To the Editor:
It is likely that this week’s issue of The Polytechnic will contain reports on the recent suits against two RPI students by the RIAA. This suit is an attack on academic freedom on this campus, as well as the right to free speech protected under the constitution.
Firstly, I would like to indicate that I agree with the RIAA, in that infringing on the rights of copyright holders is morally and legally wrong. Downloading a copyrighted MP3 file from another machine on the campus network is the same as walking into Tower Records, stuffing some CDs under your shirt, and then running outside. Both crimes should be punished. Copyright infringement, however, is not a relevant issue in this case as much as the RIAA might want it to be. The campus search engine Phynd is, like other network search engines such as Google, simply a tool that makes it easier to find information that others have published on the network. If students were to publish their academic research, poetry, artwork, or their own original music on the network, it would be just as easy to locate using Phynd as the copyrighted works referenced in the suit. The RIAA should be targeting the students who publish copyrighted works on the RPI network, not those who automate the process of locating materials. It would make more sense for the RIAA to sue Fraunhofer, holder of the MP3 technology patents, Microsoft, IBM, and Rensselaer as they were the ones who actually facilitated the transfer of the copyrighted materials. Instead, students were sued as they were less likely to have the resources to mount a credible defense.
Freedom of expression is useless if nobody can hear you. Before Phynd, a student publishing materials on the SMB network would not expect people other than immediate acquaintances to be able to find what he or she had published. Phynd allowed anyone on the Rensselaer campus to find published works, providing a directory of the wealth of community knowledge. The small benefit to the copyright holders that would result from the elimination of Phynd in no way outweighs the enormous damage that this would have on the fundamental rights of students and faculty to share ideas with one another.
Rensselaer should do everything in its power to help defend the students in this case. Not doing so would set a dangerous precedent where students would be afraid to experiment with the development of new and possibly revolutionary network technologies. It would be sad if the next leap forward in computer technology was stifled because a student was afraid of being sued for how the technology might some day come to be used by others.
Nathan Woodhull
ITEC/STS ’05
