House Panel Examines Epidemic of Online Piracy At Colleges

Rosen Touts Early Collaboration With College Groups, More To Do

Washington, DC - February 26, 2003 - A key House panel today examined the growing epidemic of peer-to-peer network piracy on college computer systems, with Hilary Rosen, Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), applauding the initial collaborative measures taken with the university community to address the piracy problem and urging additional proactive steps

Against the backdrop of an estimated 2.6 billion files illegally downloaded each month from unauthorized peer-to-peer networks -- a substantial proportion occurring on college computer networks -- Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) convened his first hearing as chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property on the problem of "Peer-to-Peer Piracy on College Campuses."

In addition to Rosen, those who testified were: Graham Spanier, President of The Pennsylvania State University; Molly Corbett Broad, President of the University of North Carolina; and Dr. John Hale, Center for Computer Security, University of Tulsa.

"The unauthorized P2P file sharing problem poses tremendous difficulties not only for copyright owners and artists, but also for administrators on our nations' college campuses," said Rosen in her testimony. "Rampant file sharing of music and video content imposes a heavy toll on all of us. Despite education campaigns about the illegality of file sharing, and despite numerous court decisions clearly holding that copying music, movies and other copyrighted files is against the law, there is an alarming disregard among students for Internet theft. As a result, P2P abuse has overtaxed numerous college computer systems, slowing processing of legitimate information to a crawl due to the uncommonly large number and size of files being uploaded and downloaded," stated Rosen.

Few students are fully aware of other dangers from peer-to-peer applications, such as compromising campus network security, making their own hard drives containing their personal data available to others, and opening the campus network to computer viruses.

"Even more alarming is the fact that up to 75% of those coming onto the campus networks are people outside the university community who are searching the Internet for the greatest amount of broadband capacity in order to expedite the file transfer," said Rosen. "Campus systems, with their fast connections, find themselves hosting total strangers."

The scope and nature of this problem has spurred all sides to act. The RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Songwriters Guild of America and National Music Publishers' Association of America (NMPA) authored a letter last fall to 2,300 college and university presidents explaining the severity of the problem and the importance of their active involvement in tackling the issue.

"We also reached out to the leadership of the national associations representing the spectrum of the nation's colleges and universities and they demonstrated their support by sending a follow up letter to the same universities urging them to address the P2P problem proactively," said Rosen. "This started a chain of conversations between the content industries and the leaders of higher education leading to the establishment of the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities."

This joint committee decided to establish three task forces to focus on the following areas: Education/Best Practices, Technology and Legislative Issues. Those task forces are have recently started to delve into the relevant issues.

Rosen said that initial efforts to find "common ground" with the leadership representing the nation's colleges and universities were off to a good start. "Given that those institutions are themselves heavily invested in copyright and other intellectual property rights," she said, "there's every reason to believe that we can forge baseline understandings upon which we can structure effective strategies and programs to educate students and others about music, film, videogame, and software property rights and their legal obligations towards them."

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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade organization that supports and promotes the creative and financial vitality of the major music companies. Its members are the music labels that comprise the most vibrant record industry in the world. RIAA® members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 85% of all legitimate recorded music produced and sold in the United States.

In support of this mission, the RIAA works to protect the intellectual property and First Amendment rights of artists and music labels; conduct consumer, industry and technical research; and monitor and review state and federal laws, regulations and policies. The RIAA® also certifies Gold®, Platinum®, Multi- Platinum™ and Diamond sales awards as well as Los Premios De Oro y Platino™, an award celebrating Latin music sales.