Tuesday, April 4, 2000

LOGGING IN WITH . . . Chad Paulson Student Calls on Peers to be Responsible in Use of Digital Music By KELLY McCOLLUM When Indiana University at Bloomington pulled the plug on Napster, the controversial software that has allowed thousands of students to trade MP3 music files across the Internet, Chad Paulson took action. Mr. Paulson, a sophomore telecommunications major, started an organization called Students Against University Censorship -- its Web site is called savenapster.com -- to protest the banning of Napster on hundreds of campuses and to seek ways in which students and institutions might compromise on issues of network use. Q. Why should universities allow programs like Napster, which consume large portions of network bandwidths? A. Just because Napster has high-bandwidth consumption doesn't mean it was designed to do that. The students themselves are using it irresponsibly -- that's why Napster is overloading everybody's systems. If used responsibly, if shut down when not in use, if students download one or even a few songs at a time rather than downloading, like, 50 songs at a time, it can be used effectively. Q. How about the legal issues? A. I don't advocate breaking the law in any way. Even though people do use Napster to commit piracy and copyright violations, we don't advocate that. We're trying to take a responsible approach to this whole thing. There are students who are out of control, and are using proxy servers -- which is like a workaround to get to Napster -- and that breaks the policies. We're not about breaking through the policies that universities set. We're in the business of getting with them, trying to talk with them and work out something that brings about the best interests of both parties. Q. Why do you think universities should not ban these programs? A. Blocking is not in their best interest, especially for the future. There's going to be more and more programs like Napster. Whatever's hot is going to replicate. And in 5 or 10 years, every house in America is going to have some sort of high-speed connection, and if they don't use them responsibly, it's going to be chaos. The universities are setting the precedent now -- if they can't handle it, the I.S.P.'s are not going to be able to handle it. As the Internet gets bigger and bigger and users get access to more power, they need to become more responsible. Many people take the Internet for granted and use it and abuse it, and they don't really think anything of it. This is a call for responsibility and communication between administrations and students. Q. What can students do to change universities' policies? A. I'm definitely encouraging them to be responsible, that's No. 1. No. 2 is to get involved with their universities and to communicate with them. Contact them and be persistent. Q. Do you think universities are more concerned about the copyright issues, and bandwidth is a convenient argument to make against Napster? A. I don't think they really care about copyright. I think they kind of do, but I think they do since the [Recording Industry Association of America] is getting involved. So I think it's pressure from them to get the universities to shut down Napster and other media-sharing programs like it. I think that's where that's coming from. But I think bandwidth is the major role player here. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

N.L.R.B. official says N.Y.U. teaching assistants are employees and may unionize Court reverses $12.2-million award to Yale intern infected with AIDS virus College groups blast tax proposal that they fear would cause deluge of paperwork Florida Supreme Court says university is liable for intern's injury College Board names former CBS executive to lead its for-profit Web venture Provost will become president of Stanford U. Anti-sweatshop hunger strike at Purdue U. moves into second week Organization of American Historians honors 23 for achievements in the field Spring commencement speakers are announced by 15 colleges Student calls on peers to be responsible in use of digital music Distance education gets official O.K. in Thailand