We are a generation faithful to our way of entertainment. Youngsters spend most of their spare money on outlandishly priced CDs, yet the vampires of the entertainment business have not yet sucked enough of our blood, it seems.
On top of CDs costing 20 bucks and DVD collections that are priced in the hundreds, ASU honor students are expected to refrain from any illegal downloads of music and movies, as Alicia Fremling could tell you. Fremling is an honors freshman who got her Internet privileges taken away because the Barrett Honors College (BHC) is a tool of the music industry.
Although its profits are as high as they have ever been, the entertainment industry had the audacity to ask 2,300 universities to support them in stopping computer piracy. The BHC listened.
Prior to Fremling's case, the BHC's only action was to send out an e-mail to all honors students on Feb. 19, asking them to refrain from using campus Internet for any unauthorized downloads. So long as they had no intention of enforcing this, the e-mail was harmless. But what they did to Fremling is beyond exoneration.
The college's argument is technical in nature. William Lewis, chief information officer at ASU, claims that if students are not kept from using the Internet for such downloads, then the school's bandwidth will suffer. The school feels that when the limited available bandwidth is monopolized with downloads, those students needing the Internet for research struggle for proper Internet performance.
Lewis has a decent point, but his argument fails to address two things: First, there is no evidence to suggest that ASU students do research, but we'll humor him and give him the benefit of the doubt on this point.
But what about the other Internet activities that demand bandwidth, such as gaming or other multimedia operations? Of course, the reason that no one is cracking down on these is that they do not step on the toes of corporate profits.
Fred Estrella, an information technology officer at NAU, suggested that students rat one another out for such usage. But if another student comes to me and threatens to snitch for downloading a song I will bludgeon him about the face repeatedly until he realizes that I am not the enemy (then probably a little while longer just to make sure). The true protagonist here is the greed of the entertainment arena.
The industry's propaganda of choice appeals to our code of ethics, proposing that paying these artists for their music is the right thing to do. They claim that in a few years' time, if pirating continues, the entertainers and all of those hard-working Americans involved in this multi-billion dollar industry will suffer.
What you do not see is a rich, mammon CEO damning his luck that he cannot take all of our money. If the industry was losing this battle so badly, they would not be able to afford propaganda as we will soon see in nationwide anti-piracy movie trailers. Such is the act of a business hungry for greater profits, not starving because of fair use.
Other than label whores such as Lars Ulrich, the record companies are the only ones crying mercy, not the artists. The artists make only pennies from each CD sold; most of their money comes from touring. If these corporations go the way of the dodo, it will simply bring about more bands like the Phunk Junkeez, who refuse to surrender all of their money to a record label and instead market their own music.
Though industry profits are up, and polls show that free usage does nothing but spawn more consumer spending, they still harp on how much more they could have made.
There has never been a shortage of people dying to have their music heard, and the notion that this will simply stop if and when profits slow is entirely erroneous. I am ashamed to see the BHC succumbing to such insistences.
While a million bucks a year goes to bandwidth, they cannot use the argument that there is no money to pay for more; not when they are currently throwing money away to enforce this Drachonian rule.
It is bad enough that the BHC heeds the complaints of people hired to smoke out piracy, but counting on brown-nosing students to say "he done it" is more immoral than sharing a couple of one-hit wonders with friends. There is hope for BHC students; big brother is only watching for these downloads from 6 a.m. to midnight, so be sure to do your pirating in the wee hours.
I encourage every student to slap on an eye patch, cry "arrrrgh" and get your music for free, 'cause being a pirate beats being a snitch any day.
Darren Todd is an English Literature Senior. Reach him at lawrence.todd@asu.edu.
