An exclusive service that allows students to find, listen and download songs to one's PC and even burn songs to a CD is not coming to Marshall.
Ctrax, an online music program site, offers free subscriptions to students, giving them access to more than 2.2 million tracks from all major record labels through a partnership with MusicNet.
Ohio University in Athens and the University of Temple in Philadelphia, Pa., offer Ctrax to its students, while faculty and staff at Temple can access the service for $5.99 a month.
Using Digital Rights Management systems, Ctrax can protect the copyright of materials by defining how the content can be used.
Marshall and Ohio are two of 25 universities that received copyright complaints from the Recording Industry Association of America in February. Marshall ranked 25 with 331 complaints, while Ohio headed the list with 1,287 complaints.
Jan Fox, Marshall University Computing Services vice president and chief technology officer, said most of the products have workarounds posted on the Internet and have shown a minimal decline in illegal downloads on campus.
"We had looked into the purchase of blocking and filtering devices, such as RedLambda's and Audible Magic's CopySense," Fox said. "These products are very expensive and several of the top 25 schools were using sites like Ctrax or Ruckus to provide legal downloads."
The RIAA Web site claims 1.3 billion music tracks were illegally downloaded by college students in 2006 with the use of peer-to-peer or P2P, programs such as Limewire or other P2P systems.
"Marshall has historically restricted the amount of network bandwidth allowed for P2P transmissions via the Packeteer," Fox said. "Our students soon learned that they could fool the system by using products like AresWarez. All 25 RIAA infringements cases were using AresWarez."
Marshall University received a new letter from the RIAA a few weeks ago, which made a formal request that the university not purge any information for selected infringement cases.
The RIAA sent out 400 letters to students at 13 universities, including 20 students at Marshall. The RIAA Web site claims 116 of those 400 students, which is 29 percent, have reached a settlement, but it is unclear what universities are involved or how many Marshall students have settled.
"That is information that the RIAA has not shared directly with the institutions," Fox said.
Fox said that Marshall has yet to turn over any names to the RIAA and has no plans to turn them over, unless subpoenaed by the RIAA.
"If we received one, we must legally abide," Fox said.
Students should be aware that most downloaded music automatically creates a share folder and that the RIAA has been pursuing users of P2P programs.
"Students need to check their computer and make sure the share is turned-off," Fox said. "Students who have real copies of CD's can get a violation for not understanding, that if it is unintentionally shared, they can get a copyright infringement."
Bill Lusk can be contacted at lusk20@marshall.edu.
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