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Posted by Ablang on 01/30/07 01:53
< This article had at least 18 comments on it as of this
posting. See link below. >
Piracy thriving on campuses
Crackdown hasn't stopped illegal downloads
By Eric Stern - Bee Staff Writer
Last Updated 12:15 am PST Monday, January 22, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A1
College students who illegally download music and movies have been
sued. They've had Internet access shut off or threatened, and they've
been warned to never do it again.
But the threat of a letter in a permanent file doesn't hold as much
sway as it used to. Complaints of copyright violations remain steady
at campuses across California -- even going up in some cases.
"As far as illegal goes, it's not really a concern for most people --
it's like buckling up or not buckling up," said Meghan Moyle, 20, a UC
Davis student from Reno.
The culture of downloading music without paying for it is so pervasive
that two-thirds of college students say they don't care if the music
is copyrighted, according to a 2006 study by the University of
Richmond law school. The study concludes that the "confrontational
approach" is not working.
Moyle said she has paid for about 60 percent of the music on her iPod.
The rest of the tunes came from friends.
"You don't know who got it first," added Rex Pham, 21, a UC Davis
student from San Jose, who estimates 70 percent of his music was
passed along by friends or online forums.
Super-fast Internet connections in the freshman dorms at Davis made it
even easier to share music, Pham said. "It takes a second to send a
song. It takes three minutes to get a whole album."
Amanda Morgan, 20, a UC Davis student from Sacramento, recalled how
dorm residents swapped music by setting up file-sharing programs on
internal dorm networks dubbed "ourTunes," a play off of Apple's
iTunes. "It's very easy to stay under the radar," she said.
Hundreds of the students ate lunch one recent afternoon around the
Memorial Union at UC Davis -- a good half of them wearing the
ubiquitous, cord-dangling iPod earbuds.
For now, the kids may have a leg up on the adults. But the media
industry takes copyrights seriously.
Record companies, movie studios and video game companies routinely
scan the Internet for their stolen wares and send complaints of
alleged copyright violations to universities. Federal law requires
universities to cut off Internet access of students who get caught for
repeatedly downloading and passing along copyrighted material.
University of California campuses received more than 1,500 notices
last year. California State University, with fewer students living in
dorms, draws at least 700 copyright violation notices a year.
UC Davis fielded 310 complaints in the 2005-06 school year and is on
pace for more than 400 this year.
"We're on track to shatter the record," said Jan Carmikle, an attorney
and former programmer who oversees copyright issues for UC Davis.
University and industry officials said the number of copyright
violations could reflect more aggressive monitoring. However, no one
thinks that illegal downloading is dropping off.
"This isn't a situation that's going to change overnight," said Rich
Taylor, a spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America.
He said there's still a "naive sense of invincibility that you can't
be caught," but "the good news is that we see a very low rate of
recidivism when folks are caught the first time."
Nearly all complaints are resolved with a warning to students, UC and
CSU officials said.
In 2005, four unnamed UC Davis students were snared in a copyright
lawsuit by the music industry, accused of copying and distributing
songs from the Smashing Pumpkins to Smash Mouth. Songs by Eminem, Ja
Rule, Linkin Park and Usher also were spotted by the recording
industry's Internet watchers -- even some oldies by Pink Floyd and the
Eagles. The claims against the UC Davis students were dropped a few
months later, after the students presumably settled for several
thousand dollars, campus officials said.
"They were very frightened," said Jeanne Wilson, director of student
judicial affairs at UC Davis.
Kenneth C. Green, a visiting scholar at Claremont Graduate University
who studies campus computing issues, said the targeting of students as
"digital pirates" is misplaced. College dorms used to be one of the
few places with high-speed Internet, but now millions of households
can just as easily swipe music and movies through broadband
connections provided by cable and telephone providers, he said.
"This effort to constantly villainize college students as the only
culprits is just off the mark," Green said.
But college administrators remain under pressure. Faced with waves of
increasingly Web-savvy students, they continue to ratchet up
information campaigns about campus-downloading policies. And they've
brokered deals with legitimate downloading services that offer free
music to students. UC Davis and California State University,
Sacramento, partnered with the Cdigix downloading service last fall
and are beginning to make it available. Students can download music to
a computer for free but not to a portable device like an iPod without
paying for it. Movies and TV shows are not included.
The California Research and Education Network, the state's fiber optic
backbone for K-12 schools, community colleges and public universities,
also inked deals late last year with Cdigix and Ruckus to encourage
legal downloading, said Janis Cortese, a spokeswoman for the network.
"The best way for us to address the issue is to redirect students'
behavior," said Kris Hafner, a technology official at University of
California system headquarters in Oakland.
Beginning today, any student with a valid university e-mail account
will be able to use Ruckus Inc.'s ad-supported service.
But legal downloading services haven't kept up with students'
interests and demands, Hafner said.
At campuses such as UCLA, which has subscribed to Cdigix and another
service called Mindawn for nearly a year, complaints for copyright
violations are up.
"I'm not seeing a direct cause and effect ... of students immediately
jumping to it," said Kenn Heller, UCLA assistant dean of students.
UC and CSU officials have meetings scheduled in coming weeks with
executives from the recording and movie industries.
"We're interested in knowing how we can provide services to our
students that are more attractive," Hafner said. "We're kind of
throwing the ball in (their) court."
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/111465.html
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