There's No Place Like Nebraska

I promised Hers I wouldn't bring this blog down by boring the few readers we have with copyright issues, but I just had to give some props to my Alma Matar. This post at BoingBoing pointed me to this article at ZDNet, which pointed me to this article from the Omaha World-Herald about the University of Nebraska at Lincoln's dealings with the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

The RIAA sends out settlement offers to students it plans to sue for illegally downloading music. If music is downloaded over a university network, the RIAA needs the help of the school to find the student's name. UNL has traditionally retained records regarding student internet activity for about a month. Without this information, the RIAA cannot track down students who illegally share files on the University network.

Jenni Engebretsen, a spokeswoman for the RIAA, derided the school's record retention policy in the Omaha-World Herald article:

"One would think universities would understand the need to retain these records," she said.

I would imagine that retaining data for a longer period of time would result in added expense for the University. Clearly, the University itself has no need to retain the records any longer than it does, so in changing its record retention policy, the University would bear the complete burden and the RIAA would be the sole (or at least major) beneficiary. Not a bad deal for the RIAA.

In addition to settlement offers, the RIAA also sends thousands of cease and desist (C&D) notices to students. Like settlement offers, the RIAA requires help from the University to find the student's name before sending out a C&D. UNL has received over 1,000 C&D-related requests during the current school year. It costs the University $11 to process each requests meaning the University has spent more than $11,000 during the current school year helping out the RIAA. In response, UNL sent the RIAA a bill for its expenses. Walter Weir, the University's chief information officer, says it better than I can:

"We're spending taxpayer dollars tracking down RIAA problems. Are we an agent of the RIAA? Why aren't they paying us for this?"

Nonehteless, UNL clearly has a problem. The University receives more C&D requests than any other in the country save two. However, the University realizes that it isn't as simple as tossing up a filter to prevent peer-to-peer file sharing as the RIAA advocates and as so many other universities have already done. Chancellor Perlman and others at the university have pointed out that the software is expensive and that peer-to-peer has many legal uses. Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, expressed his doubts that students are downloading Shakespeare over peer-to-peer networks as if the University doesn't have a computer science department. It's often more efficient to download open source software (some of which would certainly be useful to a computer programming major) over a peer-to-peer network. Such software is free to distribute over a peer-to-peer network. Additionally, some companies are even taking advantage of peer-to-peer to distribute videos and other content legally because it's a cheaper, more efficient method of distribution.

Sorry for long, boring post, but um . . .
Go Big Red!