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 the Op-Ed piece an anonymous trustee wrote. It's pretty chilling!

We all know that kids love their music. Retail music is a $14 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 MP3 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.

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 MP3 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!

The recording industry is undergoing some pretty dramatic changes as a result of kids' downloading MP3 files. But until the distribution channels settle down and adjust to the new MP3 download craze, you must be vigilant. 

• 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.

--Rob Kennedy, Private Schools Guide