With October being Cyber Security Awareness month, one campus group is making a push to inform students about the dangers of pirating music and providing alternative, legal options.
Legal Freaks, a group headed by OU IT, is geared toward promoting legal music downloads and alerting students about monetary fines they may face for illegal downloads.
“We are trying to make sure students know how to be safe and legal on the Internet and how to protect them from two things,” OU IT spokesman Nicholas Key said. “One, to protect them against fines and potential court appearances and two, to protect them from possibly harmful peer-to-peer files that have not been scanned and checked for viruses.”
To catch student interest, the group is marketing themselves like a typical band with tour dates and concert stops, Key said.
“We want to get people using free and legal music,” Key said.
The Recording Industry Association of America is a group that will take legal action against a person for illegally downloading music from the Internet, Key said.
“A copyright organization contacts OU IT and, from there, the university is bound to try and identify the person that has been illegally downloading,” Key said. “OU IT gets about 1,500 complaints per year and about 50 percent of those are found on OU’s wireless network.”
According to the RIAA Web site, they believe that university leaders have a responsibility to acknowledge campus piracy and should take steps to prevent the theft from occurring in the first place. They should also demonstrate leadership in teaching students that music has value and there are right and wrong ways to acquire it.
“College students are at a disadvantage because they are all confined to one space and usually use the university network,” Key said. “It is easier to find where the person downloading and who the person is.”
Philosophy junior Jerod Coker said he uses the university’s wireless Internet network because it has a fast connection, but doesn’t consider the legal aspect with obtaining this music.
“Peer-to-peer downloading is cheap and I’m not even sure that it’s illegal,” said. “The band will survive without my purchase. I’m not worried about getting caught.”
If the RIAA does catch piracy, they take action through the university.
“If they can identify the person downloading illegally, then the RIAA offers that person a settlement document that costs about $3,000,” Key said. “If they person declines, it could cost them up to $80,000 per song.”
Once a student is charged with downloading music illegally, the matter moves into the Office of Student Conduct and OU IT no longer deals with the issue, Key said.
“Legal Freaks will be in the South Oval and other high-traffic areas around campus to get students interested in how to download legally,” Key said.
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mustafa 2 years, 7 months ago
These laws are to protect the “artist” intellectual property, but is that really fair? The only reason their property was protected in the past was because they were able to control the distribution. But technology has now rendered that impossible, so they turn to the government for protection. But do they deserve that. Technology has made countless other form of enterprise untenable or obsolete without the government saving their bacon.
Most of the people in the music and film industry are there as a result of nepotism or cronyism. The OU Arts produces gazillions of artists who are just as, or more talent but who’s careers get nowhere simply because they don’t have “connections.”
Why shouldn’t the movie star/rock star phenom go the way of carriage maker and lamplighter?