When asked about how
his job had changed with the evolving issues arising from the limits of
the Digital Millennium Copyrights Act applied to Internet access, Mr.
Conrad said that he felt like a "policeman." This gets in the way of removing
barriers and providing easier access to the 33,000 students attending
Florida State University. Mr. Conrad nonetheless said, "It is cleaner
to limit Napster because of financial implications rather than moral ones.
It is not appropriate to use tax dollars for Napster," he stated.
The Napster issue, he admits is "very thorny" and although Florida
State University was not sued, like Yale and the other universities, all
blocked access after the artists' legal staff announced that students
could be liable individually. Mr. Conrad thought it amusing that his counterpart
at Yale remarked, "The Yale experience should not involve creating
a rap sheet for its students."
While the beat goes on with Napster and now Gnutella, which gives the
user complete anonymity, scrambling the computer's number so that a call
is untraceable, performers and the legal system will have to come to terms
about what can be gotten for free. Make no mistake, however, while some
attribute the argument to morality and ethics, it boils down to money,
and how much are we entitled to get for free.
