And then there was Napster. The new standard in music piracy. To enlighten those of you who haven't been reaping its benefits, Napster is built on a model called "Distributed Aggregation." In non-CS nerd language, this means that you run the Napster client, and it sends a list the MP3's on your hard drive to it's server. The server takes everyone's files and compiles them into a huge searchable database with direct links to the users individual computers. So you just type in "Staying Alive," and Napster pops up 12 people from whom you can download it. Admittedly, the software, still officially in beta testing, is pretty crappy. It was written by a Boston University freshman with no previous programming experience. Half the time it doesn't even work, but Napster's several thousand users don't seem to mind. At any rate, the program has amassed enough popularity to attract the attention of the record industry, which is suing the 6 month-old startup company for $100,000 for facilitating the illegal transfer of copyrighted materials. Napster claims innocence on the grounds that all file transfers go directly from user to user. Napster merely hosts a list of accessible file servers.

Recently, however, a more sinister issue has surfaced. Network administrators at well over 100 colleges and universities nationwide are blocking Napster's address form being accessed from dorms, thus cutting the primary user base - college students - out of the loop. Among these universities are NYU and Seton Hall, locally, as well as Ivies Brown and Penn. Enraged students at Indiana University immediately did what college students do best and started a protest group with an acronym for a name, and starting passing around a petition. SAUC (Students Against University Censorship) have been shouting about first amendment violations, but overwhelmingly, these institutions cite bandwidth flooding as their reason for cutting off access to Napster. In some cases, administrators found that almost 50% of network traffic came from large file transfers to and from dorms.

If this is true, it is hard to make a case against these universities. As the owners of the network equipment, they have the legitimate right to limit the flow of traffic if it becomes disruptive to network service. But there are those who believe that the bandwidth issue is only a ruse. The real reason, some say, is pressure from Napster's evil arch-nemesis, Recording Industry Association of America.

"Napster is being blocked because the RIAA is secretly meeting with top school officials and threatening to sue them if they don't block it." Said user Kimlana on the Napster online message board. "This isn't speculation...at least two schools so far (CMU is one of them, I forget the other) have come forward admitting to these threats." Kimlana has not responded to requests to support this claim, but such tactics are not unusual for the RIAA, which has been sending letters to universities (including Columbia) since before Napster was even conceived, asking them to shut down file servers run by students. Kimlana also pointed out that under the Communications Decency Act of 1996, service providers like the universities and even Napster itself cannot be held responsible for content provided by users. Thus the RIAA does not appear to have any legal basis for suit. It does however, have a whole ton of money to spend on lawyers. Anyone interested in signing the censorship petition or otherwise supporting the cause can find information at the SUAC website savenapster.com.