In Brief

Universities Cope with New Anti-Piracy Requirement

Institutions of higher education are now required to curb file sharing on campus or face the prospect of losing federal funding

By Joan Goodchild, Senior Editor

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Worona referenced a managers' report that was authored along with the legislation that defines the "technology-based deterrents." They include bandwidth shaping, traffic monitoring to identify the largest bandwidth users, a vigorous program of accepting and responding to Digital Millenium Copyright Act notices and a variety of commercial products designed to block or reduce legal file sharing. It's the fourth item on that list that Worona has heard concern about from many school IT officials. Using commercial products to block or reduce illegal file sharing is expensive. But the report states schools need to use some OR all of the technology-based deterrents listed, so the concern is misplaced, he said.

"Among the other three, it's our impression that most campuses are doing one or more of them already. For example, most EDUCAUSE surveys suggest most campuses are doing bandwidth shaping. I think 70 percent is the figure I have seen. We believe most campuses are already accepting and responding to DMCA notices. The legislation and regulation require that campuses employ one or more technology-based deterrents and that means one or more from those four. Two of which we believe campuses are already employing. We believe that most campuses will not find it onerous to comply with this legislation."

Indeed the provision has had little impact on security practice at the University of Delaware. UD, which has a student body of just under 20,000, generally receives very few DMCA notices, but the school has had policy and other file-sharing deterrents in place for some time, according to Scott Sweren, UD's information security officer.

"UD had procedures in place to respond to copyright violation notices prior to the act passing," said Sweren. "After reviewing the act, it was determined that UD's procedures met the HOEA 2008 Act's requirements. So we did not really need to do much to come into compliance."

But for Reis, the provision is what he termed a "significant change for higher education." Thomas Jefferson University is a science and medical school research facility with a much smaller student body than a large university.

"There seems to be a split. The very large state schools have already dealt with this issue because they've had to," said Reis. "Small schools haven't got a robust program in place because we have not encountered it before."

The bill was signed into law after Reis' 2009 budget was already in place, but getting a six-figure approval in 2010 to make the changes necessary was certainly no small request. Reis is looking at Audible Magic and Red Lambda, two very different technologies that both manage peer-to-peer file sharing, as possible investments to be in compliance.