Campus Computing News

File Sharing and Copyright Issues in Higher Education

By Dr. Maurice Leatherbury, Senior Director of Academic Computing

Only a couple of years ago, Napster was in the news for its innovative use of the Internet to permit sharing of music files easily and quickly. Napster almost single-handedly popularized the concept of "ripping" music from individuals' CDs and making that music available for anyone on the Internet to listen to it on their home or office computers. However, Napster brought with it several problems:

• Record companies argued that it was illegal to share their copyrighted music with other users without paying royalties for such use. They brought suit against Napster and were successful in shutting down its ability to share copyrighted files.

• On college campuses, including UNT's, Napster quickly came to consume inordinate amounts of bandwidth that was already in short supply. As an example, Napster was in its heyday when UNT expanded its Internet bandwidth capabilities from 9 Mbps to 45Mbps. With five days, Napster traffic accounted for at least 30Mbps of the available bandwidth and threatened to use up all of our capacity, thus denying or slowing other uses of the Internet such as our Web site or WebCT traffic. UNT's scenario was repeated in virtually all institutions of higher education that had relatively large "pipes" to the Internet.

File Sharing Software and Problems it Causes

Although Napster itself is no longer a problem for either the recording industry or our data communications infrastructure, other file sharing programs have supplanted it that cause virtually identical problems. KaZaA is one such program that we're seeing lots of on campus but there are others almost too numerous to list. KaZaA is particularly troubling for two reasons: (1) it has the ability to advertise itself as a storage or processing node for others to use and (2) recent incarnations of the program have the ability to change their "footprint" so that we can't easily determine that KaZaA is running on a campus machine. The first problem is serious for us as a State institution because by law we can't use State of Texas resources for anything but official business (with minor exceptions for incidental personal use.) If multiple machines on campus start being used as file storage nodes for pornographic sites, for example, it is obvious that we'd have serious concerns.

The second problem arises because we have a device in place that limits the bandwidth that is allocated to several file-sharing protocols, including KaZaA. The purpose of those limits is to preserve the limited amount of bandwidth we have (currently, 45Mbps) for uses more directly related to the University's mission: teaching, research, and service. In other words, we don't want to cause students who use WebCT from off-campus to experience intolerable delays because students in our dormitories want to use file sharing services like KaZaA for recreational pursuits. The device we use identifies the file sharing protocols by the "port" they operate on (a port is a generally hidden part of the Internet address of a particular service on a machine:) KaZaA now employs "port hopping" to change it's identity so that we can't tell that it's running on a machine or machines until we notice that that particular port is consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth.

Copyright Issues

A larger and more serious problem with KaZaA and its cousins, however, is the issue of illegal use of copyrighted files. Notwithstanding any arguments about music, game, or motion picture companies overcharging for their wares, the simple fact of U.S. copyright law is that those companies do have the right to limit distribution of their products to persons who pay for or otherwise obtain the right to use those products. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides immunity from prosecution to "service providers" (UNT is considered a service provider just like your home Internet Service Provider is) for transmitting and storing unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials if they "upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity." This has been named the "immediate takedown" clause of the DMCA and requires UNT to act quickly to track down and render inaccessible any copyrighted material found on our campus network.

The various copyright-holder groups are getting increasingly vigilant about protecting their interests and constantly scan university networks, including UNT's, for potential violations of copyright. Although UNT hasn't (yet) received 250 notices in a single day of such violations, as was recently reported about another university, we responded to an average of 5.7 per month from September 2002 through March of this year,  from:

• Interactive Digital Software Association
• Motion Picture Association of America
• Mediaforce
• Universal Studios
• Recording Industry Association of America
• Microsoft Corporation
• Digital Software Association

 Here's an extract of one that we received on March 3rd:

I am an authorized representative of the Interactive Digital Software Association, which represents the intellectual property interests of over thirty companies that publish interactive games for video game consoles, personal computers, handheld devices and the Internet.

IDSA is providing this letter of notification pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and 17 USC § 512 (c) to make University of North Texas aware of material on its network or system that infringes the exclusive copyright rights of one or more IDSA members.  This notice is addressed to you as the agent designated by University of North Texas to receive notifications of claimed infringement, as so reflected in the current records of the U.S. Copyright Office.  Under penalty of perjury, we hereby affirm that the IDSA is authorized to act on behalf of the IDSA members whose exclusive copyright rights we believe to be infringed as described herein.

IDSA has a good faith belief that the Internet site found at [a UNT address] infringes the rights of one or more IDSA members by offering for download one or more unauthorized copies of one or more game products protected by copyright, including, but not limited to:

007
Mario
Max Payne
Star Trek: Armada
Star Wars: Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast
Zelda

The unauthorized copies of such game product[s] appearing on, or made available through, such site are listed and/or identified on such Internet site by their titles, variations thereof or depictions of associated artwork (any such game titles, copies, listings and/or other depictions of, or references to, any contents of such game product, are hereinafter referred to as "Infringing Material").  Based on the information at its disposal on 3/3/2003 6:01:53 AM GMT, IDSA believes that the statements in this notice are accurate and correctly describe the infringing nature and status of the Infringing Material.

Accordingly, IDSA hereby requests University of North Texas to immediately remove or disable access to the Infringing Material at the URL address identified above.

Spotlight on Universities

Colleges and universities have become prime targets for copyright owners who fear wholesale theft of their wares. Because institutions of higher education typically have higher bandwidth capacities than commercial Internet service providers, higher concentrations of potential purchasers of music, games, and videos than the population as a whole, and college students are more easily identifiable than teenagers connected via commercial ISP's, it seems that the copyright owners make special efforts to track down illegal sharing of files on college campuses. To date, the copyright owners have turned over the legal or disciplinary action to deal with students to the universities, but there are indications that that stance may change if more stringent punishment is not meted out by the higher education community. (See Chronicle of Higher Education Volume 49, Issue 27, Page A32, March 14 2003.) The U.S. Congress is also threatening to take action if higher education doesn't: quoting from the same article, "The lawmakers, members of the intellectual-property subcommittee of the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee, told officials of Pennsylvania State University, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Tulsa that the way to convince students that illegal file sharing is wrong is to expel or prosecute them."

The ratcheting up of pressure to prevent copyright theft on college campuses is of course troubling to those of us who have to either provide technical means to block unauthorized access to copyrighted materials or to discipline those who do download or share copyrighted materials without permission. It is almost impossible to completely block file sharing programs because, like viruses, they change constantly and publishers of those programs find ways around the efforts we might take to prevent them from working on our campuses. In addition, file sharing programs do have some legitimate uses, such as sharing open source programs or music files, or even commercially-produced programs that are freely distributed. We are reluctant, therefore, to attempt to issue a blanket edict that file sharing programs may not be installed or used on our campus network.

It's safe to say that this issue won't go away any time soon and that the problem of illegal sharing of copyrighted files isn't limited to college campuses. We will continue to respond to "takedown" requests as we are required to do so by law and will make efforts such as this article to educate students, faculty, and staff of their responsibilities to follow the law. In the meantime, it is each person's responsibility to honor the spirit and letter of copyright laws.