by andrew chase-ziolek

Managing Editor

Calvin students may soon need to be more discerning about the music that they download. Since the beginning of this year, Calvin has been receiving notices from a company in the employ of Sony Music, telling Calvin to remove the offending content with the implicit threat of legal action.

Two Calvin students were notified, and their ResNet connections were apparently suspended.

Calvin was first contacted in late August by NetPD, a corporation which sells copyright security. This corperation uses proprietary software to search for copyrighted content both on the web and through popular music sharing software. NetPD alerted Calvin to copyright violations concerning music produced by Incubus and Michael Jackson.

To date Calvin has received five e-mails, citing nine instances of copyright violation. All of these students were sharing music using the popular Napster replacement Aimster. At this time, only two students have been informed. It may take some time to trace the information which NetPD has provided back to the offending students. These violations may be from as far back as Sept. 1, and Calvin Webmaster Jeff Greenfield noted that he had received an email as recently as Oct. 3.

``The bottom line is that sharing of copyrighted material is not allowed. Students should know that they are ultimately responsible for what they do on the internet, and though we may not go looking for violations at this point, other people are,'' said John Witte, Associate Dean of Residence Life.

``Our standard response would likely be some sort of warning or low level probation, depending on the severity and the type of copyright violation. Repeated violations, however, could eventually lead to disconnection from ResNet -- we would really have little other choice'' Witte said.

As of yet, however, a comprehensive plan for filtering copyrighted media on ResNet has not been established. Greenfield attributed this largely to Calvin's stringent regulations for setting up servers on ResNet.

``We would only make an effort to filter our network if music sharing interfered with the academic software that we run'' Greenfield said.