Clogged Internet connections as a result of college and university use of Internet music programs have given over 100 universities justification for blocking or restricting access to students' digital music files and the popular Napster.com Web site, the Web site that allows Internet users to search for and download thousands of MP3 digital music files. But University officials do not predict having to resort to such measures.
"We are very reluctant to ban access to sites that have any potential positive use," said Robert "Chip" German, director for policy and planning of the Information Technology and Communication Office. "We are really reluctant to take steps that amount to censorship."
During the past month, 134 universities around the country, including the University of Richmond, Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania have restricted student use of Napster.com, a Web site which connects thousands of MP3 digital music files online and has become a veritable feeding trough for music-loving college students.
The bans and restricted access have created a general uproar on college campuses around the country. An Indiana University student formed the Students Against University Censorship group, which has collected over 6,000 signatures on its online petition, savenapster.com. The group helped to regain Napster access for students at the University of Southern California earlier this week.
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Other universities said they were forced to take this step after discovering that nearly 30 percent of their Internet traffic involved transmissions to and from Napster, slowing Internet access to a crawl and creating worries of a network crash.
Every computer connected to the Napster site becomes a server for MP3 files, and as users share files with each other, networks become clogged because of the bi-directional traffic of large MP3 files.
The University should not have to face this problem anytime in the near future, as the high-bandwidth network is equipped to handle such heavy traffic, German said.
And while the University does have the ability to block access to Web sites like Napster, it would do so only if a "high-volume site was negatively impacting other network applications, such as those that support instruction, research or other such services," said James Jokl, University director of communication systems.
"Normally, we don't focus our measurements on Internet traffic related to any one site, but we will be monitoring the traffic to and from the Napster site to see if there is reason for concern," German said.
College students are the most avid users of MP3s because of the high-speed ethernet connections available in most dorms, so it should come as no surprise that Napster was developed by a 19-year-old student.
Shawn Fanning, who called the program "Napster" after the nickname he received for his nappy hair, came up with Napster after hearing his roommate's constant complaints about difficulties downloading MP3s, Napster spokesperson Jill Mango said.
Last year Fanning dropped out of Northeastern University in Boston to start Napster, Inc. with another 20-year-old, Sean Parker. The company was started on venture capital funds and is now based in San Mateo, California.
Since its inception, Fanning's program has faced controversy from the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA alleges that the site is used to transfer copyrighted music files and currently is suing Napster, Inc. over the alleged violations, although no trial date has been set.
Napster has avoided copyright violations through a policy statement which requests that users access only legal MP3 files - those to which recording artists have given users the right to copy and send through the Internet.
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