In a quiet Friley Hall dorm room, a clock marks the passing of early-morning hours as Theo Peterson hunts for MP3s.

He loads the familiar blue screen of StrangeSearch, a searchable index of files on personal computers connected to the campus network. With a few strokes of the keyboard, hundreds of songs, movies and programs are at his fingertips.

Even in the early morning, the sophomore in computer engineering is not alone. Every day StrangeSearch has 100,000 hits from more than 2,000 different computers, resulting in an immeasurable number of copyrighted downloads. Peterson alone has more than 80,000 MP3s.

But does the responsibility for copyright infringement fall on StrangeSearch users, Iowa State or StrangeSearch itself?

“From what I understand about StrangeSearch, I think they certainly facilitate copyright infringement,” said Keith Bystrom, assistant counsel for University Counsel. “They have the potential liability as a copyright infringement contributor.”

A copyright is legal protection against the reproduction of original works including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and other intellectual products.

Although StrangeSearch does not physically transfer a file from one computer to another, its index of files assists others with copyright infringement.

In the case of Gershwin Publishing Corp. v. Columbia Artists Management Inc., the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled, “one who, with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another, may be held liable as a `contributory infringer’.”

StrangeSearch administrator Josh Carlson thinks “contributory infringement” is a stretch.

“If you’re going to start charging for that, I can think of a lot of other things that help infringe upon copyrights,” he said.

Carlson, senior in computer science, thinks StrangeSearch does not violate any laws.

“It’s a similar concept to a typical search engine, like Google or Yahoo, where it indexes all files,” he said. “Napster specifically only indexed MP3s. We’re not restrictive since StrangeSearch indexes everything.”

Copyright responsibility falls to the user who originally shares the file, Carlson said.

Bystrom, however, does not think that argument would hold in court.

“If [Carlson] has knowledge of copyrighted files, he could personally be held to be in violation of contributory infringement,” he said.

The only way a legal case could be brought against StrangeSearch is for an outside company to take up a lawsuit. If this were to happen, Bystrom thinks Iowa State could face charges as well.

“My guess is, as most lawsuits go, they would go after everyone and try to include anybody,” Bystrom said. “They’re more likely to try to include the university because it does not do them much good to try to get some money out of a student. We have the deep pocket and that’s frankly one of the things we worry about.”

Iowa State discusses the potential liability associated with StrangeSearch on a regular basis, Bystrom said, and the university could shut down StrangeSearch. But Bystrom said he does not think that will happen.

“I think it depends on decisions that would be made within the university if they would become more active in trying to stop StrangeSearch. I don’t think the university is that far at this point,” he said. “Universities pride themselves of being an open marketplace of ideas.”

Bystrom does not think Iowa State is a contributory infringer since students use the university connection as a conduit to their own personal machines. As a network service provider, Iowa State would be protected from liability of StrangeSearch under the safe harbor provisions of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Under the act, a network service provider can receive reduced liability if the provider has designated an agent for notification of claimed infringement through the U.S. Copyright Office.

Iowa State’s designated agent is Mike Bowman, Academic Information Technologies assistant director for customer services. On average, Bowman said he receives about 12 notices of copyright infringement material each year.

“The most common that we have are reports from the artist associations saying that they have reason to believe that a particular address on the network is providing copyrighted material,” he said.

Bowman works with Bystrom to determine if the notice complies with the copyright act. A service provider only has to comply with notices from the copyright owner or an agent representing the owner. When Iowa State receives a legitimate notice, users sharing the file are asked to remove it from their computer.

In addition to copyright infringement, Iowa State also considers ethical obligations.

The university endorses the software and intellectual rights statement developed by EDUCOM, a non-profit consortium of colleges and universities committed to the use and management of information technology in higher education.

According to the statement: “Violations of the University Code of Computer Ethics are treated like any other ethical violation as outlined in the Student Handbook and applicable faculty and staff handbooks.”

Bystrom could not comment on any ethical charges that could be brought against the administrators of StrangeSearch, other than to say that some investigation has been conducted.

Bowman, however, believes the true violations are committed by StrangeSearch users.

“The person who is making the copy is violating copyrighted material, and the person who has the material is potentially violating copyrights,” he said. “If students were not allowing their files to be shared, or allowing their systems to be set up so that their files were shared in that manner, then StrangeSearch would not be indexing them.”

There is no way to know what percentage of the network capacity is used for file transfers by StrangeSearch, but according to conducted sampling, Bowman said it is significant.

“There are times when we expect that it is affecting the connection to the interface because of the load that it puts on the Internet connections that we have,” he said. “At those times the capacity of our connection to the Internet becomes full and there is an impact of all traffic that is trying to get through that connection.”

Network usage from the residence halls peaks in the late afternoon and evening, into the morning hours, Bowman said. Carlson said on busy days StrangeSearch is used by 75 percent of residence hall students.

Peterson said he probably infringes copyright laws along with all StrangeSearch users, but he thinks this use is justified. Due to his limited budget, he generally uses StrangeSearch to preview recordings before he purchases them.

“Dave Matthews has an excellent philosophy about files sharing,” Carlson said. “He encourages people to share his music because if more people hear it, they might by his CDs.”

Peterson also thinks sharing software on StrangeSearch is justified as long as it’s not used for financial gain.

“I have to assume that the students with whom I’ve shared software are in the same boat I am and would not otherwise be able to afford to purchase it, and that I am, therefore, not negatively affecting the software publishers’ ability to make money,” he said. “By allowing others to use and learn the software, I am in effect assisting the software publishers by creating a larger user base for their software that, upon entering the workforce, will create a demand for and drive the sales of their product.”

Despite possible copyright and ethical violations, the number of files indexed by StrangeSearch grows every day. Carlson sees no end in sight.

“I’m proud I get to run it,” he said. “I’m the StrangeSearch guy.”