In the wake of several rounds of lawsuits against illegal file sharers, colleges and universities are taking steps to curb the practice among students.
According to the 2003 nationwide Campus Computing Survey, nearly two-thirds of schools who participated reported having institutional policies in place designed to reduce students' illegal downloading of copyrighted music and movie files.
The policies differ among universities. Schools like the University of Rochester and Pennsylvania State University have provided students with a university-supported legal alternative to file sharing that allows students to download and purchase MP3s.
Other schools simply have policies that comply with the law, under which sharing copyrighted files is completely illegal without compensation. According to the survey, almost four-fifths of universities -- 80.9 percent of public universities and 77.5 percent of private universities -- have campus codes of conduct that focus on downloaded commercial content.
Despite these statistics, there is no official policy against file sharing at Penn. "We try to stay away from technical details in our policies because technology changes so rapidly," said Dave Millar, Penn's information security officer.
However, Penn's policies expressly forbid copyright infringement of any kind. "We maintain that infringement is against both our own policies and the law," Millar said.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a specific anti-file-sharing policy that defines fair use and copyright infringement for students and forbids using any programs that "generate excessive network traffic apart from educational purposes."
As an example, the policy cites Kazaa, a file-sharing program students often use to download music and movie files.
In addition to prohibiting file sharing, some schools have adopted strict enforcement policies.
Students who use the University of Michigan's technology in ways the school deems inappropriate are subject to "termination of Internet access, disciplinary review, expulsion, termination of employment, legal action or other disciplinary action" from the school.
The Recording Industry Association of America has encouraged colleges to take steps to curb illegal file sharing. Surveys have shown that schools are starting to do so.
"The 2003 data confirm that colleges and universities are making significant efforts to respond to the concerns of media industry officials regarding the unauthorized distribution and downloading of music, video and other commercial content on campus networks," Kenneth C. Green, who founded and runs The Campus Computing Project, said in the survey report.
As of 2003, 92.3 percent of universities have policies intended to stem the unauthorized duplication of commercial software, and 87.4 percent have codes of conduct regarding the fair use of copyrighted content like books and articles.
