University halts illegal downloads
By Lance Dwyer
When freshmen Eriko Sato downloaded the movie "40 Days and 40 Nights" from Kazaa, little did she know Universal Pictures would track her down and threaten her with a lawsuit.
Four weeks ago, Sato's network connection was abruptly suspended. A few days later, she received a letter in campus mail from the Assistant Dean of Student Life Matthew Duncan informing her that she had violated section 13 of Santa Clara's Student Conduct Code and that her network connection would not be restored until she met with Duncan.
Upon meeting, Duncan informed Sato that Universal Pictures determined that a movie produced by their studios had been illegally downloaded onto Santa Clara's network via the peer-to-peer file sharing program.
According to Information Services Chief Information Officer Ron Danielson, Universal Pictures was able to determine the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer that downloaded their films, information which could be used by the university to determine which student committed the violation.
According to Sato, eight other students in addition to herself were caught in violation of section 13. Sato said that these nine students were merely random scapegoats for a larger situation.
"I understand where [Universal Pictures] is coming from, but people aren't going to stop using Kazaa. We were all just unlucky, " said Sato.
Duncan said that regardless of the number of students that were traced, it is probably more effective for Universal Pictures to try to reach fewer people in as many universities as possible as opposed to trying to get every person within only a few universities.
The identities of the students still remain unknown to Universal Pictures, as the students all have privacy rights within the university. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Santa Clara is required, however, to ensure that the illegal activity stops.
The precedent for such cases has already been set by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Four college students across the country were recently sued for setting up peer-to-peer networks at their respective colleges. The RIAA sued each individual for $150,000 per each song illegally distributed.
Each student was shown to have possessed more than 100 songs, which would have ensued in lawsuits totaling over $100 million. On May 1, the lawsuits were settled out of court and the plaintiffs must pay between $12,000 and $17,000 over a three-year period.
According to Sheldon Halpern, a visiting Santa Clara law professor with experience in copyright issues, downloading any materials without the copyright owner's consent is a serious case of copyright infringement and could have extreme consequences.
"The Copyright Act provides for statutory damages where actual damages aren't proven, and if the infringement is willful and continuing, those statutory damages can be substantial," said Halpern.
Each of the alleged nine students charged with violations could face liability charges of over $100,000. The thought of being held liable for thousands and even millions of dollars for stealing something that is not even tangible is difficult to grasp for some students and professors.
According to copyright expert and Santa Clara sociology professor John Ratliff, digital material is not really stolen.
"There is a different set of ethical assumptions about material that's available digitally online as opposed to physical property embodied in atoms in the physical world," said Ratliff. "So we have two different sets of ethics. Many people who would never dream of going into Tower Records and shoplifting a CD, don't hesitate to download the same information if it's purely in digital form on the Internet."