Says they must do more to prevent their students from illegally sharing music, movies, and other copyrighted material on campus networks.
Members of the House Science and Technology Committee heard from university officials and technology “experts” on different methods available to reduce illegal file-sharing on campus networks.
“Illegal file-sharing isn’t just about royalty fees. It clogs campus networks and interferes with the educational and research mission of universities,” said Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN). “It wastes resources that could have gone to laboratories, classrooms and equipment. And it is teaching a generation of college students that it’s alright to steal music.”
Witnesses testified on the extent to which these technologies reduced illegal fil-sharing, and also technological issues surrounding them, such as privacy and impacts on speed and reliability of campus networks.
They urged university authorities to conduct more aggressive educational campaigns and to use more effective network filters to reduce the problem, otherwise they may have to take matters into their own hands.
Legislators warned that if illegal file-sharing continues, they may have to enact new laws or worse, even hold back funding for some of the colleges and universities who fail to comply. Rep. Tom Feeney suggested that Congress withhold funding for universities if piracy continues to run rampant, noting that universities annually receive billions of dollars in funding for research and other academic development activities. In 2007, new grants and loans to students totaled some $82 billion USD.
“One of our nation’s greatest strengths is our educational system, and American universities are the envy of the world. Their mission is to educate students, and they should not condone or look the other way when their computer networks are used as clearinghouse for digital piracy and illegal file-sharing,” said Gordon.
The associate vice president for academic affairs and undergraduate studies of the University of Utah, Charles Wight, said claimed that his school was able to save $1.2 million in bandwidth costs and $70,000 in personnel costs after using a combination of monitoring and filtering tools to hinder illegal file-sharing. Arizona State University reported that it had also implemented a similarly successful program to reduce illicit file-sharing.
The legislators, however, were not satisfied. They claimed administrators were not doing enough to stop rampant file swapping and wanted more stringent controls put in place.
Meanwhile, the University of California at Los Angeles is disputing the data used by the congressmen to compile their list of top offending schools. Officials said the data was taken out of context and that it was “misleading” because some types of file-sharing were allowed for academic purposes.
Either way, it’s pretty disheartening to see Congress so wholeheartedly pursue the agenda of organizations like the RIAA and MPAA, even going so far as to threaten to cutoff of federal school funding. Since when do the losses of the RIAA, whose obviously inflated losses have never been fully substantiated mind you, constitute a need by Congress to begin legislating each of their networks and reduce academic funding and research if they fail to comply?
Also, the real problem is that no P2P management program will ever be 100% effective without eliminating the use of all P2P and file-sharing programs. Content is content and how are network admins to determine which is or isn’t a legit download.? All they can do is monitor the size of the data being downloaded, which may or may not indicate illegal content because there are a number of legitimate academic and nonacademic uses that are possible.
digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/politics/Congress_threatens_new_laws_withhold_funds_if_colleges_don_t_stop_P2P’;
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@ejonesss
I’m not an expert but it is my understanding that while you are technically correct about funding day to day operation many universities rely on government funded grants for conducting research and upgrading infrastructure. Also State and Community colleges are also heavily subsidized by both the state and federal government loosing it could necessitate a logarithmic tuition increase pricing many lower (and increasingly middle) income people out of a decent college education and denying them reasonable employment opportunity .
ok that is just grant monies !!!!big deal!!! universities are privately run and you have to pay tuition so they can run from the tuition payments.
you have to buy your books you have to pay for your meals you have to pay for on campus housing so they can just run off the money paid bt students.