At the risk of self-promotion, I follow this issue on my blog (http://mistakengoal.com) and in applied research I conduct with fellow university housing and IT professionals (http://resnetsymposium.org/workinggroups/research.htm). In fact, I have been drawn to this group as I have wondered just what my students are doing on the residential computer network, why they're doing it, and why it seems so important to them. I'll leave the legal speculations to the lawyers. But on the congressional front, it's pretty bad news for colleges and universities. First, the copyright holders have successfully convinced American legislators that file-sharing is indeed copyright violation and equivalent to theft. Second, we in the academy have done an exceptionally poor job of making our case and explaining our apparent inaction. I don't need to explain to this group of scholars the many complicated legal, ethical, and technical issues involved but we've barely tried to make those cases with our legislators (academic freedom is derided as a poor excuse by some legislators). Finally, too many institutions have completely underestimated this issue and have been too inactive. The last round of hearings in the House was particularly brutal and demonstrative of their intense displeasure of how institutions have handled this challenge. Today, we discovered that 19 (or 20) institutions are being heavily scrutinized by Congress and placed in the uncomfortable position of answering a lengthy and biased questionnaire or dodging the questions and incurring the wrath of legislators (you can't hide in that small of a group). I don't know if legislative action will occur at the national level but it's clear that there is significant and growing bipartisan willingness to take action. And some of the mumblings (change copyright law to modify safe harbor, perhaps to require particular technological attempts to prevent copyright infringement) should be of interest even to those not in my small world. Kevin