Naval Academy fires broadside at copyright violations

The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., has seized nearly 100 student computers suspected of containing illegally downloaded music and movies, the toughest action yet in higher education's struggle against the trading of copyrighted material over colleges' Internet servers.

Navy officials said punishment could range from loss of leave time to court martial and expulsion.

Though the consequences for midshipmen may be unusually steep, in part because the computers are government property, the issue is bedeviling college administrators across the country.

In recent years, students have taken advantage of super-fast campus Internet networks to swap everything from the latest episode of "The West Wing" to the next single by Eminem -- all for free.

The music and film industries -- having vanquished Napster, the mother of all music-sharing software, in court -- are pleading with universities to help stop a new generation of file sharing, which they say cuts into their sales and violates copyrights.

Meanwhile, colleges have found their computer systems slowing to a crawl because of the strain placed on them by the nearly constant downloading of audio and visual files.

"Our outbound service to the Internet gets maxed out," said Carl Whitman, executive director of e-operations at American University in the District of Columbia. "If you're a prospective student interested in applying or a student trying to do work from home, you can't get into our system sometimes because it's saturated."

Many schools have adopted computer policies that prohibit students from circulating copyrighted materials and cut off repeat offenders from Internet-server privileges. Yet school officials continue to come up against the casual attitudes of students, many of whom have few moral qualms about something as cheap and easy as downloading a song.

"This is a lot better deal than going out and spending $15 for 20 other tracks on a CD you don't want," said Evan Wagner, 20, a junior at American. "It takes you five or 10 seconds to type in. There's no risk, and it's one of those things where you don't see the victim."

Last month, four entertainment industry lobbying groups sent letters to 2,300 colleges and universities urging them to crack down on piracy by students.

This was part of an aggressive, multi-pronged campaign, stretching far beyond college campuses, against file-swapping technologies and their users.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been successful in suing to force Napster and other popular services out of business.

The entertainment, or content industry has lobbied Congress, so far unsuccessfully, for legislation that would mandate building barriers into computers to block illegal copying and that would allow copyright owners to hack into offending computer systems.

The content industry also has sought to compel companies that provide Internet access to consumers to identify users who illegally download copyrighted material. In a case awaiting a judicial ruling, the RIAA is seeking to force Verizon Corp. to divulge the name of a customer who the organization alleges is downloading music files illegally.

The letters to colleges and universities, many of which operate their own networks, avoided direct threats. Instead, they urged the schools to develop methods of raising awareness of copyright theft and stamping it out.

The Naval Academy had issued several warnings to students before taking action Thursday, when computers were seized while midshipmen were in class. Cmdr. Bill Spann, the academy spokesman, confirmed that an investigation is under way, but he declined to comment further.

Higher education lawyers suggested that the academy took stronger action than most institutions because it is a federal installation.

"The academy may be wanting to send a strong message to midshipmen, as a shot across the bow," said Sheldon E. Steinbach, general counsel of the American Council on Education.

Some in the technology community criticize the content industry's tactics as a Gestapo-like assault on the concept of "fair use," under which it is generally accepted that an individual can lend someone a book, tape a song or share videos of television programs.

They argue that rather than going after file sharing, the movie and recording studios should concentrate on building online services that offer copyrighted material at reasonable prices.