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Proposed Bill in Tennessee Penalizes Schools for Allowing Piracy

Posted by Soulskill on from the the-riaa's-problems-are-everyone's-problems dept.

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."

5 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Ah Good by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:Ah Good by Dr.+Eggman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Or they could stop offering internet connections for personal devices and instead only offer connection through university run/approved labs and computer centers. Control over what gets installed or run on such computers could be more strictly controlled. "Off-campus" housing could still provide access, but the University could more easily claim that its outside its authority. You might laugh, but the computer lab used to be the only place you could get connected; why might it not be possible to become so again? Likely, no not really. But still a grim possible approach.

      --
      Demented But Determined.
  2. Parallels to Civil War by Shajenko42 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. They will have to contract it out to comcast by gambolt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. protest on March 5th in Nashville by kaldari · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.