Mar 16, 2008

Prank panics copyright violators

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

Last week, Stanford University reported thousands of students for illegally downloading music, many of whom will now have to pay thousands of dollars for violating copyright laws.

OK, so actually the university did no such thing - but thousands of students panicked nonetheless.

On Monday, the Stanford Chaparral, the university's humor magazine, published in its annual "Fake Daily" an article warning students about a new campus policy on copyright infringements. The accompanying Web site received nearly 24,000 hits from students checking to see if they were in imminent danger of being sued, said co-editor and Stanford senior Anthony Scodary.

"Under the new policy, Stanford proactively seeks violations. ... This drastic change now requires the university to flag and report each individual download spotted on the network," stated the article written by Scodary and his co-editor Josh Stark.

Already 78 "unnamed students" had been reported for violations, according to the article, with roughly 34 percent of Stanford's undergraduate population in danger of having to pay up to $9,250 per song in damages.

"We wanted it to be realistic because we wanted to generate some real panic and outrage on campus," Scodary explained on Friday.

For nearly a century, the Chaparral has published a fake edition of the Stanford Daily, the university's newspaper, on the Monday of the week preceding winter quarter exams, while the actual Daily limits its production to only one paper on Wednesday, Scodary said.

This year's effort was the first to include a Web site designed by a computer science major to accompany the main headline article, Scodary said.

When students typed in their name at http://riaa.stanford.edu to see if they were likely to be contacted by the Recording Industry Association of America, a program told half the students they were in trouble. While randomly assigned, the response remained consistent regardless of how many times a student checked his name.

"People were checking their names over and over again," Scodary said. And it was not just students worried about their status. "People on staff recognized their professors checking," he said.

Other staff members reported hearing students sobbing in the library and conducting anguished conversations with their parents, he said.

One graduate student wrote in a panicked e-mail wondering if listening to BBC Radio was enough to condemn him.

"We said, 'Oh, that's bad news ...,'" Scodary said.

Graduate student Briac Legraverend said the article was "really panicking." After he read it, he thought, "OK, I have been downloading a bit, like anyone else ..." and was startled to find his name on the Web site's list. He calmed down after typing in celebrity names to determine that Nicolas Sarkozy, Leland Stanford and Chuck Norris were also apparently guilty.

The Chaparral staff did what they could to fan the flames of panic by responding to students who had e-mailed the fake address set up to "help" them.

"We asked a lot of them to send their entire music library, arranged by genre," Scodary said. "We said, 'Don't worry, you can collapse bluegrass and blues.'"

The article also referred students to the university's legal counseling office, complete with its actual phone number and drop-in hours.

Bill Faulkner, the office's managing attorney, said the prank did not cause the massive panic at the office its organizers might have hoped.

"I'd say it was all in good fun," he said.

On Tuesday, the Chaparral posted a note on the Web site letting visitors in on the joke.

"This page is part of the Stanford Chaparral's 2008 'Fake Daily,'" the note read. "We hope you all had a good time thinking you were totally sued."



E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com.