http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/20/congress-moving-forw.html

Congress moving forward with plan to tie college funding to support
for RIAA measures

Posted by Cory Doctorow, January 20, 2008 10:20 PM

The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns us that H.R. 4137, the
College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007, is still steaming
ahead with its "Campus-based Digital Theft Prevention" that ties
college funding to universities' purchase of DRM-based
industry-sanctioned download services and deployment of network
snoopware that spies on and disconnects college kids if they appear to
be violating copyright (without any hard evidence or a chance for the
student to present her side of the story).

These congressional requirements will turn out to be expensive
dead-ends -- the industry-sanctioned online music services are laden
with DRM, and network detection/filtering programs present privacy
risks and are inevitably rendered obsolete by technological
countermeasures.

Advocates of the bill stress that the language stops short of
demanding implementation -- that it only requires universities to
"plan" -- but this argument misses the point entirely. The passage of
this bill will unambiguously lead universities down the wrong path.
For the sake of artists, administrators, students, and consumers
better approaches exist.

The bill also would hang an unspoken threat over the heads of
university administrators. In response to concerns that potential
penalties for universities could include a loss of federal student aid
funding, the MPAA's top lawyer in Washington said that federal funds
should be at risk when copyright infringement happens on campus
networks. Moreover, earlier versions of "Campus-based Digital Theft
Prevention" proposals nakedly sought to make schools that received
numerous copyright infringement notices subject to review by the US
Secretary of Education.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/20/congress-moving-forw.html

Congress moving forward with plan to tie college funding to support
for RIAA measures

Posted by Cory Doctorow, January 20, 2008 10:20 PM

The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns us that H.R. 4137, the
College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007, is still steaming
ahead with its "Campus-based Digital Theft Prevention" that ties
college funding to universities' purchase of DRM-based
industry-sanctioned download services and deployment of network
snoopware that spies on and disconnects college kids if they appear to
be violating copyright (without any hard evidence or a chance for the
student to present her side of the story).