File-Sharing Students Fight Copyright Constraints

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/education/10students.html?ref=education

This article talks about how students at universities across the country are banding together in order to try and change the rules regarding intellecctual property rights. This came about at Brown University when Zachary McCune and twelve other students received summons telling them they were being taken to court for illegally downloading copyrighted material on the college campus network. Mr. McCune settled for $3000 with the RIAA.

These students have organized themselves and hold protests and demonstrations in front of major record stores holding up signs like "Ipod Liberalization." But it is not just music that they are looking to make free and open to the public. Another way they are searching for ways to make things more public is trying to make research that is being conducted be more in the public eye. There is a bill that was passed called the Federeal Research Public Access Act which makes it mandatory for government financed research to be published online, free to the public.

Personally I think that people should have access to any research information, while I understand that some professors want to make a living on their research, I feel if US Tax or any Tax dollars go into that research that citizens should have a right to look over the research for themselves, this would allow people to formulate their own ideas on the subject and may stimulate further research in that given field.

I do not know if I would go so far as to start protest rallies on the matter, but it would seem like something that just sounds like the right thing to do.

Now I do feel if one is illegally downloading music to his or her computer and they got caught after being warned several times not to do so, well, then that was their fault and they deserve the punishment they received.