As the ease of online file-sharing has grown, so too has the number of Tufts students facing disciplinary and legal action for copyright infringement violations.
A record 204 students last semester received complaints from copyright holders after engaging in illicit file sharing activity, enabled by protocols like BitTorrent and LimeWire, according to Tufts OnLine supervisor Judi Vellucci. Tufts OnLine is a student-run group that provides computer support.
Vellucci said that this represents a marked increase in complaints from the previous two academic years, during which a total across both semesters of 331 and 346 students, respectively, encountered disciplinary action.
"We're only halfway through the year and we're more than halfway through the amount of notifications we got in a full year, last year and the year before," Vellucci said. Complaints from copyright holders often come with pre-settlement letters requiring students to pay up to $1,500 for a first offense in order to avoid immediate further legal action, according to Vellucci. Last semester alone, 16 students received pre-settlement letters with their letters of complaint, according to Vellucci.
The university streamlined its disciplinary procedure for handling copyright infringement violations last fall in response to the 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act, which requires colleges and universities to institute policies that deter and discipline file-sharing, Martin Oppenheimer, Tufts' senior counsel for business and corporate affairs, told the Daily in an e-mail. The law requires that institutions report their file-sharing policies to the federal government, Vellucci added.
"We have to educate, we have to inform, and we have to use technology to combat or block peer-to-peer," Vellucci said. "We also need to be able to report … our plan of action at the drop of a hat."
Tufts' policy blocks students found to have engaged in illegal transfer of information from using the Internet on campus. Violations are traced back to students' Internet Protocol (IP) address.
One-time violators' Internet privileges are reinstated only after they watch a short informational movie and pass a quiz on copyright laws. Subsequent violations result in consequences as severe as level-one disciplinary probation (pro-one), a one-semester ban from Internet use in residence halls or referral to the Dean of Students Office.
Dean of Judicial Affairs Veronica Carter said she has recently noticed a "little bit of an increase" in repeat violations of the university's file-sharing policy. She noted that students generally do not consider copyright infringement to be a serious issue until they are discovered.
"Students don't think it's a big deal until they come in and get their access restricted for a semester," Carter said. "Then they come in and they think it is a big deal."
Following the Tufts disciplinary procedure for a first-time offense and paying any required settlement does not completely protect students from future legal action, according to Vellucci.
"There's one line in those complaints: ‘reserve the right for legal action later,'" Vellucci said. "If you've come through the quiz … and gotten reinstated and you get sued later, unfortunately the university will turn your name and information over to the copyright holder, because it's the law."
In general, it does not seem as though the copyright holders have any intention of winning court cases against violators.
"No one has ever taken this to court and completely won," Vellucci said. "It's a lose-lose situation."
The ubiquity of file-sharing across college campuses makes it challenging to combat, Vellucci noted.
"[Students] look around in the dorm and they see someone downloading and uploading music themselves and they're thinking, ‘what am I doing on iTunes?'" Vellucci said.
BitTorrent and LimeWire are the most popular file-sharing protocols used by Tufts students to exchange music, movies and television shows, according to Vellucci.
The hazy legality of file sharing programs often makes it difficult for non-experts to determine the legitimacy of the exchange.
"LimeWire, at one point, was selling the software and saying [it was] perfectly legal," Vellucci said. "They're right, the software is perfectly legal, because there's a legitimate use for it. It's what you use it for that breaks the law."
The drawbacks of file-sharing for illegal entertainment purposes often overshadow the benefits of similar programs for academic use, Vellucci said.
Academic research, which often benefits from collaborative research, could be adversely affected were the university to completely block file-sharing programs, according to Vellucci.
"We're a research level one institution, and we firmly believe that there are legitimate reasons for students to use peer-to-peer," Vellucci said. "If we were to disable that it probably would disable a lot of our research work. … I don't think we'll ever see the day when we block everything."
