Wednesday, January 29, 2003

Record Industry Has No Plan to Seek Names of Students Trading Copyrighted Songs By ANDREA L. FOSTER In a case that campus-network administrators followed closely, the recording industry won an important legal victory last week that will help record companies ferret out music fans who illegally trade copyrighted material. But an industry official says the victory doesn't mean companies will start demanding the names of college students who pass song files around -- 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, a group representing record companies. "I can't rule it out." The court case pitted the RIAA 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 RIAA sued to learn the customer's name, saying the Digital Millennium Copyright Act required Verizon to reveal it. Judge John D. Bates, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, sided with the RIAA, ruling on January 21 that Section 512 of the digital copyright act 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 swapped music online. Mr. Sherman says the recording industry group has not presented subpoenas to colleges asking for the identity 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 identify violators through the numerical Internet address of the user's machine. Colleges now receive hundreds of such complaints each month. 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. "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." Nonetheless, Mr. Sherman says he believes that colleges qualify as Internet service providers under the digital copyright law. So the institutions can be subpoenaed to hand over the names of infringing students, he says. That point is not lost on Sheldon E. Steinbach, vice president and general counsel of the American Council on Education. If the court decision is upheld, "the message to students will be clear," he says. "We can find you, and you can be held personally liable for copyright infringement." Verizon plans to appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But at least one college administrator speculates that the recording industry would be reluctant to pursue colleges. Tracy B. Mitrano, director of the computer policy and law program at Cornell University, says colleges would vociferously assert their traditions to uphold 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." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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