The sound and the legal fury:
Illegal music file sharing and the UNCP Honor Code

By Lawren Shepard
Campus Life Editor

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has made good on its threat of punishing individuals who use programs such as Kazaa and Gnutella to illegally share copyrighted music.

According to www.cnn.com, on Monday, Sept. 8, the RIAA filed 261 lawsuits against major offenders- those individuals who offered more than 1,000 songs for illegal download.

An unemployed woman from New York, a Yale University professor, and an elderly man from Texas were among the first to receive subpoenas, according to www.cnn.com.

An estimated 60 million people in America use file sharing software (sometimes called “peer to peer” or “P2P” programs) to exchange music and movies. According to CNN’s website, the RIAA plans to file as many as 1,600 subpoenas in the coming months.

In response to this, the designers of Kazaa Lite, a version of the Kazaa software available for free download via the Internet, have developed a new version of the program that, according to the official Kazaa Lite website, will block the RIAA and other organizations, thus protecting users from being discovered.

The new version also boasts of being “spyware free” and providing added privacy for users.
As of Thursday, Oct. 2, the website’s hit counter stood at 36,861,329, with a current average of 129,629 hits per day. Apparently, the allure of “safe” illegal file sharing is more powerful than the threats of the RIAA.

Downloading music and other files through Kazaa, Kazaa Lite and other such programs is exceptionally popular among college students.

Some colleges and universities, such as Simmons College in Boston, Mass. (www.simmons.edu) have instituted a policy that prohibits students from trading illegal files. If the student is caught using the school’s network to illegally share copyrighted music, they may face restriction of network privileges and possibly be held in violation of the school’s honor code, which prohibits theft of property, including theft of copyrighted material.

The University of North Carolina at Pembroke currently does not have a specific, separate policy regarding illegal online file sharing, according to Dr. Maurice Mitchell, associate vice chancellor for information resources at UNCP. However, all students accessing the Internet through the campus ResNet service are held accountable to the terms and conditions that all new users must accept before being allowed access to the network.

The problem is not the downloading itself, said Mitchell. Downloading has its uses.

“If it’s copyrighted or licensed material, such as music files, unless the user has specific authority from the copyright holder to copy and distribute the files, doing so is illegal,” he said. “All users on our network must comply with all federal, state and local laws, all licenses and the Millennium Copyright Act.”

According to the on-campus housing agreement (of which ResNet use is a part), “Users of UNC Pembroke’s computing services must abide by the Computer and Network Use policies, which are intended to preserve the utility and flexibility of the system, to protect the privacy and work of students, faculty, and staff, and to preserve the right to access the international networks to which UNCP’s systems are connected. Failure to comply with the guidelines will result in, at minimum, termination of service.”

Part of the computer and network’s acceptable use policy (AUP), as found on the UNCP website, states that “allowing external parties access to the UNCP technology infrastructure or agreeing to such (as defined in some peer-to-peer software licenses)” is in violation of the policy.

The website states that with the approval of the chancellor or his delegate, the UCIS reserves the right “to investigate any alleged AUP (or other UNCP or UNC policy infractions; or to assist in any University or law enforcement investigations seeking evidence regarding alleged violation of any criminal law.”

Furthermore: “Users have no Constitutional expectation of privacy in any information on the UNCP technology infrastructure. To the extent allowed by law in the absence of any expectation of privacy, which absence is established with this policy, UNCP reserves the right to make any communications, data or information regarding, transmitted through, or stored on any UNCP system or network available to law enforcement officials without a search warrant and without prior notice to any User.”

According to the AUP, if a UNCP student is found to be in violation of this code, or in violation of state or federal laws, they may be subject to immediate loss of their network privileges, disciplinary action, and dismissal from the University, as well as facing whatever further actions may be taken by local, state, or federal officials.