Presented by Tracy Mitrano
February 14, 2005
Los Angeles, California
Why We Are Here
- Digital and networking technologies -- in short the Internet-- disrupted
- Entertainment industry's business model;
- Profoundly altered social norms concerning intellectual property, copyright in particular; and
- Is still testing the boundaries of copyright law.
Why is Higher Education a Target?
- Big pipes
- File share software operates on the fastest feeds
- Demographic population of traditional, residential students
- Low on disposable income
- Facile with new technologies
- Developmentally dependent on entertainment industry for models on social conformity and personal identity
Why Higher Education is a Target...
Because we take our obligations seriously not merely to inform students of the law and assist with compliance but to appreciate the dynamics of law, policy and ethics as part of a larger calling of colleges and universities: to inculcate us all, and students in particular, in the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
What Must Be Done?
- Comply
- Educate
- Provide Legal Alternatives
- Debate
What Must Not Be Done
- Monitor our networks for content
- Cornell University Policy 5.9, Privacy of the Network
- In response to demonstration of Audible Magic:
- "Against our culture and traditions"
- Polley McClure, Vice President of Information Technologies, Cornell University
What May Come?
- Communications Assistance Law Enforcement Act
- Criminal prosecution of copyright infringement?
- Google Book Search
- Significant legal challenge to current copyright law?
What Yet May Come?
- Internet Charges for Content?
- Postage Payment for Electronic Mail?
- Telecommunications Act of 200x?
- Revision of Electronic Communications Privacy Act?
- Untangling telephony and data networking for the Fourth Amendment
A Cornell Story
- Network Utilization Based Billing (NUBB)
- Promote copyright infringement?
- Do anything you want so long as you pay for it!
- Inhibit copyright infringement?
- Students won't pay to serve out infringing material!
- Rorschach Test for Copyright
- Experiential "truth" lies somewhere between
- And nowhere motivation had nothing to do with it.
The Real Story
- NUBB created to flatten the uneven and unfair costs of network services across a widely distributed campus further divided by inequitably funded endowed and state contract colleges.
- Positive *unintended consequence* of drawing user's attention to security vulnerabilities and compromises.
Debate
NUBB is a largely successful program, particularly for addressing the issue it was design to fix. Still, a minority opposition claims that NUBB mitigates against our research mission, even though NUBB incorporates sophisticated system of accommodation for public ports (e.g. library), high priority heavy bandwidth usage (e.g. weather computation) and other exceptions. Finally, just because it works for Cornell does not mean that it is right for all colleges and universities.
Object Lesson
Internet is the ink blot upon which we project our hopes, fears and dreams. It is understandable that we do so through the prism of our own institutions and their particular missions. For-profit institutions have to answer to share-holders. Higher education must maintain its time-honored traditions of teaching, research and outreach using information in search of truth in the name of wisdom.
Conflict... Resolution
Our different types of institutions and missions have brought us into conflict expressed, at times, by hyperbolic statements to congressional committees and the press; mitigated by efforts of the Joint Committee to mutual understanding; and we hope toward a transition to business models and legal changes more in keeping with the technology and social norms.
Conclusion
In the meantime, higher education cannot afford to forget or forsake its missions. Those missions rest on the foundational values of free speech and open inquiry. Thus, while we comply with the law, we must also hold constant to our values. We have obligations to ourselves and to American society to act as a beacon in these controversial and interesting times.
