It's nice to not be the guinea pig. The problem arose late last year when some universities saw the connections between their own Internet systems and the larger, commercial Internet bogged down by heavy traffic. Officials discovered that the traffic jams were caused by students who were downloading free music by using an application from Napster. The application lets users search for music on the computers of everyone else who is linked to Napster at the same time, blocking the schools' primary roadways to the outside computer world. The technology's capabilities haven't endeared Napster to the Recording Industry of America, which accuses the company of encouraging people to break the law by pirating commercially recorded music from the Internet.
Many students feel otherwise.
Bruner set up a Web site and petition drive for students at all 196 universities that he says have banned Napster. Only if a request can't be satisfied that way will it cross the school's pipeline to the larger Internet, he said, greatly reducing the traffic on those roads. The school has changed its own campus network so that things like Napster music searches come second to the school's own business and research, he said. A later version of the application will direct searches to a university's own network before sending them to the schools' shared one, Kessler said. A spokesman for RIAA did not return repeated phone calls by The Associated Press seeking comment.