Antipiracy Campaign Exasperates Colleges

["Hamaker, Charles" <cahamake@uncc.edu>]

http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i49/49a00104.htm

Antipiracy Campaign Exasperates Colleges
But attempts to break with recording industry run into legal hurdles

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

...

On e-mail lists and in interviews, university CIO's and other 
information-technology professionals say their mission is getting 
derailed and staff time is being overloaded by copyright takedown 
notices, "prelitigation settlement letters," RIAA-issued 
subpoenas, lobbying efforts, and panicked students accused of 
piracy.

Now, feeling burdened and betrayed, some of those universities 
are quietly fighting back, resisting requests for information and 
trying to quash subpoenas. Those that do so, though, find that 
their past compliance - and the continued compliance of their 
peer institutions - is being held against them.

...

Responding to RIAA notices used to be part-time work for one 
person, said William C. Dougherty, assistant director for systems 
support at Virginia Tech. "Now he's doing it full time and has an 
assistant," he said. "Our attorneys are also involved on almost a 
daily basis, as am I."

Ways to Resist

Mr. Dougherty said that in June his office began discussing 
"technological and sociological approaches" to reduce the time 
spent responding to RIAA notices. One potential solution would be 
to erase network-access logs sooner so that the university could 
not be asked to track down alleged pirates' identities after a 
month had passed. Mr. Dougherty says that those records get less 
reliable the older they are and that he fears implicating the 
wrong students.

....

"At the point where universities finally come to see they're the 
target of this RIAA campaign, that's the point at which they'll 
start arguing their own self-interest," says Charles R. Nesson, 
founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard 
Law School. He believes the RIAA is trying to wear universities 
down with letters and subpoenas until they give in and install 
filtering software, a policy precedent that the RIAA may then 
decide to use against commercial ISP's.

****