E-Mail This Article to a Friend College try Local institutions of higher learning seek to stop their students from using school networks for illegal file-sharing — sort of BY ADAM REILLY

LITIGATION OVER illegal file-sharing has placed local colleges and universities in an awkward position. This summer, five Boston-area schools — Bentley, Boston College, Northeastern, Boston University, and MIT — were hit with subpoenas from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which sought the names of students suspected of illegal file-sharing. BC, BU, and MIT initially refused to cooperate, arguing that the subpoenas hadn’t been issued by the appropriate court — but after the RIAA served them with validly reissued subpoenas, the schools were forced to comply. This month, 261 individuals were named in lawsuits filed by the RIAA, and the organization has indicated plans to file additional lawsuits in the future.

Since college students’ use of school networks to download digital music and file-share has become something of a focal point in this evolving story, it’s fair to wonder if area schools are doing anything new to rein students in. For the most part, the answer is: not really.

At BC, Northeastern, MIT, Tufts, Brandeis, and Bentley, the same policies exist today that were instituted during the first Napster-fueled wave of digital music downloading. (Officials at Harvard College did not respond to the Phoenix’s requests for information.) Boston College chief information officer Marian Moore emphasizes that incoming students are getting the same warning at orientation sessions — namely, that the institution can’t and won’t protect them if they ignore copyright restrictions. "It’s not a new phenomenon that we tell all students that if they violate intellectual-property [restrictions], they’re breaking the law," Moore says.

The efficacy of these orientation pitches is uncertain. Northeastern, like BC, has been warning students for years — but Rick Mickool, Northeastern’s executive director for information services, says infringement reports from the RIAA and copyright holders have become commonplace. Less dramatic than subpoenas or lawsuits, infringement reports also rely on automated programs capable of scanning the Internet for suspect transactions. It’s easy to flag a particularly active user address, or IP, as a probable offender, and when a copyright holder notifies that user’s Internet service provider, network personnel can track down the offending party.

Mickool says he’s received about 90 infringement complaints specifically connected to music use since January 2003, and that new complaints are now arriving from the RIAA every day or two. After Northeastern IT staffers link the IP to a particular student, the consequences vary: less egregious offenders may simply be asked to delete the illegally obtained material from their computers, but individuals revealed as high-volume traffickers in illegal files can have their network privileges temporarily revoked. Approximately 50 Northeastern students were hit with port shut-offs in the last year, but Mickool can’t say how many were prompted by infringement complaints from the music industry.

Like Northeastern, Tufts University responds to infringement complaints on a case-by-case basis. According to director of university IT infrastructure Lesley Tolman, some students are told to remove illegally obtained materials and to disable the uploading function on whatever file-sharing program they happen to use, while others lose computing privileges altogether; the type of disciplinary action taken is determined by the Dean of Students’ Office. At Brandeis, the consequences are harsher: if an infringement complaint is upheld, the offending student’s network connection is immediately disabled, but can be restored if the student removes the offending material and convinces administrators that he or she has reformed, according to chief information officer Perry Hanson.

Some schools take additional steps to shape student habits. Several IT departments monitor bandwidth use and investigate users who take a high level of bandwidth for a long period of time. This type of "top talker" policy is a staple of Northeastern’s internal-enforcement mechanisms. Brandeis has a similar policy, and also maintains a Web site that allows students to measure their bandwidth use and determine if they’re about to receive an institutional warning. Repeat offenders can lose network privileges altogether.

Advocates of bandwidth monitoring frame the issue in ethical terms: the network belongs to the community, and inordinately heavy bandwidth use deprives other community members of a needed resource. They also distinguish between monitoring usage patterns and monitoring content. But others say it’s hard to differentiate between the two, since sustained high levels of bandwidth use imply a certain type of material is being accessed or distributed. "We don’t do bandwidth, largely because we have run for a very, very long time an open network based upon the notion of no content filtering and no content oversight," says Tim McGovern, who monitors computer-system misuse at MIT. "By our reading of the rules that govern ISPs" — here McGovern cites legal precedents dating back to the late 1980s — "if we begin to monitor any part of our network traffic, we really become responsible for the content of any part of that traffic."

None of the policies already mentioned was implemented in response to the recent subpoenas or lawsuits. But at least some Boston-area colleges are spreading the word about their old protocols with a heightened sense of urgency as the new academic year begins. MIT’s administration has taken out ads in the school’s student newspaper, the Tech, discussing the RIAA subpoenas and the university’s response. In May, Brandeis’s Hanson sent an open letter to students outlining the school’s student-computing policies and emphasizing the dangers of file-sharing; the letter was re-sent this fall. "I think there are about a half-dozen different venues we use to review the responsible-use policy," says Lesley Tolman of Tufts. "It’s in print, it’s part of orientation, it’s in the student handbook, it’s published in a variety of places, and we’ve also gone through a series of postering sessions and tutorials with [resident assistants] and proctors."

The exception is Bentley, which was hit with four RIAA subpoenas. This summer, the college responded by blocking access to the most widely used file-sharing applications; the measure remains in effect this fall. But Traci Logan, Bentley’s vice-president for information technology, downplays the move. "We see this as a somewhat reactive approach to addressing this issue, one that reduces rather than eliminates file-sharing," Logan wrote in an e-mail. "The fact is, it’s virtually impossible to completely prevent this type of activity through the use of network management tools, so we like other colleges and universities rely heavily on education to influence behavior."

Whether this approach will be adequate remains to be seen. Michael Krugman, executive director of BU’s office of information technology, suggests that something more may be needed: "I’ve prayed for five or 10 minutes of time every day for the past several weeks," he writes in an e-mail. It’s hard to know if he’s joking — and several administrators express frustration at the situation they now find themselves in. "The premise that the real problem is on college campuses is totally bogus," says BC’s Marian Moore. "The larger ISPs such as AOL, Mindspring, and Earthlink probably are generating much more file-sharing than all of the college campuses put together. But we’re probably an easier target."

Adam Reilly can be reached at areilly[a]phx.com