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De: Meeg!!
Fecha: 29/05/2006-10:38

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The Effects of Piracy in a University Setting
by Joseph Nyiri

Introduction
With the recent rise and fall of Napster, the MP3 file format has become a
source of ire for numerous corporations nationwide. The MP3 digital audio
compression technology enables users to download a complete CD in under an hour
via a broadband connection. This nascent technology has built new "doors" that
can now be easily opened with a computer and a modem. Users have a great deal of
raw computing power available to them, and this power increases year after year.
But with this newfound power comes additional responsibilities, as never before
have the opportunities for copyright infringement been so rampant.

Why are the entertainment industry, businesses, and universities so passionate
about stopping this rash of illegal MP3 downloading? There are two main reasons:
album sales and bandwidth. In the November 11th, 2002 edition of the New York
Times, a report from Nielsen SoundScan reveals that, "[f]or the first nine
months of the year, in-store and online sales combined were down by 13 percent,
compared with last year's nine-month period" [13]. In addition, universities and
businesses invest enormous sums of money annually to increase or maintain data
transmission speeds; excessive downloading of MP3s and other digital files clogs
the Internet pipeline and can slow both Internet access and data transmission to
a crawl.

MP3s as Intellectual Property
Most of the songs on the Internet found in the MP3 format are protected by
intellectual property laws. Intellectual property, such as copyrighted or
patented work, is protected under numerous federal laws. Without intellectual
property protection, it is believed that people's incentive to create would
decline, resulting in massive "idea borrowing." Also, everyone would be free to
use other people's ideas as they wish, and they would be allowed to financially
benefit from these ideas. Intellectual property can be seen as an umbrella under
which the concepts of patents and copyrights rest. Patents basically cover
inventions and are not meant to cover artistic expression. Copyrights, on the
other hand, cover artistic expressions. When someone downloads a copyrighted MP3
from the Internet without the proper license, a copyright violation has been
committed. In civil court, copyright violation damages for MP3 piracy can be as
high as $150,000 per infraction.

The Internet as the Medium of Piracy
Technically, the unauthorized downloading of an MP3 online is akin to stealing;
the holder of the copyright does not receive recompense from the MP3's use.
Unlike shoplifting, when stealing via computer, the crime is distributed in two
distinct places -- at the perpetrator's computer and at the host computer. The
perpetrator never actually sees the "victim" in the traditional sense of the
word. Because the perpetrator is often committing crimes over the Internet,
evidence is difficult to obtain. Moreover, unless a monitoring program has been
installed on a perpetrator's computer, it is difficult to track usage behavior.
In addition, because the Internet is so widely available, even if the record
industry was able to trace illegal activity back to the original computer, the
search may lead to a public terminal at a library and not to a specific person's
computer.

Even if record companies know who is downloading illegal files, it is hard to
sue "Dr. Death Star 1428" without knowing his or her real identity. Screen names
serve as a valuable mask for perpetrators of Internet crimes because the
Internet serves as a forum for anonymity. As Hinduja [8] explains, "On an
individual level, data communications often take place at high speeds without
personal contact, leaving very little time for users to consider the
implications of their actions online." A growing sense of depersonalization is
thereby ingrained in the MP3 pirate. This occurs not only as a result of the
apparent absence of a victim but also as a result of the user becoming less a
member of society and more a member of the online subculture, or community, of
MP3 pirates that gathers on the Internet. Also, because of the lack of a
tangible social environment, people's inhibitions are reduced. The combination
of these factors results in a breeding ground for crime and chaos.

The RIAA
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the organization
responsible for maintaining the rights of record labels to retain the privilege
to market albums for profit. The RIAA, its member record labels, and the record
labels' artists are unhappy with the prevalence of piracy. The RIAA, on behalf
of its members, fights to stop the piracy of digital music files using what some
would call strong-arm tactics.

Although tracking down users who are trading copyrighted files on the Internet
can be difficult, one approach is harvesting the IP addresses of suspected users
which are cross-referenced with existing records through ISPs. The RIAA has
filed subpoenas to obtain the personal information on over 1,500 users suspected
of trading these files on services such as KaZaA and Morpheus. The Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) includes a provision under which "...copyright
owners need only get the signature of a district court clerk in order to
subpoena Internet service providers for the names and addresses associated with
a customer's IP address" [2]. Utilizing information garnered from the subpoenas,
lawsuits are filed against the users. Up to October 22nd, 2003, the RIAA has
filed 261 lawsuits against users in this manner. They have also sent letters
demanding 204 users to settle out of court in the week of October 13th, 2003 in
lieu of a lawsuit.

Such tactics have been met with a opposition. Claiming the subpoenas filed by
the RIAA violate the rights of its users, the ISPs Charter Communications,
Verizon Communications, and Pacific Bell Internet Services have filed motions
with the courts to dismiss similar subpoenas each received from the RIAA. In
addition, at least two individuals being sued by the RIAA have maintained their
innocence. Ross Plank and Sarah Ward have both denied using KaZaA and claim to
be caught in the middle of cases of mistaken identity. The case against Ward has
since been dropped, but the case against Plank is still pending at the time of
writing [2].

One might ask, "Are the tactics of the RIAA working?" The answer is unclear. In
a September 19th, 2003 article, the New York Times reported that 36 percent of
respondents to a New York Times/CBS News poll believe "file swapping is never
acceptable" [7]. Consequently, approximately 65% respondents view file sharing
as acceptable either always or under certain circumstances. Without polling
numbers prior to the RIAA lawsuits, it is difficult to analyze these numbers and
conclusively say if their tactics are working. It is certain, however, that the
majority still feel file sharing is acceptable. Another poll conducted by the
Gallup organization found 83% of 517 teens found illegal downloading of music to
be morally acceptable [11].

A more accurate representation might be drawn from traffic to the immensely
popular KaZaA network. "Since the week ending June 29, traffic to KaZaA has
fallen 41 percent to about 3.9 million unique visitors from 6.5 million in the
week ending September 21" [11]. However, it is hard to assign the decrease in
users to the RIAA. The RIAA did not really intimidate users until they began
suing them September 8th. What is needed to reach a more accurate conclusion are
day by day numbers beginning a week before the lawsuit announcements and ending
a week after. However, even with this data, it cannot be clearly shown that the
RIAA is responsible for this decrease.

The Other Side of the Coin
It is easy to place blame solely in the hands of those who commit crimes and
agree with the stance of the RIAA. Often, during the sentencing phase of a
criminal trial, a judge and/or jury will hear arguments from the defense
pertaining to why their client should have some of his guilt shifted to a third
party. Although not prosecuted criminally, this is often the case with Internet
users who download or share MP3s. Of those who do download MP3s online, most
will defend their actions wholeheartedly. In an attempt to shift blame to third
parties for their illegal actions, some will deny responsibility for their
actions. Although unethical, this practice is not without merit.

The RIAA and its member record companies are not without fault. Prices of CDs
have decreased very little since they were picked up by mainstream America in
the late '80s, even though CD production costs have plummeted. Home users,
through one of several formats, can burn a CD for approximately 10 cents per
disc. The RIAA stated that the average cost of a CD was $12.75 in 1996 [1].
Recently, the world's largest record company, Universal, who employs such
artists as Eminem, 50 Cent, and No Doubt, decided to drop its prices from $18.98
to $12.98 [6]. That means prices are just slightly higher than they were in
1996. Yet consumers are still not willing to pay that much for CDs when they
know production costs are not that high. This price inequity may have been a
contributing factor to the decrease in CD sales the United States has seen in
the past three years.

When presented with a less expensive CD, the RIAA may find that the public is
much more willing to purchase CDs. Norah Jones had her debut album priced at
$7.98 -- until she won her numerous Grammy awards [6]. This low price helped
make her album one of the top sellers of 2002. After the Grammy Awards, however,
the price went back up to the normal $18.98. Such price gouging is exactly what
some people are quickly tiring of.

The RIAA claims the general public has been turned off to the concept of paying
for music as a result of the increasing popularity of the MP3 in recent years.
The debut of several pay to download sites has demonstrated that the RIAA may be
wrong. The popularity of such services as the iTunes Music Store, Musicmatch,
and Listen.com has shown that people are more than willing to pay for
downloadable music. It may be the ability to select 19 good songs at 99 cents
each instead of an album by a single artist with 2 or 3 good songs at the same
price point that draws consumers to this new business model. The public showed
its willingness to adopt the new standard of digital music back when the
popularity of the now defunct Napster was at its peak. Unfortunately the music
industry is only now starting to catch up. Apple sold 1 million songs during its
first week of its iTunes service [4]. The figure has now topped 30 million. Even
more remarkably, this service had only been available to Mac users until
recently. Apple launched iTunes for Windows on October 16th, 2003 to an amazing
market reaction. By the next Monday, the 20th, the site had sold 1 million songs
at 99 cents each to Windows users [10]. Also worth noting is the return of
Napster. Napster 2.0 launched into an already saturated 99 cent song market on
October 28th, 2003, hoping to draw market share with its well-known brand.

The RIAA has been slow in adopting the Internet as a legitimate medium for the
distribution of music. With the enormous success of the iTunes Music Store and
similar services, the RIAA has finally seen a portion of the Internet's
potential. The true potential of the Internet, however, lies in its advertising
power. With millions of users connected in cyberspace, word of mouth is a
powerful tool. Many artists have embraced this technique and offer MP3s of their
songs on their websites. Smaller, unsigned bands have used this to their
advantage by gaining a tremendous new market outside of their home towns. As
MP3s of the band spread via their web site, file sharing programs, and word of
mouth, some bands can attain success by getting air time on the Internet, not
the radio.

Record companies have finally begun to embrace the digital revolution started by
the first incarnation of Napster. As previously stated, Napster-like services
such as KaZaA continue to draw millions of users per day, but the number of
users patronizing these services has waned recently. Naturally, the RIAA claims
this as a personal victory won by their utilization of scare tactics and
lawsuits. There is no doubt that the actions of the RIAA have been a
contributing factor, but on the other hand, millions of people have begun paying
for their music again, this time online. However, the RIAA will continue its
fight against piracy, a fight some say would not have been necessary had the
record industry not been so slow in embracing this new business model.

The Impact of Piracy
The monetary losses attributed to piracy by the RIAA are substantial. It is
difficult to put a number on the amount of revenue the RIAA's member groups lose
as a result of online piracy. Falling CD sales are not enough to enumerate these
losses. Users who download music online may simply be experimenting with
different musical styles or artists. These people may not necessarily have
purchased the albums that the songs they downloaded came from. As a result,
these figures cannot be attributed to lost revenues. However, the RIAA still
maintains that millions of dollars are lost annually to online piracy.

Piracy also causes indirect harm to consumers. The majority of pirated
recordings are from the most popular artists. This is great for the music
pirate; the most popular music is also the most easily attainable. However,
these items dominate a label's income, as these are the albums people are most
likely to buy. These losses have to be recovered somehow, so they are rolled
into the price of albums. Unfortunately, the people who bear the brunt of this
solution are the legitimate consumers. These are often the people who never
download albums and depend on their local record stores or radio stations for
music. Every law-abiding member of society who goes to the store ends up having
to pay the increased price for a legitimate copy of their favorite artist's
album.

In addition, piracy causes non-monetary effects by stifling creative efforts.
When artists don't see their expected royalties coming in, they get frustrated
and may attribute this loss of revenue to piracy. According to the RIAA, 85% of
all recording that are released never make enough revenue to cover their costs.
So for these 85% of artists, this piracy hurts even more [12]. This could cause
some artists to "throw in the towel" because they are making little to no money
in their chosen occupation.

National universities and businesses also feel the harmful effects of piracy.
The threat of litigation from the RIAA or a law enforcement agency is a very
real danger posed to both groups by students and workers committing piracy. The
legal fees that result from fighting litigation can become astronomically
costly. Negative publicity raised by accusations is also extremely detrimental,
as negative publicity can often be worse than a financial reprimand.

The University Standpoint
The RIAA has relentlessly targeted schools across the country. As a result, MP3
piracy is a topic that has come under fire at national universities more than
elsewhere. The high-bandwidth Internet connections that universities provide are
typically seen as being warranted only for legitimate uses, not only by
students, but also for faculty research, communication, and collaboration.
Faculty research attempts slow dramatically when bandwidth is being harnessed by
illegal, non-educational, student activity. The cost of universities to upgrade
their Internet lines as a result of increased student use is high. Universities
see the Internet as a new method of learning, not as a new distraction for
students to amuse themselves with, and they cannot justify paying for students
to use it for such tangential and illegal activity.

Piracy is a large problem at national universities. If nothing is done about
this problem, universities may find it difficult to escape the repercussions of
piracy. There are a variety of actions that can be taken to combat illegitimate
bandwidth use. One method universities use is called packet monitoring, a form
of bandwidth monitoring. One such system, PacketShaper, is developed by
Packeteer. Packet monitors enable organizations to discover and classify
applications, analyze their performance, and then enforce policy-based bandwidth
allocation based on their user-defined importance [9]. The University of Florida
has unveiled a new open-source solution known as Integrated Computer Application
for Recognizing User Services (Icarus). Icarus is a software-based program
developed by on-campus programmers that is similar to PacketShaper. "Icarus
automatically sends an e-mail and an immediate pop-up warning and disconnects
the student from the network. The first violation disables network access for 30
minutes; the second cuts off access for five days. Third-time offenders are
subject to the school's judicial process, and their network access is cut off
indefinitely" [3]. Initial results have been extremely promising, as bandwidth
use dropped a massive 85% since initial deployment [3]. It is also important to
remember that faculty, not just students, can engage in illegal downloading
habits. Unfortunately, most schools do not publicly acknowledge this fact.

Another method employed by some universities is called port restricting. Port
restricting controls bandwidth usage by stopping (blocking) or restricting
(capping) the use of certain ports. These measures can cripple certain programs
and reduce bandwidth usage substantially by either not allowing users to connect
to the Internet or severely slowing down their access. Typically, Information
Technology (IT), Information Systems (IS), or the equivalent department, can
identify the most common port numbers being used by these programs that are
taking up all the bandwidth, and they restrict these ports on a reactive basis.

Unfortunately, both packet monitoring and port restricting are inherently
flawed. Much of the traffic the university is blocking could be legitimate, such
as the exchange of students' personally created, legal files. In the case of
Icarus, hosting computer games over the LAN is no longer permitted. In addition,
neither of these systems can determine whether the data being transmitted is
copy-protected. Even with the most advanced system, this is one sticking point
that may never be overcome. Another problem is that students typically become
angry about the speed of the Internet for their entertainment needs when such
restrictions are employed, and the use of restrictions can actually exacerbate
more problems than it fixes. The most common gripe is that students are paying
to use the Internet in one way or another so they believe they should have
unrestricted access to it [5]. Students who are dedicated to downloading MP3s
will find some way around imposed restrictions, move off campus, or transfer to
a different school just to satisfy their need to use the Internet the way they
want to.

Another way to stop students from downloading copyrighted files is to prevent
them from desiring to download these files in the first place. Education is a
method some universities have utilized to attain this goal. When it comes to
issues pertaining to intellectual property, some students do not even know that
downloading MP3s is (usually) illegal. College students are an especially
difficult group to work with because they are not used to being under the more
restrictive rules that most universities place on Internet use. As a result, new
students have a hard time adapting to these new rules and will just continue to
engage in the same downloading habits they practiced at home.

The system most universities have undertaken is one of many forms of passive
education. In passive education, schools expect students to learn about
intellectual property issues on their own. This can be accomplished through
posters hung on the walls, a clause in the student handbook, pamphlets handed
out when registering your computer, disclaimers that must be agreed to when
using the Internet, etc. The problem with passive education is that it is
usually not very effective. Many students will not even read disclaimers,
regardless of where they are - mindlessly clicking "agree" to computer-based
disclaimers, laughing at posters on the walls, tossing out distributed
pamphlets, and not even knowing about that clause in the student handbook.

The overwhelming majority of students will never receive any formal education on
intellectual property unless they take a law class that deals specifically with
this topic. As a result, some universities have employed systems of active
education. In active education, students are directly told what is and what is
not acceptable usage of the Internet. Many universities have some sort of a
mandatory class for all new students, and this is an excellent forum for
in-class education, a method of active education. If a presentation about
digital piracy, its costs, effects, etc. was given in one class session,
positive effects may soon surface. The Icarus system described above is also a
system of active education because the student is "forced" to understand the
rules of Internet usage.

A sanction system is another method of active education. Possible sanctions, or
punishments, could include progressively increasing periods of Internet
suspension. Although harsh, it is indeed one way for students to understand the
policies surrounding Internet use. Sanctions are important for universities to
impose so that students will understand that these places of higher learning do
not tolerate intellectual property violations. If sanctions are not imposed, it
may tell students that the university doesn't care, silently endorses, or
condones this behavior [8].

Conclusion
As file sharing becomes more prevalent, the distinction between good and bad
becomes easily blurred. Many students in national universities have a loose,
inaccurate interpretation of piracy, which has caused university officials a
variety of problems. The easiest solution is to ignore the problem, but clearly,
not taking proactive decisions to curb the problem will only result in a bigger
one.

As piracy continues to flourish, computer users across America have the
opportunity to listen to music from some of the all-time greats. The only
problem is that these wonderful artists never see any profit from these MP3s.
Sooner or later, if this trend continues, piracy could become so mainstream that
even the big-name artists will be unable to support themselves through album
sales. Can digital piracy be stopped, or is it too late? The RIAA may have taken
the wrong stance on the MP3 issue, giving more publicity to popular services
such as Napster and KaZaA. With the overwhelming success of legal services such
as iTunes and Musicmatch, hopefully the RIAA will see the mistake they have
made. It has taken the RIAA too long to embrace this new music distribution
format, one that the public has been gravitating toward for more than half a
decade.

på norsk?

Are You CRAZY???!
jeg er ikke så snill!

debe tratarse de una broma................