Do your students store copyrighted music on your school's servers? Do they 'share' music files using your school's facilities? If they do, then, watch out! Your school could be in some real legal hot water! Plenty of unwanted negative publicity too! I mentioned the issue on the ISED-L mailing list and it touched off a series of responses. For an example of how easily and innocently your school can become an unwitting pawn in this copyright quagmire, see page two of this article for one trustee's story. It will give you pause.
Students & File Sharing
We all know that kids love their music. Retail music is a multi-billion dollar industry. Do you think for a minute that a recording company is going to give its product away? Not likely. Yet that's the essence of the music file sharing craze. Kids can download their favorite songs from thousands of sites on the Web. Are the copies which they are downloading stolen? Most kids don't care.
What can the RIAA do?
Now, is the recording company going to go after the end user? That's like looking for a needle in a haystack! But what about going after St. Swithin's Preparatory School for Young Ladies, which just happens to have a few hundred copyrighted music files stored on its servers, courtesy of its young charges' earnest musical downloading activities? You bet. The lawyer's letter will appear in due course. No doubt about it!
Be vigilant!
The recording industry is undergoing some pretty dramatic changes as a result of kids' downloading music files. But until the distribution channels settle down and adjust to new ways of distributing copyrighted music files legally and for a profit, you must be vigilant.
5 Ways To Avoid Storing Copyrighted Music
- Speak to your Information Technology professional and see what you can do to block or at least control the illegal downloading.
- Ask your students what they download.
- Ask them if they are aware of the legal issues involved.
- Make them understand that the theft of intellectual property is a serious matter which could land them and their school in serious legal difficulty.
- Impose serious penalties for storing and accessing copyrighted materials on your servers
