Students arriving for fall classes at colleges across the country are facing technological hurdles and stern warnings aimed at ending swapping of music and movie files over high-speed campus Internet connections.
Several of the universities are responding to a recording industry campaign to control the rampant copying of files over peer-to-peer networks. Among other things, campuses are distributing brochures, running ads in student newspapers and devoting school Web pages to information on copyright infringement. Some are even using software to choke the amount of data that can flow in or out of a computer when students use Kazaa and other file-sharing programs.
“We’re feeling a great deal of pressure as a result of what the entertainment industry is doing, and we’re stepping up a lot of activities to address it,” said Jim Davis, associate vice chancellor for information technology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group representing the five major recording companies, regards file-sharing as theft and is expected to file several hundred copyright infringement lawsuits by mid-September.
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