Congress Hoping To Find Out Just How Many College Kids Are Downloading That Ne-Yo Album

A group of Congressmen has asked 19 colleges and universities to fill out a very long survey about downloading habits on their campuses, in an effort to figure out just what the kids today are doing with those newfangled tubes in their dorm rooms:

A bipartisan group of House of Representatives lawmakers said Wednesday that they had written the presidents of 19 colleges and universities asking their officials to complete an expansive survey on the use of their campus networks for illegal downloading of copyrighted music, video or other digital content.

…The six-page survey (which starts on page 4 of this document) asks a wide range of heavily detailed questions and seeks a slew of documents about the institutions’ policies and practices. The inquiries fall into four basic categories:

* Education: the campuses’ policies on “acceptable use” of their networks and how they communicate and enforce them. * Enforcement: how the institutions respond to copyright infringement notices and other violations of their acceptable use policies. * Technology: what practices or policies they have in place to prevent misuse of their networks. * Legal alternatives: the extent to which colleges promote “legitimate services as alternative sources for copyrighted materials.”

“Universities have a moral and legal obligation to ensure students do not use campus computers for illegal downloading,” said Smith. “These schools do not give away their intellectual property for free, and they should not expect musicians to do so.” He added: “We want to know exactly what they plan to do to stop illegal downloading on their campuses.”

Fair enough, although perhaps Smith shouldn’t have thrown around the word “moral”–as Consumerist noted, Smith has taken about $7,000 in donations from the RIAA Political Action Committee (co-signers Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) and John Howard Coble (D-N.C.) have received funds from the group as well).

We’re wondering, too, why the list of colleges, which includes Brown, Columbia, Duke, UCLA, and Michigan, doesn’t include Penn State; after all, they had their own free, legal alternative available to students, at least until they pulled the rug out from underneath it. Wouldn’t that comparison at least shine a light on whether a low-cost, legal file-sharing alternative would help curb illegal downloads?

Congress Ups Ante On File Sharing [Inside Higher Education]