[ARSCLIST] CHE: Record Industry Has No Plan to Seek Names of Students Trading Copyrighted Songs

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Record Industry Has No Plan to Seek Names of Students Trading
Copyrighted Songs
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 3.2.14
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i23/23a03601.htm

  By ANDREA L. FOSTER

   In a case that campus-network administrators followed
  closely, the recording industry won an important legal victory
  last month that will help record companies ferret out music
  fans who illegally trade copyrighted material. But an industry
  official says the victory doesn't mean that companies will
  start demanding the names of college students who pass around
  song files -- at least not yet.

  "We have no current plans to do that, but that doesn't mean we
  wouldn't in the future," says Cary H. Sherman, president and
  general counsel of the Recording Industry Association of
  America. "I can't rule it out."

  The court case pitted the trade association against Verizon
  Communications, which had declined to turn over the name of a
  Verizon customer who had allegedly downloaded nearly 600 songs
  using KaZaA, a popular file-sharing system. The association
  sued to learn the customer's name, arguing that the Digital
  Millennium Copyright Act required Verizon to reveal it.

  College Rumors

  Judge John D. Bates, of the U.S. District Court for the
  District of Columbia, sided with the association, ruling that
  the law permits a copyright owner to send a subpoena ordering
  a service provider to reveal information about a subscriber.
  The subpoena doesn't require a judge's permission.

  The ruling prompted a flurry of speculation among college
  administrators about whether the recording-industry group
  would regularly present subpoenas to colleges demanding that
  they identify students who swap music online.

  Mr. Sherman says the association has not presented subpoenas
  to colleges asking for the identities of students who share
  music online. When copyright owners complain to colleges about
  individuals who use campus networks to share movies or music
  illegally, the owners usually refer to alleged violators by
  the numerical Internet address of each user's computer.
  Colleges receive hundreds of such complaints each month.

  But because the recording-industry group communicates
  periodically with college administrators about copyright
  infringement, it hasn't felt the need to demand that colleges
  hand over the names of copyright violators, Mr. Sherman says.

  'In Good Faith'

  "We are operating in good faith together to try to address the
  problem in a very productive manner. We would hope not to have
  to be going down the road we had to go down with Verizon," Mr.
  Sherman says.

  Nonetheless, he says he believes that colleges qualify as
  Internet-service providers under the digital copyright law,
  and that as a result, the institutions can be subpoenaed to
  hand over the names of infringing students.

  That point is not lost on Sheldon E. Steinbach, general
  counsel of the American Council on Education. If the court
  decision is upheld, he says, "the message to students will be
  clear: We can find you, and you can be held personally liable
  for copyright infringement."

  Verizon last month asked Judge Bates to halt the ruling while
  it appeals the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
  District of Columbia Circuit.

  At least one college administrator speculates that the
  recording industry would be reluctant to pursue colleges.
  Tracy B. Mitrano, director of the program in computer policy
  and law at Cornell University, says colleges would
  vociferously assert their tradition of upholding academic
  freedom, free speech, and fair use if the record companies
  asked for students' identities.

  "If I were in the entertainment industry and looking to
  enforce" the digital copyright law, she says, "I would more
  likely want to pursue a commercial Internet-service provider,
  and perhaps one that has moved into broadband, because that's
  where this activity is moving."