Howard Ranked a Top Pirating School, ISAS Employs Firewall

Mercia Williams-Murray
3/5/07/Hilltop



Junior marketing major Chris Irish sat down at his computer on Jan. 2, his first day back on campus from winter break, and discovered he could no longer easily access one of the things he loves most.

“I thought ‘this is horrible,’” Irish said. His attempts to use Howard’s network connection to share music files were blocked by a firewall.

“I understand that many people steal music. But most of the music that I get is stuff that isn’t being sold or new music that I want to see if I like,” he said.

Irish, along with many other Howard students, has been adjusting to a firewall that ISAS placed on Howard’s network at the beginning of this year. ISAS installed the firewall on the network because of the multitude of complaints the University was receiving from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Howard University ranked first on the list for the number of complaints sent to the University during the 2005-2006 school year by the RIAA. Last year the number was 604. This year there are 572 complaints to date.

Due to illegal file sharing and downloading, Howard has been placed under scrutiny by the recording industry.

According to ISAS employee Phil Carison, the firewall blocks file sharing programs that attempt to connect to the Howard network.

“We just don’t support [file sharing] software that does it,” Carison said. “We have a firewall that blocks all of them.”

Ohio University and Purdue University received the first and second most complaints for this school year to date, respectively. The University of Wisconsin at Madison rounded out the top ten with 513 complaints so far for the 2006-2007 academic year.

“It’s very difficult,” said Jeanne Norberg, a spokesperson for Purdue. “We think [illegal downloading is] an important issue.” Norberg said music piracy has social, economic, legal and technical implications.

She added, “The problem is in a wireless environment, you cannot easily find the person who is downloading the music even if you have the IP address.”

This is because wireless IP addresses, also known as Internet Protocol addresses, are assigned randomly when people sign on to the Internet, Norberg said. However, students who use the same IP address or the same computer are confronted on the issue.

“If a student abuses their privileges in our network, we can deny them access to the network,” Norberg said. Other sanctions include probation and suspension from the University.

Norberg said students need to be honest and ethical. “There is a cost. There is a hidden cost to downloading music illegally,” she said. “Not supporting the music artists is the main issue.”
Instead of downloading illegally, Norberg suggested that students ask parents, friends and family members for iTunes cards as gifts.

“We’ll come up with a solution, we just haven’t yet,” Norberg said. “There are students who believe there is little that the administration can do to deter illegal downloading.”

Joe Connelly, a freshman material science and engineering major at Purdue, is one of those students. He said the inability to share files due to a firewall would temporarily thwart his activity.

“Sure it would [affect me] until some persons find a way to overrun these measures, then life would return to normal,” Connelly said.

Connelly, explained that computer science and engineering majors are given the abilities, through their training, that would allow them to create a program that could bypass any system the administration put in place.

“Even if the administration could do something about the illegal downloading [and] file sharing, they would not be able to do anything considering the brain power of this school,” he said.

Irish also found a way around the firewall. Instead of using a file sharing program, Irish uses Web sites to get free music.

“The [songs] are only there for a limited amount of time,” Irish said. “But I use it because I love music.”

What was it that they say about folks who throw rocks, then hide their hand???