P2P, the RIAA, the studios, and the universities
May 28, 2007 information technology No CommentsLast week I participated in Copyright Utopia: Alternative Visions, Methods, and Policies, the annual copyright conference produced by the University of Maryland's Center for Intellectual Property. The lunch speaker was the College Park campus's chancellor, Dr. William E. Kirwan. He is currently co-chair, having taken the place of Penn State's Graham Spanier, of the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities Technology Task Force–i.e., the P2P committee.
Dr. Kirwan spoke of his concerns on this issue. One is that, because they have found willingness among universities to play a disciplinarian role, the entertainment industry has singled out this segment of Internet service providers for their campaign against illegal file sharing. Why, he asked, have they not been as aggressive in pursuing others? He also spoke of his concern that students learn about intellectual property rights and asked the conference attendees to help him find a way to do this. I serve as my university's registered DMCA agent. This gives me opportunities to educate students on this issue–but only one at a time and then only after the RIAA or SONY or whoever has alleged copyright infringement by a student. I believe it was last summer that I received a DVD in the mail from a group (it may have been the RIAA) with the recommendation that I use it to educate our students on this issue. I looked at it and threw it in the trash. It used scare tactics such as a student expressing regret for illegal downloading because it got him into legal trouble and his legal debts forced him to drop out of college. It also showed downloaders being led away in handcuffs! Nowhere did it mention that our copyright system is more subtle, more ambiguous, and less constricting than as presented in this video. I mentioned this to Dr. Kirwan and quoted Sir Philip Sidney's “An Apology for Poetry,” his famous essay published posthumously in 1595. Sidney wrote that “Poetry … is … a speaking picture, with this end: to teach and delight.” Surely this dual purpose can be imputed to the “speaking pictures” produced by movie studios and recording companies! And just as surely these entertainment industries have the resources to produce lessons about intellectual property (including fair use) that delight as much as they teach. Dr. Kirwan reported that another “educational” DVD is headed to my mailbox this summer, presumably one without images of handcuffed students. In other words, not only is the entertainment industry expecting universities to act as their police and disciplinarians, they also want us to be their propagandists. No matter how balanced a view of IP this new production gives (and I expect it to be one-sided), a stand-alone didactic video is not going to get the message across. The movie industry is very adept at product placement. Maybe it can devise ways to place meaningful, helpful information about copyright in their myriad productions. They certainly haven't tried. It might even improve the quality of many of their products–especially the summer blockbusters and would-be blockbusters that students heading to college in the fall will be watching.
