Ars technica, May 11, 2008
By Nate Anderson

Neither DMCA takedown notices nor RIAA prelitigation letters have any necessary correlation with on-campus P2P usage rates, as the recent upsurge in RIAA letters this last month shows (the RIAA says that the higher volume is a result of changes to the way MediaSentry detects P2P use). Making such letters a metric for judging school enforcement against P2P would thus seem to be problematic, but that was one provision of a bill introduced earlier this year in Tennessee. As federal efforts creak slowly forward, copyright owners are increasingly taking their war on higher ed P2P to the states, and the higher ed community needs to stay vigilant to keep such laws from gaining traction.

At an EDUCAUSE higher ed IT conference last week in Washington, campus IT specialists detailed their fight to stave off technological mandates imposed by local legislatures. Their basic complaint is that P2P is a social phenomenon with deep roots, not a merely collegiate practice. They say that singling out campuses is unfair, especially since only 20 percent of students nationally live on campus. But the entertainment industries are apparently convinced that a collegiate crackdown is necessary, and they're willing to go local to make it happen.

The RIAA goes to Nashville

Tom Danford, the CIO for the Tennessee Board of Regents, detailed his university system's fight against the Tennessee law. The idea for the bill began with a 2006 senate joint resolution that asked schools in the state to educate students about P2P and develop policies to deal with it. But when the University of Tennessee continued to top RIAA piracy lists, the music lobby pushed for a legislative remedy with more teeth than a mere resolution.

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