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P2P amendment dropped from college funding bill

28 July 2007 8:36 by Rich "vurbal" Fiscus | 12 comments

Last Monday US Senator Harry Reid withdrew a proposed amendment to a renewal of the Higher Education Act, which provides financial aid to US college students. The amendment would have required colleges to crack down on illegal file sharing.

The Reid amendment also would have required the education secretary to annually identify (and publicly embarrass) the 25 colleges and universities that had in the previous year received the most notices of copyright violations using institutional technology networks.

Unless it was a response to lobbying from the entertainment industry, the reasoning behind this is puzzling since these notices are really just complaints from outside parties claiming copyright infringement; in other words allegations that haven't been proven in court.

College officials had lobbied aggressively against the Reid provision, arguing that it would require colleges to buy unproven software or hardware and that it ignored the many efforts that higher education institutions have been taking to attack the problem of illegal downloading.

One IT official at a Boston-area school noted that the proposal would have created a kind of "revolving door" for anti-P2P software companies who would have, in effect, been guaranteed 25 new customers each year.

The amendment was replaced by one requiring schools to simply publish notices to students explaining why illegal file sharing is bad.

Source: Ars Technica

Permalink to this article

Lobbyists stage pro-copyright event in U. S. capitol (14 October 2007)

Azureus hits 7 million subscribers with Vuze (10 August 2007)

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Discuss this article!
armorthis (Inactive) 28 July 2007 9:38
I don't understand why people are trying to fight P2P file sharing. If they somehow manage to stop people using torrents all that will happen is people will make a forum like PSPISO. Nothing is going to stop piracy, accept it. [ + quote]
mspurloc (Member) 28 July 2007 9:39
Guess his bribery check must've bounced. [ + quote]
flyingv (Member) 28 July 2007 10:08
It's not the Colleges' responsablity to look into P2P problems for the government! They have the RIAA in their pocket to do that for them. For god's sake, let our children grow! [ + quote]
windsong (Junior Member) 28 July 2007 12:58
A Democrat from Nevada wanting more government intrusion into ordinary citizen's lives? Say it ain't so! [ + quote]
DXR88 (Senior Member) 28 July 2007 13:42
Are computer lab at school is built to utilize P2P taking it away would cripple are lab. [ + quote]
AXT (Member) 28 July 2007 19:00
Ohh the corruption. Wonder how much money was promised to reid. Now we just need universal healthcare for ALL. Damn Europeans and their free healthcare and other awesome social services. [ + quote]
mspurloc (Member) 28 July 2007 21:10
*Originally posted by AXT:* Ohh the corruption. Wonder how much money was promised to reid. Now we just need universal healthcare for ALL. Damn Europeans and their free healthcare and other awesome social services. Of course, they're only free services if you're a freeloader and don't work for a living. The people who are supposed to use them, pay for them, by having their income seized. And when I was over there, nobody thought they were awesome. My friend's mother died while waiting for a bed in one of their awesome NHS hospitals. I'll take my chances with free market forces. [ + quote]
borhan9 (AfterDawn Addict) 28 July 2007 21:13
*Quote:* The amendment was replaced by one requiring schools to simply publish notices to students explaining why illegal file sharing is bad. Now thats the way it supposed to be. If they choose not to follow the rules then do something about it but otherwise let things be. [ + quote]
craftyzan (Member) 29 July 2007 0:02
*Originally posted by armorthis:* I don't understand why people are trying to fight P2P file sharing. If they somehow manage to stop people using torrents all that will happen is people will make a forum like PSPISO. Nothing is going to stop piracy, accept it. There already ARE torrent sites with forums on board. The Forums chat about any manner of bull, and have torrents 'hiding' all over the place. As it's not illegal to have a forum site... [ + quote]
mspurloc (Member) 29 July 2007 7:32
Look at how we've allowed them to redefine the term "piracy." Piracy is copying something for the purpose of selling it. Lawmakers love this stuff. They lump groups together racist-style, and all of a sudden someone who's copying something to watch it, or who is sharing it, is an international pirate. A public enemy. It's like this trick they're trying with "climate change" over "global warming," which is not working. Everybody (except for the Intolerant Church of Global Warming members) sees that they're just selling anti-rhinoceros pills. [ + quote]
armorthis (Inactive) 31 July 2007 8:26
*Quote:* *Originally posted by armorthis:* I don't understand why people are trying to fight P2P file sharing. If they somehow manage to stop people using torrents all that will happen is people will make a forum like PSPISO. Nothing is going to stop piracy, accept it. There already ARE torrent sites with forums on board. The Forums chat about any manner of bull, and have torrents 'hiding' all over the place. As it's not illegal to have a forum site... What I meant was it won't be P2P (torrents) it will all be uploaded to sites like megaupload and rapidshare. [ + quote]
chaos_zzz (Junior Member) 30 September 2007 16:25
nopthing will stop piracy that's 100% true tey'll have to like 1-no p2p got 2-no torrent 3- no files hosting 4- no ftp sharing 5- some other way i can't remember right now so it's really imposible with all this going on over the internet so face it media enterprises lower your prices so ppl start buying your stuff. that's the real solution not to ruin every sharing tech on earth [ + quote]