Last school year, 23 Vanderbilt students received subpoenas to answer for allegedly illegally downloading music. Since 2006, a total of 96 subpoenas have been served, according to Sal Ortega, Vanderbilt’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act expert.
Obviously, "Music City, U.S.A." is a great place to live if you want to catch live acts around town. But if you are a college student illegally downloading music, it's a different story.
That's pretty much the impetus for a new Commons seminar for first-year students. "Stealing In Music City" will give students a chance to formulate their own systems of a legal, cheap way of distributing digital music while having artists and labels compensated.
Director of the Music Library Holling Smith-Borne and Education and Outreach Librarian Sara Manus developed the class after the Recording Industry Association of America sued several college students (including Vanderbilt students) for illegally downloading music.
"The impact that I would like to have on the students taking the course is to increase their ability to critically think about the issue of music copyright and for them to look at it from a variety of perspectives," said Smith-Borne. "It's easy to look at P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing from a consumer perspective but what about the music industry professional, or the artist, or the lyricist?"
First-year student Sarah Barr was attracted to the class for various reasons.
“I write and perform music, so I am fascinated with the entire music industry,” said Barr.
“I’ve never had any experience with copyright laws or dealing with music from the piracy side so I came into this class to gain knowledge and to hear different perspectives.”
The class will also have a list of speakers affected by illegal downloading, such as Alice Randall, the only African-American woman to ever write a No.1 country song; Tim Dubois, a Grammy nominated songwriter and clinical professor of management at the Owen Graduate School; and Randall Foster, licensing and business development manager of Naxos of America.
For more information, check out the Common Place Web site for a complete description of the class and class time.
