Is downloading music from Internet theft, or not?

By Ok Joo Chung

May 6, 2005 | Today, anybody can reproduce and distribute easily any files throughout the entire world. The Internet has become the largest threat to copyright law as the advent of the Internet and digital technology; this issue is not an exception for Utah State University.

The illegal downloading music files on the Internet still occurs at the University. Any creative works are copyrighted, so sharing and downloading copyrighted materials without permission is illegal. Students may not reproduce or transmit in any form or by any means without the permission of copyright owners. See http://cil.usu.edu.

Bob Bayn, associate director of Network & Computing Services, said that if students download and/or distribute commercially available music without the consent of the copyright holder they are in violation even if you make no money from it.

The biggest reason for why illegal downloading is still occurring is that most of the students don't have enough knowledge about copyright law.

"I am not that knowledgeable about it. I know that it has to do with free trade and money. I think I download legally now after all of the lawsuits, but I don't know how to tell if it is illegal or legal," said a graduate student, Robb.

Yun Ji who is a senior student in Biology major said, "I've read newspaper articles about people who violated copyright. However, I couldn't have any chance to learn exact regulations related to copyright."

The university should help students and staff to learn about copyright issue to prevent their illegal downloading. Bayn explains that how the students measure whether there are downloading legally or not. "Legal is paid for, or with the expressed consent of the copyright owner. Everything else is illegal. If students can buy it in the store, then downloading it for free is most likely illegal. The opposite is not necessarily true. The lack of commercial availability of the music does not guarantee that the free download possibilities are not still a violation," he said.

If the students download music without consent and use illegal software, it could make technical or social problem. Bayn said that aside from the copyright issue, use of P2P to move entertainment files around is not what the university's network infrastructure is funded for. When that entertainment use interferes with the intended educational and research uses, then we have technical and social problems.

Another problem of illegal downloading is that it hurts music sales.

According to RIAA, when you post digital music files on the Internet for anyone to take and keep, it's not promotion but distribution. When someone decides to take distribution into his or her own hands, that decision can impact not only the artist whose music is being taken, but also the artists that may have been supported by those sales.

To prevent these problems, the university uses some network management tools to make high volume file sharing less efficient or more difficult. This includes bandwidth allocations by protocol and non-routed IP addresses which require students to use our proxy server for legitimate network access.

If University finds out that their students use illegal downloads programs or software, they might be imposed fines or punishment. When University receives an official DMCA copyright infringement complaint, they are obliged to take certain actions to avoid creating a legal liability for the university. The offense is then between the downloadeder and the copyright holder. If the downloader is a student with limited funds and the copyright holder is the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) with lots of lawyers on staff.

"Under the terms of the DMCA, we are obliged to stop the transfer of the infringing files by insuring that the files are removed from the computer and/or insuring that the computer is removed from the network. In some cases, our means of insuring that the computer is removed from the network (by de-registering its IP address or turning off its wall jack) results in a cost-recovery charge to have the access restored. A cost recovery charge is not a disciplinary action," Bayn said.

Finally, he added that, "You could still obtain files in violation of copyright and stay under the radar if you took extra pains to not make the files you got available to others. But, clearly, if everyone tried to do that, P2P would quit working because no one would find anything to download for free." See: http://cc.usu.edu/~bob/spiderman.html and the links on that page, for more information about official complaints, legal sources of files (for a fee), and other precautions, Bayn said.

NW
MS