Violation of copyright laws addressed at open forum
By Allison Sundaram
Students who download music on the campus network could risk not only losing their Internet access and face disciplinary action from the Office of Student Life, but also could incur costly fines, a panel said Wednesday.
IT held an open forum in Kennedy Commons last week to address student questions about using technology on campus, and the legality of digital media. Ronald L. Danielson, vice provost for Information Technology and chief information officer, and Santa Clara law professor Tyler Ochoa acted as panel members.
As the university's CIO, Danielson receives notices from copyright holders about the violation of their intellectual property. Notices are usually about the unlawful distribution of copyrighted material, including movies, music or software, over a peer-to-peer network such as the commonly used LimeWire.
Danielson has received 16 notices since the beginning of this school year.
The notices cite an Internet Protocol address coming from within the school's network, a number which represents an individual's unique connection to the campus network.
IT identifies and closes the network port that the offending address is traced to. The users must call IT to get their Internet access restored, thereby identifying themselves.
"I forward the e-mail to IT. They track that IP address down to a port, some place on campus, and they turn that port off. The person at that port then calls IT and says 'my network connection is broken.' And if it's a student, we say, 'you have an appointment with (Associate Dean for Student Life) Matthew Duncan.' This is what's known in higher education as a 'teaching opportunity,' " Danielson said.
While only 16 percent of file sharing traffic on the Internet is from campus networks, college students are being specifically targeted for lawsuits, Danielson said.
The penalties in federal court for copyright violation are severe. A $150,000 maximum penalty could be imposed per infringing work. The minimum is $750.
"The problem is if you did a hundred songs, times 750, that's $75,000. That's a pretty big chunk of change," Ochoa said.
Ochoa also discussed copyright law and the implications it has on students and their use of digital media. Some European countries have a personal-use provision within their copyright codes, allowing for individuals to make backup copies of their materials.
In contrast, the U.S. does not. "The U.S. has no statutory exception for personal use. So again, in theory, even a single reproduction of a copyrighted work infringes, unless it meets some other exception," Ochoa said.
While "ripping" a CD to MP3 format has become a popular way of using digital music, distributing the MP3s over the Internet is illegal.
Contact Allison Sundaram at (408) 554-4546 or asundaram@scu.edu.