Today's Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Sen. Harry M. Reid ( D-NV), the U.S. Senate's majority leader, yesterday backed away from his intent to introduce an amendment to the Higher Education Act, currently under consideration for reauthorization. His proposed amendment would have imposed special burdens on a small number of colleges and universities, deemed by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America to be the worst “enablers” of questionable P2P downloading. The amendment would have required these 25 institutions to “review their antipiracy tactics and to make plans to adopt 'a technology-based deterrent' to peer-to-peer file sharing.”

Higher education lobbyists succeeded in heading this off. One of their arguments was that technology alone cannot resolve this issue. Nor can the higher education community address it alone. Nevertheless, the music and film industries seem intent on drafting American higher education as their copyright cops. All of us in higher education have a responsibility to teach our students proper respect for intellectual property, including an understanding of their fair use rights. We do not, however, have a responsibility to the RIAA and the MPAA to hold our fingers in a dike while they cling to increasingly untenable business models. The recording and movie industries need to take stock of the realities of the current technological landscape, the evolving culture, and a growing social and artistic movement they cannot contain. If they do this rather than insist that academe save them from change, maybe they will come up with some ideas and strategies that will allow them to continue to generate revenue at the same time they acknowledge and foster the creativity of mash-up culture. But I wouldn't bet on that happening before the dike bursts.