The music industry has won another copyright infringement battlenow that a MP3 Web site has shut its doors.
The Web site, www.scour.com, filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 12. Thisends a legal battle that started in July with music industrycompanies. Scour was facing legal allegations of copyrightinfringement by providing listeners to MP3 files, a audio file formatthat compresses music so it can be played through a computer.
“I really didn’t use it and I didn’t think much of Napstereither,” said Telecommunications and Network Services lab assistantKrystal Smelter. “I actually enjoy going to the store and goingthrough all the CD’s and finding the ones I like. As for Scour, I’msurprised that it even went on for as long as it did.”
Scour.com is an entertainment portal for the Internet. The Website includes music, radio and movie divisions. Scour.com also offersamenities such as movie trailers, links to film and video Web sites,online radio broadcasting, music videos and links to music Web sites.It was founded by five University of California, Los Angeles computerscience students in 1997.
On Nov. 16, after several months of litigation, Scour voluntarilyshut down Scour Exchange, a music file-sharing program much likeother programs such as the student-popular www.Napster.com. It’sdownloaded by more than 7 million people.
The Web site kept Scour Exchange running for several months duringtheir legal troubles. Scour.com is still running, but the musicfile-sharing portion, Scour Exchange, is no longer in service.
Napster was disabled from the San Diego State University computernetwork in February. When the software is installed both programs,along with many others, allow users to share and download MP3 filesover the Internet, even if the application is turned off.
Joe Vasquez, vice president of business affairs, said SDSU tookthe popular music file-sharing program Napster off the universityserver because they wanted to free bandwidth (the amount of data thatcan be passed along a communications channel in a period of time) andwait until the legal issues became clear. Other college campuses havealso banned the popular program, including the University of SouthernCalifornia.
“I don’t think we really care what students are using,” said TNSnetwork manager Kent McKelvey. “The only thing that’s really aconcern is the liability issue. That’s one of the main reasons weblocked Napster because they’re a target.”
Since SDSU banned Napster on their server, the traffic on theserver dropped 75-80 percent. When Scour Exchange shut down, trafficdropped by as much as 70 percent, McKelvey said.
“The traffic dipped for awhile,” he said. “It’s starting to creepback up, but the biggest concern is bandwidth issues.”
McKelvey described bandwidth as a pipe with flowing water.
“You have a pipe that’s feeding the residence halls and the pipeis only so big,” he said. “If you have one or two individuals thatare eating up 99 percent of that pipe then you only have one percentleft and you’re not going to get access to many things.”
Many students, however, said they think something needs to be donebesides shutting down these various music servers.
“Overall I feel that it’s really inevitable something like that’sgoing to happen,” said TNS lab assistant Travis Perreira. “Thebusiness models need to be changed rather than getting rid of Scour.Someday someone’s just going to open up a server from Bermuda wherethe laws don’t apply and then what are they going to do?”
Some students said they have found other MP3 sites in place ofNapster and Scour Exchange.
“There’s a bunch of different programs just like it,” saidinformation decision systems junior Scotty Hatcher. “They pickedNapster out of all the other programs. It’s useless, there are threeor four programs just as big as Napster that are just not aspopular.”
Programs such as IMesh and Gnutella are still running strong.
In the end, however, some students said they feel these programsinvolve copyright infringement.
“I do feel that it does involve copyright infringement,” Perreirasaid. “But I think that it should have been harder for (the musicindustry) to shut down Napster and Scour because they really don’thave the music files, it’s us that have the files, so I’m reallydisappointed in how quickly they were able to shut things down.”
McKelvey said SDSU doesn’t have any pending litigation againstNapster, Scour or any other music service provider.
