It's a pirate's life for me

Illegal file sharing appeals to cheaper students

By: MacKenzie Garfield

Posted: 3/6/07

College students are notoriously cheap. However, according the Recording Industry Association of America, that cheapness in downloading pirated music translates to theft.

Music piracy is against federal copyright law, and between 2004 and 2005, Texas A&M students were served 16 subpoenas, according to Computing and Information Services.

The Associated Press reported that the number of music piracy complaints issued to universities by the music industry has increased by thousands over the past year. Some students are even receiving complaints for offenses as small as sharing one mp3 file.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) compiled a list of the top 25 universities that received the most complaints this school year. Nearly 15,000 students at these 25 universities received complaints. The top five offenders are Ohio, Purdue, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Tennessee and the University of South Carolina, according to the AP. A&M was not on the list.

RIAA President Cary Sherman told the AP that software tools are being developed that are more capable of tracing illegal file-sharing.

"We are taking advantage of that technology to make universities more aware of the problem on their campuses," Sherman said. "They need to be sending a message to their students about how to live a lawful life."

Federal law requires universities to take action to stop repeat offenders, or else the universities can be sued. While some schools take great measures to notify students who have received complaints, others, such as Purdue, rarely notify students who have been accused because of the trouble involved with tracking down the offenders, according to the AP.

Despite the risks, many students feel they simply cannot afford the music they want to listen to unless they obtain it illegally. One downloader, who wished to remain anonymous, said he loves music but can't buy all the songs he wants to listen to.

"I am concerned, but at the same time, everyone has something to be concerned about," the student said. "To me, this is the same as being concerned with anything against the law (that college students do)."

The student began downloading music from LimeWire, because he felt it was too expensive to buy the music, he said.

"I don't have access to the same budget that I did back in high school," the student said. "I download music from sources such as LimeWire because they are an easy source to access unlimited music for free. I really enjoy all types of music, and if I were to download music from each genre, prices would build up much too fast for my budget to handle."

Illegally downloading is an issue on campus, said John Norton, a lecturer and systems administrator for the Information Systems Department.

"From conversations that I have had with students, it is a problem at A&M," Norton said. "However, it is a problem pretty much everywhere, on every campus. I would doubt that you could talk to five random people on campus and not find one that hasn't downloaded a file that was supposed to be paid for but wasn't."

Norton said the problem relates to other mediums.

"Realize that the problem is not limited to music, but also popular software packages like PhotoShop, MS Office, Windows XP, etc.," Norton said.

Norton said that there are alternatives to pirating.

"Being able to purchase software at reduced prices via software.tamu.edu is helping (the pirating problem)," Norton said. "Where else can you legally get MS Office for $15? There are also places that give discounts to students, faculty and staff that just aren't highly publicized. (The website) www.journeyed.com is one of those sites. I expect that we will see more of these alternatives in the future."

Norton encourages students to use legal music downloading programs and to look at the positives of things like iTunes.

"Just look at the popularity of iTunes," Norton said. "Yes, you have to pay per song, but, you own the song and if your iPod is damaged, you can get the songs put on a new iPod for free. Also, the ability to choose the songs that you want versus buying the entire album when you just want a single song off of it is very appealing to most people."

Tom Putnam, executive director of CIS, said students will see the benefit of programs like iTunes and Napster, but says that the University has a limited responsibility for policing downloading.

"It's a complex legal environment," Putnam said. "According to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we are not held directly accountable for things that people are doing on our network provided we respond to copyright owners' concerns about things on our network. That's the primary role that we have."

Putnam said too much action against downloaders could always backfire.

"If we take a more active role and try to police it ourselves we lose protection," Putnam said.

This does not mean the University is unconcerned with music pirating, he said. A&M does try to inform people of the consequences and that it is against University rules. A&M also limits students' access to peer-to-peer networks.

"We severely limit the bandwidth on and off campus for peer-to-peer file sharing," Putnam said. "The way this works is that if you want to do research for a paper or get on Facebook, you don't want your connection to be slowed by people downloading a bunch of music. If you are sitting at your desk and looking at web pages, you get full access to bandwidth, but if you are doing peer-to-peer file sharing, then you have limited access. You can still download something but you have to be very patient."