KaZaA, LimeWire and Morpheus are services well known to many college students who enjoy the freedoms of their high-speed Internet connections and choose to take full advantage of them by downloading the new Moe song or classic Madonna singalong while avoiding the expensive prospect of purchasing the albums at a record store.
Last month, a lawsuit filed by the trade association against Verizon Communications, who refused to unveil the name of a customer who downloaded approximately 600 songs using KaZaA, came to an end with an apparent victory for the recording industry. The trade association sued with intent to learn the customer’s name by claiming the Digital Millennium Copyright Act required Verizon to reveal it.
With that decision, record companies will now have the opportunity to “catch” individuals who use file-sharing systems such as KaZaA to illegally trade copyrighted material.
Many campus-network administrators kept a close watch on the case because of the possible implications it could cause for universities. Under new provisions, colleges can potentially qualify as Internet-service providers under the digital copyright law. For institutions, this means the possibility exists of being subpoenaed to make a list of students’ names available.
Industry officials claim that companies aren’t planning on demanding the names of students who download music online; however, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future. When copyright owners currently complain to universities regarding students who use their campus networks to share movies or music illegally, the owners often refer to the alleged violators via the numerical Internet address of each user’s computer.
Many students are outraged regarding the prospective acquisition of students’ names, while others are anything but worried.
University of Wisconsin freshman Tom Bydalek currently lives at the Regent Apartments and was unable to gain access to any file-sharing system during first semester. Like students at many other universities nationwide, Bydalek assumed a block of some sort had been put up in his building in order to prohibit students from using these systems. UW hasn’t instituted a block of this sort.
“I’m not sure if they have firewalls or whatnot for their servers and connections and stuff … down the hall, one kid can’t get it (KaZaA) no matter what he tries. But mine works fine. No idea why that would happen,” Bydalek said.
Now that Bydalek’s KaZaA is up and running, downloading has begun, yet the possible subpoena doesn’t worry him. He also said he was unaware that record industries could get this information.
“Millions of people use it (KaZaA),” Bydalek said. “Why would I be the one picked out of the bunch? It would worry me if I was one of the select few using it, but it’s so widely used … so I’m not really worried about it.”
UW freshman and Sellery Hall resident Kenzie Reupert also uses KaZaA to download music and is personally aggravated with this decision. She views it as a breach of privacy.
“Just the fact that the university would have to find out what I put on my computer sounds like a huge personal violation,” Reupert said.
