Keep Eyes on States for University P2P Bills, Educause Told

Universities are watching with bated breath to see if P2P elements in a House bill for higher education reauthorization (WID March 14 p5) survive conference with the Senate version, said Terry Hartle, American Council on Education senior vice president for government and public affairs. Education groups are stuck in response mode, he said: “The issue gets defined before we get there” and lawmakers are “led to believe there’s an easy, simple, cheap solution” to campus infringement. The MPAA’s steep downward revision of data on the college share of infringement (WID Jan 24 p5) gave many lawmakers pause, he said: “If they mis- diagnose the problem by that much… what does that tell us about efforts to find a simple, straightforward solution?”

A deal between chambers could emerge Friday, though Hill leaders originally predicted reconciliation by Valentine’s Day, so education groups are “betting on Flag Day,” Hartle joked. The Education Department hearing and comment period for enacting the law could be more decisive than its eventual content, he said.

Tennessee universities escaped stiff mandates for P2P policing despite heavy lobbying by the music industry, which employs 54,000 there, said Tom Danford, chief information officer for the Tennessee Board of Regents. The group, which runs the State University and Community College System, came across an RIAA-written P2P bill this year only because it reviews all legislation, he said. The board got wind of a committee hearing on the bill the night before and managed to get Educause’s Worona there to testify against it, Danford said. It would have cost universities $14 million just to implement the bill’s “effective technology-based deterrents” (WID March 7 p6), required for every campus network, not just those for campus residences, he said.

The board fretted over what Danford called a “PR response” to the legislation by the University of Tennessee System and a non-response from the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association, though eventually all joined to weaken the bill. The legislature ended up simply codifying a 2006 resolution demanding that schools educate students on campus P2P policy, “explore” offering licensed services to students, and “recommended” that schools use filtering technology, he said.

Other states are following Tennessee’s lead, Worona said. Illinois introduced a bill in April, too late for Educause to find a local university official to address the conference, he said, and an Illinois official in the audience said he hadn’t heard of it. Kent Wada, director of IT strategic policy at UCLA, said he attended a California Assembly “informational hearing” on campus piracy (WID March 12 p9) but nothing has happened since. UCLA requires alleged first-time infringers to attend a “group discussion session” with the dean of students and write a 5-page essay if they get a second infringement notice, he said. Students worry more about a “black mark” on their records, perhaps making it harder to get into graduate school, than settling with the RIAA, Wada said.

Disappointing Results from Filtering Technologies

University technology officials have been underwhelmed by filtering technologies, said Charles Leonhardt, principal technologist for Georgetown University. He represents the Common Solutions Group (CSG), 28 schools that work together to develop technology policies. The group heard presentations by three antipiracy vendors in September. Audible Magic’s signature-based product can’t detect patterns of infringement and easily is defeated by low-level encryption, while Red Lambda’s product needs “considerable human effort” to manage detected patterns of infringement, he said. SafeMedia’s product is simply a “black box” giving no indication what it blocks, or any control over what can be blocked, Leonhardt said. A formal statement by CSG said the products can’t stop “even most” copyright infringement without unacceptably disrupting network efficiency, and deploying such technology would cause “considerable angst” among faculty, not to mention students. The vendors are devising responses to the CSG’s complaints, which will be posted on its Web site, www.stonesoup.org, he said.

A sudden spike in infringement letters to universities from the RIAA isn’t evidence that the trade group is filing more complaints to get lawmakers’ attention, Worona said. He believes the RIAA’s explanation that MediaSentry simply fine- tuned its software to catch more alleged infringements. But the notifications aren’t any more accurate than before, Worona said, agreeing with an audience member who said 20 to 60 percent of notices his school gets can’t be traced to any known IP address. That gives universities another talking point against legislation, which often sets a ceiling for infringement notices beyond which schools have to implement restrictions, Worona said.

Audience members suggested several ways to rebut RIAA talking points, such as citing schools’ implementation costs as continuing, not one-time; publicly questioning the accuracy of copyright industry loss estimates; and pushing for studies on strict enforcement policies’ effectiveness, which may show that costly efforts yield little in reduced infringement. Wada noted that if revised MPAA figures are right, and are applied to the 1 in 5 students nationwide who live on campus, then campus filtering would affect only 3 percent of college students.