of the battlegrounds where the music industry goes to set an example,” Pepperdine University Provost Darryl Tippins said. “They’re trying to scare people into obedience. We need to be aware of their awareness of us.”
An estimated 60 million Americans use networks such as KaZaa and Gnutella to exchange music, movies and other software. Downloading music has become a cultural norm for many people, including many Pepperdine students, who chose to speak on the condition of anonymity.
“(Downloading music) is so commonplace in our society that when I download music I don’t think ‘this is wrong’ or ‘this is right,’ it just happens,” a junior business major said.
Tippins has also noticed the complacency students have towards downloading music.
“We have students thinking (downloading is) OK and that’s the culture we’re in and unfortunately that mentality is at odds with the law,” Tippins said.
The law can be unclear to some, especially when different sources give contradictory information about whether downloading is legal. The RIAA says that it is illegal to share songs over the internet and doing so violates copyrights. An official statement from the KaZaa Web site states: “MP3 is simply an audio format and as such has no legal standing… it’s not the MP3 format itself that is at issue but rather the copying of music.” According to the U.S. government Web site all audio forms of music are protected by copyrights and it is illegal to copy and distribute them without permission.
The RIAA lawsuits also raise issues of people’s rights to privacy. The RIAA and other copyright holders have the ability to trace internet and file-sharing activity and can pinpoint the IP address of file-sharers and their user-names. The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows copyright owners to use subpoenas to learn the identities of alleged copyright infringers. The RIAA can use this act to subpoena colleges and force them to give the identities of students whose IP addresses the RIAA has identified. The Supreme Court has ruled that this is not an invasion of privacy.
While Pepperdine does not monitor the Internet activities of individual students, Chief Operations Officer of Information Technology Kathee Robings said that if Pepperdine is subpoenaed it will comply with the law.
“We are not into ‘spying’ and detailed level monitoring of students, but we must get a handle on the illegal activity,” Robings said.
Pepperdine does receive letters, called Digital Millennium Copyright Act notices, from copyright owners telling them when they have discovered copyright infringements. Robings said she had recently received one from a software company that told her the IP address of the computer and the person’s username. Robings said the volume of the notices has increased recently and Pepperdine must respond to them, otherwise the university may be subpoenaed.
Students found misusing the school’s Internet service will first be issued a warning. On the second offense they will be sent to the Student Disciplinary Committee for review.
Other schools, such as Yale University, are now requiring students to attend an orientation session about proper Internet use before they are allowed to use the school’s service. Pepperdine did speak to the incoming freshman at New Student Orientation about Internet use but has not formally warned students about the issues surrounding downloading music and file sharing.
“We (Pepperdine) obey the law of the land and the law supports the producers of intellectual copyrights,” Tippins said. “We’re going to encourage our students to be lawful citizens.”
Some Pepperdine students support ideas like Tippins and feel that taking music from the Internet for free is wrong.
“I think the fact of the matter is that you are taking something that isn’t yours for free, it is stealing,” junior Brian O’Flaherty said. “If you are concerned with morality, according to the law and the teachings of the Bible, it is wrong. Stealing is a sin and I believe this is stealing. Yes, the artists at the top are making a lot of money, but I am concerned about the janitor at Sony Studios, for example. The music industry as a whole is suffering.”
It is unlikely however that the janitor at Sony Studios will benefit from the recent lawsuits. The RIAA said in a Los Angeles Times article that the proceeds from any trials or settlements will be kept by the RIAA to cover the cost of its anti-piracy campaigns rather than being used to compensate labels and artists.
The junior business major said the RIAA’s fight is futile and will not benefit the music industry.
“From an economic standpoint (the music industry) just needs to adjust and find other forms of revenue, because I don’t think (downloading) is going away. Downloading is more cost-effective (for consumers) and it’s like instant-gratification,” he said.
The RIAA’s actions seem to have some effect; a few Pepperdine students have already changed their downloading habits.
“I used to download about every other day, but now I don’t do it anymore,” a junior international studies major said. “I don’t want to get in trouble for something like downloading music.”
The RIAA may also have an easier time fighting file-sharers if Congress passes the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2003. Presented by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D- Mich., and Rep. Howard L. Berman, D- N. Hollywood, it would make it easier to bring felony charges against people who offer music, movies and other digital files on public computer networks.
September 11, 2003
