Technology Group Searches for Legal Alternatives to File
Sharing
By FLORENCE
OLSEN
A group of representatives from colleges and entertainment
companies is trying to help colleges find ways to manage the problem
of illegal file-sharing by compiling a list of companies that could
provide campuses with online music and video services, legally and
at a reasonable price.
The technology task force of the Joint Committee of the Higher
Education and Entertainment Communities issued a "request for
information" on the topic late last month, under the aegis of
Educause, the higher-education technology consortium. The group has
asked companies to respond by July 14.
Such requests for information often precede a request for bids,
but neither Educause nor the task force has plans to award a broad
contract for such services. However, individual colleges could use
the information compiled by the task force to solicit bids.
The joint committee -- whose members include presidents and
provosts from Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University,
the University of North Carolina, the University of Rochester, and
Yale University -- organized in December 2002, with Educause as its
sponsor.
The technology group is one of three task forces that the joint
committee has formed to try to solve the problem of students' using
KaZaA and other file-sharing technologies to avoid paying for music
and other copyrighted works.
"There are a lot of campuses that know they need to do some more
things related to this," says Mark S. Bruhn, chief
information-technology security and policy officer at Indiana
University at Bloomington who is a member of the committee's
technology task force. "Certainly they're being encouraged to do
more things by the government and by the entertainment industry.
They just need to know what options there are."
The other two task forces are looking into educational and
legislative approaches to ending illegal file-sharing. The recording
industry has recently threatened to solve the problem for them by
filing hundreds of lawsuits against copyright violators.
The technology task force is seeking information about digital
movie and music services that would be available by September 1, but
it is willing to review information about services that companies
may be planning to offer between then and July 1, 2004.
"It's early in the evolution of these services, so we're looking
for a good first step that could be improved later," says Mark A.
Luker, a vice president of Educause.
The companies are being asked to include the type of content --
music, videos, and games, for example -- and number of titles they
offer, as well as the names of content owners from whom the
companies have secured licensing agreements.
The same task force has been evaluating responses it received
last month from a related but separate request for information about
specific blocking or filtering technologies that may help colleges
reduce illegal file-sharing.
Most analysts familiar with the problem of illegal file-sharing
on college campuses agree that providing students a legitimate
source on online music and movies for downloading at a reasonable
price will be ineffective unless colleges also block students'
access to free but illegally shared music, movies, and other
entertainment.
Before colleges say to students, "We're going to give you
authorized content, you have to block all of that unauthorized
content," says Michael Hoch, a research director at the Aberdeen
Group, a business-technology research company, in Boston. The list
of companies that make products that block file-sharing or otherwise
control the excessive use of file-sharing is fairly extensive, he
says, and includes companies like Packeteer and Allot
Communications.
The list of companies from which colleges could buy online
content is more limited. "The business relationships are very
difficult to put in place," Mr. Hoch says, "and security is one of
the main concerns."
Apple Computer, Pressplay, RealNetworks, and MusicNet, for
example, offer services for legally downloading music. But some
smaller companies have had a difficult time persuading the major
recording companies and entertainment studios to license their
copyrighted works for subscribers to download, Mr. Hoch says.
Apple Computer, with its iTunes Music Store, is among the few
that have been successful so far, he says. Apple has said it plans
to offer a Windows-compatible service, but such a service is not yet
available.
Sean Gallagher, an analyst at Eduventures, a market-research
company based in Boston, says that few standards or accepted
practices exist today for managing digital rights. "I think Apple is
somewhat proprietary in how its iTunes service is linked up to the
Macintosh." The service is linked to sales of Apple's iPod music
player, "so there's a good alignment there," he says.
Data submitted by companies that respond to the request for
information will be collected and distributed to colleges and also
published on the Educause Web site. "The plan is to make it widely
available," Mr. Luker says.
The task force members expect that individual colleges will use
the information to contact the companies that provide
digital-content services, to selectively test the services on their
own campuses, and ultimately to recommend or perhaps to subsidize
one or more of them.
"If you give them an easy, authorized way to do it," says Mr.
Hoch, "then you're much more likely to have a successful service for
your students."
