Public colleges and universities across the country can be glad to have Dan Glickman on their side.

Dan Glickman is the chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. The MPAA is backing legislation headed by California Democrat George Miller to hold colleges and universities responsible for monitoring the download activities of their students.

While most campuses have programs in place to regulate bandwidth and oversee file-sharing, the legislation will ultimately make universities the watchdog of the music and movie industries.

Online blogs by college students showed their concern for the bill. Some are worried that if it passes, universities will pass on expenses to students through tuition costs. Students are also concerned that efforts to block file-sharing would eliminate legitimate peer-to-peer sharing for educational purposes.

Educause.edu, a non-profit association dedicated to advancing higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology, estimates that less than 4% of illegal downloads take place through campus residence hall networks.

“You have the federal government requiring a nonprofit educational institution to develop plans to help a for-profit industry to earn more revenue from their students,” Matt Owens, assistant director of federal relations at the Association of American Universities, said.

Wendy Seltzer is a visiting assistant professor at Northeastern University School of Law and formerly taught Internet law, copyright and information privacy at Brooklyn Law School. “This addition to the higher education bill would unfairly interfere with schools’ independence and educational missions,” Seltzer said.
”Universities…shouldn’t have to restructure their networks to meet special-interest demands, especially not in ways that invade students’ privacy or block academic research,” Seltzer continued.

But what do they know?

Dan Glickman, in an MPAA press release, said, [b]”Illegal downloading doesn’t just hurt the motion picture and music industries, but it can also be harmful to universities as it puts their systems a risk for security purposes, takes up bandwidth, and slows systems that are designed for research and other educational purposes.”[/b]

This man obviously has the best in mind for American higher education.

Dan Glickman, a warrior for the foundation of American institutions of higher learning.