Administrator Lite Posted August 5, 2008 Administrator Share Posted August 5, 2008 The Senate and House have voted to reauthorize the Higher Education Act and approved controversial new provisions that will require universities to provide students with access to commercial music downloading services and implement traffic filtering technologies in order to deter peer-to-peer filesharing. The bill now goes to President Bush, who is expected to sign it into law.These provisions have strong support from the content industry, but have been targeted with widespread criticism from the academic community and advocacy groups such as Educause. The push for mandatory filtering at universities began in 2007 when the RIAA published a list of top piracy schools and the MPAA claimed that piracy on university campuses accounts for 44 percent of the movie industry's annual losses to piracy. The group later retracted this claim when it was discovered that the numbers were grossly inflated. The RIAA followed up its top piracy school list with a litigation and propaganda campaign which included the development of a web site to handle automated settlements, but soon faced serious setbacks in court. The MPAA also developed an Ubuntu-based software toolkit for detecting file-sharing on university networks, but was forced to discontinue distribution of the software when they were hit with a Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown notice. The MPAA had violated copyright law by failing to adhere to the General Public License under which Ubuntu is distributed. The RIAA and MPAA have vigorously lobbied for a legislative solution at both the state and federal levels. Pressure from the content industry compelled Congress to begin investigating the issue. View: Original Article Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sontiago Posted August 7, 2008 Share Posted August 7, 2008 Not to sound too depressing, but America is becoming more and more like China. Every day more and more civil liberties taken away but yet we chide China for what it's doing to it's citizens.. "Do as I say, not as I do".... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
demonon Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 Not to sound too depressing, but America is becoming more and more like China. Every day more and more civil liberties taken away but yet we chide China for what it's doing to it's citizens.. "Do as I say, not as I do"....Finally someone agrees with me.Just stop complaining about a country you say has no freedom.Solve your own crap first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.