The Triangle’s universities are welcoming back students for the fall semester. One of the most common campus activities is the downloading of music and, unfortunately, some of that is illegal. The Recording Industry of America is stepping up its fight to stop the theft of music and Triangle universities are among those being closely watched around the country. In fact, the executive vice president and general counsel of the RIAA is Steve Marks, a Duke graduate. In the July-August issue of Duke magazine. Mr. Marks writes:
Surveys indicate that more than half of college students frequently download music and movies illegally via school networks. This means that campus networks—often taxpayer funded and specifically reserved for educational use—are continuously used for the illegal exchange of copyrighted works, gobbling up valuable bandwidth and costing colleges money. For example, the University of Florida reports that peer-to-peer use constituted 90 percent of its Internet traffic. After deploying technological tools, the university experienced an immediate and overwhelming drop in illegal use and has since estimated administrative and network equipment savings of more than $1 million.
I presume students wouldn’t think it is OK to steal a CD out of a store, so I’m mystified as to why they believe stealing copyrighted music from the internet is OK.
