June 7, 2007
Moving Off the Most-Wanted List
When the Recording Industry Association of America released its recent list of 25 institutions plagued by piracy, some of the colleges named on the list were confused by their placement. Others were angry. And plenty of the institutions were probably at least a bit embarrassed.
But embarrassment can be a great motivator. And according to the music-industry trade group, several of the institutions that placed on the worst-offenders list have drastically cut incoming copyright-infringement notices since being publicly called out.
Ohio University, which topped the RIAA list, made headlines four weeks ago by instituting a campuswide ban on peer-to-peer networking. Since then, the trade group says, the university has received just seven infringement notices from record companies. (Before the ban, Ohio had been getting an average of more than eight notices per day, according to the RIAA list.)
Two other institutions on the list — the University of South Carolina and Seton Hall University — have received no copyright complaints from the music industry since mid-February. After it turned up on the list, South Carolina sent officials to discuss antipiracy strategies with Ginger DeMint, the RIAA’s director of government and industry relations. Now the university is remaking itself as one of the recording industry’s institutional allies: It has devised a “technical literacy” exam that students must pass, sought to bring a legal-downloading service to campus, and bolstered its network-monitoring software, according to The Daily Gamecock.
Eliminating copyright-infringement notices and putting an end to piracy are two different things, of course. But officials at Ohio, South Carolina, and Seton Hall will likely be pleased if their institutions don’t show up on any future worst-offender lists. —Brock Read
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“Eliminating copyright-infringement notices and putting an end to piracy are two different things, of course.” Well said, Brock; they are indeed different. That the RIAA has chosen (unlike those who hold trademarks, copyright holders are not obliged to defend their copyrights) to not send DMCA takedown notices to those institutions is not necessarily indicative of anything but a decision by the RIAA to not send DMCA takedown notices. It’s likely that there has been a reduction in copyright infringement but it’s extremely difficult to accurately measure.
— Kevin Guidry Jun 7, 03:26 PM #
It’s also worth noting that UCLA has publicly disputed the numbers released by the RIAA and MPAA. They dispute both the methodology and the actual numbers cited by the groups. Campus Technology wrote about this at http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/48371/.
— Kevin Guidry Jun 7, 04:41 PM #
“Eliminating copyright-infringement notices and putting an end to piracy are two different things, of course.” Indeed that’s correct but changing any sort of behavior without first explaing the desired behavior and then providing an incentive (positive or negative), is unlikely to produce change. This isn’t an end; it’s merely a step in the education and training process.
— Rob Jun 8, 09:20 AM #
I guess I’m confused as to why some institutions still receive so many DMCA notices. My own institution allows P2P, but aggressively shapes outbound P2P traffic. We do some student education about intellectual property, but don’t have a free download service or signature matching technology (e.g., Copysense.) Yet in the past 3 years we’ve only received 16 DMCA notices for a 2100 student campus.
What’s wrong with this picture?
— Fred Jun 8, 09:42 AM #