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Universities Refuse To Ban Napster
sachsmachine writes: "The Harvard Crimson is reporting that MIT, Stanford, Duke, and UNC are refusing a Metallica request to block Napster, and that Harvard will likely do the same. Nice to see our institutions of higher learning sticking up for online freedom ..."
[Updated 14:07 GMT by timothy:] fredder adds another small evidence of persistent sanity: "I received this email from the powers that be at Duke University this morning:
'Duke has declined a request from the attorney representing several music performers to ban access to napster.I do wish to remind all students that your license to use Duke's computing networks is predicated on legal use only, and that copyright infringement is not a permitted use.
Tallman Trask III'"
It's more than a little ironic that in the same town that the RIAA and MPAA are based in, a state-sponsored school is refusing to kowtow to them.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Um, actually, I don't support copyright violation. I _also_ don't support the supression of a legitimate means of data replication and transfer simply because _some_ people are using it thusly.
When the RIAA forgoes that little hidden piracy fee on audio tapes and actively starts to enforce copyright on recorded music by going after the individual violators, then they have an ethical leg to stand on. While they're attempting it this way, they can go hang.
Remember, Xeroxes aren't illegal, jut some uses of them. No matter _how_many_ xerox users are using them for print "piracy", xeroxes remain legal. Period. The same argument applies to Napster.
It still amazes me that a group that worships the virtues of the GPL (which is a binding contractual agreement to which the originator of a work provides for it's exact usage, forcing the user into terms he may or may not agree with) are so quick to rally around the open violation of copyright laws.
... well for the recording industry and yes, the artists, copyright laws are their bible in a way, and when someone breaks them, they have the right to try and stop it.
... it's about theft, plain and simple. If you don't believe it, read through the court documents describing how the original board characterized their application. Here's a hint, they made NO MENTION of independent artists ... their main goal was to allow users to find ANY song they want and download it for free. Where do people hear songs they want? You guessed it, the radio. How many independent artists are played on the radio? You guessed it again, zero.
... make your own, but to blatantly break the law and then act like it's you're right, this just makes you look like a scolded child throwing a temper tantrum, not to mention the fact that at this point, any credibility your argument once had becomes negated.
... the "freedom" to rip someone off is not one of them, no matter how upset you are that CDs still cost $16.
Look at it this way. The GPL is your bible, it's your life and when someone breaks it, you're quick to jump down their throats
What will you do when Napster/Gnutella becomes a trading ground for those who decide the GPL is obsolete and distribute programs that purposely violate it? You'll go ape shit and you know it.
Sure the RIAA is the devil, but hypocrisy on such a mass scale doesn't fall short of being satan himself.
Napster is not about freedom
If you're so unhappy with the status of the commerce of art, stop buying it
There are plenty of worthy things to rally around folks
I work at the computing center for Purdue and our Assistant Director has stated that they will not ban Napster or any other service for that matter (e.g. porn). However, they caution us because if anyone comes with a court order they will not fight for the students. So he says if we want to hang ourselves we're more than welcome to.
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Ok, obviously the universities aren't required to police the online activities of their students, but how the hell do you justify pirating music (not the only napster use, i know that, now hush) as "academic freedom" and "access to information"?
You don't. But in any truly free nation, you are innocent of any crime until you have been proven guilty. Simple use of Napster does not necessarily mean music piracy, so Metallica has no right to ban Napster, thereby punishing innocent people right along with the ones who are actually committing crimes. The US legal system was founded on the now somewhat cliched saying that it is better to let ten guilty people go free than to punish a single innocent person, and for Metallica to think they have a right to supercede that system is nothing more than hubris. They certainly have a right to their money if they want it, but that right is outweighed by the right of innocent people to not be punished for things they did not do. And that's the only fair way to do it, because while Metallica can always make more money, you can't "un-punish" an innocent person when the damage is done.
Coming from a school where most of the classes require some (if not all) work to be done on or based on the web, knowing I'm paying $30k and I'm not gonna be able to do my homework because a bunch of slackers who won't be there next semester because they're d/ling music truly pisses me off.
This is a legitimate concern, and a good question. Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to it. I do know that the students who are downloading music are paying just as much for the network access as you are; keep that in mind. Also note that you're paying no small amount, judging from your post (you wouldn't happen to be at RIT, would you?) At that rate, your college should be able to afford the necessary bandwidth upgrades. It should also be possible to establish some sort of bandwidth-limitation/traffic-shaping system, such that a portion of the network would be guaranteed reserved for student work use, with harsh penalties for using that portion of the network for any other purpose.
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Oxford's response would most likely be:
"I say, one of those horrid greasy beat combos have asked us to ban something called Napster. Well, I don't know what it is, but if 'Metal Liker' don't want it at our university it must be a favourable item. Request denied"
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Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
So you mean, they're actually holding you accountable to your claims and refusing to restrict access to a whole class of users? They're asking you to do the non-cost-effective job of policing your recently obsolescent copyright regime, rather than pushing that burden onto others? They're taking the stance that because they are not required by law to do this you can't intimidate them into it? And they're doing all this in the name of idealistic generalities like "academic freedom" and "access to information?"
Imagine.
Somebody's got their head in the sand, pal, but surprisingly it is not these Universities.
Kudos to these Universities for recognizing there's a larger issue here rather than just whittling away at users' access just because it's the easier, less risky thing to do.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
Last school year, Bucknell University did block students from using Napster after realizing that the file-sharing program represented at least 40% of all network traffic and resulted in a total saturation of our T-3 at the peak of Napster's popularity here on campus. Since the staff and administrators at Bucknell care a great deal about their students' welfare, they worked hard to provide a legal alternative that didn't saturate our network.
Their final solution was entirely free (i.e. Bucknell paid $0.00); it involved setting up an iBeam server and coordinating with content provider Launch.com so that anyone Bucknellians can listen to a seemingly infinite amount of legal music beamed off of a dish on top of the campus' Computer Center.
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Eric Krout
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Actually, it's tougher than you might think to block Napster. You see, if you block Napster entirely, the students will use different port numbers to get around your block. It's a loosing battle for the network admins.
Now, I happen to know from first hand experience of one university which is limiting it's Napster traffic. Using various QoS tricks, they lower the priority of Napster traffic so that it doesn't consume too much of their bandwidth. A Napster "knob" if you will that lets them tweak the bandwidth it gets. They crank it down some, and the students just think that the link is more congested than it used to be. But they know if they crank it down too far, the students will realize that something is up and move to a different port. It's an interesting bit of network engineer / psychology going on.