Time's up
File Sharing @ TCU
By Aaron Kokoruz
Staff Reporter

Jaclyn Wilbur, a senior fashion major, said she knows she takes a risk by downloading music, but she does it because it’s fast and accessible.

“It’s much easier to download off the Internet because it’s faster than going up to buy a CD and pay for the whole CD when maybe all you want off that particular CD is one or two songs,” Wilbur said.

People who violate copyright laws by downloading music are responsible for a 31 percent decline in compact disc sales over the last three years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America Web site. For this reason, the organization is targeting college students who download large amounts of copyrighted music for lawsuits aimed at recouping its losses.

“It’s like we are big time criminals here,” said Savannah Lay, junior anthropology major. “We aren’t trying to hurt anyone here, just trying to get some good music to listen to.”

The RIAA has filed 261 lawsuits in federal court against people who downloaded an average of 1,000 copyrighted music files, RIAA officials said Sept. 8.

According to RIAA press releases, around 1,000 subpoenas have already been issued around the United States.

At TCU, there have been no subpoenas issued, said Mike Russel, associate dean of Campus Life.

“If a subpoena was issued to TCU, we would definitely comply with that subpoena,” Russel said.

Russel said Campus Life doesn’t know what the punishment would be for such a case at TCU because they haven’t seen anything like that. Punishment would be decided on a case-by-case basis, he said.

“We only had one person who had a repeat offense and that was because of a virus,” Russel said.

David Edmondson, assistant provost of Information Services, said a device called Network Shaping allows TCU to tune the network to the amount of space students can utilize for file-sharing programs, such as Napster. He said the firewall could block Napster and other music downloading programs but doesn’t.

“There is a firewall up on the TCU network to block traffic that might possibly come into our network and contaminate it,” Edmondson said.

Ebony Platt, a senior business management major, said she feels bad about downloading the music and doesn’t do it much anymore because she realizes it’s the people behind the scenes in the music industry who are affected.

U.S. copyright laws allow up to $150,000 in damages for each song offered illegally on a person’s computer.

“We do have the TCU Computer Usage Policy that says copyrighted materials are not to be shared,” Edmondson said.

Edmondson said there are agencies out there and companies that work for the recording industry that look on college networks for file sharing systems and tries to find IP addresses to find students who are file-sharing. Those students are then turned over to Campus Life, Edmondson said.

Last April, the RIAA sued three other college students and accused them of using illegal file-sharing programs on campus networks.

All four lawsuits were settled out of court. Each student agreed to pay between $12,000 and $17,500 to the music industry over the next several years, according to RIAA spokespeople.

Daniel Peng, a junior at Princeton University, was sued by the RIAA. He settled with the organization for $15,000 and is also facing legal fees.

“I work every summer to save some money for the school year, but each summer only covers at best a quarter of the settlement, so I will be paying off the RIAA for quite a few years,” Peng said.

Peng said he started a Web site asking for donations from people around the world to help pay legal fees and the RIAA. He said the biggest donation he received was for $500 from a donor in Lincoln, Neb.

The RIAA has started an amnesty program for people to admit they illegally share music online. People who sign this must promise to delete any downloaded music and not participate in anymore illegal file-sharing.

Individuals who have already been targeted by lawsuits will be ineligible for this program.