Spring Break
Realistic alternative to P2P file sharing needed
Ethan Clay
Issue date: 4/16/04 Section: Ed-Op
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Eight-hundred-pound gorillas are running wild on every college campus in America. There is one in nearly every dorm room, pouting for attention. In fact, you could have your very own furry ape hunched upon your desk as you read this commentary, but we students have chosen to ignore the growing epidemic of peer-to-peer file sharing. In late March, the Recording Industry Association of America filed its latest round of lawsuits specifically targeted against college students and their families for the first time. Because the accused remain anonymous, they appear no more human than a descending green pixel in The Matrix. Nevertheless, these college students are real and are about to receive subpoenas from Drexel University and over 20 other universities across the country.
At present, the RIAA's solution to the entertainment industry's inability to keep up with digital technology over the past decade is a terror campaign designed to frighten students away from P2P networking. If the entertainment industry had encouraged technological advances in the past, the unsuccessful and costly effort to pervert copyright laws in favor of the RIAA's goals would be obsolete and consumer's downloading needs would be met.
Despite the number of legal ways to license digital media, the RIAA focused its efforts elsewhere and throughout the history of file sharing inadvertently encouraged its evolution from the "central hub" of the good old Napster to the more pervasive P2P of Kazaa and others. This phenomenon has not changed and the current RIAA efforts are driving students underground to become more skilled and evasive file sharers, as evidenced by the newly-created sharing software entitled Waste.
Regardless of the current debate over copyright laws and the effect of downloads on record sales, it must be recognized that digital entertainment has become tethered to the college experience. Until a realistic alternative to P2P has been created and implemented on college campuses, it is unrealistic to expect students to meet their entertainment needs in any other way.
At present, the RIAA's solution to the entertainment industry's inability to keep up with digital technology over the past decade is a terror campaign designed to frighten students away from P2P networking. If the entertainment industry had encouraged technological advances in the past, the unsuccessful and costly effort to pervert copyright laws in favor of the RIAA's goals would be obsolete and consumer's downloading needs would be met.
Despite the number of legal ways to license digital media, the RIAA focused its efforts elsewhere and throughout the history of file sharing inadvertently encouraged its evolution from the "central hub" of the good old Napster to the more pervasive P2P of Kazaa and others. This phenomenon has not changed and the current RIAA efforts are driving students underground to become more skilled and evasive file sharers, as evidenced by the newly-created sharing software entitled Waste.
Regardless of the current debate over copyright laws and the effect of downloads on record sales, it must be recognized that digital entertainment has become tethered to the college experience. Until a realistic alternative to P2P has been created and implemented on college campuses, it is unrealistic to expect students to meet their entertainment needs in any other way.
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