D.J. Donahue says his school's ban on P2P and BitTorrent unfairly punishes gamers and Linux users.
(Credit: Michele Wilson)Truth be told, the state of Tennessee didn't need a lot of prodding from the recording industry to pass a law that requires universities and colleges to filter for unauthorized music downloads.
Remember, Tennessee is the home of Nashville, country music, and Elvis. Some of the music industry's largest music publishers are based there. Some schools were apparently eager to comply with copyright protection. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville began blocking access to BitTorrent and file-sharing sites for possibly the last month, said D.J. Donahue, a graduate research assistant at the school.
"I have been unable to access any torrent or P2P sites for several weeks, and there was an e-mail sent to students about it," Donahue told CNET News.
News broke on Tuesday that Tennessee's governor signed a bill into law that was designed to thwart music piracy at the state's campuses. The bill requires Tennessee public and private schools to exercise "appropriate means" to ensure that campus computer networks aren't being used to download copyright material via file-sharing programs, according to the Web site of the Recording Industry Association of America.
A spokesman for the school could not be reached for comment.
"This is just another turn of the big orange screw," Donahue said referring to the university. "This places a burden on those of us who use the torrent and P2P systems for legal downloads."
Donahue said his school's ban on P2P and BitTorrent unfairly punishes gamers and Linux users like him.
"I am a Linux user, and the best way to download many distributions is through a torrent system," Donahue said. "I'm trying out new Linux distributions, trying out the new stuff that comes along and one of the major sources of that are peer-to-peer and torrent sites. Since Linux is a free download, their sites can't support massive HTTP bandwidth."
Donahue said that game sites, which issue big update files, often use torrent sites. He said that gamers at the school will be unjustly blocked from receiving these updates.
Colleges in Tennessee will be required to root out file sharing.
(Credit: University of Tennessee )Tennessee has agreed to filter computer networks for unauthorized music downloads at the state's colleges and universities.
Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen signed into law a bill designed to thwart music piracy at the state's campuses, the Recording Industry Association of America said on its Web site.
The bill requires Tennessee public and private schools exercise "appropriate means" to ensure that campus computer networks aren't being used to download copyright material via peer-to-peer file-sharing programs, the RIAA said.
"Upon a proper analysis of the network," the RIAA continued, "those institutions are required to implement technological support and develop and enforce a computer network usage policy to effectively limit the number of unauthorized transmissions of copyrighted works."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet-user advocacy group, called the law "ridiculous," and said the costs of enforcing it would top $9 million.
"The entertainment industry lobby seems to be succeeding, bit-by-bit in persuading legislators to coerce universities into buying 'infringement suppression' technologies," the EFF said in a blog post, adding that these technologies are expensive and "won't stop file sharing on campus networks."
The RIAA said that a 2007 Student Monitor survey found that more than half of college students download music and movies illegally.
A friend of mine, Patricia Montesinos, a senior at the University of Tennessee, said Tuesday she's seen no notifications yet from the school about filtering.
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