Features

With the recording industry waging a war on downloaders who snag music and films for free off the Internet, UC Berkeley administrators warned students this week that illegal downloading could carry severe consequences. 

“We’re telling students that we know lots of people are sharing copyrighted files, we know it’s easy, but it’s against the law, and you might suffer sanctions,” said Dedra Chamberlin, the university’s manager of residential computing. 

The Recording Industry Association of America, stung by slumping sales they attribute in part to online piracy, has zeroed in on universities this year, demanding that schools, like commercial Internet service providers, comply with court-ordered subpoenas and hand over the names and addresses of students the RIAA says are the worst offenders. 

In May, four students at Princeton University, Michigan Technological University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute agreed to pay the RIAA between $12,000 and $17,500 after the RIAA sued them for running music piracy systems on their schools’ servers. 

A month later, the RIAA announced it was using subpoenas to gather data against users who offer copyrighted songs online, threatening thousands of lawsuits against individual offenders.  

The RIAA says it has no choice but to fight consumers from stealing its lifeblood. 

In 1999 Shawn Fanning, a student at Northeastern University, introduced Napster, a program that electronically connected music listeners, allowing them to swap songs. 

Since then, record sales have dropped by 26 percent as 2.6 billion copyrighted files are illegally downloaded every month, said RIAA spokesperson Amanda Collins. 

“Everyone is adversely affected by this: the artists, the songwriters, the engineers, administrative staff,” she said noting widespread layoffs at struggling recording companies. 

She plugged several Internet sites that allow fans to download music legally, paying either by a subscription fee or on a per song basis. 

Managers at several independent record stores in Berkeley agreed that sales were down, but said other factors might be to blame. 

“I’m not sure that downloading is the culprit,” said Norman Arenas of Primal Records. “We’re in a war economy, people don’t have much to spend.” 

The recording industry has fought in court to protect its copyrighted property. In 2000 the RIAA won a ruling shutting down Napster, but the trade group recently hit a legal roadblock. 

Four months ago, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that two of Napster’s biggest successors, Grokster and Morpheus, did not infringe copyright law, because unlike Napster they also provided lawful services and could not be held accountable for their customers using the programs for illegal ends. 

Unable to shut down file sharing programs, the RIAA shifted its attention to individual abusers. 

They have monitored file-sharing networks and gathered 1142 subpoenas against suspected music pirates this year, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation a legal fund that represented the parent company of Morpheus against the RIAA. 

Service providers have challenged subpoenas, but in April a federal judge rejected the claim of Verizon Internet Services that the practice infringed on their customers’ privacy rights. Verizon is appealing the decision and Pacific Bell Internet Services recently filed suit against the RIAA on similar grounds. 

EFF staff attorney Wendy Seltzer urged universities to fight the subpoenas. “Networks are about academic freedom, [the universities] should think about that, not just what the RIAA wants.”  

She recommended that universities stop logging network activity, so the record industry could not track file transfers. 

Karen Eft, UC Berkeley policy analyst, responded that logging the network was needed to analyze use and investigate possible hackers. 

“We don’t do it with the intention to track students,” she said. “If we didn’t have to do it we wouldn’t.” 

UC Berkeley has so far received one subpoena. It turned out the illegal activity was the work of a hacker who had accessed an administrative computer to capture his downloads.  

Michael Smith, campus counsel, said the university would not automatically hand over anyone’s name to the RIAA. “If we thought the subpoena was faulty, if it came from the wrong jurisdiction, we could challenge it,” he said. 

Two weeks ago Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College successfully fought off subpoenas, arguing they needed to be filed in Massachusetts instead of Washington, D.C. 

Still, under increased pressure from the recording industry as well as from students and faculty who say excessive downloading is slowing down their server, UC Berkeley is getting tougher on illegal file swapping. 

Students who receive take-down notices filed by the RIAA to remove copyrighted materials from their computers will now have one day to comply before losing their service.  

Previously it was up to the administration to confirm the violation, and evasive students could delay the process, Chamberlin said. Last year 163 students in the dorms received such notices—twice as many as the year before. 

The university is also stepping up enforcement of students who download excessively. 

Students who twice surpass downloading 50 gigabytes per week—about the equivalent of four movies, 200 songs and 1,000 e-mails— will lose their Internet connection until they complete a quiz on university bandwidth rules. 

Freshmen interviewed this week said they opted not to download music out of respect to the musicians, but that the warnings they received when signing up for Internet accounts wouldn’t make a difference. “They gave their spiel,” said Travis Johnston. “I don’t think it will hamper anyone. They’ll give you a warning. They’re not that serious about it.”