About three months ago, Congress added a provision to the Higher Education Act which would require universities to create published policies to deal with illegal file sharing and also to create a plan to offer legal alternatives. There was no real purpose explained for this action then and there still doesn’t seem to be one now. But the House of Representatives has approved the bill.

It says higher-education institutions participating in federal financial aid programs “shall” devise plans for “alternative” offerings to unlawful downloading–such as subscription-based services–or “technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.”

The MPAA produced data that shows that students using university servers are a very small part of the larger file-sharing issue. After this data was presented, Rep. Steve Cohen stated his intention to introduce an amendment to the bill that would have said that no university “shall be denied or given reduced federal funding for student loan or other financial aid programs” because of failure to create an anti-piracy plan. Later, Cohen withdrew the proposed amendment because he was dealing with the tornado aftermath in Tennesee and could not be present during a key vote.

I would say that the whole thing smells of the RIAA/MPAA pushing Representatives to pass this as a way for them to generate revenue… except the MPAA’s own data that was provided to the House proves that Universities are not the problem.

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