"BU computer science professor Azer Bestavros said in a June declaration supporting the defendants' motion to quash the RIAA's subpoenas that it is "not possible to distinguish between a music file obtained from a licensed, legal source and the same music file obtained illegally by downloading such filed from a remote user's computer over a network and only listening to the downloaded files."
Copyright law originally only applied to people who owned printing
presses, but with the new age of the Internet and computers, copy
machines were put into the hands of everyone, said Leonid Reyzin, a BU
computer science professor, at the Union digital rights panel.
"Suddenly, the small area of law that was relatively small is affecting us all," he said.
As
more and more people deal with digital media and copyright laws, he
said, there is a confusion and concern among Internet users, and they
do not know what is legal.
"This is seriously stifling innovation," Reyzin said. "We don't know what we're missing because of today's copyright laws."
BU is at a "very important time," Pasquale said, pointing to Harvard
University and the University of Oregon as models of schools that have
stood up to the RIAA and announced they will not accept or distribute
any letters regarding illegal file sharing that they receive.
"BU
really needs to listen to the students," he said. At some point, the
school must decide if it will refuse to distribute the letters or
"continue to be the mailbox for the RIAA."