Harry drozdowski

The Campus- Based Digital Theft Prevention Rider

Recently, a massive 747 page higher education bill was introduced in Congress, titled the “College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007.” Contained in this bill is a rider which contains a provision requiring any and all universities receiving federal funds to police and enforce the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America’s corporate demands. A rider is a small section attached onto a big bill which would never pass on its own but passes because the majority of congress wants the rest of the bill to pass. This controversial section of the bill begins on page 411 and is titled “Section 494(A): CAMPUS-BASED DIGITAL THEFT PREVENTION.” To prevent college students from illegally accessing copyrighted material and to encourage “proper purchasing,” the section says all schools must have 1)“a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property” and 2)“a plan to explore technology based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.” Essentially, the RIAA and the MPAA have lobbied so furiously and effectively that congress now feels that, among the myriad purposes of higher education universities, universities should be required to police and prevent the illegal downloading and sharing of copyrighted material.

If universities don’t comply with the proposed regulations of the bill, then they risk losing all federal financial aid. Included in this federal financial aid are funds earmarked for students who need financial assistance in order to pursue a higher education, such as Pell Grants. Students who have never even considered illegal downloading or sharing of copyrighted materials may be barred from pursuing higher education because their university is no longer eligible to receive federal funds by reason of the university refusing to police and enforce outdated RIAA and MPAA-backed policies. This rider is a last-gasp effort by the RIAA to sustain dwindling profits and it simply will not work to curb illegal downloading on university campuses. “Like steroids,” says Eliot Van Buskirk of Wired Magazine, “the Campus Based Digital Theft Prevention provision could artificially bulk up their revenue statements. But it would be healthier for record labels to do the heavy lifting themselves by embracing business models that attract customers by being useful rather than required.”

Approximately two-thirds university students live off-campus and utilize commercial Internet Service Providers. According to The Digital Citizen Project, through Illinois State University, “control and command of University networks on most campuses impacts only a small percentage of students’ internet connectivity and thus file-sharing activity.” This means that only a small percentage of students would actually be required to follow the university’s congressional mandated policies. The Digital Citizen Project published a report which lists many problems and flaws with the proposed language of the COAA. Three of the most convincing arguments given are listed below. First, the DCP argues that “signature based vendors, whose products block or filter based on content cannot supply or service 4,000 college campuses because, in our opinion, they aren’t ready. Many of these products were originally developed for other commercial uses but are being adapted to meet this new challenge. Audible Magic, the industry leader, has less than 100 installed campuses. Additional companies like Red Lambda, eTelemetry, Safe Media, and others have few customers of record.”

It seems beyond silly to require universities and colleges to implement and force students to use technology that has not even been shown to work effectively or adequately. Additionally, “each and every campus network is different in its architecture, its needs, and its capabilities.” Some installations appear to change network settings or registration procedures that can cause chaos on a live network and would prevent students from using the networks for genuine academic pursuits. Also, these systems are “costly and labor intensive to install and maintain. There is very little available from these companies in the way of technical support either in documentation, in person, or by phone.” Perhaps the most convincing reason why the COAA would fall short is that fact that the current technologies for finding illegally downloaded or shared intellectual property simply do not work. The existing systems that track songs and films simply cannot find all, or even most, illegally downloaded movies and music. Tests conducted at Illinois State University show “that even the largest library of electronically-signatured media still only captures 33% of the songs and about 2% of the movies. Campuses cannot catch and block what they cannot find.” Essentially, the RIAA and MPAA, through congress, are attempting to make universities and colleges use substandard, unproven technologies in a feeble effort to reduce illegal file sharing and to encourage “legal” (See: Profitable) file sharing.

Furthermore, it would require an almost socialistic approach to funding the proposed “alternatives” to illegal file sharing. The only current alternatives are subscription-based services, such as the new Napster, which allow a user to download an unlimited number of songs which often times cannot be shared or even moved to a different media by the same user. One service goes so far as to prevent the user from accessing any downloaded content after graduating from the subscribing university. The cost of these subscription programs is certainly not cheap, but with federal funding on the line universities would certainly find a way to pay the subscription fees. The bill for this subscription service will undoubtedly fall to the already financially burdened college students, a bill which Digital Freedom estimates to be nearly 100 billion dollars. While this 100 billion dollar stream of revenue would undoubtedly be a boon to the failing music industry, it places too strenuous a burden on college students and universities. Requiring 100% of college students to pay for a service only 15% of them will actually use and 2% actually want is outrageous.