Paper 1: College ISP and the RIAA
Due: Friday, Sept 18. Your paper must be submitted electronically,
either via email or through the Blackboard digital dropbox.
We've
discussed in class the new strategy of the RIAA: when they detect users
engaging in music file-sharing (or, more specifically, when they detect
users who are sharing their music library), instead of filing lawsuits
against
individual users they will work with the user's ISP first to notify the
user, then to throttle the user's bandwidth, and finally to cut it off
altogether.
You are a college administrator, and the ISP to all your resident
students. The RIAA has just contacted you with a proposal to cooperate
with them in this new strategy to stop illegal file-sharing. Should you do this?
If so, should you cooperate fully, or should you refuse parts of the
request? Or should you request something in return from the RIAA?
The proposed draft agreement includes the following requirements:
- A first violation draws a notice. If the machine is seen
sharing files 24 hours later, bandwidth is reduced 90% and a second
notice is sent; cutoff occurs if sharing continues for 24 hours beyond
the second notice.
- you provide the RIAA with on-campus computer access to scan for
those file-sharers who limit their sharing to within the school.
- when a user is detected breaking the rules, you are to disable
their dorm-room access and also suspend their computer-lab access.
- You turn the student's name over to the RIAA. The RIAA promises not to sue at this time.
You note that Congress has passed a law requiring colleges to try to
discourage illegal file-sharing. However, the law is relatively nonspecific, and you already have an
educational program in place and an Acceptable Use Policy that forbids
downloading or sharing of unlicensed copyrighted material.
You are somewhat concerned about bandwidth; you are paying for a T3
line to the outside world and it is at capacity much of the time.
However, you're also connected to Internet-2, and the link to that
is 80% idle on average. You are aware that students have software to
search other Internet-2 sites for music files first; from their
perspective, this is probably mostly about improved download time.
In theory the RIAA's request is about music file-sharing; however, the
scanning will also include scanning for movie file sharing. Right now your staff
tells you they don't see a lot of movie downloading, but you are aware that a movie
is about a hundredfold larger than a song.
When analyzing the situation, you might consider describing the stakeholders, the full consequences of
either position, and your responsibilities to all involved. Feel free to take either a utilitarian position, or a
deontological one, or both, or neither (in the latter case, you might consider a strictly legal analysis).
You are encouraged to treat this as an individual ethical decision, to the extent possible, despite the "corporate" setting.
Your paper will be graded primarily on organization
(that is, how you lay out your sequence of paragraphs), focus (that is,
whether you stick to the topic), and the nature and completeness of
your arguments. It is essential
that all quotations from other sources be indicated as such, at a
minimum by using quotation marks or block quotes and preferably by a
citation as well.
Expected length: 3-5 pages (600+ words)