Don't you hate it when you miss an episode of your favorite TV show? Any television fan will tell you that even a single missed episode can mean a week's worth of anxiety and frustration.
A friend of mine found himself in this very situation a little over a week ago. Having missed the latest episode of his favorite show, he decided to download the episode the next day online from a popular peer to-peer file-sharing service. But it turns out the anxiety suffered from having to wait for the download was the least of his problems. Several days later, he promptly received a blitz from Kiewit Computing Services, alerting him to "cease and desist" from activities that infringe copyright law. A repeat offense could result in suspension of network access, probation, and even expulsion by the College in serious cases, not to mention legal action from the Motion Picture Association of America. Considering the fact that the show was aired on network television -- a show that any person could have easily recorded -- I find the fact that students who download could face civil and criminal charges and fines totaling in the hundreds of thousands utterly ridiculous.
The debate over the legality of internet file-sharing has been raging for some time now. That illegally sharing music and video files online is prohibited has been made abundantly clear by the College. The rationale behind the rules, however, is unclear. At one end of the spectrum in the debate are the artists and producers who want to be paid for their artistic and intellectual creations.
At the other end are media-hungry students who, understandably, see P2P services as a convenient means of obtaining the music and movies they want. College students' insatiable appetite for quick access to a vast collection of entertainment media and the software's ease of use have fed the phenomenon on college campuses. And given this huge demand and the increasing availability of this technology to meet this demand, it is unlikely that the music and movie industries can stop the proliferation of file sharing. (I wouldn't be surprised at all if LimeWire becomes the third most widely used software application on campus behind BlitzMail and Word.) The availability of our campus's super-fast network, which makes downloads mind-bogglingly fast, does nothing to reduce the temptation to share and download. Add to that the fact that college students are often impoverished, and it is inconceivable that any legal pay-per-download service can ever hope to compete with cost and hassle-free file-sharing programs.
The MPAA is quick to sensationalize the illegality of file sharing, stating on its website that downloading a movie off the internet is tantamount to robbing a DVD store. And although this statement does contain a fair measure of truth, it's nearly impossible to mentally equate a few simple clicks of the mouse with grand theft.
True, I have to concede that despite the fact that it seems so harmless, downloading copyrighted songs and movies is a breach of the law. What I don't get, however, is why publicly available information, like the television episode my friend downloaded, should be similarly off limits. How is it any different from recording a show using a VCR or TiVo for later viewing? Advanced models of TiVo not only allow you to record TV shows onto the TiVo hard drive, but also burn it onto a DVD. Hmm, saving video files on a hard drive and then burning it? Sounds familiar...
In his op-ed, ("The Ethics of Sharing," Nov. 10, 2005) staff columnist Michael Belinsky '08 argues that "once access [to copyrighted material] is purchased and granted, repeat access should be allowed free of charge." But the fact that the MPAA still prohibits the downloading of a show even after its release on network TV suggests that access is not the real issue. If the network studios really wanted to restrict access, they would charge consumers a fee to view their programs, much like cable companies do. What the studios actually want to restrict is ownership. They do not want fans to actually own copies of their TV shows, most likely for fear of hurting sales when they release the shows on DVD. This would be a valid qualm were it not for the fact that there exist numerous other ways to legally obtain the episodes for one's own personal viewing pleasure (the aforementioned TiVo and now-outdated VCR are two examples).
By airing a show on television, the studios effectively make it free and publicly available information. The means by which it is obtained by consumers should be unimportant, as long as it is intended for personal use and not for profit. And while the same cannot be said of songs and movies since the means by which they initially become available to the public are more severely restricted, network television definitely falls under the category of public information, making the possible litigation that students face for TV downloads quite nonsensical.
