New services add to file sharing

Despite filing 4,000 lawsuits against peer-to-peer file sharers during the past year — and working to increase the popularity of legitimate online music distribution systems — the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) may still have a long way to go in its battle against online piracy.

"I think the RIAA lawsuits have certainly greatly increased awareness of the possibility of crackdowns," said Andrew Uzzell, a freshman at Yale University. "But I don't think that's caused an appreciable shift in student attitudes."

Shaun Dozier, a Duke freshman, echoed those sentiments, suggesting that while most students have heard of the lawsuits, many continue to download music while thinking "it won't happen to me."

While these comments would likely be troubling to the recording industry coming from any college campus, they might be even more so in this case because Duke and Yale are among a handful of colleges that have invested in services and technologies over the past year to make digital music a legal and integral part of their campus experiences.

Over the summer, Duke officials made national headlines by announcing plans to give each freshman with an iPod and use the devices in class.

While Dozier said he used his iPod to record a voice lesson, he suggested many students were simply transferring downloaded music to them.

Yale used a different strategy to make progress on the digital music front. They partnered with Cdigix, a company which offers various digital media distribution services to college campuses. The pilot program let students download music from a one million song library, and, for an additional fee, burn it to CD or transfer it to a digital music player.

Cdigix president and founder Brett Goldberg said Yale's primary focus was to fulfill an educational mandate, but that this technology could be used primarily for entertainment. Cdigix's services are currently used on six college campuses nationwide.

He also said he had conversations with Princeton about introducing a similar service to campus, and he described Princeton's focus, like that of Yale, as educational.

According to Goldberg, the increased popularity of legal music systems, like his Ctrax and Apple's iTunes, is based on the increasing economic viability of these services. He suggested the small premiums associated with these services were justified by the ability to avoid the viruses and "spyware" often associated with peer-to-peer systems. However, he said at least a small part of the shift toward legal alternatives might have been driven by awareness and concern generated by industry lawsuits.

At Duke, Information Technology Security Officer Chris Cramer didn't anticipate much impact on campus copyright infringement as a result of the iPod project, citing the educational, rather than recreational, focus of the initiative.

"One of the things I find interesting is the level of focus the RIAA has on universities," Cramer said.

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"When you look out there the vast majority of the users connected to the Internet are not on campuses at all, but it seems the vast majority of [the RIAA] effort is being directed toward alleged campus copyright infringement."

Princeton efforts to make digital music easier to legally access were minimal this year. The latest Student Computing Initiative computers were shipped with iTunes already installed. However, this was done to provide students with some music management program rather than to encourage a particular music purchasing system, OIT's Steven Sather said.

According to Princeton's Digital Millennium Copyright Act Compliance Officer, Rita Saltz, the University continues to receive complaints from copyright holders regarding online copyright infringement.

"I had hoped that our frosh would be smarter than their predecessors regarding the risks and regarding the law," Saltz said of the Class of 2007, which initially seemed to be receiving fewer complaints.

But, she said, as the year went on, the number of complaints "revved up," and by year's end did not represent an improvement over previous classes.

Most involved with the issue said the future of the file sharing debate was uncertain, but likely to involve a balance between piracy and affordable, legal alternatives.

Cramer, the Duke security officer, is in this camp and likened online music theft to speeding.

While speeding is technically a crime, he said, few people see it as ethically wrong, and they will continue to speed as long as they are not likely to be caught.

Uzzell and Dozier, the Yale and Duke freshmen, said they personally refrained from peer-to-peer downloading for ethical reasons. However, both indicated that many of their peers subscribed to the "speeding" paradigm.

"We'll continue to be surprised [for the next five years]," said sociology professor Paul DiMaggio, who has studied the social implications of digital technology.

"I think things are moving quickly enough now that it is hard to predict."