MSU Approves Bill on Illegal Downloading Concerns

Andrew Struska

A bill on university involvement dealing with illegal downloading and student file sharing gain approval from the House Education and Labor Committee last Thursday.

The bill, entitled the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, contains a number of sections addressing issues in the American education system. Section 494 of the College of Opportunity and Affordability Act, named Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention, addresses the downloading and file sharing on campuses.

Section 494 of the bill specifically makes the point of placing responsibility on universities to offer “alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.” The bill also provides grants to universities in order to assist in preventing students from becoming involved in illegal downloading.

MSU Telecommunication Professor Robert Larose explained peer-to-peer file sharing.

“Files are shared directly between users without being stored on a central computer. You download the files from hard drives of other users.”

The alternatives suggested in the bill refer to the university offering legal downloading services to their students, such as Napster or Ruckus.

Illegal downloading and peer-to-peer file sharing costs nothing. Some students say it has the convenience of being able to download directly what music tracks or movies that are wanted to an individual’s computer.

However, the consequences of being caught illegally downloading can be rather severe.

“Penalties include stern lectures, loss of your computer account and, for repeat offenders, dismissal and revocation of your tuition,” Larose said.

Enio Mirando, a chemical engineering junior, said he chooses to get his music by purchasing it legally.

“It’s not really worth taking the risk if my scholarship winds up being revoked,” Miranda said.

While the College Opportunity and Affordability Act has yet to become a law, MSU already has measures in place, similar to those outlined in the bill. It is to help lower the number of students who illegally download files.

David Gift, vice provost of libraries, computing and technology, listed several methods already being used by MSU to deter illegal downloading which include the following: notifying the MSU community through common channels of communication such as the State News; keeping users of the MSU network informed on the university’s policy of enforcing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; and providing access to Ruckus, a legal music and music download service, to network users.

Larose said that, should the College Opportunity and Affordability Act become a law as it is, it would act as an extension of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This will put both the university and students in a position of responsibility for the student body’s online behavior.

It is going to cost students money, as well as the university for having to upgrade the network because of all the traffic, said Larose.

“Beware,” Larose said. “File sharing applications like LimeWire open up more than just your music files to ‘sharing.’ Crooks can search for files named ‘passwords.doc’ as well as those named ‘radiohead.mp3.’”

Students who wish to look further into their rights regarding file sharing and downloading can find the Digital Millennium Copyright Act processes on the MSU Web site along with MSU’s Acceptable Uses Policy.