One in three college students download music illegally, according to a recently released survey from the Intellectual Property Institute. The survey also showed that 54 percent of the students did not know what their college's policy was regarding illegal downloading and 74 percent believed the practice helped "up-and-coming musicians."
Jim Gibson, director of the Intellectual Property Institute and a University of Richmond law professor, attributes the decline in illegal downloading to the realization of the moral and legal concerns of today's youth.
Some Dartmouth students questioned the results of the study, however, and suggested that the number of students who download music is in fact much higher.
"I would have trouble believing it even if the numbers were reversed, [at least] on this campus," Arjun Chandrasekaran '08 said.
College General Counsel Bob Donin emphasized the legal implications of downloading music.
"The recording industry has a very aggressive litigation campaign in which they are filing 500 lawsuits every month," Donin said. He said that many of these lawsuits were against college students at other Ivy League institutions such as Harvard, Columbia and Princeton.
A user of the Dartmouth network has never been sued for illegal downloading, according to Donin. The closest a Dartmouth user came to being sued was in January, 2005 when the Recording Industry Association of America issued an intent to subpoena the names of six people, Donin said.
In the end, however, the College never received those subpoenas.
This does not mean that illegal downloading does not exist at Dartmouth. At least one complaint per day is received by Ellen Young, manager of consulting services to Computing Services. These complaints arrive in form of e-mails from industry associations such as the RIAA, the Movie Production Association of America and the Software Business Alliance.
Once Young receives these warnings, she tracks down the users from the information provided by the organizations, usually the internet protocol address of the user, and sends them an e-mail asking them to remove the downloading software and the downloaded material. The user must confirm once he or she has complied with Young's request.
If a user is caught downloading again after complying with the first request, he or she is removed from the Dartmouth network and referred to his or her dean. A third offense would lead to severe disciplinary actions and an appointment with the Committee on Standards.
There have not been any repeat offenses at Dartmouth, however, and no case has been heard before the Office of Judicial Affairs.
"The idea of losing BlitzMail is far more compelling than anything else," said Director of Judicial Affairs April Thompson about why no cases have come before Judicial Affairs.
Dartmouth offers no official protection for students. If the music industry were to sue a student or obtain the information about a student from the College, the student is responsible for his or her own legal representation, according to Donin.
Donin also said that industry associations catch students when they are uploading or sharing files, not when they are downloading them. The organizations believe if uploading can be stopped, then downloading will have to stop as well because nobody could share music.
Many students would like to purchase music on websites such as iTunes but cannot due to limited amount of choices.
"I try to buy music where available but many artists do not sell their music online," Laura Little '08 said. "Also, international music is not available on iTunes."
The movie industry faces similar problems. In response, the movie industry has announced that it will roll out websites allowing consumers to download new movies at prices similar to those of newly released DVDs, while older movies will be less expensive.
