Seven years ago, a Northeastern University student named Shawn Fanning released his masterpiece, a peer-to-peer file sharing service called Napster. The program started a revolution and the Napster generation was born. Nearly any song was a point and a click away, and, at times, we could even download entire albums months before their release. The best part was that it was free. There was no obligation to invest any money in your music, except for the cost of an mp3 player or blank CDs and a Discman. Gone was the expectation that you would have to pay to hear a song. The mere thought of paying had become outrageous! Why pay for something when you could get it free? Oh, wait — it is illegal. This was a minor technicality for many.

In 2001, the law caught up with the highly successful peer-to-peer service and, sadly, the program ended up shutting down. However, today, seven years after the highly controversial program first sent shockwaves through the landscape of the music industry, we can still feel the aftershocks, as the children of the Napster generation have not died, but have multiplied. The file sharing fever has spread from music to all types of media, including video files and software. This generation has become very comfortable with the point and click method of obtaining their media. Even legal media programs operate using this method. The real problem comes in when the exchange of currency is bypassed and the content owners are not compensated, as is the case with many file sharing programs.

One example of a service that allows you to share video files is the website YouTube. The site essentially allows you to keep a library of videos available for viewing online. Currently, YouTube does not actively seek out copyright infringing videos and will only remove them if prompted by the owner of the copyright. This is a horribly inefficient process. In search of the worst infringement I could find on the site, I was able to locate the entire first two seasons of Robot Chicken, a popular show on Cartoon Network. The DVD for season 1 sells for around 30 dollars and season 2 is not even out on DVD yet. Can you imagine walking out of a store with a DVD and not so much as batting an eye? YouTube allows its users this luxury.

An example of a site that allows the same thing with music is called The Hype Machine at hype.non-standard.net. I located every track of Justin Timberlake’s latest album Future Sex/Love Sounds, which was just released last week. These sites make entertainment as easy as pointing and clicking with no buying involved. Even worse is the fact that many of the site’s users don’t realize that they are downloading material that is protected by intellectual property laws. These types of nonchalant attitudes toward “free” media translate very easily to the file sharing networks, where users can become defendants for downloading files.

In spite of these trends, Cornell has set an example for our peer institutions to follow. We students get ourselves into trouble less than our counterparts at other schools.

At present, when the University receives a copyright infringement notice, it is generally of the form “IP address x is sharing copyrighted material.” These are called Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices. The Office of Information Technology then contacts the person registered to the offending IP address to determine the cause of the notice. If the violation is confirmed, then the student is referred to the Judicial Administrator. Cornell has always had the lowest number of DMCA notices among its peers, and only one Cornell student has been subpoenaed.

In 2003, Cornell received 287 DMCA notices, over a 90 percent increase from the year before. At the same time, the Office of Information Technology and the Dean of Students, in concert with the Student Assembly, sought a legal media program. In spring 2004, the S.A. chose to bring Napster 2.0 to campus (the legal version that shares its name and logo with the original). Students enjoyed a free two-year trial and we received only 91 and 99 DMCA notices in the years 2004 and 2005 respectively. However, seeing no strong desire to renew the service for the student body at-large, the Assembly decided to enter this school year without a legal music service.

The results of this decision have been intriguing. To date we have already matched the total from 2004 with 91 notices. There are two possible explanations for the increased number. First, many students are likely defaulting to illegal file sharing programs now that there is no free legal program. Second, Cornell may be a target for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) now that we are not endorsing a legal service. There have long been whispers that these organizations are more lenient with schools that have made a visible effort to curb file sharing problems.

This year the Student Assembly would like to determine whether or not there needs to be a shift in the culture on campus. It is troublesome that the absence of Napster may be responsible at least in part for more students receiving DMCA notices. On the other hand, it is very easy to conclude that we are doing well if less than 100 students out of 13,000 received DMCA notices the past two years. Do we need a legal music service? You be the judge.

Kwame Thomison is the president of the Student Assembly. He can be reached at kmt34@cornell.edu. Guest Room appears periodically.