Anti-P2P college bill advances in House

[Hairbautt]

"WASHINGTON--The U.S. House of Representatives has taken a step toward approving a Hollywood-backed spending bill requiring universities to consider offering "alternatives" and "technology-based deterrents" to illegal peer-to-peer file sharing."

"In the House Education and Labor Committee's mammoth College Opportunity and Affordability Act [Available for Download] lies a tiny section, which dictates universities that participate in federal financial aid programs "shall" devise plans for "alternative" offerings to unlawful downloading, such as subscription-based services, or "technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity." The committee unanimously approved the bill Thursday.

Supporters and opponents of the proposal disagree, however, on what the penalty would be for failure to comply with the new rules. The proposed requirements would be added to a section of existing federal law dealing with federal financial aid."

For more information, visit the source site.

Source: C|Net News.Com

[TheFoX]

Amazing how entertainment takes priority over a country's education system. I thought the whole purpose of universities were to train the next generation to carry on from the current generation. Seems that the Motion Picture Industry has found another cow to milk, at the cost of future generations????

[AmpeD]

Amazing how entertainment takes priority over a country's education system. I thought the whole purpose of universities were to train the next generation to carry on from the current generation. Seems that the Motion Picture Industry has found another cow to milk, at the cost of future generations????

at the cost? its not like they're poorly educated because of no filesharing

[Broken]

I really don't have a problem with this.
Just like you shouldn't do "this" kind of stuff at work, I believe it also have no place at school.

Living on campus is a choice that comes with rules beyond that of normal society.

[Evil_Monkey]

Yes, there's no problem with removing file sharing from universities. It's distracting, it hurts the campus bandwidth when 500+ hundreds download huge files, etc.

[thegman24]

Jesus, as if high level college education wasn't boring enough. A4year Bachelors won't get you a job at Wendy's, and now you can't even download porn while your attending!!

[th0r]

My campus throttles any kind of file downloading traffic as it is (even Firefox and FTP speeds are crap). I haven't heard of anyone at my university getting busted for downloading illegally, but I guess it's good that there are deterrents rather than arrests.