Peer-to-peer File Sharing

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and copyright owners of music, movies and other materials aggressively pursue people who illegally share files, including using lawsuits and subpoenas.

This indeed can happen here. In the spring of 2007, five Bates computer users were threatened with lawsuits for copyright infringement by attorneys representing record companies and the recording industry. They were among thousands of college and university computer users affected nationwide. In May 2009, the District Court in Maine decided that a user had to pay record companies minimumdamages ($6,750 plus court costs) for illegally sharing nine songs.

In the strongest possible terms the College reminds you of your responsibility to avoid sharing music, video or software files with anyone unless you have received explicit permission from the copyright owner or have paid a fee to obtain distribution rights for the materials. In most cases, the copyright owner is the publisher, producer, or performer of a song, program, album, or film.

If you are using a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing program to share copyrighted material without permission you are exposing yourself to great risk. In addition to enabling illegal activity, P2P software use also has the potential to consume large amounts of network and Internet bandwidth. To reduce the impact of this activity on the College, Information and Library Services (ILS) employs technologies to limit excessive Internet bandwidth usage, which has the effect of limiting the impact of P2P file sharing on the availability of Internet services for the campus. If you have downloaded file sharing applications, you may find your Internet connection speed is slow. You should remove such programs from your computer. See our Web page for links to Internet resources to help you do this.

Limits on bandwidth utilization set by Bates will not affect your ability to purchase and download media from legal sources. For a list of some of these sources, see the RIAA’s website.

• If you are sharing copyrighted materials without permission, you are breaking Federal law, violating College policy and exposing yourself to considerable risk.
• You are not anonymous on the Internet, and you may not be aware that your computer is sharing files. Computers can be identified by Internet address. Copyright owners can detect downloading and file sharing.
• The potential risks are very large. College students, including Bates students, have settled copyright lawsuits for thousands of dollars each. The RIAA has issued hundreds of subpoenas seeking financial damages for illegally downloaded or shared music files, many of them directed at computer users at colleges. Penalties could be up to $150,000 per file. In some cases there could be criminal charges as well.
• Placing legal copies of digital materials in publicly shared directories on the campus network could also result in legal action against you by copyright owners unless you own distribution rights for those materials.
• Some file sharing is perfectly legitimate. Some artists make their recordings available over the Internet without restriction. New services exist to pay monthly or per-song fees to download music. If you are sharing materials for educational purposes in a class, staff in Ladd Library, User Services or Help Desk Services can help you set up a password-protected location or library reserve so that you can share materials under “fair use” or comply with restrictions imposed by the copyright owner.
• You are responsible for your compliance with copyright law. The College cannot take responsibility for your compliance, and cannot defend you against a claim by a copyright owner. If College officials receive a complaint about your behavior, we are required to take action, which could include such steps as terminating your network connection or providing your name to the copyright owner.

You should take the appropriate steps to protect yourself from what may be very unfortunate consequences.

Copyright compliance and file sharing questions

Gene Wiemers
Vice President for Information & Library Services and Librarian
George and Helen Ladd Library
48 Campus Avenue, Lewiston, Maine 04240
Phone: 207-786-6260 Fax: 207-786-6055
ewiemers@bates.edu