Even though UW-Madison ranked high on the list of universities receiving the most number of music copyright complaints this year, campus administrators say they do not plan on cracking down on downloading.
UW-Madison ranked 10 on the Recording Industry Association of America's list for the most amount of illegal downloads among college campuses, with 513 copyright complaints so far this school year.
Brian Rust, communications manager for UW-Madison's Division of Information Technology—which is in charge of campus networks—said the university usually considers the RIAA's first complaint only a warning.
""We simply send notices every time we find an instance of copyright infringement,"" said Jenni Engebretsen, spokesperson for RIAA. ""It's up to the university to pass along the relevant information to the user and to take action as they see fit.""
Rust said when DoIT gets an RIAA copyright compliant, they pass the information on to the student, housing and the dean of students, leaving the next step up to those authorities.
However, with no ""real"" enforcement, students continue to download as much media as they can on UW-Madison's high-speed network.
""I'd say I download 10 songs or about an album a day,"" said Hank, a freshman, who has downloaded 4,420 songs since coming to Madison.
Compared to other students, this number is small. Ben, another UW-Madison freshman, has downloaded 15,000-20,000 songs since getting to college—about 100 songs a day.
The RIAA considers illegal downloading to be a major issue for universities due to the amount of space downloads take up on a network.
""This is an issue for university administrators as well as the music community,"" Engebretsen said. ""Not only on a moral level, but on a financial level.""
Rust said he doubts there is an increase in the number of illegal downloads at the university, but that it ""doesn't let [DoIT] off the hook for continuing PR campaigns to tell students, faculty and staff that they shouldn't be doing this.""
