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Congress Wants to Break NYU's Internet and Kill Your Financial Aid

Monday, 11.12.2007 – Category: News

It’s not often that we have *urgent* news in the Free Culture world, but today we do.Some of you have probably already heard (via news.com / boingboing / slashdot) about the so-called “p2p” bill that House Democrats are trying to push.This bill contains wording that, if passed into law, would jeopardize federal aid for universities if they refused to filter their student’s internet access. In other words, the bill is designed to force universities to police their student’s internet connections in a way that no other ISPs in the world do. Besides encouraging a violation of network neutrality on campuses, this bill demands universities to do something that is technically impossible — how is NYU’s router supposed to be able to tell the difference between a Creative Commons licensed video podcast that you’re downloading via Miro and an “illegal” file your roommate is getting off of a file sharing network? The point is they can’t — no technology has been invented that can properly discover whether a file is “legal” or not (consider how difficult it is for a judge to decide whether a use is fair, and then think of trying to create a chip that would do it) and no technology will ever be invented to do this.

The dubiously titled “College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007” (coming in at a staggering 747 pages, the relevant part is from pg. 411-413) is a bad deal and we need to let our representatives know it before they vote on it on Wednesday at 9am.

This is an opportunity for Free Culture activists to get involved and let our government know that this bill is a mistake. EDUCAUSE is maintaining a resource page here where you may find additional helpful information.I’ll also be organizing a “Call-A-thon” in the next 24 hours (probably tomorrow 10am, at Kimmel) for those of you with a laptop and skype… so please let me know if you’re interested (frederick [ at ] nyu.edu) and I’ll keep you updated about our next steps.

UPDATE: Good news and bad. The bad news first: The bill made it past committee without any revisions to the section on peer-to-peer. The good news? Apparently all our calls made a difference. The committee has released a crazed screed attacking universities as being “digital thieves”; a highly inappropriate and bizarre action decision after what would ordinarily be a routine markup proceeding. Public Knowledge has a write up about the “fact sheet” the committee released with some insightful commentary here.