BY BRIAN JORDAN | THE NORTHEASTERN NEWS (NORTHEASTERN U.)

In print | Published February 7, 2008

(U-WIRE) BOSTON – Colleges could soon feel the financial burden of a new Congressional initiative to impose stricter enforcement of Internet copyright laws on college campuses.

Section 494 of the Higher Education Act, a new amendment to a bill submitted by the House of Representatives, would require colleges to provide legal alternatives to Internet downloading and take steps to prevent it.

Wendy Wigen, a policy analyst working for Educause, a technology-education interest group, said, “There’s enough legal alternatives [to downloading] available out on the open web now — commercial alternatives — that we don’t feel the university’s need to be in that business.” Leon Janikian, a professor in Northeastern’s music department, expressed similar sentiments regarding the bill. “I hate to think that this university would become the police force for downloaders,” he said. “I think we have other agendas that we need to address.”

The milder Senate version of the bill, which includes Section 494, passed almost unianimously last July.

The updated bill has yet to reach the floor, but there are two ways it can be removed.

“What we’re trying for is to get the language deleted in what they call the manager’s amendment,” Wigen said. “So, before it ever gets to the floor for a vote, the language will be deleted.” She also mentioned a late option — that when the House and the Senate assemble together to compare versions of the bill, they could have one last chance to delete the language that would require universities to police students’ online habits.

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, anyone who operates an ISP (Internet Service Provider) is legally bound to disclose the identity of any user who is targeted by legal query. If a record company tracks illegal downloads to a student’s computer in Northeastern’s network and decides to sue, it follows that the university must legally share the suspect’s identity.

“Most of those queries come from a simple complaint,” said Glenn Hill, director of info security and ID services. Hill said they then have a discussion with that person.“We make a point of not being the data police … So we don’t go in and monitor [user’s] content as a normal course of business,” said Bob Weir, vice president of information services.

Copyright infringement has been a prevalent issue on campuses since former Northeastern freshman Shawn Fanning wrote for the program Napster in his college residence hall room 10 years ago. Napster was the first major peer-to-peer file-sharing program used for illegal music and movie downloading on the Internet.

On Jan. 22, the Motion Picture Association of America — a movie industry lobbyist group — released a statement recanting their 2005 study, which inaccurately blamed college students for 44 percent of illegal movie downloads. In their more recent 2007 study, the number was 15 percent.

“The 44 percent was ludicrous at the time, but they would not share how they’d gathered that information,” Wigen said.

Janikan said the recording industry should encourage people to use other technologies. “Someone once said, ‘now that the cat is out of the bag, you can never put him back in.’ The cat’s out of the bag. Let’s figure out a way to make this work,” he said.

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