Thank you Mr. Chairman, Senatory Leahy.

I’d like to begin with some background on The Graduate Center of Marlboro College, an innovative branch of our institution that provides internet-based curriculum to working professionals.

Three years ago, we introduced the first e-commerce degree in the nation, followed quickly by two additional graduate programs for engineers and educators. In addition, we’re preparing to launch a wholly online Internet Teaching Certificate program that will target K-12 teachers specifically. Given our programming, the proposed TEACH legislation is of great interest to us and we applaud your extensive work with the Office of Copyrights to enact these minor changes that will so greatly expand what our students are able to accomplish in their studies.

Other activities of The Graduate Center have included innovative partnerships and software development to foster a richly-interactive, comprehensive virtual learning environment.

The software environment that our designers have created is capable of supporting rich media; however, it is currently underutilized due to the prohibitive expense and paperwork involved in licensing and distributing copyrighted materials for use in distance instruction.

I’d like to pause for a moment to address the technological aspects of transient copies. As many of you know, a network server must send digital packets to literally hundreds of servers before it reaches the intended recipients through the world wide web. However, servers that receive intermediate copies routinely have their memory cache flushed, the remnants of those data are often incomplete, and if the proposed amendments are approved, at best, "hackers" would obtain unauthorized access to small excerpts of rich media, which, out of the context of instruction, are essentially so devoid of value as to be an insignificant threat to primary markets for the source materials.

Although this transmission technology is also safeguarded by the provisions of secure servers, encryption, and user passwords, we are still experiencing the frustration of not being able to serve our distant students as fully as we are currently able to serve their residential counterparts who can attend in a "traditional" classroom.

One example that comes to mind from my personal experience was the request to use a small excerpt from the Branagh version of a Shakespeare play, which would have taken months of paperwork and thousands of dollars to accomplish. Unfortunately for our students, I abandoned a sound pedagogical plan because of the obstacles.

An example taken from our graduate courses demonstrates clearly as well, the ongoing struggle between valid instructional use of copyrighted materials and the restrictions against using sound recordings in our online courses.

As this marketing student’s campaign illustrates, the inclusion of just 8 seconds from the licensed popular song "Everybody Dance Now" has now rendered an otherwise excellent model of instructional excellence in developing an effective campaign inaccessible to our distant students.

We see this disadvantage even more dramatically at the K-12 level, where one of our education students was interested in obtaining a segment of the popular "Magic School Bus" science series, the production of which is co-sponsored by the NSF. The teacher found that the process and expense of obtaining license from the MPLC were both prohibitive and prevented the delivery of timely instruction in an innovative delivery system.

Finally, in closing we’d like to applaud the Senators’ provisions of copyright education resources to all students and faculty members who engage in distance learning environments. At Marlboro College, we are grateful to the Library of Congress for its excellent website, filled with educational resources to which we regularly refer our teachers and students in their coursework. In addition, we refer our faculty specifically to the "Crash Course in Copyright" website hosted at the University of Texas, in Austin.

Thank you for your attention, Mr. Chairman, Senator Leahy.