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Proposed Bill in Tennessee Penalizes Schools for Allowing Piracy
An anonymous reader brings us an Ars Technica report about a proposed bill in Tennessee which would require state-funded universities to enforce anti-piracy standards. The universities would be forced to "track down and stop infringing activity" or risk losing their funding. The U.S. Congress requested last year that certain universities do this voluntarily. Quoting:
"Efforts taken by universities thus far to deter and prevent piracy have had mixed results. The University of Utah, for instance, claims that it has reduced MPAA and RIAA complaints by 90 percent and saved $1.2 million in bandwidth costs by instituting anti-piracy filtering mechanisms. However, the school revealed that their filtering system hasn't been able to stop encrypted P2P traffic and noted that students will find ways to circumvent any system. The end result, some say, will be a costly arms race as students perpetually work to circumvent anti-piracy systems put in place by universities."
Ah good, so Tennessee has the magic black box that can sniff out encrypted traffic.
Right?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The NSA reports a record recruiting year from students at the Univ of Utah. "They are some very talented cryptography students.", says NSA spokesman.
they do this already, and for the most part are very good at it (Limewire and the like can't be used without the user's internet being disconnected).
Of course, many of the people I know simple use uTorrent. So yeah, the legislation won't do much of anything but deny universities money when the US is already lagging worldwide.
This reminds me of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
Cliff notes: Slave owners couldn't track down slaves that made it to the North, so they made a law saying that federal marshals had to do it for them or face an enormous fine.
Essentially, the same thing that the RIAA is trying to do with copyright infringers - force other people to do their policing for them.
Of course we know what happened to the slave owners - they lost their legal right to own slaves entirely. Who knows how this will affect the RIAA's right to own copyrights.
...until they'll realize that all the efforts the **AA has gone through will result in some people exchanging data on physical media. I'm amazed that they still believe everything will be fixed if the internet has been regulated beyond reason.
;)
There's a theory which says that all music produced up to now will fit on a single hdd within a decade. I'm certain that they will stop chasing universities the moment they'll realize that some people carry all music available in their purse
I don't read replies by ACs.
A guy I know who works in a Campus IT department has said that if bills like this pass they will have no choice but to contract dorm connectivity out to Comcast (and make students pay for it). Efforts to launch stuff like campus wide wifi would be dead in the water. It sounds like it would be the death of .edu, pretty much.
Enforcing the law is the job of the law enforcement system. No one else. If we're going to suddenly make it the responsibility of universities to ensure their students follow the law, then it's high time we fired our law enforcers... because what, then, are they doing, if not enforcing the law?
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Are they going to search every kid's locker and backpack for USB sticks, micro SD-cards, and plain old external hard drive enclosures? From what I've heard, good old sneaker-net is still a common way for kids to exchange movies, songs, games... if they crack down on the net, kids will just resort to physical trading more often.
The record and movie indusry lobbiests don't give a damn about rape, murder, assaults and double-parking assholes. They're job is buy the political whores that sit in Washington and state legislatures.
What I think we need to do is to pass a Constitutional amendment forcing all politicians to dress up like the cheap tarts they really are. Every morning before they go into a session, they should be forced to stand out on the street showing their legs while lobbiests are constitutionally required to throw nickels at them.
If we're going to have pathetic whores in power, they should be forced in every way to behave like them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A major protest is planned for Wednesday, March 5th in downtown Nashville. 8AM, corner of 6th Ave. and Union (near the capital building). Come and show your opposition to this ridiculous legislation.
...Penalizes Schools For... "Teaching Intelligent Design" Oh please please say "Teaching Intelligent Design".
...Allowing Piracy Dhoh! So close!Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller