College Network provides a file sharing service to all college and university students over the Internet. The messaging system that is installed on the college network platform allows users to share all files available on their computer, as stated by the platform provider – for study purposes only. As it turned out, students were sharing not only academic articles, books, and lectures but also music and movies that are normally watched by people for entertainment purposes. Some of the movies, on the other hand, were shared by students for educational purposes, such as for preparation of a report. College Network provided opportunities for student sharing of all types of data and created the network.

Consequently, there is a possibility of infringement of copyrights, as files were used by students and did not serve only educational purposes; however, this fact cannot be supported by factual evidence. The question that rises is whether students should be charged for copyright infringement. If so, should the responsibility be shared with the College Network for creating the opportunities for copyright infringement and to what extent? Should students or College Network be sued for copyright infringement at all? Or, perhaps, from a utilirianistic perspective, the act of file sharing for educational purposes should be considered legitimate?

The solution to the problem of copyright infringement can be discussed from several perspectives. Under a utilitarianistic perspective, neither students nor College Network should be charged for copyright infringement, as files were used for educational purposes in order to increase the level of awareness and raise the level of knowledge. Given the utilitarianistic approach view the subject from cost minimization and benefit maximization for society overall, in order to stimulate scientific development in the long run though provision of the essential knowledge, individual students, once again, should not be charged. Whereas if to consider copyright law in terms of incentive provision perspective, such file sharing over the network could have potentially created long run negative effects, as economic benefits would be, therefore decreasing.