Byline: David McGuire
It's move-in day for freshmen at the University of Maryland's College Park campus and the narrow lawn outside Denton Hall is strewn with piles of suitcases, bedding and Dell computer boxes. If recent history is any guide, the smiling teens wandering amid the makeshift encampments are primed to join the next generation of hard-core music pirates who'll raid Internet file-swapping networks for hundreds of thousands of illegally copied songs over the next four years.
Jason, an incoming physics major guarding a pile of boxes, summed up the sentiment that terrifies record company executives: "I'll end up downloading something at some point, I'm not going to let them say, 'Oh, we're going to get mad at you a little bit' [and] deter me from what I want to do."
The university environment has proved to be something of a "perfect storm" for encouraging illegal downloading. Teenagers arrive on campuses already armed with powerful computers and are greeted with free high-speed Internet connections, unprecedented privacy and scads of free time. A college student built the original Napster in the late 1990s to swap songs with his buddies, and universities have been hotbeds of downloading activity ever since.
The recording industry has watched disc sales fall from a high of $13.2 billion in 2000 to $11.2 billion in 2003, a period that also witnessed the exponential growth of "peer to peer" song swapping, known in online shorthand as "P2P." Although it's difficult to measure college students' precise contribution to that phenomenon, experts say they are some of the most active illegal downloaders. Companies that monitor file-swapping activity see predictable spikes in file-swapping activity when college students go back to campus, and troughs when they go home for vacation.
"I know when it's spring break without looking at the calendar," said Mark Ishikawa, the chief executive of Los Gatos, Calif.-based BayTSP, which monitors peer-to-peer networks on behalf of entertainment and software companies. Ishikawa said he tracked about 140,000 electronic infringements a week against one of his movie studio clients at the beginning of August but by the end of the month -- as students began to move back in -- that number rose to nearly 190,000 infringements a week. Ishikawa wouldn't name the studio but said he sees similar trends for all his clients.
In 2003, the recording industry stepped up its crackdown against illegal song-swappers, suing thousands of people and issuing warnings to thousands more. Officials at Washington-area schools have responded by boosting efforts to quash the practice, which eats up their electronic resources and lately has forced them to handle a glut of cease-and-desist letters from entertainment-industry lawyers.
At schools throughout the region, administrators have stepped up their efforts to educate students, stiffened penalties for copyright violations, installed technology to restrict abnormal Internet traffic and in one high-profile case, given students a legal way to download their favorite songs.
Lots of Letters and a Skit
Although schools have differing strategies for tackling electronic piracy, the unifying factor among those efforts is increased education.
Some schools may be moving more slowly toward changing their disciplinary codes or buying the slickest new technology to "shape" the bandwidth that students use, but "virtually every university has been pro-active -- at least about educating students," Recording Industry Association of America President Cary Sherman said.
Every incoming Maryland freshman got a bright-yellow letter from the provost warning against file-swapping, tucked into the "Get Connected" pamphlet that tells them how to set up their Internet connections. Georgetown and George Mason universities sent out similar warnings to all of their students.
Georgetown, George Washington University and the University of Virginia have set up special Web sites to advise students of the law and their responsibilities online. Johns Hopkins won't let students onto its network until they agree to a written policy banning illegal downloading.
The hallowed freshman orientation has also been pressed into the service of the copyright wars at many schools. In addition to running incoming students through the usual gantlet of campus tours and mixers, this year "we read them the file-sharing riot act," said Carl Whitman, executive director of e-operation at American University.
To bolster its orientation offering, Catholic University has commissioned a video that General Counsel Craig Parker said would be an "MTV-ish" admonition against file swapping. Parker said Catholic plans to make the video available to other schools once it's completed.
Maryland has gone a step further and arranged for its student welcoming committee to put on a cautionary skit about file swapping for newcomers. In the performance -- repeated for several different groups of incoming freshmen -- Lisa, a virtuous dorm dweller, hectors her ne'er-do-well peers, Chris and Kelaine, to leave off their file-swapping ways.
"Oh, that is just fantastic. You know you guys could get in serious trouble for this. You're downloading who knows what and hosting a black market," she says after discovering her friends' digital treachery. "What do you think this network is? Your own playground?"
Alas, Chris and Kelaine are implacable in their lawlessness. The skit ends with Chris and Kelaine about to be cuffed and hauled off by campus authorities.
Lindsey, another Denton Hall newbie, said it's hard for her to tell how many people actually get caught for file swapping so the skit didn't really scare her. She conceded, however, that it "kinda puts the idea in your head." Lindsey, Jason and the other students named in this story asked that they not be identified by last name.
Sherman said that jibes with the recording industry's take on such efforts. "Education alone, while important, is not effective in changing behavior," he said.
More Than a Slap on the Wrist
For students who don't get the message burned into their retinas by a series of letters, Web sites and one-act plays, many schools have begun to formalize punishments for downloading songs illegally over their networks.
The most common way that students are discovered trading files at Maryland is when the school receives a "takedown" notice from an entertainment company. A 1998 federal law allowed copyright owners to demand that network operators remove any infringing material they may be unwittingly hosting. Universities must comply with the takedown notices or risk running afoul of the law themselves.
In 2003, Maryland received more than 900 of the notices, and other schools report being deluged with similarly large volumes. Whitman said American University officials went through stretches in 2003 when they received more than 30 notices every day.
The notices don't identify students by name, but rather by the unique Internet protocol (IP) number issued to each student by the school.
When Maryland receives one of the notices, its information technology office immediately orders the student to remove the offending material from his or her computer. If the student doesn't comply within 24 hours, the office kills the student's connection until the infringing copies are purged, said Amy Ginther, director of the university's NEThics project.
The office doesn't punt first offenders to the campus judicial system, but does warn them about the risks of file swapping. Ginther said officials advise students that the same entertainment company that sent the takedown notice could just as easily have sued them. She said they also tell students that the typical settlement for such a lawsuit is around $3,000.
Two-time offenders earn a trip to the residence hall judicial office and a new "judicial record," which acts as a kind of probation notice, said Chris Taylor, who runs the office. The judicial record compounds the punishment for any other violation of campus rules, Taylor said. No student at Maryland has ever committed a third offense, but third offenders would lose their network connections for at least some length of time, and could lose their residence hall berths altogether, Taylor said.
Other schools have a similarly tiered punishment system. At the University of Virginia second offenders must pay a $100 reconnection fee before they can get back online. Such deterrents are apparently having the desired effect. Since Virginia installed the tiered system last year, "only one person committed a second offense and nobody committed a third offense," said Shirley Payne, the school's director for security coordination and policy.
Look Out Honey, Cause I'm Using Technology
