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College Funding Bill Passes House, P2P Provision Intact

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the College Opportunity and Affordability Act passed through the House today with a vote of 354-58 and the anti-P2P provision is intact. That provision would require universities to filter P2P and to offer legal alternatives. They are claiming now, though, that universities would not lose federal funding if they fail to do this. Of course, an amendment that would have clarified that was withdrawn immediately after it was offered."

5 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What's needed for this madness to stop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They are just asking for completely decentralized encrypted network. Soon they'll get it.

  2. Re:College = education. by eli+pabst · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't think it is that absurd for a college CS major to be downloading a linux ISO from bittorrent. I don't mind Universities helping copyright holders protect their works, but denying all P2P traffic is a ham-fisted way of doing it. If they want to filter based on content, that's fine, but even that isn't fool-proof. You have to be very careful in how you legislate this because its people who can't afford to go to college without university support that are going to be paying the price.

    I think examples such as the DMCA should make us wary of how well-intentioned legislation can go wrong when you have technologically illiterate politicians guided by industry lobbyists doing the writing.

  3. Re:Here is some Clarification by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Even so... IMHO this still opens the door to more Orwellian legislation, and provides further evidence of how industry pwnes our government.

    Sounds like you are too young (or too old) to remember the 1984 (apt year eh?) National Minimum Drinking Age Act which saw the US Federal Government force each state to raise the minimum drinking age to 21 ....... or face retaliation by way of reducing Federal aid for state highways. Hows that for Orwellian?
  4. Not really a win. by gnutoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The part about filtering P2P is disturbing but there's are plenty of good legal alternatives to RIAA crap. I'd love to see every university mirror the Internet Archive, Creative Commons and promote work from people in their community. Let's take that part of this stupid law and make something cool that will continue to bleed the RIAA out of existence.

  5. So lies == bullshit laws now by Doug52392 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So the MPAA lied and said 44% of damages from illegal movie downloading is caused by collage kids, says that for 2 years, then tells everyone due to "human error", it's more like 15%. Now they pass this bullshit legislation that will, yet again, destroy the rights and civil liberities of collage kids. Will someone get these dreaded 4 letter industry lobbyist organizations out of the picture?