RIAA Has Friends in Nashville

I sup­pose no one should be shocked that the state that calls “Music City” its cap­i­tal would end hav­ing clash­es between music fans and copy­right own­ers. Now, a state bill seeks to get state-fund­ed uni­ver­si­ties to do some of the dirty work. From ArsTech­ni­ca:

A new bill pro­posed in the Ten­nessee state sen­ate aims to reduce copy­right infringe­ment at uni­ver­si­ties by forc­ing the schools to become antipira­cy enforcers. If passed, the bill would require uni­ver­si­ties that receive fund­ing from the state to ana­lyze all traf­fic pass­ing through their net­works in order to track down and stop infring­ing activ­i­ty. Under the pro­posed bill, uni­ver­si­ties could lose state fund­ing if they refuse to imple­ment net­work analy­sis sys­tems or if they receive ten or more infringe­ment com­plaints from con­tent own­ers dur­ing a sin­gle year.

Giv­en much of a high­er-learn­ings taint­ed record of on-cam­pus law enforce­ment, I frankly don’t trust them to han­dle it from either side of the copy­right issue. How­ev­er, play­ing CSI — IT isn’t the uni­ver­si­ties job and we should­n’t be putting the schools’ fund­ing at risk to make them play along.