U. allows students to keep rocking

Unlike other universities, Penn has decided to take no action against Napster.com, an MP3 provider. Making downloading MP3 music files off the Internet simple and easy, Napster.com has turned thousands of personal computers across the country -- especially at college campuses --into virtual jukeboxes since its inception a year ago. The brainchild of a former student at Northeastern University in Boston, Napster was geared at college students whose thirst for music and high-speed access to the Internet allow quick downloads of megabyte upon megabyte of music. But its design has proved to be a burden on some college networks by turning hundreds of networked computers into an army of servers, draining bandwidth away from regular applications such as Web browsing and, in some cases, nearly crippling over-extended systems. At Indiana University, for instance, computing officials decided to cut off access to Napster last February, citing overuse of the service at the time of the shutdown. "The expectation was that the level of traffic was going to be 81 percent [of Internet use] much too soon," IU Information Technology Policy Officer Mark Bruhn said. "And that was unacceptable." IU's decision was preceded by the same restrictions made at a slew of schools, including Brown, Northwestern and Tufts universities and the University of Texas. "It's something that just doesn't scale well for a university campus," Brown Computing and Information Services Senior Network Specialist Don Wright said. But while many schools have decided to banish Napster from campus, Penn officials say that they have no plans to place filters that will block the service. In a recent statement released by the Office of Information Services and Computing, University officials outlined Penn's policy with regard to the growing controversy surrounding Napster. The statement revealed no plans to cut off access to the service, merely cautioning users to be aware that they are exposing the contents of their computer to millions of outsiders and potential hackers and warning them of their individual liability should they be accused of copyright violations. Vice Provost for Information Services and Computing Jim O'Donnell said that the University's network was not seeing the same problems that other colleges were experiencing, citing Penn's large Internet connection and the currently small scale of Napster use on the network. Upon opening the Napster program, users are greeted by a message that clearly states the company's disassociation from any illegal actions that its users choose to take part in, effectively claiming that Napster itself only provides a service that can be used for good or ill. Bruhn agreed with that assertion, saying that the decision to cut off access had nothing to do with whether students were allegedly engaging in wholesale piracy, despite student objections that IU was engaged in censorship. "It was not anything other than a technical capacity issue. We weren't telling them they couldn't get their Tori Amos or James Taylor," Bruhn said. In addition, the recent lawsuit by the Recording Industry Association of America against Napster, alleging illegal distribution of copyrighted material, questions the service's legal right to even exist. But O'Donnell concurred with Napster's position on the legality of their service. "I don't think anybody will be able to say it's illegal and block it on those grounds," O'Donnell said. The major users of network access remain Web browsing and net services. But O'Donnell said that if Napster usage or any other large non-academic information transfers were blocking regular network services, the University was ready to take action to halt it. "If we find any system, or any site or anything creating difficulties for the campus as a whole, we know how to deal with that," O'Donnell said.

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