Anti-online piracy enforcers hound colleges

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -- If you're a college student who likes to swap music on the Internet, beware! Big Brother is watching!

With one 19-year-old Oklahoma University student possibly facing criminal charges for creating a Napster-like program that allowed songs to be transferred via the Internet, the message being broadcast to campuses in the midst of the recording industry's landmark copyright lawsuit against Napster is: Watch your back.

The Oklahoma student could face charges of copyright infringement after police found as many as 1,000 Internet music files on his computer, which they seized from his dorm room after officials were notified by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as part of its crusade against Internet piracy.

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"We're just identifying users on the Internet violating these copyrights. Unfortunately, college students have historically been a significant part of the problem because of easy access to computers in their dorm rooms and high bandwidth supplied by the university networks," said Frank Creighton, anti-piracy director for the RIAA.

The RIAA, which is suing song-swap company Napster for allegedly facilitating online piracy, will release mid-year piracy statistics later this week, or possibly as early as Tuesday, a spokesman said.

In 1997, its first year of enforcement on the Internet, about 70 percent of the infringing activity emanated from university networks, Creighton said, noting that less than 100 sites were identified that first year.

The RIAA then launched an education program called Soundbyting to inform college students and faculty about the "dos and don'ts" of adhering to copyright law on the Internet.

"There are very few colleges we haven't sent letters to," Creighton said, adding: "We support universities if they want to go the law enforcement route. We've seen everything from students losing their computer privileges to other disciplinary actions."

Creighton said the percentage of students out of total notifications dropped to 30 percent in 1998 and, so far this year, to five percent of all the notifications sent out by the RIAA.

But he quickly added that the overall number had skyrocketed.

"The number of notifications sent to sites in the first half of this year rose over 200 percent over the total number sent in all of last year. In other words, we sent out thousands of notifications in the first six months of 2000," he said.

Another reason students comprised five percent was that the RIAA was not going after the millions of students using Napster.

"Instead of going after Napster's 20 million users, we're going after the organization. It doesn't mean the users are not committing a crime, we just elected not to go after the users at this time because of the litigation," he said.

Opening arguments in the Napster case have been set for October 2 after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco stayed a judge's order that would have shut down the service.

In the suit, Napster faces the most powerful recording companies, including Seagram Co. Ltd.'s Universal Music, Bertelsmann AG's BMG, Sony Corp.'s Sony Music and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music Group and EMI. Time Warner is the parent company of CNN.com.

"We feel very confident the ruling is about to come down in our favor," Creighton said.

A few weeks ago, research firm Gartner Group Inc. said 34 percent of 50 colleges it polled had banned students from using Napster, saying the service raised legal and moral issues.

"I would not want to be the university president who neglected to update the school policy regarding music downloads this year," said Robert Labatt, analyst for Gartner.

"The RIAA is trying to desperately establish a point that whether your big or small like a student, they're going to go after you," said Leonard Rubin, a copyright expert and attorney at the law firm of Gordon & Glickson.

About 10 days ago, Howard King, a lawyer representing Dr. Dre and Metallica in separate copyright lawsuits against Napster, sent letters to several colleges, including Harvard, Stanford University and Columbia University, requesting they ban Napster.

This strategy worked earlier this year, when Metallica had originally named Yale University, the University of California and Indiana University as defendants in its lawsuit, but subsequently dropped them from the case after those schools banned students from using Napster.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Recording Industry Association of America
Napster
Universal Music Group
BMG
Sony Music
Warner Music Group
The EMI Group
Dr Dre
Metallica
Yale University
University of California
Indiana University

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