August 4th, 2008
No penalties for colleges that don't enforce anti-P2P
Although George Bush is expected to sign the Higher Education Act, reauthorized by both the House and Senate, provisions requiring academic institutions to police peer-to-peer traffic on campus has many colleges nervous. According to Ars Technica, the act does not contain any penalties for colleges that don’t prevent copyright infringement among their users. However,
Educause and many in the academic community fear that the new provisions are a trojan horse that will open the door for Congress to add penalties in future iterations. If this happens, universities could potentially be denied funding if they don’t agree to play copyright cop.
The act requires (but does not seem to have much in the way of enforcement teeth),
institutions to make available the development of plans to detect and prevent unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material on the institution of higher education’s information technology system,” the statement says. “The Conferees have combined elements from both bills to require institutions to advise students about this issue and to certify that all institutions have plans to combat and reduce illegal peer to peer file sharing.”
So for right now, schools just need to have a plan in place and tell students about the plan. Sounds fairly benign, but an increasing number of schools are simply killing P2P traffic to avoid any trouble, whether with RIAA/MPAA or the government.
Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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