Despite Blog Hype, Bill Wouldn't Turn Universities Into Copyright Cops | Threat Level from Wired.com

Despite Blog Hype, Bill Wouldn't Turn Universities Into Copyright Cops | Threat Level from Wired.com 

Despite Blog Hype, Bill Wouldn't Turn Universities Into Copyright Cops

By David Kravets November 19, 2007 | 6:14:48 PMCategories: Copyrights and Patents

The blogosphere has been flaming over a few paragraphs about illegal downloading tucked here and there in the massive proposal called the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007. (747-page .pdf)

THREAT LEVEL isn't about to name names of the blogospherians out there fostering this blistering hype. The blogosphere isn't alone in its hyperbole, either.

Some university presidents, vice presidents and chancellors from Yale, Stanford, Penn State and the University of Maryland are also crying wolf about the act, which a House committee approved Thursday. They say in a letter to California Rep. George Miller, one of the measure's Democratic architects, that a university's students would be cut off from financial aid if an "institution has failed to prevent illegal file sharing."

"Such an extraordinarily inappropriate and punitive outcome would result in all students on that campus losing their federal financial aid -- including Pell grants and student loans that are essential to their ability to attend college, advance their education and acquire the skills necessary to compete in the 21st century economy," the campus officials wrote Miller on Nov. 7.

Nowhere in the 747-page document does it suggest such a Draconian outcome, which is being echoed over and again.

One provision under Section 494 of the act, entitled "Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention," asks universities "to the extent practicable" to "develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity."

The act does not spell out any consequences for failing to abide. And nowhere does it say how a university can abide by Section 494.

Nobody has pointed out that the section at issue is valid for five years. That's about how long it would take to litigate a lawsuit over the issue all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if need be.

The measure also has to pass the full House and Senate.

Then there's another provision, under Section 487: "Institutional and Financial Assistance Information for Students." It requires universities doling out federally-backed financial aid to inform "students that unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, including unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing, may subject the students to civil and criminal liabilities."

Telling students the obvious does not reduce a university to copyright cop. Young students, like 18-year-old freshmen just off the farm, might not fully appreciate the ramifications of illegal downloading, especially when the university hands them an all-access pass to the internet as part of their tuition fees.

The Recording Industry Association of America has sued more than 20,000 people for copyright infringement. The Motion Picture Association of America has sued hundreds for unlawful downloading as well.

Still, there's one thing the blogosphere and university chiefs got right. In their letter to Miller, the school officials, for example, repeatedly called the act an "entertainment industry proposal."

Photo: Wesley Fryer

Despite Blog Hype, Bill Wouldn't Turn Universities Into Copyright Cops | Threat Level from Wired.com