Web Seminars Contributed by EDUCAUSE and P2P File Sharing

Congress recently passed H.R. 4137, the Higher Education Opportunity Act, a massive piece of legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act that the President will soon sign into law.

This legislation imposes an array of new federal regulatory and reporting requirements for colleges and universities. Two of these provisions are designed to reduce illegal uploading and downloading of copyrighted works through peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing on campus networks. These and many other provisions of the Act go into effect when the President signs the bill. Institutions must take their obligations under the Act seriously and make a good faith effort to comply--as they would with any new federal law. But the law is unclear in certain respects, and ambiguities will need to be clarified through the regulatory process.

In this Webcast, the speaker will discuss what the law will require, what happens next, and what you should do now.

Copyright continues to be a core interest of the higher education and academic library communities. This briefing will focus on eight critical legislative and legal arenas where the United States will be working on copyright: orphan works, digital fair use, broadcast flag, Section 1201 anti-circumvention rulemaking, electronic reserves, peer-to-peer file sharing, open access to government-funded research, and the report of the Section 108 Study Group on exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives. The work of the study group will be highlighted, including its primary findings and recommendations. In addition, two important recent studies will be described and their importance for libraries will be cited. The advocacy and educational roles and responsibilities of librarians on copyright also will be outlined.

The recording industry’s complaints against alleged music downloaders are just the tip of the iceberg in legal threats against online activity. In the five years of the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, we have seen thousands of legal threats, with claims including trademark infringement, defamation, and copyright infringement. This seminar will discuss some of the range of complaints, both unwarranted and justified, and describe ChillingEffects.org’s resources for those trying to evaluate legal threats. In some cases, the web’s sunlight can help to melt meritless threats.

A steady stream of press releases from the MPAA and the RIAA about unauthorized peer-to-peer downloading suggests that college students are digital pirates and campus network officials are engaged in benign neglect. Yet ample evidence confirms that unauthorized P2P downloading is primarily a consumer market problem, not especially tied to college students on campus networks. Moreover, the media companies with strong ties to consumer broadband providers are themselves at least indirectly promoting unauthorized P2P activity. This is not new: Media companies have a long history of seeking remedy (and revenue) from Congressional action, rather than pursuing marketplace solutions.

This presentation will focus on how Big Music and Big Hollywood have targeted colleges and universities via press releases and Congressional lobbying initiatives while largely ignoring the much larger amount of unauthorized P2P file sharing taking place on commercial networks.

Illinois State University has embarked on a comparative study of what works and what doesn't regarding peer-to-peer file sharing, media, and copyright on campus. After receiving almost 500 Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaints in the 2004–2005 academic year, the campus decided to explore the P2P issue in-depth and put in place a multifaceted plan to address it, working from the basis that the issues are education, ethics, and legal access rather than technology. The project has been strengthened by direct interaction with associations such as the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, along with vendors. This seminar will share the project's history, explore its six tenets, and provide some early data results.

In response to increasing rates of media piracy, particularly among college-aged students, the content industry has tried a variety of methods to dissuade questionable file-sharing practices, including airing commercials, filing lawsuits, and urging schools to provide access to sanctioned legal services, but progress to date has been minimal. Students themselves have not been consulted about their actual attitudes and behavior in this arena, although diverse motives have been ascribed to them. To gain a richer understanding of this key demographic, 42 undergraduates from a major East Coast university were interviewed at length about their media-acquisition habits and their responses to industry antipiracy efforts. This presentation will cover the students' viewpoints on this controversial topic.

With P2P use continuing to grow even in the face of more than 11,000 RIAA and MPAA lawsuits—so far!—and with Internet2 making it even more tempting, the issue of music file sharing remains at the top of the IT policy charts. What does the Supreme Court's recent decision in the Grokster case mean for your campus? Who is Cecilia Gonzalez, and why should your students care? And what can you do to reduce the burdens file sharing imposes on your system and your time? This EDUCAUSE Live! session will give you the answers to these and other related questions.

Yale and Penn State have both pioneered the use of legal services for distributing copyrighted media. In January 2004, both initiated commercial services that differ in many ways. This presentation will compare the services and experiences of these two institutions.

With many campuses now settling into the deployment and enhancement of core middleware, rich opportunities exist to leverage this infrastructure and enable collaborative applications. Activities are already underway to develop new, open-source tools in Web services, desktop video, peer-to-peer file sharing, list processors, calendars, and other areas that use this emergent infrastructure. This session will review the requirements for collaborative applications and discuss the status of the more promising tools and how campuses can prepare to use them.