Yale confronts growing Napster MP3 quandary

Motion Picture Entertainment Group Level 3 may go by the innocuous little acronym "MP3," but it sends large shivers down the spines of record company executives everywhere. Since hitting the Internet, MP3, a file format that allows high-quality digital music to be sent in small packages, has made it much easier for people to distribute music over the Internet, often illegally. College students with access to high-speed networks have been among its most active users.

COURTESY NAPSTER.COM

A company called Napster complicated the issue with software that allows users to trade MP3s easily with people around the world. Though the company posts a disclaimer saying users are responsible for copyright violations, the Recording Industry Association of America has sued Napster for infringement. At Oregon State University, the Administration decided to block all access to both Napster's program and its website, alleging that Napster was using up to five percent of the school's Internet resources.

At Yale, Information Technology Services (ITS) conducted tests the week of Jan. 25 that shut down access to Napster's website for hours at a time in order to gauge the effect that Napster usage has on the University's resources. Though Yale has no present plans to block access, a meeting with computing assistants (CAs) has been planned for Fri., Feb. 3, to discuss methods of discouraging Napster usage. However, Yale has no set policy on MP3s or Napster as of yet.

Bandwidth and copyright are both potentially being abused by Napster users. "The ITS Appropriate Use Policy has two sections directly relevant to MP3 traffic," Daniel Updegrove, director of ITS, said. The first is "denial of service," which bans individual monopolization of network resources. The second is "copyright," which states that students must observe "intellectual property rights" when distributing information. "MP3 traffic is not inherently a violation of law or University policy," Updegrove said. "It's a violation of law when copyright is infringed, and it's a violation of University policy either when copyright law is broken and/or when some component of the University network, the user's subnet, the campus backbone, or a gateway to the Internet or Internet 2, is carrying excessive traffic to or from one user."

According to Updegrove and H. Morrow Long, the information security officer for ITS, Yale has no present plans to block access to Napster or to crack down on MP3 sharing. Nevertheless, concerns about Napster-related strain on Yale's Internet connection has led ITS to conduct ongoing tests. "In order to determine the aggregate impact of Napster traffic on the network and Internet gateways, we have shut down access to www.napster.com several times," Updegrove said.

These tests, along with monitoring of Napster use, have shown that Napster users account for "five to 33 percent of network traffic, depending on time of day," Long said. Since this glut did not come from a single individual, but many users, ITS has not acted. Long added that if any individual is found to account for most of the bandwidth use, the user will be informed that he or she is in violation of the resource-hogging restriction.

In developing policy toward Napster, ITS is intent on "informing" students rather than blocking access. According to Long, ITS plans to meet with CAs in order to decide Napster policy "at the end of Friday." Long and ITS have plans to have CAs communicate their views on Napster. "We're going to do it through the CAs," he said, "And let the students know that they shouldn't use excessive resources or violate copyright laws." Long hopes that such measures will discourage students from excessive Napster use.

One anonymous Yale student and Napster user, however, disagreed."If ITS comes around and tells people not to use Napster because it's taking five or 10 percent of Yale's bandwidth, I don't think it will stop anyone," he said. "I don't think that my use of Napster places that much of a strain on the network."

Back to News...