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Colleges Not Responsible For Illegal Downloads
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Published: January 7, 2008
Should colleges become media policemen? That's exactly what would happen if the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 were passed.
The bill as written deals primarily with federal college grants, loans and scholarships. It also includes, in Section 494, a provision increasing the responsibility of colleges for stopping illegal downloads and peer-to-peer transfers over the Internet of copyrighted material such as music, movies and TV shows.
The bill states that all participating schools will inform students and employees of the "policies and procedures" related to the illegal sharing of various media. The bill also encourages institutions to develop plans to offer alternatives to or deter the use of their networks for the aforementioned activities.
Fortunately, adherence to this new policy is not mandatory. The bill's proponents have said that institutions and students will not be penalized for noncompliance.
The secretary of education, however, will be empowered to give out grants on a competitive basis to schools that follow through on the procedures. This will likely entice many institutions that will then spend money and resources to implement such systems. Who are these costs going to be passed on to? The students, of course!
There are a number of reasons this bill should be opposed. It is a violation of student privacy. The government or any other surrogate organization should not be looking at the Web sites we go to. They should not be reading our e-mail and monitoring other Internet traffic because someone might be sharing a copyrighted song.
The main issue with the bill is that of enforcement. Why should the school be responsible for stopping media piracy? Shouldn't the entertainment industry be stopping people from sharing music over the Internet?
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has given their support for this section of the bill, and perhaps the MPAA, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and other groups were pushing for its addition from the start.
The attempted enforcement by the music and movie industries has gone overboard. Recently Jammie Thomas was found guilty for making her music available on a peer-to-peer network on the Internet and was hit with a $222,000 fine.
Obviously their new plan is to go after colleges and students where, in all probability, a large amount of this sharing takes place.
Early in December, the RIAA sent pre-litigation notices to hundreds of college students, giving them the choice of settling or meeting the RIAA in court like Thomas did.
If the entertainment industry truly wanted to stop piracy, it would realize that lawsuits and federal bills are not going to cut it. A study done by the NPD group showed that four times as many people download music and movies illegally than those who use legal methods.
Even supposing sharing could be stopped over the Internet, the problem is not going to go away. College students are resourceful; Sharing media will just evolve and change. The industry needs to realize that the model of selling CDs with one song people want to listen to is out of date.
Most people have no problem paying for something if they can do it in an easy, effortless and reasonably priced manner. Just look at iTunes for all the evidence you need. It, along with other online venues like Amazon, allows users to buy just the songs they want - not a whole CD - for a realistic price. The users can then use them on their computers or music players, or put them on CDs.
This removes the manufacturing and distribution costs and makes the customer happy. As a result, they have been incredibly successful. All the entertainment industry needs to do is embrace this paradigm shift, and the customers will follow.
Will this new model eliminate media piracy? No, of course not. Since the first reel-to-reel recorders became available there has been piracy, and yet since that time, the entertainment industry has increased in size enormously and continues to make money. Piracy obviously can't be affecting their bottom-line all that much.
The entertainment industry should not go around complaining about a problem, going after college students in court, or enticing colleges to become media police - the industry should be productive and fix it.
Andrew Bulthaupt is a computer engineering student at Stevens Institute of Technology.
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