Why did colleges stay mum on MPAA stats?
February 23, 2008 Filed in: Digital
piracy
Last month, C|NET news.com ran the article Why did colleges stay mum on MPAA
stats? It was in response to the disclosure
by the MPAA, which noted that 15 percent, not 44
percent (as it had previously claimed), of the
movie industry’s domestic losses come from
illegal downloading of movies by college and
university students. It wagged its finger at
colleges for not standing up for its own: "learn
the truth before you cower".
What a frustrating article. Let me identify issues that seem to me to be most important.
First, studies are being performed by higher ed: consider Illinois State University’s Digital Citizen Project, Kenneth C. Green’s Campus Computing Project or the Brandeis University survey on DMCA practices. [Update: the Campus Computing Project published The Campus Costs of P2P Compliance in 2008.]
Second, such studies aren’t always easy or straightforward. Most institutions set high bars for protecting individual privacy that are in place for good reason: privacy underpins the intellectual freedoms of the academy. I don’t mean to brandish privacy as a bludgeon, but I think it's fair to say the type of monitoring involved for such studies could easily cross the threshold where monitoring becomes surveillance, or the monitoring of behavior. (Consider that the Digital Citizen Project went through the standard rigorous privacy requirements for any human subjects research.)
Third, institutions are doing their own analyses. I don't know what caused the author to mention UCLA - but let me assure everyone that within the framework of our policies, we actively pursue understanding what we are seeing to better tune our programs, whether educationally or advocacy related. Sometimes these insights are very public, as in the testimonies before Congress, whereas other times the information is shared with those who may find it useful, or simply used internally to enhance what we do.
Finally, I think it's important to remember higher education comprises thousands of individual and highly individualistic institutions; and that we have to work hard in order to work together. And we do: often through national associations such as EDUCAUSE, AAU, ACE and NASULGC.
All this said, it’s hardly the case higher ed couldn’t do (a lot) better, which perhaps is the point of the article. But this is, believe it or not, a complicated issue.
What a frustrating article. Let me identify issues that seem to me to be most important.
First, studies are being performed by higher ed: consider Illinois State University’s Digital Citizen Project, Kenneth C. Green’s Campus Computing Project or the Brandeis University survey on DMCA practices. [Update: the Campus Computing Project published The Campus Costs of P2P Compliance in 2008.]
Second, such studies aren’t always easy or straightforward. Most institutions set high bars for protecting individual privacy that are in place for good reason: privacy underpins the intellectual freedoms of the academy. I don’t mean to brandish privacy as a bludgeon, but I think it's fair to say the type of monitoring involved for such studies could easily cross the threshold where monitoring becomes surveillance, or the monitoring of behavior. (Consider that the Digital Citizen Project went through the standard rigorous privacy requirements for any human subjects research.)
Third, institutions are doing their own analyses. I don't know what caused the author to mention UCLA - but let me assure everyone that within the framework of our policies, we actively pursue understanding what we are seeing to better tune our programs, whether educationally or advocacy related. Sometimes these insights are very public, as in the testimonies before Congress, whereas other times the information is shared with those who may find it useful, or simply used internally to enhance what we do.
Finally, I think it's important to remember higher education comprises thousands of individual and highly individualistic institutions; and that we have to work hard in order to work together. And we do: often through national associations such as EDUCAUSE, AAU, ACE and NASULGC.
All this said, it’s hardly the case higher ed couldn’t do (a lot) better, which perhaps is the point of the article. But this is, believe it or not, a complicated issue.