With little money and barely any means to defend themselves, college kids have been the perfect targets for industry harrassment since the beginning of the file-sharing lawsuits. As the RIAA continues its ridiculous war on technology, they're taking another stab at college kids (who probably buy more music than any other demographic.) The RIAA would like to poke around on the private networks of major Universities. So, are schools there to educate, or to be monitored by monopolies and indoctrinate students with a particular, skewed corporate viewpoint? I guess it depends on who you ask.
On April 27th, the EFF reported:
Today the RIAA and MPAA sent a nag letter to 40 university presidents, urging them to stop students from swapping music and movies on campus networks. Once again, rather than offering collegiate music fans "all you can eat" sharing plans in exchange for a sensible fee, the entertainment industry is trying to deputize universities to act as their unpaid on-campus police force.
While cracking down on university LANs won't stop file sharing, it will likely compromise the privacy of the university community, as activities are monitored for file sharing. The RIAA and MPAA recommend adopting network filtering tools like Audible Magic, but they're trivial to evade. New restrictions on network use will also hinder legitimate network uses (already, some universities are blocking students from running any kind of servers).
This is, of course, scary. Restrictions being placed on students who want to use technology for a purpose that's either explicitly educational (for class) or for learning outside of the classroom, is deplorable, it runs in contradistinction to the whole idea of going to school. Of course, the industry isn't so concerned with that, as they've shown with their hostility towards reverse engineering DRM technology. This is two competing mantras, "think think think" and "buy buy buy" coming up against each other. Privacy issues, the continuing use of technology for artistic means, maintaining a vibrant, creative, and free society in the digital age - these aren't the RIAA's problems, but they're most definitely ours.
