One of the most important activities that can be done to promote artists and copyright is to lean on institutions of higher learning to do what needs to be done to combat piracy. Today's universities provide students with blazing-fast Internet access and massive storage space, often taxpayer-funded. Study after study has shown university networks to be piracy hot spots. In the past there was a peculiar desire among some officials to look the other way; perhaps these individuals didn't want to be The Man suppressing students that they remembered from their halcyon college days. But in recent years -- with prodding from the creative community and Congress -- universities are becoming more responsible.

Much work remains to be done, though, as this AP story by Ted Bridis shows. (It is an otherwise excellent story, but for some reason misspells the first name of RIAA's Cary Sherman; I know Ted knows better so I'm assuming it was an editorial error.) Universities must be responsible for their own networks and in overseeing the behavior of their students for two reasons, one economic and the other social. The first is obvious -- piracy harms creators financially. The second should be equally obvious. If students use a university's high-speed network to amass unauthorized content, and there are no repercussions, they have to assume that on some level the behavior is sanctioned by the university; after all, the university owns the network and would stop such behavior if it thought it important. As a result, the lesson the university teaches its students is that theft is okay. (Let's keep in mind that many are already learning that in class, when a professor hands out photocopies of entire books, complete with copyright page, and clearly hasn't obtained the permission of the publisher.) Purdue, mentioned in Ted's story, seems not to grasp either reason.

If you're young and haven't fully developed a moral compass, and your entire life has involved ever more spectacular technology, it's natural to assume that because something is technically possible, it is in fact okay, or "fair." That is not always true, but not everyone learns that lesson independently. Sometimes they need a hand. Higher education should be about more than the lessons in one's classes; it's a time where adolescents become adults. The values they carry out of that institution of higher learning will remain with them their entire lives. We need to remain vigilant and ensure that universities are teaching the right values through their own actions, through respect for creators and their property.

ADDENDUM 11:48 am: AP has fixed the spelling of Cary Sherman's name. Not through a correction, just by changing it online. Oh, this modern world we live in, where mistakes can disappear from the record!

posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:38 AM | Academia, Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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