p2pnet - rss feed: Educause against anti-college act
p2pnet news | RIAA | MPAA:- Educause has increased the level of its opposition to the entertainment cartel inspired College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 as it stands.
“Educause continues to feel that the mandates contained in the House bill are expensive, ineffective, and inappropriate,” Steve Worona, director of policy and networking programs and founding director of the Educause/Cornell Institute for computer policy and law, told p2pnet.
In a letter to CIOs in universities across the the US, the bill, “requires every college and university 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,” says Educause, going on:
These requirements are ill conceived and would be harmful to higher education if passed into law. The legal online services they imagine are immature and have been rejected by student communities on many campuses, even when offered at no charge.
Literally at the last minute, Tennessee lawmaker Steve Cohen (right) yanked his amendment to it.
The bill would not only have American colleges and universities acting as movie and music industry copyright cops, but would also compel them to report on what “technological” measures they take to ensure cartel strictures are adhered to.
Failure to adequately comply could have serious consequences for the schools and Cohen’s amendment would have given a measure of protection against them being financially penalised if students were found to have been sharing files online.
We continued:
“The 300% error survey was a grotesque MPAA travesty in which it’d been claiming 44% of Hollywood’s domestic losses could be attributed to file sharing students.
“After seeing its grossly incorrect statistic splashed worldwide by the mainstream media and repeated as fact by American politicians, it finally admitted the figure should have been far lower —-15%, in fact.”
Last Friday, Educause contacted CIOs suggesting they voice objections to section 494 (a)(2) of the Act.
The letter also included talking points >>>
The House bill to reauthorize the Higher Education Act (HEA), “College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007,” addresses the problem of copyright infringement on campus networks in two parts. The higher education community supports the first part that deals with disclosure of institutional policies and opposes the second part that requires campuses to develop new institutional plans for addressing infringement on their networks.
Part one occurs in Sec. 488 of the amended bill, DISCLOSURE OF POLICIES AND SANCTIONS RELATED TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, requires institutions to report to their students annually on their policies and practices with respect to copyright infringement on campus networks.
This is the same provision included in the Senate HEA bill and the higher education community supports this provision.
Part two occurs in Sec. 495 of the amended bill and reads:
(a) In General- Each eligible institution participating in any program under this title shall to the extent practicable–
(1) make publicly available to their students and employees, the policies and procedures related to the illegal downloading and distribution of copyrighted materials required to be disclosed under section 485(a)(1)(P); and
(2) 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.
These requirements are unacceptable and the higher education community urges that this section be removed from the bill.
- Sec. 495(a)(1) is redundant and covered under Sec. 488
- Sec. 495(a)(2) is unacceptable for the following reasons:
- Campuses that offer legal downloading services typically must charge a student fee to cover the expense. Taken across all campuses, this practice could represent a transfer of over $400 million annually from higher education to the entertainment industry while raising the cost of higher education.
- Most colleges and universities have already considered offering legal, online music or movie services. Their students, however, have often told them they do not want to use or pay for these services because they do not carry musicians that the students want, do not work with Apple iPods, etc. The failure of industry to create and offer attractive downloading services should not lead to a federal solution in which colleges and universities must bear an additional financial burden so that industry can sell more of these services.
- Today’s technologies to deter copyright infringement on college and university networks are expensive, do not solve the problem, and fail to meet basic requirements identified by higher education community experts in a workshop of the Joint Committee of Higher Education and the Entertainment Community on April 19-20, 2007. Installing deterrent technology now at every campus would require an even larger increase in the cost of higher education.
- The higher education community is already working with the entertainment industry to explore technology-based deterrents as planned in the next steps of this workshop.
- Campus networks are a very small fraction of the copyright infringement problem. After touting the results of its LEK survey since 2005, on January 22, 2008, the MPAA reported that its previous estimate of 44% of copyright infringement damages coming from college campuses was a mistake. It now estimates that the correct percentage is 15-16%. They also verified that the new figure still includes all college students, not just the 18.7% of them that live on campus; therefore, the final figure for revenue loss due to downloading on campus is actually closer to 3%. So with the proposed language in the House HR4137 we are now facing federal requirements to plan to spend many, many millions of dollars in colleges and universities on technologies to reduce 3% of the MPAA projected revenue loss to a smaller figure. Although it remains important to address the problem of copyright infringement by college students through education, policy, and judicial measures, these corrected figures cast substantial new doubts on the cost effectiveness of campus technological measures, which as we know, exhibit many performance and policy problems as well.
We oppose the provisions in part (a)(1)and (a)(2) of section 495, HR 4137 as amended, and urge that it be eliminated.
Here’s the Educause letter (we’ve broken some parts into paragraphs) >>>
Dear [CIO],
Senator [Name] will be a member of the Conference Committee that will be reconciling the Senate version (S 1642) and the House version (HR 4137) of the Higher Education Reauthorization Act. We need your assistance in requesting that Section 494 (a)(2) from the House bill does not appear in the final version.
The House of Representatives passed HR 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, a sweeping bill that among many other things requires every college and university 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.
These requirements are ill conceived and would be harmful to higher education if passed into law. The legal online services they imagine are immature and have been rejected by student communities on many campuses, even when offered at no charge.
The technological deterrents they imagine are unproved and expensive, do not work well in practice, and repeatedly have been rejected by campus experts looking for real solutions. It is unclear how these plans will be evaluated for compliance with the law or by whom (for example, by the Secretary of Education). It is also unclear what penalties will be applied to campuses whose plans are found not to be in compliance.
Once campuses are required by law to make such plans, it is only a matter of time before they will be required to implement them. Together these requirements will increase the cost of higher education by hundreds of millions of dollars without solving the problem of copyright infringement on campus networks.
Recent statistical corrections show that campus networks are responsible for less than 3% of the financial losses claimed by the MPAA. We need your help now to block these requirements as the House and Senate bills are reconciled in the Conference Committee.
What You Can Do To Help
Please work with your federal relations staff and campus executives to explain the importance of this issue for [CIO’s campus]. Encourage them to call, email, or visit Senator [Name] and ask them to reject the language in House bill HR 4137. If you can not reach the Senator please ask for [staffer’s name], who is the staff member covering this issue. Explain why this is important for your campus.
Senator [Name]’s contact information:
Phone:
Staffer:
Staffer email:
Thank you very much for your help!
Best regards,
Mark Luker, Vice President
EDUCAUSE
Jon Newton - p2pnet
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