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 ofcopyrighted 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 bligations 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.
EDUCAUSE, along with ACE, AAU, and NASULGC, has prepared a memo summarizing what the law will require, what happens next, and what institutions can do now. The memo also includes the relevant portions of the act, as well as the report language that accompanies and clarifies the law.
