Rebekah Kim
Download If You Dare
columbia and the riaa crack down hard on illegal music
PrintThe quintessential dorm room familiar from TV shows and slacker comedies is strewn with clothes, books, and CDs, but the typical Columbia dorm room is suspiciously CD-free. Though CD sales have been on the decline ever since Napster introduced mass music file-sharing in the ‘90s, the closing of Kim’s, Morningside Heights’ only record store, and a 30-percent price increase on popular songs on iTunes have both furthered students’ motivation to download music illegally. But getting an album for free can mean risking thousands of dollars and trouble from Columbia—is it really worth it?
Columbia, more than other universities, strictly enforces penalties for illegal music downloading. Columbia University Information Technology’s policy says not only that under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Columbia must take action if informed of copyright infringement, but also that the copyright owner may take additional action if necessary.
According to Ashok Ilankovan, a SEAS senior and CUIT employee, Columbia allows outside companies to watch the IP addresses of people on its network, unlike schools including Boston University, University of Wisconsin, UC Santa Cruz and University of Oregon. Nevertheless, he says, the university also doesn’t “give you away to the company right away.” Standard disciplinary procedure holds that the student is warned via e-mail for a first violation, must meet with his dean on the second violation, and will then be sued by the company if he violates the policy a third time.
Despite the official policy, Yazzy Koukaz, a Columbia College senior, was forced to pay $3,000 in fines after the RIAA directly filed a lawsuit against her. “They said, ‘You can go to court and you’ll be charged a minimum of $750 per file,” she recalls. Koukaz decided to settle out of court, a process she describes as “demeaning.” “It was so vile that it was typical for them to be catching these college students that have no income,” she says.
Some settlements, however, are far more costly than Koukaz’s. According to her, guilty students can enroll in a six-month payment plan that adds about $500 interest—but if they can’t pay after six months, the RIAA continues to add fees. Although Koukaz was fortunate enough to settle her lawsuit with money from her savings, the situation still plagues her: “I’m really paranoid. I have nightmares that someone’s going to sue me.”
Columbia College sophomore Kevin Elder encountered a similar problem. Elder was aware of Columbia’s policies, and, as he says, “put the downloading on hold.” He was still accused of copyright infringement by the RIAA his freshman year. Like Koukaz, Elder was given the option to settle, but unlike Koukaz, he couldn’t come up with the money. Although the RIAA warned that failing to sign the settlement agreement within 20 days would result in a subpoena, this never happened. “Now I receive a phone call time to time from one of their agents,” he says, “who tells me the RIAA is now offering settlements at a reduced cost and that I should hurry up before it’s too late.”
Elder contacted CUIT about the violation, hoping that they would advise him. He says they informed him that the settlement was his problem, but did provide him with a list of lawyers he could contact—all of whom were out of his price range. “Essentially,” says Elder, “Columbia had thrown me to the dogs with a curt apology and a ‘best-of-luck.’”
While it is understandable that Columbia would want to distance itself from such litigation, many students are outraged that Columbia doesn’t do more to protect them. “I find it disgusting that Columbia has failed to stand up to the RIAA and protect its students from these conmen,” says Elder.
As he points out, universities and organizations from around the nation—and even attorney generals of states like his home state of Oregon—have stood up against the RIAA for persecuting college students. “Maybe this is further proof that Columbia’s care for its students is heavily outweighed by the fetish it keeps with its reputation,” Elder says.
Fear of prosecution has not halted Columbia students’ downloading activity. Although students are usually caught and sued for illegal downloading after using file-sharing programs like Gnutella, Kazaa, and Limewire, music lovers with tight funds who once relied on such programs have simply gotten more creative. Jeffrey Hoffman, a Columbia College senior, used to use Limewire, then switched to BitTorrent, which allows for downloading entire albums at once. After being warned by Columbia that an outside company had caught him downloading a movie, he removed all torrent programs from his computer.
Hoffman still continues to download music, employing a particularly clever system: He uses a program like GarageBand to record music from YouTube and other streaming sites. While Hoffman’s method is small in scale and untraceable, it is still considered illegal.
The recording industry has struggled for years to figure out how best to prevent their copyrighted material from flowing freely across the Internet. And while it seems that most students at Columbia have recognized the danger of downloading illegally, not all can afford to pay for music or think that they should have to. As SEAS freshman Henry Jones—who pays for what little music he downloads or uses Pandora, an Internet streaming radio station—says, “I don’t think that many people are worried about getting caught because they still do it, and I don’t know anyone that’s been caught.” It seems as though neither Columbia nor the RIAA has plans to change their policies, leaving us to wonder what has really changed since Napster was shut down—and whether the RIAA and the university are just behind the times.
30 April 2009
vol. 6, issue 12
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