Congress Investigating the Impact of University P2P Networks
On Tuesday, September 26, the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness held a hearing entitled “The Internet and the College Campus: How the Entertainment Industry and Higher Education are Working to Combat Illegal Piracy”.
Congress has yet to regulate educational networks, but has considered measures that would require universities to actively monitor their networks to limit the sharing of copyrighted materials. As the holders of copyrighted materials continue to see sales eroded by online piracy, it appears that increased pressure will be put upon federal legislators to force educational institutions to limit access by students to P2P sharing of copyrighted works over their networks. This may not be as uncomfortable for universities as it may seem, as P2P sharing eats up network bandwith, and may put schools in tricky positions should one of their users be sued.
A full webcast of the Subcommitte hearing is available here.
For a summary of the meeting and further discussion please see Congress Looks At P2P in Academia at arstechnica.
September 28, 2006 3:48 pm 
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