Fisher Testifies at Congressional P2P Hearing
Harvard Law Professor and Berkmanite Terry Fisher last week presented this testimony to a subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about optimal responses to illegal P2P filesharing at colleges and universities. More details here and here.
Not surprisingly, Fisher’s analysis is a measured one. He recognizes the significant problems of illegal filesharing (both the legal problems of copyright law and the technical problems of finite bandwidth on campus), but also:
- points out the many legal and educationally beneficial uses of P2P technology;
- warns that attempts to filter out particular P2P systems resemble a game of “whack-a-mole” in which students stay well ahead of university administrators;
- raises the privacy concerns involved if universities monitor precisely what media students are watching and reading.
The testimony also represents a nice update on both the descriptive and prescriptive aspects of Fisher’s 2004 book Promises to Keep.
Filed under: Berkman, Copyright, Digital Media, Education & Copyright, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Music, Privacy, RIAA
Those are some very interesting points made by Fisher. One might also note that the recent RIAA videos on the topic have suggested that college filesharing should be deemed a crime with all manner of collateral consequences. That would be a troubling development; this seems to me an area we should we wary of criminalizing, if only because resources could be deployed far more productively in stopping violent crime, violence against women, street crime, etc.
[...] A more measured approach that recognizes both the problems and benefits of P2P technology and university responses to it is exemplified by Terry Fisher’s congressional testimony on the subject. [...]