The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News February 11, 2005

Piraters could face lawsuits

Obies have long been known for their commitment to, and appreciation of, the arts. In fact, their passions are so strong and far-reaching that many of them spend hours on the internet each day downloading their favorite songs and movies onto their computers. What they may not realize, however, is that these practices could lead to lawsuits.

Last Friday, students received an e-mail from John Bucher, director of information technology, outlining the College’s new policy for handling cases in which individuals are found to be downloading copyrighted music, videos, software and games from the internet illegally.

Whereas in the past an offender’s personal connection to the network was suspended only until he or she had met with a judicial coordinator in Student Life, network suspension will now last, without exception, for one month. First-time offenders will only have their network connection restored provided they write a letter to the Center for Information Technology stating they have disconnected whatever program they were using to download copyrighted media. Those who have been written up on previous occasions will face more serious consequences, such as a standard review by the judiciary board.

The reason for Bucher’s decision to add muscle to the more lax policy of fall semester was sparked, in part, by the fact that more than fifty instances were reported of Oberlin students violating copyright laws in the past five months alone. More significant, however, is the growing concern that various copyright associations are beginning to serve students with subpoenas. A student at Oberlin has yet to face this ordeal, but Bucher fears that “it is just waiting to happen.”

Bucher explained that the scenario in which a student could be discovered for participating in illegal downloading activities does not apply to the popular downloading programs OurTunes and DirectConnect, which are restricted only to a given college community. It is when people download music from the World Wide Web using programs such as Kazaa, LimeWire and Morpheus that copyright associations are able to use tracking devices to connect an individual’s distinct IP address to the organization to which it is associated.

From there, notification is sent to the institution - in Oberlin’s case, CIT - where the IP address can be matched up with the name of the student to whom it belongs. That is how the College is able to determine who is abusing copyright regulations.

“But things are getting even more serious,” said Bucher. “Instead of just sending us an IP address, these guys [at copyright associations] are coming after people with lawsuits. They’re asking for the names of copyright violators and serving them with subpoenas and under the law we have to turn the names over.”

One part of Bucher’s e-mail reads, “It is the student’s responsibility to make sure that his/her computer is not sharing copyrighted files on the network. Ignorance is not an excuse.”

This has led to some concern among students who do not want to be accused of downloading media illegally when they may not have realized what they were doing. For example, Bucher told one story from first semester of a student who accidentally put the movies she had downloaded on her computer legally up for illegal sharing through Kazaa, which she did not even realize had been installed. Fortunately, this student did not have to deal with a lawsuit, but had she been given a subpoena, Bucher is not optimistic she would have been able to evade it.

“This is not new stuff,” he said. “People have been downloading movies off the internet for years and the fact that it is illegal has been highly publicized, so law enforcers and agents from copyright associations are not so sympathetic anymore to people saying, ‘Oh, I didn’t know.’”

Bucher encourages students to come to him with any specific questions they might have concerning these issues and plans to post a Frequently Asked Questions page on the CIT website to guide students in legal internet policy.
 
 

   

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