Previous |
Next |
October 19, 2005, 03:58 PM ET
At Educause, Little Optimism About Curbing Piracy
As more than 30 campus technology officials traded tales from the file-swapping trenches at this year’s Educause conference, one point quickly became clear: Music and movie piracy is alive and well. The general tone of the discussion—moderated by David Futey, the associate director of academic computing at Stanford University—was one of measured, but apparent, exasperation.
Some participants complained that lawmakers and entertainment-industry officials have gone too far in pressuring colleges to sign up for legal file-swapping services like Napster and Cdigix. When colleges sign up with those services, record companies tend to stop sending them complaints about individual copyright infractions, according to one administrator. "Their notifications are stopping even though their peer-to-peer activity remains the same," he said. "That’s why this feels like extortion."
Another campus official said that lawmakers from her state have written her to ask about her institution’s antipiracy practices. "What they’re really asking," she said, "is what [legal downloading] service have you contracted?"
And when the discussion turned to methods of stopping piracy, many administrators essentially threw their hands up in the air. In public, a number of college officials have boasted of cutting piracy by educating students in the ethics and laws of computer use. But in private, there wasn’t very much optimism. "I’m not so sure education is an answer," said one official. "How many people know it’s against the law to speed, but do it anyway?"
Add Your Comment
Commenting is closed.