BY DYLON CHOW

In print | Published September 18, 2008

In the Reserved Students Digest for Friday, Sept. 12, there was a notice about a change to the policy for what to do to students who were caught illegally sharing files through the Internet. The new policy states that students caught in the act of illegal file sharing may have their personal computers blocked from the college network for a minimum of seven days.

Representatives of Information Technology Services, the Dean’s Office, student focus groups and Student Council have unanimously decided on a policy that they believe will enforce the idea that illegal file sharing is both risky and dangerous without causing considerable unease among the student body. Previously, when a student was caught engaged in illegal file sharing, he/she was notified by the college to take down the illegal files and was given ten days to do so.
Now, the student must notify the Chief Information Technology Officer of an error or file a Fair Use claim within three days. The student will not be able to access the network on that student’s computer for a minimum of one week, if no mistake has been reported and no Fair Use claim has been filed.

However, the student will still be able to access the Internet and tools such as Blackboard and Swatmail on public computers.

According to Gayle Barton, “The recent change is due to a new law passed by Congress that requires colleges to do more to prevent illegal file sharing. Our old procedures were not very effective and they did not meet the spirit or requirements of the new law.”

This may be an inconvenience to many students on campus who are caught and are accustomed to using their own computers. Nevertheless, the new policy was not set forth in order to make the lives of students harder, ITS dorm consultant manager Robert Matthews ’09 said. “We don’t want to be nannies,” he said.

And although the new policy may be a pain for students, it is also a pain for ITS. Myrt Westphal, the Associate Dean for Student Life, mentioned the inefficiency of the routine ITS goes through to handle the situation. It is a pain, she said, to have to spend time looking up the student who committed the violation, contact the student, and then have to wait for up to three days to receive notice.

But perhaps it’s not so bad compared to the policies of some other colleges and universities. “Some schools are taking stronger measures such as imposing fines, limiting bandwidth for file sharing, or blocking certain protocols,” Barton said. And if it will help to prevent illegal file sharing, then all the better. Since the beginning of this school year, Swarthmore has already received three complaints about illegal file sharing from different associations.

Westphal finds the issue to be age-based. “Many young people think [file sharing is] perfectly acceptable,” she said. Perhaps this has to do with the ease in which it can be done. In the past, copying media illegally took more time and energy. One could, for example, take a cassette tape, record it, and distribute it covertly. Now, she said, illegal file sharing can be done instantly.
Will the new policy be effective? According to Barton, “It is too early to know.”

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