College funding bill passed with anti-P2P provisions intact

  This article discusses the context of the Higher Education Act passed by the senate and house that includes new provisions requiring universities to execute a traffic filtering system that would prevent students’ peer-to-peer file sharing and also to give students access to more commercial downloading services. The amendment requires universities to inform students about file sharing issue, but also to make sure that all the universities have plans to reduce illegal file sharing.  The article discusses not only the amendment, but also the positions taken by the involved parties. It claims that the RIAA and MPAA had been pressuring congress but that the passing of this bill may not slow down their drive. The article concludes saying that many institutions worry about this bill is that it will only expand to allowing the government to penalize schools for a number of things including not policing their students file sharing.

    This article provides information that prevents the possibility for universities to remain legally neutral in the peer-to-peer battle. Although the bill makes universities involvement necessary, universities’ actions regarding file sharing among students should be at the discretion of universities if at all.  The article is important for my topic because it presents the worry of universities in response to the new bill. It also provides information contextualizing the RIAA’s actions and the motivation for creating and passing the bill which is important for my topic. The article's points questioning how far the RIAA wil push this and the worry this causes universities relates to my topic that this is a legitamite concern for universities.