ISU Begins Blocking P2P, Launches 'BirdTrax'

Illinois State University launches new website promoting legal alternatives to illegal file-sharing after it restricts their use on campus networks thanks to recent passage of the Higher Education Authorization Act.

The revamped Higher Education Act (HEA) was signed into law by President Bush a few weeks ago on August 14th and already we are starting to see some of the effects the legislation will have on colleges and universities throughout the country.

Illinois State University, no doubt in time for the new Fall semester, has decided to begin prohibiting the use of P2P and file-sharing applications and services on the campus network.

Erik Christiansen, a junior business teacher education major at ISU, noted that he "...wouldn't do it [share files illegally] if the charges were more reasonable." He lamented that prices for content on legal services are tough to afford on a student's budget.

To assist students trying to find legal alternatives to file-sharing, ISU has decided to launch a site called BirdTrax which provides a comprehensive list of places they can go.

"There are so many groups that this affects," said David Greenfield, director of Student Technology Support at ISU. "We want students to give us feedback. We want people to tell us what their favorite site is so that we can continue in our evaluation."

After a quick evaluation, I can tell you that the suggested alternatives are every bit as bad one would think they are.

Here are a few of the standouts:

MUSIC - Wal-Mart, Zune, Ruckus, Rhapsody

MOVIES -Blockbuster, Netflix, Wal-Mart

TV SHOWS - Joost, Wal-Mart

Now if your recall, the MPAA once blamed college students for 44% of domestic piracy losses. It later revised the figure to a mere15% which, if you subtract students who live off campus and thus won't be affected by the legislation, means that they're responsible for 10% of the problem at most. This makes the overall costs to educational institutions to monitor and enforce the anti-P2P provisions of the HEA a terrible waste of resources, especially when all they do is hinder the ability of students - the future doctors, engineers, and scientists of this country - to be able to share ideas and communicate and ultimately have no effect on the remaining 90% of movie piracy alone!

Worse yet, restricting P2P applications still does nothing to address the plethora of alternatives that abound. From sites like Rapidshare to Divshare, from MegaUplaod to even simple e-mail attachments, students will still be able to illegally share copyrighted material. Only now colleges and universities like ISU to get to diverge precious resources from academics to intellectual property enforcement of third parties.