The entertainment industry's decision to sue hundreds of college students for using the super-fast Internet 2 network to steal music and movies couldn't have come at a worse time. As April winds down and finals loom ahead, the last thing today's harried coed needs is a steel-toed boot in the face from the brownshirts who do the Man's dirty work.
That's not my opinion. That's the reaction of an unnamed student quoted in the Columbia University Spectator upon learning that the Recording Industry Association of America has filed 405 lawsuits against students across the United States for sharing illegally copied works.
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"I don't know how horrible this will be. ... I'm just really scared about it. These aren't rich people, these are people with student loans," said the student, the subject of one of the lawsuits. "I think it's pretty devious of them to do it at a time when students are worrying about papers and school -- the most stressful time of the year."
I understand. I graduated in 1995, just before the Internet became a fixture in collegiate dorm rooms. It was tough cramming for those midterms and finals, staying up 72 hours straight hepped up on caffeine and pizza. Knowing that I could be on the line for thousands of dollars because I helped myself to things that didn't belong to me would have really distracted me from those irregular French verbs.
But one decade and one Internet revolution later, it's hard for me to work up much sympathy. They knew what they were doing was wrong and they did it anyway. Moreover, they used i2huband the closed Internet2 network because they thought it would keep them from getting nailed.
Equally amazing is the student's comment that the university is somehow at fault. Columbia shut down the server that students had been using to share music, so many turned to i2hub, the Spectator reported: "Upon hearing the news, one Columbia freshman said, "'S---, I've gotta get off that.'"
Carnegie Mellon University's Tartan also snagged an interview with an on-campus music pirate who suspected that he would get sued because he had used i2hub.
"Everybody does it -- very few get caught," the student told the paper. More from the Tartan: "He says his only mistake was generosity. 'I usually never share, but I felt generous one week and I shared one of my hard drives one week on i2hub for 4-5 days and boom, it happens. Just got unlucky,' said the student. Before any of this happened, he thought i2hub was relatively safe from the prying eyes of the RIAA because it was a private network, but did not feel completely immune. 'I realize there is no 100-percent safety in anything. I knew there was a risk involved,' he said."
One of the benefits of the Internet2 network is that it's far less heavily populated than the regular Internet. That means it can take much less time to download movies and music. With that kind of instant gratification, i2hub's 7,000 users were sharing "enough material to fill a video store," the Wall Street Journal quoted Motion Picture Association of America President Dan Glickman as saying. Glickman also said that the most hardcore user shared 328 movies.
In case it wasn't obvious already, the MPAA plans to sue as well.
