Music and movie industry groups are pressing computer and software makers to craft new technology that will restrict rampant illegal file sharing, a Harvard Law School professor told a campus audience last night.

As a result, Internet appliances designed to keep a tighter fist around copyrighted material will blossom and perhaps threaten the popularity of today's personal computers, said Jonathan Zittrain, a Pittsburgh native who co-founded Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

"The giants have woken up. They're not happy. They're smart and rich and powerful," Zittrain said. "They are doing what they can on a technical level, so that it will be harder and harder to use a [peer-to-peer] network like Morpheus."

The professor served as co-counsel on a copyright case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court last month. He said copyright law -- originally contained in Title 17 of the U.S. Code -- is gradually catching up with reality.

People's instincts for what is right or wrong is clashing with lawyers' sometimes convoluted attempts to guard against what their clients see as outright stealing, Zittrain said.

Some of the legal compromises take unusual forms, such as a law that regulates how many stereo speakers eateries may use to broadcast music from the radio.

"There are auditors hired by ASCAP who go to restaurants and count speakers," he said. ASCAP is the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which makes sure artists get royalties for public performances.

Blake Buzzini (senior-computer science) helped to bring Zittrain to campus after he saw him speak last summer at a Harvard seminar on Internet law.

"He's an amazing speaker," Buzzini said. "He's kind of like Jerry Seinfeld."

The law professor, who kept the audience of about 100 laughing for much of his lecture, showed two letters that students at Harvard and Penn State received from their universities, warning them about suspected violations of copyright law.

One accused the Harvard student of exchanging an illegal copy of "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Badass Song" from The Simpsons over the university network. Zittrain said it was probably the first and only time that name appeared on Harvard stationery. "Universities are in the weird position of becoming the Net police -- something they just don't want to do," he said.

He also cited a British report on teaching the next generation about copyright law. It said: "School children should recognize their own creativity by including the copyright symbol on their coursework."

B.J. Donovan (junior-information sciences and technology) said Zittrain did a good job of showing both sides of the copyright debate. He also enjoyed his humor. "You don't normally think a lawyer would be that funny," Donovan said.