The House Education and Labor Committee unanimously approved a bill Thursday that would require universities to find alternatives to illegal peer-to-peer file sharing or face losing their federal financial aid if they don't comply.
The bill says universities must "develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity."
The specific penalties for not following the law are ambiguous, but university advocates have said it could mean universities would lose all of their federal financial aid. NU students received $35 million in aid for the 2007 fiscal year, said Ingrid Stafford, associate vice president for financial operations and treasury.
Federal financial aid, which includes Stafford loans, Pell grants and student work-study programs, is "very important" to recipients, said Mort Rahimi, NU's chief technology officer.
"To me, it's going to be very difficult for us to try to deny our students access to these federal dollars," said Rahimi, who is also NU's IT vice president.
These regulations are Section 494 of the larger "College Opportunity and Affordability Act," which also proposes giving colleges incentives for lowering tuition and streamlines financial aid application processes.
The bill does not explicitly require universities to purchase a legal music subscription service such as Napster, or pay for songs on iTunes, but purchasing such a service would be the only viable option to fulfill the bill's requirements, Rahimi said.
"The bill says to find an alternative," he said. "An alternative to someone who's taking something for free is for the university to give it for free."
The bill probably wouldn't apply to all students, Rahimi said.
"The majority of our students are already subscribing to the various services," he said. "The issue is that some don't, and why should some students who really don't care about music pay for it?"
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