OSU is No. 1 ... in Music Piracy - PeerDen.com

**Xander** · **OSU is No. 1 ... in Music Piracy -** 07-09-2008, 03:40 PM

Quote:

OSU is No. 1 ... in music piracy
Wednesday, July 9, 2008 3:21 AM
By Encarnacion Pyle
The Columbus Dispatch

Ohio State University usually likes to lead the pack when it comes to Top 25 lists, but not this time. According to the music industry, Ohio State has received 2,336 letters about students pirating music during the past school year -- more than any other college nationwide.

The University of Central Arkansas came in second with 1,811 notices, followed by Michigan State University at 1,539. "It gives us a broad snapshot of the extent to which piracy is a problem on a campus," said Cara Duckworth, spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America, which is based in Washington, D.C.

Ohio State officials speculated that they received so many notices because OSU is the largest school in the country, with about 60,000 students. However, Ohio State didn't make the recording industry association's first list of top offenders, which tallied notices from Sept. 1, 2007, to Nov. 9, 2007. Although students are primarily the ones involved in the music piracy, offenders could be anyone at the universities with access to the computer system.

The association compiled the list at the request of U.S. Rep Howard Berman, who asked which campuses have received the most notices stemming from the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Berman, a California Democrat, is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property.

No other Ohio school made the top 50. With 658 letters, Bowling Green State University ranked No. 55. Ohio University, which ranked 232nd on this list with 159 letters, had been cited in the past as a top offender where college students illegally shared music. But the recording industry association said the school had cracked down by restricting file-sharing on the campus network.

The industry sends complaints when it thinks a specific song has been illegally traded by a computer user on a particular campus. The recording industry can't identify the students, so it notifies the school about activity on its computer network. The trade group relies on the school to have the song in question removed.

If there are multiple cases tracked to a particular user, the industry threatens to sue unless the user settles. At Ohio State, about 60 students have gotten those warnings, 30 of whom have settled. OSU spokesman Jim Lynch said the university received about 95 percent of the notices in the past six months, echoing a trend noticed by colleges nationwide. College officials say they don't think the spike is matched by an actual increase in file sharing.

Computer upgrades allowed the recording industry to "turn the dial up" on enforcement by more effectively finding instances of theft and sending out notices more quickly, Duckworth said. The association now routinely sends thousands of notices each week during the school year.

To discourage students from illegally sharing music or movies, Ohio State has:

• Placed a bandwidth limit that makes it cumbersome and slow to share files.
• Adopted a policy of what is unacceptable and started talking to students about it as early as freshmen orientation.
• Started offering students a free, legal way to download content with a service called Ruckus.

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http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/07/09/OSU_piracy.ART_ART_07-09-08_A1_MBAMP09.html?sid=101

**Plush** · 07-09-2008, 04:36 PM

LMAO...Go Bucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah...you Ohioans are fuckin nuts.......

**warner** · 07-09-2008, 04:46 PM

UNL only ranked 14th, guess i should start attending

**D3M0Nz** · 07-10-2008, 04:07 PM

Go Bucks LOL
so thats why it was so hard to try and sale bootlegs to kids on campus lol

**motoxer4533** · 12-08-2008, 06:01 PM

Thats the way we do it in Ohio