Bill requires free file-sharing service
Nov. 30, 2007
The U.S. College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007, which cleared its committee Nov. 15, will call for colleges and universities to develop a plan to provide a free alternative to illegal downloading.
The Committee on Education and Labor said the act reflects bipartisan collaboration on key college access and affordability issues, according to a news release from the committee.
This includes requiring institutions to report annually to their students on their policies and practices dealing with copyright infringement on campus networks and requiring the availability of alternatives to illegal downloading.
Division of Information Technology Director Terry Robb said the UM system already meets these requirements.
"I think, in general, that it does," Robb said. "We have education effort, penalties and technical gears to prevent sharing files."
Robb said the UM system stops MU students from sharing files.
"Since this January, our system has had a technical gear that analyzes the traffic and prevents file sharing on the Internet," Robb said. "We've only had one complaint since January."
MU now offers Ruckus, a music download service that offers legal access to 3.2 million songs. Robb said that unlike other sharers, Ruckus is available to all MU students.
"We had another music sharer called Cdigix, and it went out of business," Robb said. "The difference is you actually had to subscribe to Cdigix. Ruckus is available to all students as long as you have an MU e-mail."
MU also subscribes to Educause, which, according to the Educause Web site, provides subscribers with timely research and analysis to help them make better decisions about information technology.
The Educause document Talking Points stated Educause agrees that universities should be required to report their policies and practices but disagrees that a free downloading service should be required.
Educause spokesman Steve Worona said the bill requires colleges and universities to do more than their share.
"The problem with the bill, as written, is that it requires every campus to come up with a plan to offer and authorize a downloading service and to block material from the network," Worona said. "A very small amount of the problem is ours, and we are already doing more than our share."
Warona said students come to the universities already having the habits of downloading illegal files.
"Campuses are already making significant actions, even though we did not cause the problem," Worona said. "Students arrive as freshmen with the habit of getting their music online. It is inappropriate for the campus to solve this problem."
Worona said it is the universities' and colleges' responsibility to educate students on what their policies are and to follow through with their punishments.
"Campuses are already taking very strong actions to educate students to what is and isn't legal," Worona said. "Campuses are using their existing judicial systems to act against the campus networks."
Worona said the bigger problem might be that the paid downloading services are not appealing enough to the customers.
"What is clear is that the customers of the big music labels are not happy with the way that the labels are selling their content," Worona said. "Otherwise, the customers would be using the services that are provided. Some of the services will succeed and some will fail."
Robb said the bill in its current form is not fair to colleges and universities.
"I don't think it's appropriate for Congress to mandate that we (the universities) provide a music service," Robb said.
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