After officials at Carnegie Mellon University disconnected 71 students from the school's intranet for distributing copyright-protected material, including MP3 files, over the school network, College officials said that no such action is planned at Dartmouth.
The Carnegie Mellon students were disciplined after an October 18 random search of public files on 250 students' computers discovered illegal MP3 music files available for access over the school's intranet.
Although the distribution of MP3 files or other copyright-protected material is illegal under federal law, Kiewit officials indicated that they have no plans to execute a similar search.
"One approach is to go looking for violators, but that's not usually what we do. It feels kind of invasive," Director of Technical Services Punch Taylor said.
When complaints come in, Computer Services examines the public files on the student's computer. If illegal material is discovered, the computer user is warned to remove the files from his or her computer via BlitzMail.
So far, no further measures have been necessary. Theoretically, if a student continued to make MP3 files available illegally on his or her computer, they would be referred to the deans' office for disciplinary action.
Computer Services will investigate activity on the network when a computer is commanding a disproportionate amount of resources in violation of the "fair share" element of the computer and network policy.
Beyond that, Dartmouth does not actively police the network, Taylor said.
"The main message we want to get out is that sharing MP3 files can get you into some pretty hot water with the law," Director of User Communications Bill Brawley said.
Dartmouth's computer and network policy indicates that access to the network is a privilege that may be revoked if a community member violates local, state, or federal laws or college policies. Copyright laws are mentioned specifically.
The issue of music piracy in cyberspace has attracted attention since the invention of the MP3 compression format that allows high-quality audio files to be stored efficiently on computers and transmitted quickly over networks, including the Internet.
Through the Recording Industry Association of America, the RIAA, the music industry tries to stop traffic in copyright-protected material. The group has a team of Internet specialists who work full-time searching out sites that offer music files.
According to John Whitehead, Associate Anti-Piracy Counsel at the RIAA, the association's primary interest when students are involved is to remedy the situation and to instruct students so the offense will not be repeated.
"We look at it as a cooperative effort with universities to educate students about copyrighted materials," Whitehead said.
According to Whitehead, the RIAA occasionally informs college officials by mail that they should be wary of online music piracy.
When the RIAA detects illegal sites on college networks, they send a complaint to the school specifying the offending location on the network. As a federally registered Internet Service Provider, Dartmouth is legally required to respond to such complaints.
For example, Jeffrey Levy, a senior at the University of Oregon, will be sentenced in federal court next week on charges of criminal copyright infringement for operating a site on the university network that provided free copies of music and software. Levy could face as much as three years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The College itself can also be held legally responsible for activity that takes places on the Dartmouth network. However since there is a procedure in place for handling complaints, the school itself is probably protected from lawsuits, said Allegra Lubrano, Assistant College Counsel.
Pirated MP3 files are not yet a major problem on the Dartmouth network, Brawley said. However, he indicated that while only a "handful" of incidents have been addressed since September, the Fall term has definitely seen an increase in the amount of illegal MP3 files on the network.
Copyright fraud costs the music industry around $300 million in revenues each year, indicated Whitehead. However, this figure does not include online piracy because such activity is too difficult to measure, he said.
