US schools as corporate copyright cops
p2pnet news | MPAA News:- Tennessee lawmaker Steve Cohen was all set to introduce an amendment to the entertainment cartel’s College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007.
The legislation wants to make schools answerable to the movie and music industries with severe financial penalties for failure to act as industry copyright cops.
Cohen’s changes would have protected the teaching institutions but out of the blue, he dropped his amendment, deciding he needed to instead pay attention to tornadoes which were ravaging the state.
Now a bill introduced in the Tennessee State Senate, SB 3974, "would force public colleges in the state to police their networks to prevent illegal file sharing," says the Chronicle of Higher Education.
"The bill would require colleges to have a policy that prohibits infringement of copyrighted works via the institutions’ networks, and to analyze their networks to determine whether they are being used ‘to transmit copyrighted works’," says the story, going on:
"The legislation would also demand that colleges either certify to the Tennessee Higher Education Commission that their networks are not used to transmit copyrighted material, or take steps to prevent the online infringement of such works. A companion bill has been introduced in the Tennessee House of Representatives."
The Senate Education Committee is scheduled to discuss the bill tomorrow.
‘… the damage was done’
Using bizarre statistics which turned out to had been grossly inflated, Hollywood’s MPAA has been claiming 44% of domestic ‘losses’ could be laid directly on file sharing students. This had the desired effect: US politicians were soon raving about the damage done to the American economy, even Hollywood’s problems are Hollywood’s problems: nothing more.
Then the MPAA finally admitted the number was out —- by a staggering 300%.
Students were, rather, responsible for 15% of domestic losses, the MPAA now claimed. But the damage was done and the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 was in place.
The music industry has for years been claiming files shared equal sales lost. The assertion is patently ridiculous, but it’s been swallowed whole and repeated as fact by the mainstream media, and the same thing is happening with the movie industry.
Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG and their RIAA are waging a protracted and bitter battle against students across America, claiming their efforts are having a marked effect, "stabilising" the "exponential growth of illicit peer-to-peer".
Nothing is could be further from the truth but as usual the statement, which doesn’t even make sense, is being parroted in the mainstream media as an accurate representation of events.
In it’s sue ‘em all campaign, he RIAA proudly boasts it’s subpoenaed some 5,500 students, claiming this is having a definite effect.
However, given the US Census Bureau’s Back to School: 2006-2007 report was projecting 7,600,000 students would be enrolled in American colleges and universities by that fall, 5,500 means nothing.
‘… requirements are unacceptable’
Educause contacted CIOs across the US suggesting they voice objections to section 494 (a)(2) of the Act, p2pnet posted recently, going on that the organisation opposed the second part, which calls on campuses to, "develop new institutional plans for addressing infringement on their networks".
A discussion paper states >>>
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.
Says Ars Technica:
"In an attempt to make it easier for schools to shoulder the burden of anti-piracy enforcement efforts, the MPAA created a toolkit last year that aimed to automate much of the process. The toolkit, however, was built using open source software and failed to comply with software’s license. After the MPAA refused to take down the software and comply with copyright law, one of the developers sent a DMCA takedown notice to the organization’s Internet service provider. The MPAA claimed that it would make the toolkit available again after resolving the copyright issues, but still hasn’t done so.
"Efforts taken by universities thus far to deter and prevent piracy have had mixed results. The University of Utah, for instance, claims that it has reduced MPAA and RIAA complaints by 90 percent and saved $1.2 million in bandwidth costs by instituting anti-piracy filtering mechanisms. However, the school revealed that their filtering system hasn’t been able to stop encrypted P2P traffic and noted that students will find ways to circumvent any system. The end result, some say, will be a costly arms race as students perpetually work to circumvent anti-piracy systems put in place by universities.
"The content industry fully admits that its own anti-piracy enforcement efforts have been extremely costly. These laws look like an attempt to shift some of those expenses away from the content industry and onto students and tax payers. Surely, university resources are better spent on education than on futile efforts to prevent file sharing and prop up outdated business models. Unfortunately, lawmakers don’t seem to agree."
Tennessee residents wishing to share their concerns with members of the Tennessee legislature can do so with contact information available on the legislative body’s web site, the story notes.
Also See:
severe financial penalties – Hollywood anti-college act approved, February 8, 2008
Chronicle of Higher Education – Tennessee Eyes Bill to Make Colleges Stop Online File Sharing, February 25, 2008
staggering 300% – Huge Hollywood mistake in student download stats, January 23, 2008
exponential growth – RIAA continues futile university attacks, February 25, 2008
sue ‘em all – p2pnet RIAA school report, February 2, 2008
p2pnet – Educause against anti-college act, February 21, 2008
Ars Technica – Tennessee legislation would turn schools into copyright cops, February 25, 2008
DMCA takedown notice – MPAA anti-university software, November 27, 2007
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February 26th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
“Now a bill introduced in the Tennessee State Senate, SB 3974, “would force public colleges in the state to police their networks to prevent illegal file sharing,” says the Chronicle of Higher Education.”
Better
Now a bill introduced in the Tennessee State Senate, BS 2008, “would force public colleges in the state to police their potocopiers to prevent the illegal copying and sharing of political propaganda,” says the Chronicle of Higher Indoctrination.