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Shooting Fish In a Barrel

By Georgia Harper

In the last week or so I have been reading about the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 that now contains a provision that would "require all institutions eligible for financial aid under Title IV to develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or P2P distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity." EDUCAUSE Talking points. Also in their talking points, EDUCAUSE states that this practice "could represent a transfer of over $400 million annually from higher education to the entertainment industry while raising the cost of higher education." I have heard various quotes about how small a part of the overall file-sharing problem is represented by college students. The lion's share of the problem is off-campus, in the "grown-up", world on commercial internets. Why don't we hear legislation pertaining to them? Why focus on such a small part of the problem? Why ignore the elephant in the room? Why sue a 13-year old girl for crying out loud!?! At my university, (one of the 25 named bad guys) efforts to inform students about the illegalities of most of their P2P file-trading activities are pretty extensive (comparatively speaking; also consume lots of worker's time and energy), yet it's hard to judge how effective they are. Even though we still allegedly have a lot of activity, would we have more without our efforts? Although it is inarguably part of the university's role to urge their students to comply with the law, behave in ethical manners, and teach that by example, we are only their teachers. We are not their parents and we are not the police. We had no role in instilling or molding their characters or their ethical or religious belief system. In fact, we didn't even teach them the computer skills necessary to accomplish P2P sharing. They came to us with these behaviors and skills fully set and continually reinforced by their peers. So when did we become responsible (in a legal and money sense) for the students P2P file sharing? If a student uses dormitory phones to conduct drug deals or extortion, is the university responsible? Should phone access be terminated? What if our students steal cable TV service" Should Congress pass a bill that withholds federal funding from our schools until the cable TV companies are financially satisfied? Since when did higher education become responsible for the profit margin of the entertainment industry?

Full post as published by ©ollectanea on November 16, 2007 (boomark / email).