Zaid Al-Husseini is frustrated.
He hails from Saudi Arabia, a place where albums by Britney Spears and N*SYNC may be purchased in stores but songs by his favorite artists--including Marvin Gaye and some techno acts--are harder to come by.
With the rise of file sharing over the Internet, however, he has been able to obtain music that would otherwise be inaccessible.
"I can download the rarer songs with Kazaa," said Al-Husseini, a sophomore. "Anything that sounds good, anything I hear on the radio, or songs that my friends recommend."
Now Al-Husseini, who used to download about six songs a day, has cut back on his downloads, as the Recording Industry Association of America has begun threatening to sue students who use file sharing programs.
Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, released a letter to the public two weeks ago stating that the industry would not target "de minimis" users. Instead, subpoenas would be sent to people who download "a substantial amount," although the letter did not specify how much that is.
Industry officials hope the campaign will scare students away from copying songs when they see classmates who have downloaded significant numbers of tracks getting slapped with lawsuits.
RIAA has now issued more than 1,145 subpoenas to Internet service providers--such as Comcast, Adelphia, RCN and Time Warner--across the United States. The subpoenas demand the ISPs hand over contact information of the users the RIAA is targeting.
Chris Cramer, information technology security officer for the Office of Information Technology, said it was certainly possible for Duke students to be sued for copyright infringement.
"While Duke has not received any subpoenas ordering us to identify students, several other universities--including [the University of California at Los Angeles], [the University of California at Berkeley] and [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology]--have," Cramer said.
"This may be a prelude to a lawsuit against those students."
Cramer said OIT does not track or monitor student downloads or usage of person-to-person transfers. The office also does not scan for P2P traffic or attempt to monitor for copyright infringement.
"The RIAA would like for us to do this; however, we believe that it violates students' privacy," Cramer said. "But we do pass along notices of alleged copyright infringement from copyright holders to the students to which the notice refers."
He added that OIT will continue stressing to students that copyright infringement is illegal and consumes Duke's bandwidth.
Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta said Duke has not yet decided what it would do if a student were to be named in a lawsuit.
"We could offer personal support, but not legal support," Moneta said. "It's clear that students have to be responsible for their own actions."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that provides legal counsel and assistance to users of new technologies, has developed a website that allows users wondering if their file-sharing username may have been subpoenaed by the RIAA to check their IP address or username with the Washington D.C. District Court's publicly available database.
The website of the donor-supported membership organization can be found at www.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaasubpoenas/. It also includes useful tips on how not to get sued by the RIAA for file sharing; many of the tips are in fact links to OIT's website.
Although no Duke students have appeared yet on the RIAA's list, students like Louisa Watkins said they are now more careful when they download their songs.
"I sign on as little as possible and download less frequently," said Watkins, a junior. "I'm happy with the music collection I have, and I'd rather just listen to those MP3s."
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