Despite a massive error in the MPAAs college campus piracy study revealed nearly three weeks ago, it appears that the US congress has passed an another pair of anti-filesharing provisions tucked into a college funding bill and it is now going to the senate.
ZeroPaid has already reported on the MPAAs error in a 2005 and also reported on the fact that the MPAA isn’t backing off of its attack. Despite faulty numbers, the congress in the house has passed the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 which contains the “Campus Digital Theft Prevention” requirement.
Interestingly enough, there is currently two versions of this act. There is the version introduced (H.R.4137.IH) in the house and one that was reported (H.R.4137.RH) in the house. The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has reported that the senates version does not have the “Campus Digital Theft Prevention” requirement while the version that passed in congress has the requirement.
“The House and the Senate must meet “in conference” to reconcile differences in their respective versions of the same college funding bill, and the Senate’s version of the COAA does not contain the mandate for exploring alternative downloading services and network filters.” The EFF explained, “There’s still a chance that members of Congress involved in the conference process will see through the smoke and mirrors to stand up for students and universities in rejecting this unnecessary and dangerous mandate.”
“Short of appointing a copyright hall monitor for every dorm room,” The EFF commented earlier in The Washington Post, “there is no way digital copying will be meaningfully reduced. Technical efforts to block file-sharing will be met with clever countermeasures from sharp computer science majors. Even if students were completely cut off from the Internet, they would continue to copy CDs, swap hard drives and pool their laptops.”
Effectively speaking, the requirement has two provisions: the first is to block “unauthorized” traffic and the other provision gets colleges to push students to use “authorized” services like iTunes.
“Intellectual property theft costs over 140,000 American jobs each year — a significant loss in this volatile economy,” Dan Glickman, chairman of the MPAA told The Holleywood Reporter, “We are pleased that Congress is taking this important step toward helping us find ways to curb intellectual property theft on college campuses.”
While not in law yet, it’ll be interesting to see how the bill fairs in the senate, particularly when there is, in fact, two versions with big differences.
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Tags: file-sharing, filtering, online, piracy
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it still has to hit the president and could be veto’d.
and i remember something like that federal law regarding file sharing on campuses only loses the federal funding or something.
Why would GWB veto this? I would think he will be falling over himself to sign it.
@El Comandante the bill may contain something he does not like as a rider and since there is no such thing as a line item veto for non spending bills then it may get veto’d
for example suppose that some environmental bill that threatens the big industries and his contributions from the industries is attached to the bill then he may veto it .
GWB has trouble putting 4 words together he wouldn’t have a clue what this is about and just sign anything put in front of him.
Well the Prez may see that the name of the bill looks like it would help people afford higher education and we all know how much he hates America the people in it education and generally things that make others happy and secure. So there is a good chance that he will Veto it (we just have to make sure to hide how much this bill will actually hurt us).