When a student in one of UCLA’s eight residence halls wants the hit tune “Dance, Dance” from Fall Out Boy, a free version is just a few keystrokes away. Launch a popular file-sharing program like Kazaa or LimeWire, and the song is available in minutes. Want to share “Dance, Dance” with friends in another dorm? They can use the same file-sharing program to download it from the sender’s hard drive. Ditto for movies.

It’s that easy. It’s also illegal.

Peer-to-peer file-sharing of free downloads means the creators of the works in question get nothing for their creations, which is why record companies, movie studios and a fair number of famous artists have another word for the practice: piracy. Welcome to the download dilemma, a painfully complex stew of points of view that pits kids against corporations, artists against audiences, perceived rights against legal copyrights. And the nation’s universities are caught in the crossfire.

Does an institution ban the technology that allows file-sharing, even when it’s used for pristine reasons like student research? More ominously, does it prowl its own networks, looking for culprits? Or does it antagonize the entertainment industry — and Congress, which is trying to legislate the issue — and do nothing? “Piracy is the label the industry has given it in order to justify punitive action,” says Anthony Seeger, a professor of ethnomusicology at UCLA and the nephew of legendary folksinger Pete Seeger. “I think they should be coming up with ways to distribute music effectively on the Internet so that students can have access to music easily and affordably.”

The problem is the pirate, not the navy, counters Myrl Schreibman ’67, M.F.A. ’69, UCLA adjunct professor of film and television. “I am involved in educating the next level of producers and directors, and I am very sensitive to the possibility that their material could be ripped off. It raises some hairs on the back of my neck.” (The subject is up close and personal for the professor, currently involved in a lawsuit against DreamWorks and Warner Bros. over their 2005 movie The Island, which Schreibman alleges is a copyright infringement of a 1979 film he co-produced called The Clonus Horror.)

For UCLA, the download dilemma boils down to basic obligations: protect its students, not to mention itself, and obey the law. And the campus, working with the University of California, has taken a leadership position in looking for ways to resolve the issue.

UCLA’s solution required a delicate balancing act, protecting a student’s right to use such programs for legitimate research purposes while installing a notification system to detect theft. It involved launching a campuswide education effort to teach students about the importance of protecting intellectual property. And with the recently unveiled “Get Legal” program, UCLA now offers students a legitimate and inexpensive way to buy content.

“We wanted to be very careful to deal with these [issues] in a way that stayed within our policies and cultural values, addressed the due process of the students, met the legal requirements of the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] and showed our respect for copyright in the sense of being a producer of intellectual capital,” says Jim Davis, UCLA’s associate vice chancellor of information technology and chief information officer.

The notification system, installed on residence hall networks in 2004, is designed to deal with alleged file-sharing offenders without shutting down their online ability to communicate with professors, get access to class materials or check e-mail. The solution grew out of discussions UCLA and UC officials had with Universal Studios, Disney and other studios as part of a working group.

Vivendi Universal Entertainment and Universal Music Group had jointly developed the Automated Copyright Notification System (ACNS), which provides a technical way for any network service provider to process infringement notices from music and movie companies, thus saving time and money. ACNS automatically restricts or shuts down Internet access for alleged violators. UCLA modified the ACNS technology and policy assumptions (to conform to the university’s privacy rights policy) and deployed a “quarantine” approach based on a two-strike policy that would give students a chance to defend themselves. When the university is notified of an infringement, the quarantine approach first blocks the offending computer from file-sharing.

“The quarantine was for the machine,” says Kenn Heller ’77, associate director of UCLA’s Center for Student Programming. “If a student needed to do research [on off-campus Web sites], they could go to the computer lab in the residence hall. We felt the students’ rights were being maintained.”

At the same time, the system electronically sends a letter by e-mail to the offending computer, which explains to the student using that machine how to lift the quarantine. If it is the first offense, UCLA requires the student to take down allegedly infringing material identified in a copyright complaint and acknowledge that he or she has removed it, without admitting liability of any kind.

If the conditions are met, Heller says the student can electronically remove the quarantine. But for repeat offenses, the student must first meet with Heller to discuss what happened. Heller then decides what penalties are appropriate under the Student Conduct Code, which can range from referring the case to a student-conduct council to requiring the student to take a seminar on ethical decision-making. Heller says only one instance went that far, when he had to suspend a student for an academic quarter for more than two violations.

Hollywood measures UCLA’s success not by the number of violation notices students receive but by the number of repeat offenders. In the two years that UCLA has had the notification system, there was only the one repeat offender Heller suspended in the 2004–’05 academic year, says Richard Atkinson, vice president of global anti-piracy strategy and operations at the Walt Disney Studios. “That is a pretty good step,” he says. “If students understand you can and will be caught, it hopefully will institute some values that will carry on.”

In truth, there’s not much any institution can do to protect its student body, because in the shadowy world of cyberspace, someone is always watching and waiting. The moment a student downloads a copyright-protected tune or movie without paying for it, a number uniquely identifying that computer can be captured by one of the entertainment industry’s hired guns who search the Web looking for digital content. If caught, kids may just get a warning that they’ve violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). If they’ve downloaded and shared enough songs or movies to be considered “egregious” violators — the studios won’t say exactly how many shared downloads trip the wire —they can be punished by a $500,000 fine and five years in jail.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the trade group that represents music companies, has filed suit against more than 17,000 people. Since the RIAA started suing students a year ago, 1,000 users on college and university networks have been sued. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) says it has filed “several hundred” lawsuits against individuals for piracy, although it doesn’t know how many of those are students, since November 2004.

Last May, five UCLA students were sued by the RIAA for using i2hub, a file-sharing program that enabled users to download music over the high-speed Internet-2 network available at many colleges and universities. A sixth student received a subpoena in September.

It’s unlikely that the young people caught in these organizations’ sights shared downloads because they wanted to make like Bonnie and Clyde. Today’s young adults grew up during a digital revolution where they learned that information on the Internet is free, or should be. A November 2005 report, “Teen Content Creators and Consumers,” by the Washington, D.C.–based Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that “most teen downloaders think that getting free music is easy, and it’s unrealistic to expect people not to do it.”

Reversing that mind-set is no easy task.

One convicted “pirate,” UCLA electrical engineering student Diana Li, discussed her experience in an interview with the Daily Bruin. “I don’t think I’m a lawbreaker,” Li said. She considered her penalty, about $4,000 in settlement and attorney fees, severe for the few hundred files she was sharing. And she said she still believes that students should be able to share music online — but she said she would not do it again.

Sherry Lansing, a UC Regent and former head of Paramount Pictures, argues that when students download material for free, they are not acting with malicious intent.

“I don’t think students intend to do anything illegal,” she says. “They just don’t know that to creative artists, taking their work without paying for it is like stealing their souls. I don’t think the kids want to do this.”

For Lansing, the key to solving the problem is education. At UCLA, learning about copyright infringement begins on the first day of orientation when a representative from the Dean of Students’ office discusses illegal file-sharing and the sanctions violators may face. The effort is then reinforced by a “Share Right” campaign, with posters distributed in the fall to residence hall common areas. And twice a year, Davis and UCLA Dean of Students Bob Naples send a letter to students to reinforce the message that piracy violates the Student Code of Conduct. UCLA also invites guests to discuss the issue. Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of the MPAA, visited the campus last November and held a question-and-answer session on file-sharing.

UCLA isn’t alone in tackling the problem of student peer-to-peer sharing, of course, but its stance does appear more evenhanded than most. The University of Florida’s policy, for example, has been accused of being “draconian,” following the switch-on in 2003 of a program called Icarus, which stands for Integrated Computer Application for Recognizing User Services.

Icarus, which has been renamed cGridb, blocks all illegal file-sharing programs, period. Gator students have no access to any legal peer-to-peer file-sharing programs unless they apply for a fair-use exemption. A company that UF has a stake in holds the license for Icarus and is offering it to other colleges and universities. Robert Bird, Icarus’ creator and the UF coordinator of network services, dismisses criticism that his program is unnecessarily restrictive and says that the university has not received any notices or subpoenas since the program started. As for student rights, he says any student can request an exemption for academic or fair-use purposes, but none have done so.

“The electronic free speech front has misinterpreted what we are doing here,” Bird says. “They have chosen to turn a blind eye to what the software does. UF has taken a strong stand and says no, this is wrong and you need to be responsible.”

But David Walker, director of advanced technology in the UC Office of the President, says the issue is not free speech but a university’s proper role.

“We don’t feel that we should be the policemen, which is essentially the role Florida has taken with Icarus,” he says. “We really don’t like the notion that we are watching what people are doing on our communications network. People’s privacy is important to us.” Moreover, critics counter that Icarus can leave universities more vulnerable to lawsuits. Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C.–based advocacy group that defends digital rights, argues that universities are best served if they are neutral carriers of information.

“Once you start to act like a gatekeeper, you assume a lot of liability,” she notes. “If someone sends a threatening note to another student, you should have stopped it. You are opening up a hornet’s nest and you don’t want to be in that position.”

Both the RIAA and the MPAA deny that they pressure universities to do anything. But Rich Taylor, senior vice president of external affairs and education for the movie trade group, isn’t shy about expressing his opinion.

“People like to toss the word ‘draconian’ out about Icarus, but when [UF] put it in place, it made life better and easier,” he says. “What people get upset about is they realize the game is up when [universities] move toward [that approach].”

Because the law is unclear, UCLA campus counsel Amy Blum says the university has taken steps to protect itself not only under the safe-conduit provision of the law but has also put policies in place to comply with other parts of the DMCA, including requiring copyright infringers to remove illegally downloaded material and to take action against repeat offenders.

Since the Supreme Court ruled last June that peer-to-peer companies like Grokster could be held responsible for the copyright theft on their networks, Sohn says that illegal file-sharing programs are all “going down the drain anyway.” As a result, she says, it is unfair of the entertainment industry to pressure universities to actively do something about the problem. It is also the reason UC and UCLA officials have decided to offer students legal ways to download music and movies that the student would pay for instead of the university.

UCLA has signed contracts with Apple iTunes, Cdigix and Mindawn to offer students, faculty and staff discounted music, movies, video and game software programs, and other benefits via Get Legal, a collaboration among UCLA’s Communications Technology Services and the offices of Housing and Hospitality Services, Information Technology, and Student Affairs. Users of the legal download services will pay roughly $1 per download, depending on content and program used. Bruins also enjoy some customized savings. Apple iTunes, for example, will charge its usual 99 cents per song but will rebate 5 percent of all UCLA purchases to the campus, which will be shared equally among student councils. Mindawn, which specializes in royalty-free music from independent artists, is waiving its upload fee for UCLA students.

That should mollify Big Business, at least somewhat. But now government is taking a closer look at digital piracy as well. How universities respond to piracy has come under scrutiny by congressional lawmakers who want to see them do more to fight the problem.

Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) ’62, LL.B. ’65 thinks a university is in a better position to defend itself legally if it takes active steps to discourage piracy. “It is not the old days of sharing a CD with a friend,” he explains. “It threatens the whole underpinnings of intellectual properties and has tremendous consequences. You don’t want to take down networks or ban peer-to-peer systems or create a governmental role in surveillance, and you want to maintain fundamental concepts of fair use. But it is not fair use if it is being pirated.”

In December, Berman and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, requested that the Government Accountability Office conduct a study of the steps universities have taken to combat piracy. The subcommittee also plans to look at updating some of the laws governing the licensing of music to make more songs available on legal peer-to-peer services.

The download dilemma is a moving target, however. The battleground over peer-to-peer file-sharing is widening to television. Daily Bruin news editor Shaun Bishop says he knows of students who now like to download and share high-quality copies of popular TV shows like Lost, 24 and Desperate Housewives, often made within a day of the episode’s airing.

This drama is far from over. Neither the university, nor its students, nor their parents are out of the digital piracy woods.

“I think a lot of students have that mentality of ‘it won’t happen to me,’ but the scary thing is that it can,” concludes Betty Yee ’08, a student rep who sat on the UCLA committee that developed the Get Legal service. “Students are smart, but sometimes they don’t realize that some issues have the possibility of impacting their lives in a huge way.”