As lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for illegal file-sharing continue to involve college students, with 89 suits filed against John Doe students using university computers last week, one Loyola SGA member stands by her pledge to bring legal file-sharing to campus.

As part of her research into legal sharing agreements at other colleges, including the one between Napster and Penn State University, future SGA President Kelly Crossett said she contacted colleges that have considered or already implemented the service.

At Penn State, an agreement between the university and Napster was reached on Jan. 12, 2003.

Through Napster, students have access to live streams of music but are charged 99 cents per song for actual downloads. According to the Daily Collegian, the service will be implemented for 83,000 students by the start of the fall semester.

Though Congress praised the program late last year as the ideal program for all colleges, Crossett said she has heard mixed responses from the students involved in the program at Penn State.

At this time, Crossett said her main focus is the formation of her cabinet, but she hopes to be able to work on this issue once this is done, possibly appointing a point person from cabinet members.

"What I'm promising is that I will work very hard to find the best system of legal downloading for Loyola College," said Crossett.

Technology Services, however, remains hesitant to endorse any form of swapping, but representatives said that any form of individual legal file sharing would be approved by the college.

"Right now the whole area is so legally murky that were waiting to see how some of the stuff switches itself out," said John McFadden, CIO and assistant vice president of Technology Services. "We are watching this evolve through the courts."

"From working at Technology Services, I know that doing something like that would take up a lot of bandwidth on the internet," said senior Jess Beckman, 22, who was interviewed by the WJZ station following the latest RIAA announcement.

"It's probably never going to happen," said Beckman, adding that because music downloads take up a lot of space on the Internet, they could prevent access to school-related files.

McFadden credits Loyola's good relationship with the RIAA to quick action on the part of the college when presented with information about file sharing and a precedence of contact with the RIAA. No such notification about file sharing has been given to the college within the last four months, McFadden said.

In addition, McFadden believes that the decline in file sharing is largely due to firewalls. To his knowledge, no underground student-to-student network exists at Loyola which could compare to the multi-user system that was found and halted earlier this year at the University of Maryland through the world-wide service Direct Connect.

"We really put the firewalls in to impact the spread of viruses, but we've found as a side benefit, it helps control file swapping," said McFadden.

Crossett hopes that once talks with Technology Services begin, the college will be able to find a way to provide the service most catered to the Loyola's needs.

Possible plans could include removal of the school's firewalls, a Loyola-only service, or a consortium between local colleges like Johns Hopkins University and Towson University. Further research will be able to determine the specific needs of the school, Crossett said.

Crossett used the most recent lawsuit announced last week by the RIAA to support her platform to install legal downloading. "[A lawsuit with the RIAA] could wreck your life," she said.

Among the 532 individuals to be sued last week by the RIAA is one student from the University of Maryland. The exact number of students from each of the 21 universities were not identified, and defendants listed in the suit had an average of 800 illegal songs downloaded.

The difference between this wave of lawsuits and the previous two is the location and scope of the defendants. Recently a Pennsylvania federal court threw out the RIAA's case against over 200 individuals, concluding that only one defendant would be charged and forcing the RIAA to choose whether or not to file additional lawsuits. The filing fee for these legal proceedings would total over $30,000.

On the issue of file sharing in general, the opinion of Loyola students varies.

"Whenever you tell people that they have to pay for something they didn't have to before, then they are going to be unhappy," said Crossett.

"At first I didn't see anything wrong with it. It was just downloading music," said Beckman. "After talking about it with my parents, they own their own store, they kind of convinced me it was stealing."

"I can definitely see where they're coming from. People have to make money," said senior Terrence Fluellen, 21, another student interviewed for WJZ. "The music industry is a business, and they work hard to make money."

Source: http://www.loyolagreyhound.com/news/...d-644792.shtml