Dead End - Credit: benny_lin on Flickr (CC BY)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Deeplinks Blog reports that the state of Tenennsee has now required its colleges to filter their Internet connections for copyrighted works if they receive more than 50 claims of infringement.
While the entertainment industry failed to get “hard” requirements for universities in the Higher Education Act passed by Congress earlier this year, the RIAA succeeded in Tennessee (and is pushing in other states) with this provision that gives Big Content the ability to hold universities hostage through the use of infringement notices. Moreover, the new rules will cost Tennessee a pretty penny — in the cost review attached to the Tennessee bill, the state’s Fiscal Review Committee estimates that the new obligations will initially cost the state a whopping $9.5 million for software, hardware, and personnel, with recurring annual costs of more than $1.5 million for personnel and maintenance. Not a penny of this will go to artists, nor to any of the record labels RIAA represents.
Sounds like the RIAA is resorting to a state-by-state campaign for filtering.