Georgia’s Valdosta State University has updated its network with software that can pinpoint students who use P2P software. The university is committed to stop file sharing on its network even if that results in prison sentences for students. Offenders will be disciplined by the school and then handed over to the police, the university has announced.
In July, the US put into effect a new requirement for colleges and universities to stop illicit file-sharing on their networks. This legislation puts defiant schools at risk of losing federal funding if they don’t do enough to stop illicit file-sharers on their campus. Valdosta State is merely complying…so don’t blame them.
This doesn’t seem like a good idea for the university though, if you think about it. If the old folks who run the school knew anything, they’d know that, in this modern era, there’s no way that there is a single student on that campus without some sort of file sharing program, whatever it may be. If they really do implement this like they plan to, then within a few years the school is literally going to be a jail. Either that, or they just won’t have students. The ones they did have will have all been kicked out, jailed, or won’t have the money to pay tuition after paying the RIAA and MPAA. And no new students will want to apply because they know the school is so tough on sharing (didn’t our kindergarten teachers always tell us that “sharing is caring”?). But then again, if every school starts doing this, students might not have much of a choice.
Another plausible outcome: some genius computer-engineering student will find a way around their software. That seems inevitable. Soon after, the software won’t even make a difference; all of the students will be able to download around it.
The bottom line is: If the government, universities, police, and large corporations think that any of this is going to stop file-sharing, then they’re more deluded than I thought. All this is going to do is prompt the creation of more creative ways of getting around their system.
