Buried deep within the more than 700 pages of the proposed “College Opportunity And Affordability Act of 2007” are twelve lines of text that would require all colleges to actively protect their networks against illegal file sharing.

According to the bill, currently in the House of Representatives, universities would be required to not only provide deterrents, but also offer “alternatives” to campus copyright violations.

“We very much support the language in the bill,” said Angela Martinez, the vice president of corporate communications for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The MPAA’s music counterpart, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), was unavailable for comment.

In the academic world, however, the bill has sparked considerable debate.

In a letter addressed to Congress, the higher education members from the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities vehemently opposed the bill and its implication that a university’s failure to comply would result in a loss of federal financial aid. Signatories included Stanford’s President John Hennessy, the Chancellor of the University of Maryland, the President of Pennsylvania State University and the legal counsel of Yale University.

“Such an extraordinarily inappropriate and punitive outcome would result in all students on that campus losing their federal financial aid,” they wrote in the letter, stating that this would include funding such as “Pell Grants and student loans that are essential to their ability to attend college, advance their education and acquire the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century economy.”

“Loss of financial aid for all students in a university because a few students are illegally file sharing copyrighted material is a draconian penalty,” said Debra Zumwalt, the vice president of Stanford’s General Counsel.

The MPAA disputes this, however, and sent a document to The Daily hoping to clarify its position on key points of the bill. The document states that the act does not directly threaten the financial aid eligibility of any institutions.

“Institutions of higher education must report to the Secretary [of Education] on a number of issues annually, at the risk of monetary penalties or additional reviews for non-compliance,” the MPAA wrote in the document. “[The act] simply adds an anti-piracy plan to this list of requirements. [There are] many opportunities to correct the violation before ANY action is taken with regard to Title IV [financial aid] eligibility.”

The bill would also require the entertainment industry to prepare for the Secretary of Education a list of top offenders in order to take action against them. According to such a list produced by the MPAA last year, Stanford was the 24th worst offender in the U.S. out of 25 ranked schools.

“We want to work together with colleges to do everything possible to stem this hemorrhaging of illegal downloading and explore legal alternatives to downloads students want in a way that is convenient, easy, accessible and, above all, legal,” said Stewart McLaurin, the executive vice president of education for the MPAA.

In terms of legal alternatives to downloading movies, for instance, Green Library’s Media Microtext Center contains approximately 9,000 DVDs and 18,000 VHS tapes, all of which can be borrowed free of charge with an SUID card.

There are many routes the entertainment industry can take to prosecute illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allows the entertainment industry to legally take action against those who violate copyright law. According to Stanford’s DMCA policy, students are given three DMCA warnings before the University acts against them.

However, Zumwalt pointed out that students should not rely heavily on this policy because they can also be sued directly by copyright holders. She explained that in 2007, the recording industry — through the RIAA — demanded money from 19 Stanford Internet users for unlawful file sharing either through lawsuits or pre-litigation settlement demands. In August, seven Stanford students were sued for illegally uploading music. Students who have been subjected to these demands either pay thousands of dollars to settle or defend themselves and risk substantial liability.

“Just last week we received a ‘discovery hold’ request for an IP address with a notice that the recording artists are in the process of bringing an action against that individual,” Zumwalt added. “Students should not rely on the fact that they will get a ‘warning’ to stop file sharing before they find themselves named as a defendant in a civil lawsuit.”

McLaurin said the MPAA does not sue individual students as a matter of course, since it is not part of its overall strategy, but nonetheless disagreed with Stanford’s DMCA policy of giving a student three warnings before taking punitive action.

“If we condone illegal behavior as academic intuitions even once, then what concerns me is the message that we are giving our future leaders,” McLaurin said. “We want to work proactively with academic associations and, when necessary, with Congress and state legislators to create a better framework and a better way of preventing this illegal activity from happening.”

One issue raised in the letter by the higher education members was the problem of differentiating between legal and illegal files across a P2P network and implementing a technology-based deterrent. They wrote that this demand is unreasonable because “adequate versions” of the required technology “do not yet exist,” according to technology experts.

“The problem with the legislation is that it could be interpreted to attack the technology, not the problem,” Zumwalt said. “[P2P file sharing] can be used for lawful purposes and there is no technological deterrent that we are aware of that can distinguish between lawful and unlawful use.”

The MPAA disagreed with this both in writing and in interviews with The Daily.

“There are many commercial technologies, presently available and tested that filter copyrighted material,” McLaurin said. “Our industry gives these companies the fingerprints for copyrighted material to be filtered out by the program. This ensures that only very specific material is filtered and makes it possible to have legitimate P2P activity.”

Even though enforcement of illegal file sharing has caused many students to reconsider their actions, others remain undeterred.

“It is just a matter of convenience,” said one senior who was granted anonymity out of fear of prosecution. “Sometimes I don’t have the time to buy music, and I end up downloading it. There are numerous ways of encrypting your data traffic on the network so that it is impossible to determine if one is file sharing.”

Zumwalt said that students should pay more attention to the law.

“I am surprised that some students continue to ignore their legal obligations and the potential adverse consequences to themselves,” she said. “They should know better. Now their illegal behavior could endanger the financial aid of innocent students.”