Diverse panelists examine filesharing at debate

If there ' s one thing that nearly every student at Tech has in common, it ' s a love of music. Many of us listen to it on our iPods between classes, keep it in the background while we study for our next test, and switch it on when we climb in the car.

We also keep gigabytes of it on our computers, much of it illegal.

The ethical question of downloading copyright-protected music was the hot topic of Tuesday ' s panel " The Download: Free for All? "

Hosted by the Honor Advisory Council (HAC), four panelists from different sides of the file-sharing debate spent 90 minutes discussing the moral implications of illegally downloading songs from peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

" We [wanted] to say...there ' s sides to it; downloading is illegal, and so there ' s an ethical question right there, " said Erin Holtz, a fifth-year Industrial Engineering major and HAC programs chair for the discussion panel. " We didn ' t want to tell people what was right...So we ' d be saying, here ' s all the sides, now you guys...decide how to take this. "

The event was sponsored by several Tech organizations, including the Georgia Tech Student Foundation, who funded the publicity, and the Office of Information Technology, who approached HAC with the idea for the panel.

Auxiliary Services and the Office of the Dean of Students provided additional support, and WREK and GTCN broadcasted the event.

The panelists included Linda Zirkelbach, Associate Counsel, Legal Affairs for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), who fought in last week ' s Supreme Court case against Grokster in MGM Studios v. Grokster.

John Bonus, an admitted former file-sharing addict, is a Tech alumnus who co-founded the record label Bonus Records and spoke first-hand about the impact of file sharing on the industry.

" He put a human face on the big business, " Holtz said.

Adam Toll represented Big Champagne, a leading provider of information about popular entertainment online. Toll played a neutral role in the discussion, providing only statistical data when asked.

The final panelist was Corinne Lee, a bassist and singer for the band Snowden. Her band ' s music is freely available online, a tactic she argued helps their public exposure.

The moderator was Brannon Anthony, a corporate lawyer of Lord Bissell & amp; Brook law firm.

" His job [was] to make the panel members feel uncomfortable, to ask challenging questions, " Holtz said.

The panel was originally intended to be a face-off between the RIAA and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), one of the leading nonprofit group working to preserve and protect digital rights. However, the EFF was unavailable due to the recent Supreme Court case.

" The hardest part is [finding] the panel members, because obviously you ' re dealing with organizations that are pretty famous, " Holtz said.

The panel has been under discussion since last year, when HAC started seeking new ways to promote ethics and integrity among the student body.

" We ' re not the body associated with punishment, " Holtz said. " We wanted to do something that was very proactive, that tied ethics, integrity, honor, everything into something that ' s not only valuable while you ' re at school, but...is kind of the new hot button topic. "

Especially at an institute full of techno-savvy students - who are likely to download without thought to the ethical implications - the issue becomes even more relevant.

Holtz hoped that the panel would help its attendees make more informed decisions about using P2P networks.

" A lot of us are the ones that, [while] in high school, Napster came out. We just started using it, and it ' s part of our lives, " Holtz said. " We don ' t really think about all the sides, and most people kind of made up the decision without hearing it, so this is kind of a way to learn...We want it to have future benefits in the business place, basically. "

File-sharing and P2P networks are expected to have an increasingly greater impact in the business community in the coming years.

" As [our generation starts] taking over business, are we going to allow our employees to use these kinds of networks? " Holtz said. " A lot of people are going to be developing software, and are they going to want people to be downloading illegal copies online? "

Unfortunately, the event did not go quite as planned. The discussion was dominated by Zirkelbach, who gave long responses full of statistical evidence and anecdotes. She succeeded in nailing her point home more than the other panelists, which gave the entire debate an unintended slant.

" It definitely came off more in the sense of preaching to not download, which wasn ' t the ultimate goal of the event, " Holtz said.

" We wanted it to be something with both sides, and it tended to come off in what would seem a very biased argument, " he said.

Jonathan Olinger, a fourth-year Aerospace Engineering major and HAC chair, pointed to problems with the moderator as well.

" The questions [that] ended up being posed were not the questions we intended, " he said. " It turned into a 90-minute lecture about why downloading is bad. "

" The students were quite upset, " Olinger said. " They felt it would be an actual discussion. "

However, both Olinger and Holtz agree that this provided a valuable learning opportunity, and they hope that this event will serve as a precursor to a series of panels on ethics and technology.

" Next time, we ' ll make even more of an effort to make sure that all sides are explored thoroughly, " Olinger said. " Something to challenge the way [the audience was] thinking. "

Holtz also said that they will make sure to get strong speakers who are willing to speak up for their side of the issue.

In the case of the filesharing debate, " We definitely don ' t want students to feel that we tricked them into coming and then told them that downloading is wrong, " she said.

Holtz also said that future panels would permit live questions from the students.

Questions from the audience were not taken during the filesharing debate, though two student questions that had been submitted beforehand through the HAC website were read toward the end of the event.

" We want stuff that ' s going to stay current, but also, we want controversy, " Holtz said. " But we want to do it in a way that doesn ' t talk about right or wrong but talks about thinking through ethical decisions. "