Higher Education and Entertainment Communities Seek Technologies to Address Peer-to-Peer File Sharing on College Campuses

For Release: Monday, April 28, 2003

Contact: Charles Phelps Chair of the Technology Task Force University of Rochester rles.phelps@rochester.edu 585-275-5931

Contact: Mark Luker Staff to the Technology Task Force EDUCAUSE mluker@educause.edu 202-872-4200

The Technology Task Force of the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities has issued a public Request for Information (RFI) to review technologies that may help reduce copyright infringement and bandwidth saturation that occur through widespread use of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing on college and university campuses. The RFI invites companies and individuals to provide information on available or planned technologies that might include such tools as traffic auditing; bandwidth shaping; file blocking, screening, and filtering; and network performance analysis. The deadline for submissions is 11:59 p.m. EDT on June 2, 2003.

The Joint Committee Task Force will neither recommend nor certify any technologies or services identified through the RFI process. Rather, its goal is to gather, describe, and organize the information submitted to provide a knowledge base on how the technologies address the management of P2P in the context of academic use of information resources for teaching, learning, and research. Following this preliminary effort, the Joint Committee is expected to distribute a version of the information to college and university representatives, some of whom may then elect to run pilot tests on one or more of the technologies.

EDUCAUSE, the association for information technology in higher education, is distributing this announcement on behalf of the Joint Committee. The RFI Web site includes frequently asked questions and membership of the Joint Committee and the Technology Task Force, as well as the RFI itself.

About EDUCAUSE

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. The current membership comprises more than 2,200 colleges, universities, and educational organizations, including 250 corporations, with 17,000 active members. Learn more about EDUCAUSE at www.educause.edu.