Uni Students Slammed For Music Swapping

jomaree writes "The SMH Online reports that Sony, EMI and Universal will be in the Federal Court today, in an attempt to stop students using uni computers to swap music files. Michael Speck, the director of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, is quoted as follows: 'And we're not talking about one track here, one track there,' he said. 'We're talking piracy, significant examples of piracy.' By contrast, Sydney Uni says it knows of one student with a handful of files on a website, which does actually sound quite a bit like one track here, one track there."

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Website is slow.. here is the full text

[vivek7006]

Print Article: It's war on a generation of cyber pirates

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It's war on a generation of cyber pirates
ByAmanda Morgan
February 18 2003

The recording industry has launched its most aggressive offensive yet against illegal music swapping over the internet.

In the Federal Court in Sydney today, record companies will try to seize evidence of song swapping by students using the computer networks of the universities of Sydney, Melbourne and Tasmania.

Record labels in the United States and Europe have warned the world's top 1000 companies they must stop illegal music swapping on their networks or face legal action.

Australia's major record companies, Sony, EMI and Universal, are acting on suspicions that students, and possibly staff, are using the universities' computers to swap digital music files. The industry says the three universities have not divulged information, but that others have co-operated.

Michael Speck, the director of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, which tracks swapping on behalf of the Australian record industry, believes the illegal file trading is significant.

"And we're not talking about one track here, one track there," he said. "We're talking piracy, significant examples of piracy."

The University of Sydney says it knows of one student who established a website with a handful of songs for swapping on its system. It has "isolated the website, and will hand over the evidence at an appropriate time", a spokesman said.

There are hundreds of thousands of song files on personal computers worldwide. They are "swapped" for free using special software, robbing artists and their record companies of royalties.

But the president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Cameron Murphy, said the industry was wrong to target students.

"The focus of these organisations should be on people who are running or pirating music for clear commercial benefit," he said. "I don't think there is any benefit to the community in prosecuting individuals who do this as a one-off. I mean, we'd have half the students in Australia in jail."

Mr Murphy also questioned whether the universities should be forced into the role of policing their students.

Mr Speck denied the industry was making an example of the universities. "Somebody gets caught being involved in a wrongdoing and they utter, 'We're not the only ones, why are we here?' Well, you got caught."

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/17/10453305 39310.html

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Monash University

[Anonymous Coward]

A staff member was suspended from Monash University (in the outer suburbs of Melbourne) a few weeks ago for "alleged infringement of copyrights in sound recordings and song lyrics published on the staff member's home page". Apparently this led to a large amount of co-workers' computers being forcibly searched as well. No other suspensions have happened, but a lot of people have become quite nervous. It's believed that this action was at the behest of ARIA, which is basically the Australian equivalent of the RIAA.

Now, many of us have recently been advised by our superiors that we will "infringe copyright" even by doing such things as copying our own CDs or encoding them to mp3 files and bringing them into work. Also, our networks are being regularly scanned for machines running file-sharing applications.

It seems that they're gearing up to instituting a policy where having a machine that has transferred large amounts of data and has been seen listening on certain well-known port numbers will soon constitute grounds for having the contents of its hard drive searched.

Re:Monash University

[Boiling_point_]

Not many Australians realise that we don't have the same "fair use" rights that Americans and other nationals do.

We have no legal right to rip mp3s from our own legal CDs. We have no legal right to backup CDs for self-insurance. Check it out (374KB PDF).

Hell - I'm probably infringing Copyright by quoting this paragraph from the Australian Copyright Council PDF I linked to above:

Making a backup copy of a CD will involve making a reproduction of the music, lyrics and sound recordings on that CD. The right to reproduce the work is one of the exclusive rights of the owners of copyright in those items. You may not legally make a back up copy of a CD when the CD contains material that is protected by copyright unless you have permission from the owner of copyright or a special exception applies to your use.

Re:Good for them.

[KDan]

You live in a dreamworld mate. The universities will bend over and take it in the arse, rather than risk a lawsuit. Especially if they're public-funded. They might let things happen as long as it's not something public that anyone is aware of, but as soon as there's the slightest whiff of a lawsuit coming their way, they'll shut it all down pronto.

I speak from experience. In Oxford we had this great Gnutella clone called OxTella - ran on the 100Mbit/10Mbit LAN, so it was damn fast and good, and across all of Oxford. Then the RIAA sent a letter about some AIM file sharing to one of the colleges, some idiotic IT college officer sent out a mail to the entire college about it instead of keeping quiet and the next issue of the college newspaper had a big headline about it, and man, you never saw hundreds of nodes go down faster.

The universities are purveyors of education, not filesharing. They won't jeopardise the first to provide the latter.

Daniel

Federal Student Privacy Laws...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the U.S. there is a federal student privacy law called "Family Education Rights and Privacy Act" (FERPA) which higher education institutions take pretty seriously. I believe it'd be a violation of that law to reveal student information to RIAA. It's so bad that we had to examine our logging policy to review who had access to logs and what they revealed about a student to ensure that FERPA wasn't being violated.

But we (I work in IT at a college) *do* have policies against using our equipment for breaking the law, and copyright infringement is specifically listed. And if we catch them, we'll nail them. All the RIAA needs to do is note the date/time and IP and we can trace that back to a specific student and disciplinary procedures WILL happen. Problem is, the RIAA doesn't get personal satisfaction. Just like when someone e-mails abuse@ and we reply "We are investigating and will take appropriate action. However, FERPA prevents us from sharing with you the results of our investigation and any disciplinary action." It pisses the complainer off and it's to no good end because we *do* act on these complaints and if a student is violating our terms, they get disciplined and sometimes expeled.

Re:Absolutely!

[1u3hr]

Oh, and for the record, once again:
piracy != theft
Theft=larceny

For that matter:
copyright infringement != piracy

"Piracy" is armed robbery on the high seas. How on earth this word got associated with the wholly non-violent act of copying a digital file is beyond me. At least it isn't called "music terrorism" or possession of "musical weapons of mass destruction" (yet).