April 15, 2008
Computer Scientists to Congress: Don't Tell Colleges to Install Filters on Networks
A group of computer scientists in academe, industry, and government is urging some members of the Senate and House of Representatives to oppose legislation that would encourage or require colleges to install network filters to inhibit illegal sharing of music and video files. The group, the Association for Computing Machinery, stated in a letter dated today that filters are costly, ineffective, and undermine network security and the rights of researchers. The warning comes as House and Senate negotiators seek agreement on renewal of the Higher Education Act, which includes provisions to deter file sharing on college campuses. Colleges are fighting the House bill provision, since it would prod colleges to use filters.
“There are known counters to filtering technology,” the letter reads. “Motivated content thieves can encrypt their Internet traffic or use other obfuscation methods to bypass filters that are looking for some specific known signature of the copyrighted work.”
The letters is addressed to the chairman and ranking minority members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and of the House Committee on Education and Labor. —Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Tuesday April 15, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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A summary paragraph in the referenced letter from the ACM, one of the two leading associations of computing professionals, clearly states important points that Congress should consider: “… [A] Federal policy that promotes or requires filtering will indirectly add to the costs of education and university research, introduce new security and privacy issues, degrade existing rights under copyright, and have little or no lasting impact on infringement of copyrighted works.”
Unfortunately, the letter is primarily a critique of filtering as a copyright-protection technology; the very brief statement near the end about alternatives is insufficient. (And the comment arguing that filtering is a better idea when colleges themselves choose it is easy to agree with but likely to be read by the Democratic majority as a criticism of their big-government approach.)
It’s always better to tell Congress what you want them to do (and how to do it), not just what you don’t want them to do. I wish the ACM had submitted a joint letter with some appropriate legal or public-policy committee and proposed specific, well-crafted legislation.
— S. Britchky Apr 15, 04:27 PM #
ITA
— Frantz Apr 15, 06:06 PM #
The Higher Education Act, as most other legisiation pertaining to education, appears to be less about education than about preserving commercial interests. That’s what I find most troubling.
— D. deR. Apr 16, 08:55 AM #
But it is, after all, those commercial interests that provide the materials for education, isn’t it?
Why must it always be one party wins and the other loses? Can’t we all just get along?
— Rob Apr 16, 09:35 AM #
Filtering web traffic is a waste of time and resources, just like building a wall on the southern border.
In the case of web filtering, it is ridiculously easy to get around, as P2P programs are already implementing encryption algorithms that embed content in an innocuous data stream. It’s really no different than when port filtering was in vogue. The P2P software simply adapted to use port 80 and sent the files as if they were web pages.
When will people learn that building walls for defense has been obsolete since medieval warfare?
— a different Dan Apr 16, 10:41 AM #
The RIAA has paid good money for this bill. thankfully, what you don’t see is that we are really just after the precedent of making institutions responsible for paying to protect our copyrighted material. If we can do that, we’re in the money, baby.
— RIAA Sally Apr 16, 01:31 PM #
See the problem is not downloading, that really only makes for a small percent of loss profit. The Problem is the RIAA wants more money to keep from the Artists and Creators of these productions. If they really want to stop downloading, let me know that the money is going directly to the artist and not some company that wont give the band a fair cut. As for the movies, stop making sh*tty 3 and 1/2 hour long movies that have no point, then maybe people will be more willing to spend $10 for a ticket to a movie that wont blow donkey nuts.
— Monkeyboy May 5, 12:21 AM #