For the first time, students swapping music on Direct Connect, a popular file-sharing hub at Dartmouth and schools nationwide, could face criminal prosecution for their online activity. Last month marked the beginning of an alliance between the Justice Department and representatives of the music, movie and software industries with the goal of restricting illegal online file sharing.
FBI agents recently raided five homes suspected of providing file-sharing hubs through Direct Connect, in Texas, Wisconsin and New York. Though no arrests have occurred and no charges have been filed as yet, federal agents seized computers, software and other related equipment.
The threat of criminal prosecution for file sharing reverberates heavily on college campuses, which have in the past been targets of civil suits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America. In April 2003, the RIAA filed lawsuits against four college students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Michigan Technological University and Princeton University. The students ultimately settled the lawsuits for $12,000 to $17,500 in fines.
Criminal penalties, however, can be even more severe. Under the federal No Electronic Theft Act, first offenders may face prison sentences for as long as three years and fines as high as $250,000.
Dartmouth students have never been targeted in these suits, but College General Counsel Robert Donin said that Computing Services generally receives about 25 so-called "take-down" notices each month from the recording industry and other copyright holders. These notices alert Dartmouth to illegal file-sharing activity on the network. The students in question are immediately notified and usually comply with the notices quickly, he said.
Only students who fail to cooperate are subject to College disciplinary action, but the Dean's Office has never had to use college disciplinary action in cases of online copyright infringement, Donin said.
Although Dartmouth is required to comply with any formal legal complaints received under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, the College does not regulate network activities routinely. The Act can hold Dartmouth responsible for infringing activity as the provider of internet service, but generally the College only investigates student activity if a computer is consuming a large amount of network resources.
"Dartmouth takes very seriously its responsibilities under the copyright law, but we also place great importance in being able to provide uncensored access to the internet," Donin said.
To further restrict illegal online file sharing, Computing Services limits individual internet connections to two megabits per second. By limiting bandwidth, Dartmouth ensures that the network has enough capacity available for all its users, Donin said. Internal file transfers on the Dartmouth network, however, can be much larger as more bandwidth is available.
According to NeoModus, Inc. the company that manufactures Direct Connect file sharing software, only seven percent of users used the software in school, out of the 43,763 users surveyed. The average age of users, however, was 21, which falls distinctly in the college age group.
Following the raids by the Justice Department last month, the RIAA also filed another round of lawsuits, suing 744 people who have purportedly uploaded large quantities of copyrighted files, as well as re-filing suits against 152 people who had originally declined or ignored RIAA offers to settle.
