Marshall University Computer Services

[StephanieHeck]

Marshall University has been listed by a national copyright enforcement group as one of the 25 worst Univerities in the country when it comes to illegal music downloads. Copyright violations imply theft of intellectual property and this is NOT a reputation that a progressive educational institution desires to have. It is not good for Marshall and it is not good for West Virginia. The liberal side of my nature says college kids will be kids, even if they are young adults as defined by law.

However the law is none the less the law and must be obeyed.

However the fiscal conservative side of my nature understands that the state of West Virginia has invested millions of dollars for a University computer network that has all too much of its digital resources abused by students for copyright piracy.

This impacts the credibility of the University.

I am displeased by the overt waste of money. I can think of better uses for the misappropriated bandwidth. This current situation does nothing to advance the reputation of the state of West Virginia or education. It is a negligent waste of state money that this situation has not been previously abated. Tax money should not be used subsidizing unauthorized digital music distributions by students.

If the Marshall University digital network is going to be used for music distribution, then it needs to be used to put WMUL online in streaming format. That would be legitimate.

SSSSSS Hensley, MU dean of student affairs, told The Parthenon that prevention of downloading of illegal music is impossible “to restrict access to data files.” ,even though the federal law (DMCA) requires the University to regulate its own network to abate copyright piracy.

The law is controversial but the law must be obeyed.

Apparently Dr. Hensley does not understand that all MP3 music files can be rapidly removed from the student server in ten minutes by any competent server administrator. It's NOT impossible as he wrongly alleges. This needs to be done for the sake of the University’s reputation.

The University already prohibited copyright violations on its network. The University computer system administrators were merely negligent to enforce the rules. And therein lies the profound problem. This has NOTHING to do with the publicity from the We Are Marshall movie.

This situation is not without precedent. A portion of the states computer network at the state capitol was misused and abused about two years ago by state employees who were using state machines to download and burn pirated DVD's. As I understand it, the Governor of West Virginia promptly fired the administrators of that network at that time, and he was correct to do so.