With a homemade system in place to sanction students accused of
breaking copyright law, UCLA is going against the tide of an
increasing number of colleges and universities using technology to
prevent students from illegally sharing files.
About 30 to 40 colleges and universities in the United States
are using a product created by Los Gatos-based Audible Magic to
stop Internet sharing of copyrighted works. Only two schools had
the system in place six months ago.
The product ““ CopySense Network Appliance ““ compares
the content of files transferred over peer-to-peer networks with
that in a database of about 4 million copyrighted works. When
CopySense finds a match, it blocks the file from being
transferred.
UCLA Associate Vice Chancellor of Information Technology Jim
Davis said after learning more about CopySense from Audible Magic
representatives earlier this year, he and other staff decided
against bringing the appliance to the university.
Instead, UCLA uses a system developed by the school’s
scientists that relies on outside organizations such as the
Recording Industry Association of America to identify and notify
the university about students sharing copyrighted files. The system
automatically puts those students in “quarantine,”
disconnecting them from the school’s network until they sign
an electronic statement indicating they’ve removed the file
or files in question.
UCLA’s system is similar to the Automatic Copyright
Notification System, open-source software developed by Universal
Music Group and Vivendi Universal Entertainment to allow Internet
service providers to rapidly de-activate alleged copyright
violators’ network accounts.
Davis said he feels UCLA’s system, which was under
discussion long before CopySense became an option, affords students
more privacy than Audible Magic’s product would.
“With respect to Audible Magic, we’re choosing not
to go with that kind of approach. It gets too close to policing,
… looking into our own networks and looking for our own
behavior,” he said.
Vance Ikezoye, Audible Magic’s chief executive officer,
says CopySense gives students privacy by working only with files
““ no student is singled out to be sanctioned, and
students’ hard drives remain untouched. And though university
officials can configure the system to show names of files being
shared, their content remains inaccessible to administrators,
Ikezoye said.
UCLA’s system does not allow administrators to see any
information, including filenames, related to specific files.
CopySense comes with a one-time price tag of $2,000 to $50,000,
depending on bandwidth, and an annual upgrade fee of 23 percent of
the base cost.
While the RIAA has touted CopySense as a way to stop people from
sharing copyrighted works, the product is not always effective,
says Ren Bucholz, activism coordinator for Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a San Francisco-based donor-supported activist
organization that deals with issues tying technology to civil
liberties.
Some emerging peer-to-peer networks offer automatic encryption,
meaning CopySense and other systems like it would not be able to
recognize files being shared.
While copyright holders like the recording industry may believe
students and other filesharers will continue to use older
peer-to-peer networks or that they are not tech-savvy enough to
encrypt their own files, Bucholz says these ideas are
unfounded.
“That’s what they’re banking on, but I think
that’s not actually what we’ve seen in aggregate. The
usage of Kazaa has gone down, but the usage of these other
third-generation peer-to-peer networks has gone up,” he
said.
A string of RIAA litigation against thousands of filesharers
will also be ineffective, Bucholz said. Recently, the industry
brought lawsuits against 744 peer-to-peer network users on Aug.
25.
“A whole plan of suing people until there’s nobody
left is really wrong-headed,” Bucholz said, referring to the
RIAA’s prosecuting alleged filesharers. “There’s
ultimately no way to put the genie back in the bottle and stop
peer-to-peer.”
UCLA has worked aggressively to educate students about the
current filesharing atmosphere and that they could be charged with
breaking the law, Davis said. Being quarantined and warned by the
university does not preclude a student from being sued by the RIAA
or any other outside agency, said Kent Wada, director of
information technology policy.
No student has been accused of being a repeat offender since the
new system was put into place during spring quarter.
“We really can’t draw firm conclusions. (But) the
number of notifications has dropped substantially,” he
said.
Sepehr Fakour, a first-year world arts and cultures student
living in De Neve Plaza, said he used peer-to-peer networks to
share copyrighted files when he was living at home.
“The people who would oppose that, who would argue that
you were stealing, I don’t agree with that,” said
Fakour, who also buys and rents movies and music.
But Fakour says because he’s read UCLA’s policies,
he hasn’t shared materials over the Internet at school. While
he feels it’s an invasion of his privacy for the school to
regulate filesharing, he adds it is justified because “we are
using their network.”
UCLA’s system allows more free use of the Internet than
one like CopySense, which has a setting that blocks all
peer-to-peer network transmissions. Fakour said he’s glad
UCLA chose not to use a filtering system like CopySense, which
could prevent legal usage.
Val Ramirez, associate director for computing and information
services at Texas A&M University, Kingsville, said CopySense
fit his school’s needs by addressing filesharing and a range
of other technical problems.
The university of over 7,000 students uses CopySense to block
all peer-to-peer network use, alleviating dilemmas related to low
bandwith and the downloading of viruses. Ramirez said when the
university increases its bandwith, “we’ll open it
up” so students can download non-copyrighted files.
“Obviously, they’re not happy when we block all the
peer-to-peer stuff,” Ramirez said.
“I realize we’re taking away some of their
privileges,” he said.