In recent weeks, multiple colleges and universities across the nation have implemented a new network filter promoted by the Recording Industry Association of America in its latest attempt to end illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing.
Dartmouth, however, will not join the pack, according to Computing Services director Robert Johnson.
The College has not adopted the CopySense Network Appliance, a mechanism that some believe will help schools combat the growing problem of illicit file-sharing on high-bandwidth networks.
Central Washington University was the first school to implement the filter, though "a couple dozen universities are currently in some stage" of implementation, CopySense chief executive officer Vance Ikezoye said.
The filter, produced by California firm Audible Magic, examines the "digital fingerprint" of every file transferred over the network it patrols, cross-referencing fingerprints with a 4 million-song database.
The appliance can then be set to automatically cancel the transfer of any copyrighted files. It is its ability to differentiate files within the peer-to-peer network that sets the CopySense Network Appliance apart.
In addition, the database grows by 5,000 to 10,000 songs per week, Ikezoye said.
"Our appliance has the unique ability to say that peer-to-peer file-sharing itself is not bad," Ikezoye said. "We allow peer-to-peer exchanges to continue, except for the ones that are illegal."
The product has been received quite favorably by the RIAA, which despite hundreds of subpoenas against individual illicit file-sharers is still in search of a silver bullet.
In recent months, the RIAA has promoted Audible Magic's product as one possible option.
"Our role has been to help inform law makers and higher education leaders about the fact that this kind of technology does exist," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said. "It is a viable and really promising new technology because it is neutral. There is nothing wrong with peer-to-peer, except when it is hijacked."
However, the new technology comes with an important caveat that is of concern to privacy-oriented network operators. Because the appliance analyzes the content of files on the network, some are concerned about its invasion on users' privacy.
"That's a level of surveillance that I think is just completely unacceptable," Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The EFF is the primary opposition force against the RIAA in its recent lawsuits. "If we searched every house in America, we could find out more evidence about who the bad guys are, but we don't tolerate that."
These same privacy concerns have made Dartmouth network operators leery of such a device.
"Dartmouth takes privacy concerns very seriously," Johnson said. "Anything that would begin to look at the content over the network would be very difficult to implement here."
Ikezoye, on the other hand, claims his device does not interfere with privacy at all. Though some versions of the appliance -- those for businesses, according to Ikezoye -- have the ability to track which users were caught sharing illegal files, the version he sells to colleges and universities does not keep a record of who is trading songs, but rather monitors anonymously.
Instead, the appliance monitors the number of blocked transfers and a list of the content that was blocked.
"We know privacy is a big concern for academic communities, but what we've done is provide a product that provides a good balance between privacy and legality," Ikezoye said.
Though it unlikely that Dartmouth will look into such a filter, it would be possible and, in fact, "quite easy and cheap" to set up on the campus network, according to Ikezoye.
For a network of Dartmouth's speed and capacity the cost of the appliance would be approximately $16,000 for the hardware appliance and approximately $3,500 for the database subscription and technical support.
Most colleges that have employed Audible Magic's product did so to monitor peer-to-peer traffic over the network border which would catch students sharing or downloading files over clients such as Napster or Kazaa.
However, such a set-up would not regulate intra-campus file-sharing which has become popular at many schools across the country because of the almost-unlimited capacity of colleges' internal bandwidth and the emergence of network clients like Direct Connect.
Ikezoye said he expects that his appliance would work equally well regulating internal sharing, but noted that it has not been tried.
