FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions about Trinity Policies and Piracy in General
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Why shouldn't I pirate media?
Because you could get in big trouble. You could get sued for many tens of thousands of dollars, and if your volume of piracy is high enough, it could even be considered a felony criminal offense.
No, I meant: Why shouldn't I pirate media, as in, if I can get away with it, what's the harm? How can it be considered "theft" or "piracy" in the first place? I'm not actually taking anything physical from anyone.
Well, in terms of harm, piracy cuts into the rightful revenue stream of copyright holders. And we're not just talking about entertainment industry or publishing "fat cats"; lots of middle class folks are employed by these industries, and piracy hurts them, too. And as far as pirating digital content not being the same as physical theft: Even though a digital copy of a copyrighted work is theoretically valueless and infinitely reproducible without real cost, that doesn't mean that the production of that work was cost-free. And that's what you're exploiting when you pirate: someone else's intellectual and production labor, because they have the legal right to be remunerated for it.
But downloading isn't illegal. Only uploading is.
This is a deeply erroneous popular belief. Federal copyright law [in 17 U.S. Code § 106(1) and § 506(a)(1)(B)] clearly stipulates that both unauthorized redistribution and simple reproduction of copyrighted works constitute infringement. (In some cases, criminal infringement.) Case law has also definitively settled this question. For example in the case of Harper v Maverick Recordings, young San Antonio resident Whitney Harper was found liable not just for illicit redistribution of copyrighted music via P2P network Kazaa, but also for merely reproducing it for herself:
"We need not address the 'making available' [ie, distribution] argument at this time, however, because Harper did not appeal the district court’s finding that she had infringed Plaintiffs’ copyrights by downloading, and hence reproducing, the audio files. [...] Even if the court agreed that Harper did not 'distribute' the recordings under § 106(3) by making them available to others, the underlying finding of copyright infringement predicated on reproduction would remain."
And there's another issue here we need to address: The way BitTorrent technology in particular works. Without going into too much technical detail, when you use BitTorrent, you're almost always "seeding" (uploading) by default, at the same time that you're "leeching" (downloading). So even if there were a legitimate legal distinction between the two activities, there often isn't, in practical terms.
What's the big deal with pirating using the campus network? I torrent from home all the time.
What you do on your home network is not the concern of the university. But on campus, we're obliged by law to combat piracy (under the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008), and could face federal sanctions if we don't. And you could personally get in trouble. (See the first question in this FAQ, above.) You could also face institutional sanctions, including being brought before the Student Conduct Board for repeated offenses.
Why is the university cooperating with the industry? Why isn't it supporting us students in our right to download what we want?
We're simply abiding by the law, and exercising all due respect for the rights of intellectual property holders. The university fully supports students in their exploration and fair use of media in the educational process, but also seeks to educate students on their ethical and legal obligations to use intellectual property appropriately.
What in the heck is a DMCA notice?
A DMCA notice is a letter sent by a copyright-holding entity either to the representative of an internet service provider or to an individual network user, advising them of infringement activity occurring on that network, and demanding that the activity be stopped and any illegally downloaded content, deleted. In Trinity's case, these are usually sent directly to us in library administration, and we must then work with ITS to identify the infringing TU network user by IP address and communicate the cease-and-desist message to them.
I don't understand. How can rightsholders know that it's me, by name, who was doing the pirating?
They won't know it's you by name, but your IP address will be visible when you use services like BitTorrent or mass-data sharing websites. Entertainment industry rightsholders hire computer experts to track infringement occurring on these resources. And once your individual IP address is known, they contact us, and the university's ITS personnel can identify you personally by that computer address and we must then forward any DMCA notices to you and advise you to stop pirating digital content.
I have "six strikes" before I get into real trouble though, so I'm not worried.
The Copyright Alert System (aka the "six strikes" program) is neither law nor university policy, and is totally inapplicable to any torrenting that happens on campus. It is an industry initiative on the part of certain commercial internet service providers to curtail illicit file-sharing on their own networks. Trinity does not participate in the CAS, and indeed has a much stricter policy and set of sanctions for illegal file-sharing.
I've heard that some students have gotten busted for pirating porn on campus. Is this true?
Yes. (We're not going to mention any specific titles of works, though.) It might be awkward to get a DMCA noticed passed along to you by us for that stuff, so...you know, just keep that in mind.
Is it copyright infringement to use software to rip audio from a YouTube video and convert it to mp3?
This question is usually asked in the context of engaging in this activity in lieu of just paying for the song on iTunes or Amazon MP3 or some other licensed pay service. Long story short, if it's not your music, if you don't have express permission to copy, and if you're just doing it to get around having to pay $1.29 for it on iTunes, then yes, it's infringement. Consider a subscription to Spotify or Last.FM or Pandora to stream virtually any music you want and have an easy way to purchase songs directly. These days there's zero practical justification for pirating music in particular, and we're seeing less and less of it.
OK, continuing with YouTube stuff for a minute...am I infringing copyright if I'm only watching ("streaming") content that someone else has illegally uploaded?
Short answer? The law isn't exactly clear on this yet, as technology has outpaced it. But it doesn't so far seem to be legally established as infringement.
Nuanced answer: The above is not to say, however, that streaming pirated video is a good idea. Court cases have arisen in which it has been argued that streaming is infringement on the basis of a temporary copy being created in a computer's RAM, and there are certainly streaming websites that aren't the safest places to visit (hosting malware, etc). But for both legal and practical reasons, you're probably not going to get sued for just watching pirated film content in a streamed format.
I'm not gonna get busted. I use such-and-such technology. It masks my activity completely.
Nothing masks your activity completely. There is always a risk.