shouting loudly

Tina and I are now back from our honeymoon trip to Italy and Greece. And so are the copyright absolutists, who were again rattling their swords at colleges’ IT departments this week.

On Tuesday, there was yet another congressional hearing filled with cries of rampant infringement via campus networks. These have gone on for years; this time, the setting was the House Committee on Science and Technology.

As CNet recounts, Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn) had the temerity to say the following:

“Illegal file sharing isn’t just about royalty fees. [...] It clogs campus networks and interferes with the educational and research mission of universities.”

This claim is a laughable implication that Congress knows better than universities how to manage their campus networks and meet their educational and research missions. It’s also Orwellian doublespeak of the highest order: we’re tying your hands for your own good.

Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) was more straightforward about the point of the hearing: threatening to withhold federal education and research dollars in the name of greater copyright enforcement:

“We’re spending a good deal of federal resources in terms of helping universities with their technological improvements, directly and indirectly,” Feeney said. “Is it responsible for a Congress that wants to protect intellectual property rights to continue to fund network enhancements for universities if some of those enhancements are indirectly being used in fact to promote intellectual property theft?” (That seemed to be a reference to the Internet2 project, funded in part by taxpayers.)

CNet does a reasonably good job debunking the efficacy of these tools. In attacking the lawsuits against campuses, EFF also makes a compelling argument that applies here: most campus sharing of music happens offline, e.g. via swapping burned CDs.

This is the wrong committee for a hearing to be motivated sheerly by love for copyright holders’ profit margins. (That motive is at its purest in the Judiciary committee.) Rather, it’s one big hear-o-mercial for filtering technology by companies such as Audible Magic. AM President & CEO Vance Ikezoye testified about the glories of his company’s CopySense filtering software, and several members of Congress suggested that colleges adopt something like it.

The Hearing Charter (pdf) uses the phrase “network-filtering” (as in, e.g., “network-filtering technologies” or “network-filtering systems”) no less than 40 times. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what the science committee is up to here.

Because of the weaknesses and collateral damage of this strategy (not least the compromise of the important collegiate value of free communication), it’s lucky for colleges that Title II of the DMCA gives them an out. I may be too optimistic here, but there is probably too little political will to slap special restrictions on colleges. They have the same responsiblities and rights as any ISP under the current law, meaning most importantly that until and unless the law changes, they’re no more liable for their end users’ infringement than Comcast.

All the same, it’s shameful that yet another hearing has singled out colleges for moralistic lecturing. Nobody’s dragging Verizon executives into hearings a good knuckle-rapping about all the infringement they’re permitting with their FiOS networks. And why not pick on Verizon? They’re only the 7th biggest spenders on Capitol Hill.

What’s 81.9 million dollars between friends?