The American recording industry's largest lobbying group for has decided to redouble its efforts to prevent music piracy among college students, including Hopkins students. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sent more than three times as many notices of copyright infringement to universities across the country than it did last year.
Hopkins itself has received 35 such notices this academic year, seven times as many notices than 2005-2006. Each notice informs the University that a student on campus is illegally distributing copyrighted songs, and requests that the university "remove or disable access to the infringing sound recording." They are neither lawsuits nor pre-litigation letters.
The JHU Office of General Counsel, the University's in-house legal body, receives the notices. The office did not respond to inquiries about what it does with the notices.
"We know that some audiences -- particularly campus music downloaders -- can sometimes be impervious to even the most compelling educational messages or legal alternatives ... we simply cannot afford to write off a generation of college music fans," RIAA president Cary Sherman said in a press release.
The RIAA attributes their ability to increase notifications in part to their improved ability to find and track students who are illegally downloading music over peer-to-peer networks. They claim that thousands of jobs have been lost as a result of illegal downloading by college students through these peer-to-peer services, such as the DC++ network that a significant number of students who reside on campus use.
Darren Lacey, who works in JHU Information Technology Security and Compliance, suggested that this increase alone would probably not lead to any radical changes in their policies toward student use of the campus net work. Still, he emphasizes that it is against school policy for anyone to use their networks for illegal activities, which include but are not limited to copyright infringements of this nature.
A study performed by the Intellectual Property institute at the University of Richmond School of Law said that over half of all college students illegally download music and movies.
Direct Connect, the student-run network that hosts the popular file-sharing program DC++, has had a presence at Hopkins for over four years. The program allows students to upload their own music or video files, which are then shared by all of the users.
While hosting the hub itself is not necessarily an illegal activity, downloading and using any copyrighted materials from it is.
Initially, several students living in AMR II established a hub for Direct Connect at Hopkins as a way to transfer large files between each other -- something that was not provided for through the Hopkins network at the time. Whenever ResNet found hub's host, they would turn off their jack. Over the following years, the students would pass the network hub between them to keep it safe and secure from Hopkins officials.
"Overall, I would describe ResNet's actions towards file-sharing as secretive, annoying to users, and ineffective. A simple email from ResNet asking to reduce bandwidth usage would be far more effective," said a former host of the Direct Connect hub, who chose to remain anonymous.
There are only two ways for the RIAA to become aware that a student is downloading illegal files. Either they must be on location -- that is, on the Homewood Campus -- or they can observe someone while they are retrieving files from an outside source. Lacey is not aware of any incidences of the RIAA being present on campus, monitoring the network.
Without the cooperation of the University, the RIAA cannot retrieve the name of a music sharer, only his or her IP address -- the number that identifies his or her computer on the Internet.
Senior Dave Haldane, who was once closely involved with Direct Connect, emphasizes that users only put themselves in danger of being caught if they connect to an off-campus hub. He explained that a few years ago, the Motion Picture Association of America found a student downloading the film Hero long before its release date in the United States. Although they notified the school, the student was let off with a warning.
Haldane is unconcerned about the legal issues that revolve around DC++, and suggests that conscientious users need not be concerned about "getting caught."
"Using Direct Connect is going to waste your time more than it degrades your morality," he said.
Still, the RIAA emphasizes that downloading copyrighted materials from file-sharing networks is illegal, and they are serious about their attempts to decrease it. They are also well aware that their success with dismantling these campus networks depends heavily on cooperation from university administrators.
"We hope that university administrators recognize the beneficial role they will play here -- most immediately, by helping avert a lawsuit against a student, but better yet, by demonstrating the leadership that helps teach students right from wrong and by implementing the technological tools that prevent piracy from happening in the first place," Sherman said in the press release.
To date, record companies have filed copyright infringement lawsuits against students at over 130 campuses. The notices that increased seven times over so far this academic year at Hopkins usually amount to tens of thousands nationwide each year.
