Big government in service of big business?
As part of introducing H.R. 1689, the Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act of 2007, Rep. Ric Keller (R-FL) issued a statement on his web site on March 27:
… “Illegal downloading of music and movies on college campuses is harming their computer networks by consuming a huge amount of education-related bandwidth and exposing them to viruses. It’s just plain wrong to steal billions of dollars in intellectual property from hardworking people whose jobs hang in the balance,” said Keller.
“My legislation encourages colleges to be part of the solution by allowing them to apply for federal grants to help purchase innovative technologies that will stem piracy on their computer networks,” Keller added.
There are numerous options to download music legally – online retailers such as iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody and eMusic charge varying amounts for song and album downloads. Despite this availability, a recent survey conducted by Student Monitor, a college student market research firm, found that more than half of college students continue to download music and movies illegally. This troubling trend on college campuses has led to lawsuits against computer users who engage in illegal downloading of copyrighted content. These suits force colleges to spend a great deal of time and resources responding to notices of illegal downloading.
The text of the proposed bill essentially adds a new paragraph to the text of Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1138(a)), Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). The new paragraph, below, would authorize the the Secretary of Education to make grants to or enter into contracts with, institutions of higher education, combinations of such institutions, and other public and private nonprofit institutions and agencies, to enable them to improve postsecondary education opportunities by:
(9) supporting efforts to establish pilot programs and initiatives to help offset the costs associated with implementing model programs and policies on college campuses to reduce illegal downloading of copyrighted content in order to–
(A) improve the security and integrity of campus computer networks; and
(B) save telecommunications bandwidth costs, while ensuring such bandwidth is first and foremost made available for research and education-related purposes.
Sounds reasonable, perhaps, except for the fact that decreasing illegal downloading doesn’t necessarily decrease bandwidth costs if legal downloads are substituted, and the whole thing strikes me as an excuse to just clamp down on illegal downloading to help big business. If Rep. Keller really wants to decrease the costs to universities of locating records when subpoenas are issued for individual students’ identities, etc., then why not allow the universities to charge for the recovery fee, as they do in Europe? Nope, this bill does not pass the “smell test.” I think the bill really comes back to this statement of his:
“It’s just plain wrong to steal billions of dollars in intellectual property from hardworking people whose jobs hang in the balance,” said Keller.
How sad that he did not have the integrity to propose a bill that simply said:
Congress finds that RIAA and MPAA are losing a lot of profits and they need our help to protect them from those damned students.
Although many proposed bills die in committee, this bill actually has some chance of follow-up. As Nate Anderson noted in his article in Ars Technica, the Higher Education Act needs to be extended or reauthorized this summer, so it might become part of the package. Additionally, and not unimportantly, Keller is not alone in the attempt to deal with illegal downloading on campuses. In recent hearings, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-CA), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) have all indicated that schools had better do more to crack down on illegal downloading, with Schiff reportedly going so far as to suggest that if schools didn’t do more, Congress might increase the school’s liability.
Not unexpectedly, MPAA is happy with the proposed bill.
Diverting funds from higher education to cut down on illegal downloading should not be a priority of Congress. Individual schools can already apply for grants to help them improve their security. This new bill appears to be just a business-sympathizing wolf in sheep’s clothing.
