June 1, 2007
A Rough-and-Tumble Debate on File Sharing
Campus technology officials, entertainment-industry lawyers, and students from local Free Culture clubs all had plenty to say today at a discussion of the tortured relationship of colleges with the Recording Industry Association of America. But after an hour and a half of vigorous, sometimes testy debate, the participants -- gathered for a conference held by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society -- seemed resigned that the continuing struggle over file sharing and copyright will not soon be over.
Speakers vented frustration with the recording industry's aggressive legal campaign against piracy -- which asks college officials to respond to cease-and-desist notices, "John Doe" subpoenas, and now prelitigation notices. "The university's role should not be to assist the record industry," said Wendy Seltzer, a fellow at the Berkman center who argued in a recently published article that Harvard should do more to defend students sued by the recording industry. "We need to go deeper into examining the costs of enforcing this regime of intellectual property," she said.
The recording-industry trade group did not send a representative to the session, so Alec French, a lawyer with NBC/Universal, stepped in to defend the entertainment industry. Television companies and movie studios have seen their sales ravaged by campus piracy, he said.
He tried to find "common values" between the two sides, asking if colleges would be willing to use a hypothetical piece of software that could block virtually all illegal peer-to-peer downloads without shutting down any legal transactions. That question didn't resonate with many of the campus officials or students, several of whom said they considered such imaginary filtering software a pipe dream.
As the session went on, college information-technology officials asked pointedly why their existing antipiracy tactics -- like responding to cease-and-desist notices, discussing computer ethics during orientation meetings, and shutting off the network access of repeat file sharers -- had been deemed insufficient by recording-industry executives. "You’re suggesting that it’s the ISP’s job to police infringement of your copyright on its infrastructure," said Scott Bradner, Harvard's technology-security officer, to Mr. French. "Where does it end that other people are doing your work for you?"
Tracy Mitrano, director of information-technology policy at Cornell University, asked the lawyer why Congress has recently held hearings in which lawmakers called on colleges, but not commercial Internet providers, to stamp out piracy. "We are the ones who are brought before Congress, not the CEO of Verizon, and told how immoral we are," she said. --Brock Read
Comments
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The biggest problem with file sharing is the tendency to transfer copy righted files without the creators permission. Once permission can be established, then sharing should be acceptable.
— George Elting Jun 1, 10:22 PM #