Upholding Electronic Freedom

Harvard's recent refusal to block student access to the Napster music trading service is commendable. The University's reply, along with similar refusals by other universities such as Stanford and Princeton, provides a welcome contrast to the sad cowardice of Yale, which fully blocked Napster access last April in response to a lawsuit. More importantly, the decision reaffirms the principle that universities should be allowed to trust students with responsibility for their online conduct. The question that Harvard must now confront is one of enforcement when students make the wrong decision: The University must use discretion when addressing accusations of copyright infringement and should provide its students with the maximum degree of protection afforded by the law.

Harvard's decision was correct on both practical and principled grounds. Metallica and Dr. Dre, the recording artists who had requested the Napster ban, have not yet taken legal action against the University, nor are they likely to do so before Napster's own legal battle is resolved. Furthermore, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) affords protections to service providers such as Harvard that would make such a lawsuit difficult to pursue. However, we are glad to see that Harvard did not make its decision only because of its secure legal position--Assistant Provost for Information Technology Daniel D. Moriarty made clear in his response the University's commitment to electronic freedom. Content-based censoring of Internet sites, Moriarty wrote, would be "inconsistent with the values of broad inquiry and the exploration of ideas that Harvard...has traditionally sought to protect."

Although the Napster system may frequently be used to access copyrighted material, the same could be said of telnet, ftp, HTTP, NFS, Windows networking and every other electronic communications protocol yet devised. A ban on Internet traffic directed through Napster might create a precedent that would force the University to take steps more restrictive of student freedoms.

At the moment, however, the University must develop a clear policy on how it will respond to copyright infringement by students. Should Metallica or other artists inform the University of cases of copyright infringement, the DMCA would require Harvard to remove the network access of repeat offenders. Yet the concept of a "repeat" offender is not well-defined, and we encourage the University to use restraint in removing students' access to the network. Official warnings should be sufficient in most cases to scare students into compliance, and the heavy penalty of losing network access--which, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 has noted, could substantially interfere with course work--should be reserved for more intransigent offenders. In developing this policy, Harvard should make sure students understand what punishments could follow from their actions; however, the University should feel no compulsion to act more forcefully against its students than the law requires.