The Recording Industry Association of America, infamous for its lawsuits against free music, wants the University to help spread its message that piracy is theft.
Last semester, Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, asked American universities to crack down on file sharing. The venue he chose was his testimony to a Congressional committee, an ominous setting for those who think the law is already too favorable to the record labels the RIAA represents.
In Sherman's prepared testimony, a copy of which was provided to me by an RIAA spokeswoman, he said 140 schools have established relationships with "legitimate" music-downloading services. These services are "constantly" approaching the University, Chief Information Officer James Hilton told me.
One reason to subscribe to such a service is to provide an alternative to "piracy," as the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works is widely called. But Sherman told Congress "it is extremely difficult for legitimate services to take root" at a university unless measures are first taken to stop piracy. The measures Sherman endorsed included filtering the university's network (though he warned against starting this at the same time as a "legitimate" service, lest the latter be blamed for the loss of free music) and what Sherman called "education."
As Hilton told me, merely providing entertainment is not a good use of University resources. And "there are all sorts of reasons why as a university committed to free expression, we're not going to monitor the content of traffic." That takes care of two ways the University might help the labels; let's consider the third.
What Sherman calls "education" is not what most people at universities call "education." For Sherman, education means making sure that students get the message that copyright infringement is theft; allowing file-sharing "is antithetical to any educational institution's objective to instill in its students moral and legal clarity."
Moral clarity is indeed very important, especially in a university. One moral principle everyone in academe should be clear on is that the education of free minds requires discussion and debate. Thus, for example, when one studies copyright in a law school, one expects to discuss whether copyright should exist, whether it should be as broad as it is today, what exceptions there should be, and so forth. Being clear on what the current statutes and judicial decisions say is important, but it is also important to examine critically the reasons behind them.
Considering the importance of copyright issues in our digital age, Sherman is probably right that all students should be educated about them. But we must have education, not indoctrination. Even ITC's warning that piracy is illegal and "might" violate the honor and judiciary codes -- a warning on which, according to deputy chief information officer Michael R. McPherson, students are quizzed before being given new computing accounts -- is inappropriate.
So let's debate copyright. The RIAA claims that music is "intellectual property," and that piracy is the equivalent of stealing from a CD store; let's examine that claim.
"Intellectual property" is a contradiction in terms, at least in a free society. Think of a song you've memorized -- say, "Happy Birthday." (Yes, it's under copyright; you can read the story at Snopes.com.) That song is deeply ingrained in your mind, as it is in our culture. If copyright means owning the song, there is something deep in your mind that someone else owns. And if something under copyright -- some song, book or movie -- has become part of your own identity, those who claim to own it are claiming to own a piece of you.
It doesn't feel that way because our most personal uses of copyrighted works do not usually face interference from copyright holders. But that's the claim. And you can be sued for using the music that's in your head. George Harrison was, after he, thinking he was writing an original song, wrote one that too closely resembled one he had heard.
The Constitution recognizes that copyright is not property. It grants Congress the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." In other words, it gives the federal government the authority to give special monopoly privileges to creative people in order to encourage them to create. But these privileges are not property rights. Unlike property, a moral right the government is required to respect, copyrights are to be justified only by the public interest in making creativity pay.
If the copyright laws are within their constitutional scope, breaking them may be immoral as a violation of legitimate law. Piracy may be very much like tax evasion--indeed, a British advocate of copyright once aptly called it "a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers." But since copyright is not property, piracy is not theft. The University should not try to "educate" us to think it is.
Alexander R. Cohen is a Cavalier Daily Viewpoint Writer. He is a doctoral candidate in the philosophy department.
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