In July U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) introduced an amendment to the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965 that would have empowered the secretary of education to mandate technological filtering devices on the data networks of colleges and universities alleged to be the "top 25" recipients of Digital Millennium Copyright Act "take down" notices, which assert that someone on a network has been detected illegally downloading copyrighted material.

Powerful lobbying groups, such as the Recording Industry Association of America, Universal Pictures, Home Box Office and the Motion Picture Association of America, hire agencies to generate these automated notices, which are as notorious for their errors as for their recognition of real copyright infringement.

A few days later, Reid, shocked by the massive grassroots opposition that emerged over one weekend from leaders in higher education and information technology, withdrew the amendment.

Now, members of the House Committee on Education and Labor have introduced legislation that uses essentially the same language. This bill, the College Access and Opportunity Act of 2007:

It is high time for content owners to stop blaming higher education for a problem that is not of our making and for which we do not bear responsibility.

Internet technologies have outpaced business models, creating tensions between entertainment industries and their customers, the law and social norms. Surprised by the pace at which these new technologies have outdated previous methods for the distribution and marketing of copyrighted materials, content owners have lashed out at colleges and universities in part because historically their networks were a focused source of infringement, and in part because we have made ourselves easy targets for their frustrations, given our own concern for the citizenship development of our students.

Now, however, broadband commodity networks offer as much bandwidth as most college and university networks, and user studies reveal that infringers begin as early as middle school and go well beyond the traditional age of undergraduates. Rather than strive for more education on legal use of the Internet to all of its users, content owners have chosen to heap opprobrium on higher education in public relations campaigns and, in particular, in Congressional hearings designed to embarrass and bully some of our most respected academic leaders.

There may be a method to the madness: a search for the deep pockets that content owners cannot find in suing individual users and a chance to set a precedent for extending contributory liability to Internet service providers for copyright infringement. These results would have devastating consequences for both higher education and for American society overall.

Institutions of higher education rely on data networks to advance their missions of teaching, research and outreach. Content-filtering systems would seriously contravene the values of open inquiry and free speech that support those missions. As a bellwether for the rest of the Internet community, college and university networks threatened with liability for the content they carry and the specter of content filtering presage a dark future for economic growth and America's political culture. If our democracy is true, then it must be greater than the ability of powerful lobbyists to dictate speech on public networks for the purpose of shoring up antiquated business models.

Higher education institutions should not only resist legislative efforts to compromise our missions but also stand as leaders in the development of global Internet policy that prizes free speech and open communications unimpeded by enforcement measures of for-profit private interests.

Ultimately the battle is not one between content owners and higher education but one about whether the United States will demonstrate to the world the enduring values of participatory democracy, to preserve a world where global citizens can work together in freedom to shape the future of Internet policy.

Tracy Mitrano is director of information technology policy at Cornell.