The fight against file sharers, and so called music and movie
pirates continues, even though the organisations fighting it must know
that they’re fighting a battle which was lost as soon as it began.
Regardless, Instead of working with the technologies and
companies involved, organisations such as the RIAA and MPAA,
along with the US government seem intent on going down this never
ending road of criminalising otherwise law abiding citizens.
One of the biggest groups of people to be targeted is that of
college and university students, and here, Art Brodsky outlines the
latest legal move on this front.
Higher Ed Bill Passes House With
File-Sharing Warning
The House yesterday passed a
higher-education bill (HR 4137) that included language requiring
colleges and universities to deal with what Hollywood sees as a problem
in digital downloads.
The bill, which passed 354-58, said the colleges and
universities
“shall”, which means there isn’t much
room for discussion, “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”
and
report on their policies.
This section, while seemingly benign, was built from an
incorrect
premise. According to the House Education and Labor Committee report on
the bill: “College students often use their campus internet
networks to
download and share music, movies, and television programs.
When they do
it without the permission of the owner of the content, it is theft.
This illegal file-sharing has exploded in recent years, and too much of
it occurs on college campuses.” Given that 80 percent of
students live
off campus, and that many campuses have programs to deal with
file-sharing, the language was unnecessary.
A Worthless Provision For Grants
The Committee included a provision for grants to allow
colleges and
universities to find new “technology-based
deterrents,” but until money
is actually set aside by the congressional spending committees, that
provision isn’t worth much.
In addition, the report language, which is a guide to
legislative
thinking on the bill, noted that the bill didn’t mandate any
particular
technology to combat “piracy,” and that no student
would lose aid as a
result of engaging in illegal file sharing.
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) had been prepared to offer an
amendment in
the House Rules Committee that would have said: “This
amendment
clarifies Congress’s intent that nothing in the Higher
Education Act
(HEA) be construed to deny or reduce funding for federal student loan
or other student financial aid programs to any higher education
institution based on that institution’s failure to comply
with the
HEA’s new requirements concerning digital theft.”
However, on the evening of the Rules Committee meeting, Cohen
was
back in his Memphis district dealing with the aftermath of deadly
storms that struck his area.
The amendment wasn’t offered in
the Rules
Committee, and there is no guarantee it would have been accepted, but
in any case that was the only time an amendment could have been
proposed.
The amendment clarification was nice, although we would have
preferred that the section be stripped out entirely.
Conclusions
The Senate passed its version of the bill last July (S 1642),
and
that bill takes a different approach. It said that
“unauthorized
distribution of copyrighted material on the institution’s
information
technology systems, including engaging in unauthorized peer-to-peer
file sharing, may subject the students to civil and criminal
penalties.”
The next step is a conference committee between the Senate and
the
House to work out differences in the bill. We’ll work to make
sure the
bad language gets stripped out.
Art Brodsky is an author at Public Knowledge discussing public rights in the emerging digital culture. Post has Some Rights Reserved.
