Despite increased University efforts to combat electronic piracy over the past decade, the number of student violations has not changed significantly. The University's copyright infringement policy — enacted in July 2003 — has not led to decreased incidence of copyright violation, according to officials at Computing and Information Services and the Office of Student Life.
In the 2009-10 school year, there were 790 reported violations, 95 percent of which were perpetrated by students. Those figures have been more or less constant over the past several years, according to David Sherry, chief information security officer, and Michael Pickett, vice president for computing and information services and chief information officer.
Sherry receives notifications of copyright violation from organizations that represent copyright holders — for example, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America — containing the Internet protocol address of the computer that committed the violation. CIS then locates the user of the Internet Protocol address and blocks Internet access to that computer until the offending material has been removed.
But more notifications do not necessarily mean more violations, Sherry said. One reason for the lack of correlation is that organizations like the RIAA seem to step up efforts to curb piracy at certain universities selected randomly, leading to years of a single university receiving "thousands or tens of thousands" of notifications, Sherry said.
In a 2007 Herald article, an RIAA spokesperson stated that the group did not have a policy of targeting specific universities.
Organizations like the RIAA find copyright violators by using decoy sites called "honeypots" — which lure in people who intend to distribute copyright-violating material — and decoy IP addresses on established file-sharing sites.
"They also scour the Internet for open sources and file sharing," Sherry said. "It's not that hard to do."
Sherry estimated that one-third of the notices he receives are from the RIAA, 20 percent are from the MPAA and 15 percent are from Peer Media Technologies, which represents software companies.
First-time copyright violators receive a warning from the Office of Student Life. Second-time offenders must attend a hearing by the Peer Community Standards Board and usually have Internet priviledges restricted for four weeks. Students who violate copyright policies more than twice can have their Internet access banned for up to a semester and may face further disciplinary action, according to the University's policy.
"It's a huge hassle to have to go to the libraries or the CIT so often, but I'm getting around it," said one student violator whose Internet access has been disabled since the start of the semester. The student, a junior, did not want to use his name when talking about copyright violations.
But his offense is not rare. "We don't usually get these type of notices just for people who are downloading songs. We get them for people who are serving up material," Pickett said. Pickett estimated that roughly two-thirds of the notifications his department receives are for students who distribute copyrighted material.
In 2008, the federal government amended the Higher Education Opportunity Act to require universities to have comprehensive programs to combat copyright infringement. To comply with the new laws, Brown upgraded its program of technological deterrents, education and institutional policies. CIS now uses bandwidth shaping — the delaying of certain types of data packets, such as those that would be used to illegally download material — peer-to-peer protocols and firewall rules to block known websites that are used to download unauthorized copyrighted material.
Besides the increase in technological and institutional deterrents to copyright infringement, the University continues to focus its efforts on educating students about the potential consequences. CIS sent a campus-wide e-mail in September detailing the penalties for copyright infringement — which can include fines of up to $750 per illegally downloaded song in addition to campus punishments. The e-mail suggested alternatives to illegal downloads, such as Hulu or Netflix.
The Office of Student Life also covers copyright infringement policies during orientation.
In a 2007 Herald article, Connie Sadler, then chief information security officer, emphasized outreach over punitive measures. "We really don't have a sense about how much of this activity is common to students or whether there are some students who really do think that anything they pull down from the Internet is fair game," she said.
Sherry said CIS continues to grapple with that question. He noted that while the efficacy of the outreach measures was difficult to gauge, the number of violations has not increased.
But some means of possible copyright infringement are still gray areas — even for CIS officials. Many students use Mojo, a free application that shares iTunes libraries with friends over the Internet.
"There's no clean read on whether it's legal or not," Pickett said. He pointed out that while the application allows users to download songs that they have not purchased, iTunes includes a similar library-sharing feature.
Meanwhile, students continue to find ways to flout the copyright policy. Samantha '12, who received a warning her freshman year after she was caught downloading a Rihanna song on LimeWire, said she still downloads music illegally. Samantha did not want her last name to appear in connection with the copyright violations.
"Any song that you want to download, you can search for it on Google with the word ‘download,'" she said. "It's just as easy as downloading course content off (Online Course Reserves Access)." Samantha said that she has tried Mojo but that "it's not the most efficient way to get music."
"It's kind of like a virus. The more you try to cure it, the more it evolves and becomes part of the cure," she said. "As long as there's music available online, people will try to download it."
