2008 Woodie Awards
Piracy vs. privacy
Illegal file-sharing on the rise at Georgetown
Josh Justice
Issue date: 4/30/03 Section: News
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Piracy used to mean the raiding of ships and cargo, generally by swarthy men with eye patches, hooks and cannons. Today, piracy has a somewhat less bloodthirsty, albeit still illegal meaning. In the digital world, piracy causes record, movie and software companies to lose billions of dollars annually through the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. Many of the country’s largest entertainment and information businesses have begun to defend their property, actively seeking out those Internet users who share files. Often, they find some of the largest, and certainly numerous, abuses on college campuses. And when the companies pressure the universities, the universities look to those who caused the problem in the first place: students.
“I thought I was [expletive]” said Eliza*, upon being notified that a watchdog group had reported her IP address to the University. This is a common reaction among the more than 100 students who have been reported over the past three years. At Georgetown, an e-mail telling the students to schedule an appointment with the Director of Student Conduct or face potential disciplinary action is sent to students found illegally sharing files. These have elicited responses varying from outright fear at the potential consequences to bitter resentment at having been caught while so many others go unnoticed. But people do get caught, at Georgetown University and campuses across the nation, on a regular basis. So why is downloading a song from KaZaA a problem and, more importantly, how did the University find out it was that kid down the hall?
The Watchers
The process starts when a watchdog group, under the auspices of organizations such as the Motion Picture Association of America or the Recording Industry Association of America, finds a user on a file-sharing network who shares large numbers of files of copyrighted material. Simply put, this is distributing legally protected material without the permission of the creator. The watchdog groups, posing as network users, download copyrighted material and then locate the IP address from which the data was sent. This gives the watchdog group an identifying number which can then be traced to a location, business, or, in students’ cases, a university. The network administrators, such as University Information Services, are then alerted to the presence of illegal copies of protected material being distributed via their server. The watchdog company knows the violators only by their IP addresses and not by any personal information, but do know specifically the identity of the network from which the file(s) came.
“I thought I was [expletive]” said Eliza*, upon being notified that a watchdog group had reported her IP address to the University. This is a common reaction among the more than 100 students who have been reported over the past three years. At Georgetown, an e-mail telling the students to schedule an appointment with the Director of Student Conduct or face potential disciplinary action is sent to students found illegally sharing files. These have elicited responses varying from outright fear at the potential consequences to bitter resentment at having been caught while so many others go unnoticed. But people do get caught, at Georgetown University and campuses across the nation, on a regular basis. So why is downloading a song from KaZaA a problem and, more importantly, how did the University find out it was that kid down the hall?
The Watchers
The process starts when a watchdog group, under the auspices of organizations such as the Motion Picture Association of America or the Recording Industry Association of America, finds a user on a file-sharing network who shares large numbers of files of copyrighted material. Simply put, this is distributing legally protected material without the permission of the creator. The watchdog groups, posing as network users, download copyrighted material and then locate the IP address from which the data was sent. This gives the watchdog group an identifying number which can then be traced to a location, business, or, in students’ cases, a university. The network administrators, such as University Information Services, are then alerted to the presence of illegal copies of protected material being distributed via their server. The watchdog company knows the violators only by their IP addresses and not by any personal information, but do know specifically the identity of the network from which the file(s) came.