Sharing music, sharing punishment

Marshall University is one of 25 colleges that received copyright complaints from the music industry this year.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Marshall ranks 25th with 331 complaints for the 2006-07 school year, while in 2005-06, Marshall received 154 complaints.

Chuck Elliott, Marshall University Computing Services associate director of customer services, was made aware of the list early Wednesday and said it is a list on which they don't want to be.

"It is something we don't have a great deal of control over without violating privacy, which is something we are not prepared to do," Elliott said. "We are very respectful and mindful as a right to privacy and for that reason we are not monitoring activities such as e-mail, web surfing or downloads."

According to the University of Tennessee, second time offenders must carry their computers to a technology lab where popular music-sharing programs are deleted before Internet connections are restored. A third offense could result in suspension.

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst gives first and second-time offenders a warning. After a third complaint, the school unplugs the student's Internet connection and sends the case to a dean for punishment.

Marshall University has no policy against students who download copyrighted material, but the UCS has discussed the issue.

"There are a lot of things we can do, but they are all drastic measures," Elliott said. "The thing is that we try to educate students about the need to observe copyright laws when using a computer just like they do when using the library, photocopier or anything else."

The top five schools for illegal downloading are Ohio University, Purdue University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Tennessee and the University of South Carolina. The RIAA has filed almost 15,000 complaints at those 25 universities, which is nearly three times as many for the previous school year (4,914).

According to federal law regulations, universities that receive complaints about students illegally distributing copyrighted songs generally must act to stop repeat offenders or the schools can be sued.

The entertainment industry typically can identify a student only by his or her numerical Internet address and must rely on the school to correlate that information to trace a person's real-world identity.

According to a survey by the Intellectual Property Institute at the University of Richmond's School of Law, more than half of all college students illegally download music and movies.

Bill Lusk can be contacted at lusk20@marshall.edu.