December 3, 2007

Download A Song -- Lose Your Loan

Posted by Larisa Mann at 5:00AM

• 1 comment
• Email
• Print
• Reprints
• Share

Glory be, the big copyright owners have found yet another way to threaten students' access to education -- this time by going for the biggest support of higher education -- federal funding.

On Nov 22 the House Education and Labor Committee approved H.R. 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act (COAA). The name sounds like something everyone can support -- but the devil is truly in the details.

Page 411 of this 747-page bill is "Section 494(A): CAMPUS-BASED DIGITAL THEFT PREVENTION" wherein the bill's meaning takes a serious detour from its title. To prevent college students from illegally accessing copyrighted material, the section says all schools shall (when you see the word "shall" in a law, it's a requirement, not a suggestion):

1) Have "a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property"

and

2) Have "a plan to explore technology based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.”

The real eye opener: noncompliant schools could lose all of their federal funding, for all of their students. No more Pell Grants. No more federal financial aid. No more student loans. This is not just draconian punishment for students who break the law, this punishes all students at that institution even if they did nothing.

Beyond that, both requirements actually work against the point of the bill itself--implementation would likely raise school fees.

If a school requires students to sign up with an "alternative system," this means (for now) a for-profit company. Who pays for the subscription? And if a school has to use filtering software, who's going to pay for that? If schools have to prove compliance, they will have to make it mandatory--folding it into school fees is the simplest way. How does that contribute to "Affordability?"

There's no good reason for fee hikes because the requirements could never solve the "problem." Let's back up: what's the problem and why are schools being forced to solve it?

If the problem is illegal (and there is legal) downloading and uploading and its effect on the industry, why are colleges being required to stop it? The RIAA and the MPAA often state that college networks are major sites of infringement--but their own numbers don't back that up. The MPAA's own estimation is that 18.4 percent of copyright infringers overall are college students, who are responsible for 44 percent of lost revenue from copyright infringement.

Calculating "lost revenue" is tricky--how to calculate what would have been paid if someone hadn't downloaded a song? What if it made them buy an album, or merchandise? What if downloading was easier than ripping a paid-for CD, LP or cassette?

But sticking with the MPAA's semi-bogus numbers, educational technology nonprofit Educause points out that "since less than 20 percent of college students live on campus and use the residence hall networks, this means that less than 4 percent of the infringers are using campus networks, and they are responsible for less than 9 percent of the losses. Over 91 percent of the claimed losses are on commercial networks." Get that: 4 out of every 100 infringers (even trusting the industry assessment of infringement, which usually is not too carefully defined) are on college networks. And yet this is so important that Congress will subvert federal education funding?

Further evidence of this entertainment industry power-grab is described in a letter against Section 494(A) signed by the President of Stanford University, the Chancellor of the University System of Maryland, the Vice President of Yale and the President of Penn State, which describes how representatives of the entertainment industry would be the ones to provide the data identifying which schools are "violators." Punishment would be based on these numbers, which would put the Secretary of Education basically under the direction of the entertainment industry. (PDF)

This embarrassing example of lawmaking corrupted by corporate interest is sponsored by the Democratic Representatives George Miller (CA), and Ruben Hinojosa (TX), reviving a version Democrat Harry Reid put forth this summer. That was beat back in the Senate, only to pop up, zombie-like, in mid-November at the last minute: introduced to the House Committee on the Friday of a 3-day weekend to be discussed the following Wednesday. Not a lot of time for people who care about this stuff to organize and get the word out to their representatives.

As Public Knowledge, a DC-based organization working to further the public interest in access to knowledge, points out: "Democrats promised more transparent government and less kowtowing to special interests like the content industries. Actions like this indicate that it may be time to refresh their memories."

We can't let higher education become the bullyboys of the entertainment industry--education has to come first. If the federal government won't stand up for education on its own, we have to remind them.