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March 29, 2007, 12:37 PM ET
Federal Grants to Stop Song Swappers?
At a Congressional hearing this month, Rep. Ric Keller, a Republican from Florida, issued a stern warning to college officials: Make it a priority to stamp out students' illegal song swapping, he said, or "the hammer's coming."
Mr. Keller's tone was ominous then, but now the representative seems more interested in dangling a carrot than wielding a stick. This week he introduced a bill -- H.R. 1689, the Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act of 2007 -- that would let institutions seek federal grants for programs intended to curtail piracy under the Education Department's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education.
It's not entirely clear what kinds of antipiracy efforts would be judged worthy of government support. The text of the bill refers only to "pilot programs and initiatives to help offset the costs associated with implementing model programs and policies on college campuses to reduce illegal downloading of copyrighted content." But the act may be designed to keep campus officials from citing budget constraints as a reason not to purchase software, like cGrid, that blocks students from using peer-to-peer networks. (College representatives said at the hearing this month that many institutions simply could not afford such tools.)
Of course, there's another reason that some college administrators aren't optimistic about cGrid: They feel that the program, and other software like it, could prohibit perfectly valid peer-to-peer transactions. Mr. Keller has made it clear that he doesn't buy that argument. So if the bill does pass -- and that's still a big "if" -- we could see lawmakers and college administrators really start debating about the parameters of academic freedom. --Brock Read
Categories: Campus-Piracy, Legal-Troubles
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