Speeches

The Digital Piracy Dilemma

It's a pleasure to be here to discuss higher education and its role in the entertainment industry, particularly with regard to the piracy of music and movies.

The entertainment industry is now facing a serious challenge -- particularly from our youth, who have grown up believing that everything -- especially music and movies -- is free on the Internet. As one high school student recently said, "Who wouldn't want to do this? It's totally free and it's easy."

Technology has made copying music and other protected works far easier than ever before and it is this ease of replication that has made digital piracy a mainstream activity practiced by millions of people on any given day. About 60 percent of these "file sharers" are in the United States alone. A recent report from the BBC indicated that Hong Kong is the world leader in the number of songs illegally downloaded -- 130 million over the last two-and-a-half years. Across the globe, more than 2 billion files are illegally downloaded every month, and those of you in this room know what that has done to the music industry and now threatens to do to the movie industry as well.

In fact, in the less than 15 minutes I will spend talking today, about $672,000 dollars worth of songs will be downloaded in the United States alone.

As president of The Pennsylvania State University, one of the world's largest universities with an enrollment of more than 83,000 students and 36,000 employees, why should I care about digital piracy? It's not just that I'm still waiting for my big break in show business.

Universities are one of the primary producers of intellectual property and so have a vested interest in nurturing and protecting creative works -- not only those that have come from our own institutions, but also innovations that are being discovered by those outside our gates.

As a place where knowledge is created, shared, and cherished, a university must be the champion and protector of intellectual property rights in order to carry out our mission of educating students and to stimulate more creativity. As many of you know, copyright law started right here in England with "The Statute of Anne," a law passed by the British Parliament in 1710. Like today, that statute was prompted in part by a technological advancement -- the printing press -- laying the groundwork for intellectual property policies that still hold today.

Without copyright protection, the works of JK Rowling, John Meaney, Robert Bolt, the Beatles, the Darkness, and even Benny Hill, would be up for grabs. In the U.S., online intellectual property is governed by a number of laws, most notably the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enacted in 1998. Violators can face civil and criminal penalties, including up to five years in prison and fines of up to 250,000 U.S. dollars -- equivalent to about 134,000 pounds, or over 199,000 Euros.

The law covers a number of areas from fair use to the liability of online service providers, and even bans the dissemination of technology whose main purpose is to get around copyright protections. While the Recording Industry Association of America has filed lawsuits under a basic copyright law passed in 1976, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has helped expedite the process for gathering the names of those stealing music. Such lawsuits have become an important aspect of our nation's deterrence efforts.

So as the Web has enabled intellectual property to flow more freely than ever before, universities, which are the defacto internet service providers for millions of people, have found themselves in somewhat of a dilemma. In essence, we're providing the networks that allow pirated information to be shared. Most universities have been reluctant to admit that they were part of the problem. But I believe that we surely must be part of the solution.

Piracy is particularly prevalent at universities because the institutions are among the most wired in the world. Most students and employees have unrestricted Internet access at the broadest bandwidths, and there is a widespread lack of knowledge about copyright laws, making online theft an effortless and accepted activity. Clearly, this is not what university administrators had in mind when they provided high-speed internet access as part of the educational package. But one of the most compelling reasons that universities should help find a solution to digital piracy is because it's just plain wrong. As recording artist Elvis Costello recently said, "If you make something and someone steals it, that's theft. That's all you need to say about file sharing. Where's the ambiguity?"

The technology of peer-to-peer file sharing has greatly facilitated such piracy, both conceptually and legally. There are, of course, quite innovative, academically sound, and legally appropriate uses for P2P technologies. Unfortunately, using peer-to-peer file sharing for piracy has given infringers linguistic cover. "Sharing" is something we teach our kids to do but sharing stolen goods is another matter. What we communicate to the next generation will largely determine if we will live in a just society. Honesty, integrity, respect for individual achievement, and working for the common good are all values that students should have when they leave college. It's our obligation to educate students about ethical behavior.

While testifying before the United States Congress on the issue of digital piracy, I was told, as the leader of higher education's efforts in this arena, to fix this problem, or Congress would fix it for us with laws we wouldn't like. So -- what are we doing about digital piracy?

First and foremost, we are educating our students, faculty, and staff about copyright issues, and we have seen a huge sea change over the last year in awareness levels. Before receiving an Internet access account, everyone within our University, for example, must read and sign a statement saying they will abide by our policies and the laws related to copyright infringement. They also receive a document discussing the issue of digital piracy. They are advised of bandwidth limitations, a restriction that was instituted to ensure that users doing legitimate work would not be hindered. At the same time, these restrictions limit the bandwidth availability needed for egregious levels of downloading. In addition, over the last year or so, we have sent several e-mails to every member of the University community, again discussing copyright law, music piracy, the responsibilities of the computer user, and repercussions for illegally downloading and distributing copyrighted material. We let our students know in no uncertain terms that Penn State follows the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and that they may also be subject to University imposed sanctions -- including expulsion. As part of our enforcement efforts, we have assigned a designated agent to respond to reports alleging copyright infringement on our servers and we respond expeditiously to remove access to the stolen material.

Currently, we are deploying firewalls on all residence hall network systems. The firewalls will prevent access to pirated peer-to-peer traffic, while at the same time providing greater protection against viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and the like. We continue our bandwidth shaping practices and our assessment of evolving technologies.

In addition to education, enforcement, and network management procedures, Penn State also has undertaken something that no other university has. We launched a program to make online music legally available to our students. After reviewing proposals from several music subscription services, we selected Napster, which has a music library of more than 500,000 tracks.

This legitimate alternative to music piracy was rolled out several weeks ago for about 17,000 students in our residence halls on several of our campuses. By Fall 2004, about 75,000 students at more than 20 of our Penn State campuses will have access to this music service. Faculty and staff also will be able to pay for the service at a discounted rate, and we are working on a concept to serve our alumni as well.

As the first U.S. university to provide a sponsored legal alternative to illegal downloading, Penn State faced considerable skepticism from many corners, but we had done our homework by talking to groups of students who made it clear they wanted instant access to hundreds of thousands of music files. Student input was core to the development of this program and we even hired a 22-year-old on to the staff to advise us. I personally spoke to scores of students. Working in partnership with Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, we pushed the industry -- from the songwriters to the copyright holders to the recording companies -- to cooperate with this effort. To date, evidence suggests that access to Napster's legal download site at Penn State has substantially diminished the use of services such as KaZaa and Grokster.

Our students are streaming or downloading to their computers more than 100,000 songs per day. This is free to them, since Penn State pays for the subscription. Students pay 99 cents per track if they wish to burn the track onto a CD and own it.

The notion that universities should take stronger action to stop digital piracy on their networks is catching on. Last month the University of Rochester in New York also signed on to offer access for its students. Several dozen other schools have begun such discussions.

The work on this issue at Penn State emanates from the work of the Committee on Higher Education and the Entertainment Industry, a national group that Cary Sherman and I co-chair. The committee's efforts over the past year have focused on legal, technical, educational, and legislative issues.

I am proud of the work we have accomplished through this unprecedented relationship among higher education leaders and music and motion picture executives. The free-range design of the Internet combined with the victimless feel of downloading has meant the re-education of a generation, as well as a change in attitude for all computer users. Solving the digital piracy dilemma will take creativity and patience. Universities must be part of the solution.

Through continuing educational efforts, increased enforcement, technological advances, and legal alternatives, perhaps we can stem the underground swapping of movie and music files and, in the process, restore ethical behavior to our youth and put our energies toward the legitimate uses of technology for teaching and learning.