You’re busted

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – University of Florida officials say they’re simply enforcing the law. But civil libertarians say the school has itself become an enforcer for the recording industry.

In the annals of the online music wars, the university may well go down as one of the Recording Industry Association of America’s most loyal allies.

Chris Russell, an 18-year-old freshman, and some of his dorm buddies got their lesson this fall. As he was downloading Metallica tunes in his room, Russell suddenly lost his Internet connection.

Logging onto a university site, he was informed by a pop-up message that he’d violated the school’s downloading policy and his Internet service would be suspended for 30 minutes.

Russell was collared by new university software called ICARUS, or Integrated Control Application for Restricting User Services.

“It’s a pain in the neck,” Russell said of the program. “If I hear a song on the radio I like, I try to download it.”

It’s precisely such behavior that riles the music industry, which claims online song swapping is largely responsible for a 31 percent drop in CD sales over the past three years.

The industry has used lawsuits and warning letters to try to thwart the practice at colleges and universities. It has also promoted commercial downloading services, including a recent deal with Penn State to offer the new Napster to students.

University of Florida officials say they’re open to a deal with a commercial service like Napster, but say their students wouldn’t pay more than 50 cents a song – the Penn State deal will cost students there $1 for every track they want to keep.

Last spring, the pressure from record companies hit critical mass at the University of Florida. The school was getting about 40 notices a month asking it to disconnect students for illegal downloading. About 1,000 cases involving violations of copyright rules were clogging the school’s judicial system. An estimated 40 percent of dorm residents were downloading illegally.

So network administrators went to work on ICARUS, which debuted over the summer and affects the 7,500 of Florida’s 48,500 students who live on campus – and are thus on its high-speed network.

ICARUS scans the network to ensure students are not pulling down music or video using peer-to-peer software. For a first violation, transgressors lose Internet access for 30 minutes and must watch a 10-minute interactive Web program on copyright law. A second violation of the policy bars students from the Internet for five days, while a third can result in a lengthy ban and could lead to a written reprimand.

More than 100 students have been caught downloading twice, the school says, and so far there are no three-time violators.

Paul David Einslen, president of a dormitory at the university, said most students were initially upset but now accept that they can’t use the university system to download movies, music and software.

Many students are nevertheless concerned, he said, “about the whole scanning of their computer with Big Brother monitoring and watching everything.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean students are buying more compact discs, though.

“Students are pretty smart. They’ll come up with some way to circumvent it. They’ll just go off campus and do it,” said Charles Scales, owner of Hyde &Zeke, a music store near campus. Scales said he hasn’t seen sales rise post-ICARUS.

Rob Bird, the university’s coordinator of network services who co-developed the program, says he’s received inquiries about it from more than 110 universities, eight Internet service providers and 23 private companies.

Bird declined to name any of them, and said the school will not release the program until the spring. “We are finalizing some technical developments,” he said. “There are a lot of licensing issues to resolve.”