In the wake of lawsuits against two Rensselaer students by the Recording Industry Association of America, many questions have been raised about what kind of stance the Rensselaer administration would take on file sharing servers on the campus network.
Currently, the RIAA is turning its focus towards individuals who have accumulated a substantial amount of music in their systems. The exact quantity has not yet been defined. This is in addition to their campaign against file-sharing servers, such as Napster, KaZaa, and others.
In response to the tension surrounding this issue, some schools, such as Virginia Institute of Technology, have adopted new policies preventing students from sharing files using the campus network.
At Rensselaer, it has not been decided whether or not such a policy will be adopted. “The policies we have are probably adequate for the time being,” said Dean of Students Mark Smith.
“‘Time being’ is couched in current technology,” he added, explaining that as new technology is created, more stringent policies will be needed.
The current policies at RPI prohibit copyright infringement and searching of the private files of any computer on campus, but do allow for file sharing not in violation of these two policies.
RPI administration is going to wait to see what new laws have to say about the legality of developing file-sharing software, but does not plan to create a policy prohibiting file sharing. “RPI is not ready to have a policy like that,” said Smith.
The Dean of Students Office will be monitoring the situation in the first few weeks of the fall semester to see whether or not it is necessary to develop additional policies beyond those which already exist.
