By Kanupriya Arora

Ten Oberlin students have been sent to Judicial Board and numerous others warned or sanctioned for violating copyright rules this fall.

According to the new CIT policy, “students found to be in violation of copyright law by making copyrighted material available for download will be sent directly to the Judicial Board process.”

In the past few years, there has been nationwide debate about existing copyright laws and their weight in the face of peer-to-peer (p2p) filesharing programs. These programs have gained enormous popularity and are chiefly used to download and share copyrighted music and movies over the Internet, violating copyright law.

To fight the burgeoning number of copyright infringements, associations like the Recording Industry of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Interactive Digital Software Association constantly monitor the Internet for copyright violation.

Many Oberlin College students use filesharing programs like KaZaA, Morpheus and Gnutella.

The RIAA and other organizations notify the College of copyright violators who connect to filesharing programs through the College server, Director of CIT John Bucher explained.

The College is then required to take action against individuals charged with violation, according to the Federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

“Organizations like MPAA and RIAA have methods to determine that individuals are either uploading or downloading files [that are copyright-protected],” he said.

Individual users can be identified by their IP, or Internet Protocol addresses, with the help of a public database which traces each IP address to its server. The server hosts a suite of addresses and locates the specific violator.

In cases of Oberlin students breaking copyright law, monitoring bodies contact the College through Alan Boyd, Oberlin’s DMCA agent and Assistant Director of Libraries, with the IP address of the violator.

“We don’t get a whole lot of information on how somebody’s sharing a particular file,” CIT’S Client Support Analyst, Chester Andrews said. “We do get a supposed name, a timestamp [for the file sharing] and the kind of sharing network that the file was visible on, but we don’t get anything about the methodology used to determine the information.”

“Alan Boyd then contacts the CIT,” Bucher said. “We identify the person and immediately turn off that port. The person is notified and has to contact the Dean of Students to undergo the Judicial Board process.”

“Internet access is restored only after the case has been adjudicated,” he added.

Sophomore Oliver Chang received such a notification from CIT this Monday when he returned to the College after fall break. The access port in his room was turned off and he was required to meet with Bill Stackman, Associate Dean of Students.

“The e-mail said that I was violating Paramount’s copyright by sharing this particular file of a Japanese movie, “Chiang said. “I contacted the company which has the distribution rights for that movie in America, [and it] turned out to have nothing to do with Paramount.”

“I forwarded these emails [from the distribution company] to CIT and Dean Stackman, but I haven’t received an answer yet. On Monday when I received the e-mail I scheduled an appointment with Mr. Stackman, but I’m not going to see him till next Friday.”

Chiang was also confused about the name of the file that allegedly incriminated him. “[My] file’s name is different, and the file is incomplete,” he said. “I’m not trying to justify my action, I just think there is a lack of communication.”

The updated policy is part of CIT’s effort to implement copyright laws more strictly.

“Each institution, at least up to this point, can interpret DMCA as they choose to,” Andrews said. “Last year, we responded differently. Students were helped by their RCCs and had time to respond to the charges. If they didn’t respond, their ports were turned off.”

However, the escalating numbers of copyright violations over the past year have forced the College to change its approach.

According to CIT’s Fall ’03 Newsletter, Oberlin saw an ever-increasing amount of file-sharing of these types of files during the 2002-2003 school year. By April and May, the number of official complaints we had received from the RIAA, MPAA and the IDSA had quadrupled over the previous year.

There have been no serious penalties for copyright violators so far.

“J Board’s decision can range from warnings to expulsion [depending on the offense],” Bucher said. “But we haven’t had to face repeated violations yet.”

Despite CIT’s new policy, Andrews feels that the College places very few restrictions on students’ web usage. The updated policy is intended to educate students about existing copyright laws, he continued.

“The Oberlin College network is pretty free and open for almost any use,” he said. “There are very few limits on what you can do. [The network] does some ‘bandwidth shaping,’ to allow the more important academic things to get through before peer-to-peer filesharing, but there is no limiting and cutting of usage.”

“Students need to know how copyrights actually work and how the copyright law is written,” Andrews said. “It’s really up to the students to make the right choices.”

President Nancy Dye was unavailable for comment.