He was a student just like any other at Iowa State. He lived in the dorms. He ate in the dining hall. He paid tuition. But unlike most students, this computer science major was faced with the added fear of being kicked out of school for the files he shared on his computer.

“The top four sharers were all busted and faced criminal charges,” he says, asking that his name be withheld for privacy. “I was the No. 5 sharer.”

The university has equipped the residence halls with high-speed Internet connections to keep up with technology and to accommodate heavy student use. But with that access has evolved problems between the music industry and consumers on campus who share copyrighted files — a problem mirrored at universities across the country.

“I had stopped sharing [on the ISU computer network] after the first [sharer] was busted, but I was still No. 5 on the list because the list wasn’t updated enough,” he says. “Several months went by where I was listed as No. 5 and wasn’t actually sharing. I actually had a plan of hiding all my hard drives so as to avoid prosecution.”

Campus file sharing

Mike Bowman, assistant director of Academic Information Technologies, says the university is required to check any complaints regarding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. That law gives copyright holders the right to lodge complaints and file lawsuits against individuals violating copyright laws.

“The [Recording Industry Association of America] acts as a representative of the artists who hold the copyrights to the music,” Bowman says. “They claim that the distribution has not been authorized. We verify that [the claims] are legitimate.”

Bowman says the next step after a complaint is to e-mail the student in question to let him or her know of the problem. The student is told to remove all illegally shared copyright material from the computer in question and respond back to AIT within 48 hours.

“Some students may not realize that they are actually sharing,” Bowman says. “But most students know.”

If no response is given within the required amount of time, AIT’s next step is to close the student’s Internet connection. The offender may also be turned into the Office of Judicial Affairs for possible charges.

“The university takes this seriously,” Bowman says. “We want the student to understand how serious it is.”

Warren Madden, vice president for business and finance, has also worked with the copyright complaints. AIT must call Madden’s office to gain permission to release the offending student’s name so it can contact him or her.

Although a number of college students from around the country have been sued by the recording industry, Madden says that as far as he knows, no one from Iowa State has been in that situation. He says one factor may simply be that Iowa State is a Midwestern school, in a place without a lot of other crime.

“Iowa State has tended not to be out on the front edge,” Madden says. “We want to be on the leading edge of things, not the bleeding edge.”

An online community

“I share files because I like other people sharing files, essentially,” the computer science major says. “I no longer share with people I don’t know personally. But would I like to if there were no consequences? Yes.”

The student says he now gets most of his music from Internet Relay Chat, which he says is one of the easiest ways to find music on the Internet. Internet Relay Chat relies on direct user-to-user transfers, rather than using a medium, such as KaZaA.

“While it’s harder to find stuff on campus, it’s not any harder overall to find things,” he says.

Legal alternatives

With Napster’s highly advertised return as a legal download service on Oct. 29, 2003, and the sudden success of Apple’s iTunes Music Store, online downloading is still popular — and more of it is legal. Napster charges 99 cents per song and $9.95 per album. iTunes, similarly, charges 99 cents per song and about $9.99 per album. Rhapsody, another online provider gaining popularity, allows users to stream an unlimited amount of music for a monthly fee, with an additional charge for burning songs to CD.

“I love iTunes,” says Brianne Splett, junior in journalism and mass communication. “It’s really easy to use and everything goes right to the service. I think that more companies should do that.”

Splett, a Macintosh user, says she is unable to use Napster since its interface is only available for Windows machines.

She particularly likes the fact that consumers can download one song with iTunes instead of buying the entire album, but still thinks prices should be lowered.

“People don’t want to buy a whole CD if they only want one song,” Splett says. “I think it should be lower — I think it should be 50 cents. A buck is too much for a song.”

The computer science major thinks Napster’s return is less than favorable.

“I think it’s a horrible business decision,” he says. “Bringing the company back only legitimizes those lawsuits further. I think if they wanted to come back, they should have done so under a different name at the very least.”

He says he won’t be using the program, at least not to download individual songs.

“I’ll just download them [for free] if possible, or buy the album if not,” he says. “I might buy full albums online and download them, but probably not single songs.”

Madden says he is interested in seeing how everything will work out among online distributors, the recording industry and consumers.

“I don’t think anyone knows the break point of what people will pay. [Artists] are trying to sell music. What they want to do is market their music and they want people to pay for it,” Madden says. “Getting past the rules becomes a game — I don’t think you can stop it technologically.”