The Role of Technology in Reducing Illegal Filesharing: A University Perspective

Opening Statement By Rep. Bart Gordon

Good morning. Welcome to today’s hearing entitled "The Role of Technology in Reducing Illegal Filesharing: A University Perspective."

Today we are going to be addressing the issue of illegal filesharing on university computer networks. This practice, which is also known as digital piracy, is costing the entertainment industry billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. Many of the people affected by it are my constituents, who live near and work in Nashville, the recording capital of America. They are the ones who first brought this issue to my attention.

I would also note that illegal filesharing isn’t just about royalty fees. It clogs campus networks and interferes with the educational and research mission of universities.

It wastes resources that could have gone to laboratories, classrooms, and equipment. And it is teaching a generation of college students that it’s all right to steal music, movies, and other content, because it’s easy to download them on the internet. That’s wrong, and it must be stopped.

Our Committee is not the first to address this issue. Under the leadership of my friend Lamar Smith, the Judiciary Committee held a series of hearings on this topic in the last Congress. The Education Committee has also held a hearing on this issue. However, those hearings focused on the illegality and regulatory structure, as was appropriate given the jurisdiction of those Committees. The focus of today’s hearing is on technology to help prevent illegal filesharing.

In today’s digital world, we generally rely on technology to combat illegal activities. It’s illegal to send spam or to hack into a system and steal data. And though regulations attempt to stop these illegal activities, regulations alone are surely not enough. Systems from large corporate networks to home desktop computers use anti-spam and anti-virus software and firewalls.

Do these technologies stop all illegal activities? Of course not. But they do prevent the bulk of bad things from happening. And the technologies have improved, even as the sophistication of the spammers and hackers has increased. The Science & Technology Committee has a long history of holding hearings and moving legislation on technologies that are used to combat these illegal activities.

I believe the case of illegal filesharing is exactly the same. We can’t rely on laws and regulations alone to fix the problem. Technology will be the first line of defense. I’m hopeful that our work here today will contribute to the beginnings of real action on this problem. I don’t want to be holding this same hearing in the 111th Congress.

Our witnesses will focus on the use of technology to combat illegal filesharing. Some of them will discuss how their campuses decided to use technical methods to reduce digital piracy, and I hope to learn about their experiences with these technologies and how well they have worked.

I am also interested in learning about the technologies themselves--how they stop copyrighted files from being illegally shared, and what technical issues there may be for implementing them on campus networks.

And I am looking forward to hearing about an important cooperative project between higher education and the entertainment community to rigorously test and evaluate these technologies in an objective, scientific manner.

I want to thank our panelists for taking time from their busy schedules to appear before us today.

One of our nation’s greatest strengths is our educational system, and American universities are the envy of the world.

Their mission is to educate students, and they should not condone or look the other way when their computer networks are used as clearinghouses for digital piracy and illegal filesharing. Universities do not condone the piracy of computer software, textbooks, or academic research articles, and they should not treat entertainment intellectual property any differently.

It is my hope that by working together we can fix the problem of digital piracy on campuses.

Witnesses

Panel

1 - Dr. Charles Wight
Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Undergraduate Studies University of Utah University of Utah
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2 - Dr. Adrian Sannier
Vice President and University Technology Officer Arizona State University (on leave from Iowa State University) Arizona State University (on leave from Iowa Sta
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3 - Mr. Vance Ikezoye
President and Chief Executive Officer Audible Magic Corporation Audible Magic Corporation
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4 - Mrs. Cheryl Asper Elzy
Management Team, ISU's Digital Citizen Project Dean, University Libraries Illinois State University Dean, University Libraries Illinois State University
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5 - Dr. Greg Jackson
Vice President and Chief Information Officer University of Chicago University of Chicago
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