Don't want to be this guy...

http://www.baltimoresun.com/technol...0,5896083.story?coll=bal-technology-headlines

On the University of Maryland campus in College Park this month, senior Pavel Beresnev was a hunted man.

Threats and hate mail came his way. Fliers were posted in dining halls and traded online listing his address, phone number, e-mail address and Instant Messenger screen name, along with a clear message: "Can't get on Direct Connect? Say thanks to Pavel Beresnev."

Students hoping to download a catchy song they heard on the way to campus were caught by surprise earlier this month when their link to Direct Connect, a popular online file-sharing program, was suddenly shut down. More alarming was the explanation they heard for why that had happened: Beresnev, one of their own, had turned them in for violating copyright laws.

Students were shocked - and angry. Why would Beresnev - who himself was trading a huge number of files daily on Direct Connect, a program that allows users to easily share everything from the latest music to class notes - alert authorities ready to prosecute students for downloading copyrighted material?

The truth is, he didn't.

Beresnev would not comment directly for this article. But he told friends that, as a prank, he'd sent out a fake e-mail indicating he'd tipped off authorities at the Recording Industry Association of America, which offers up to $10,000 for such information. Spooked by the e-mail, the student who had been operating the College Park Direct Connect site shut it down.

In the days since the mid-February incident, the phony tipster has recanted, and Direct Connect is up and running again on campus. But the reaction to the hoax reveals just how strongly students feel about their ability to download material off the Internet - and the fears they have about the increasingly tough stance being taken both by copyright holders and colleges and universities.

"It's just becoming too dangerous - people are getting scared," said Adam Kidwell, a junior meteorology major from Bethesda who was recently served with a warning from campus officials for obtaining copyrighted software online. "I thought everybody else was doing it, it's not that big of a deal. But when the [Direct Connect] network went down, that's when I got cautious. It made me think twice about what I'm going to be doing on my computer."

Protection is limited

Less than a week before the Direct Connect shutdown, university Provost William W. Destler and Chief Information Officer Mark Henderson had sent an e-mail to all Maryland students, staff and faculty warning of the increasing risks associated with file-sharing.

Back in December, administrators had installed software on university computer systems to restrict how many of the most commonly swapped file types could be accessed, something Destler says has shown "remarkable results" in a short period of time.

"What we want to do is communicate with students the risk they put themselves in with this sort of file downloading, and make it as difficult as possible to [do that]," he said.

The university does not prowl the Internet in search of file swappers; instead, an office it has set up called Project NEThics fields complaints from movie, music and software companies and passes along warnings to offenders. If those offenders don't delete illicit files by the next day, they risk having their access to the school's network cut off.

Once a copyright holder decides to pursue legal action, though, the university will not protect the student, Destler said.

"Once you begin to assume any responsibility like that, you're responsible for assuring [that] the behavior of all students is appropriate, and we simply can't do that," he said.

Project NEThics, which operates out of the university's Office of Information Technology, follows up every complaint, and no student has faced legal action yet. But the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the music industry, sent a message to college students nationwide last April when it sued four of them for operating private computer networks that are used to swap popular music files.