Staff Layoffs In Tennessee Edu To Pay For RIAA Supported Legislation

[GhostShip]

With the passing of a new peice of legislation many teaching staff positions are likely to go to fund what is a stealth tax on the tennessee education system

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/11/riaa-wins-campuses-lose-tennessee-governor-signs-c

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.

It makes no sense to force universities to spend millions on technologies that will hobble innovation on campus while failing to stop file-sharing.

What is not so well known is that many of the RIAA preffered "magic" filtering systems that they try to force eduacation establishments into purchasing are owned by a good friend of the RIAA Dr Doug Jacobson, who produces a software of the "audible magic" kind that was savaged by a common sense expose in another EFF article

http://w2.eff.org/share/audible_magic.php?f=audible_magic2.html

Not only did this type of software fail recently in a high profile case when it was admitted it could not do what it claimed but critics are fully aware it will never be able to do so, however those education establishments who use such types of  software are miraculously removed from the RIAA,s "hit" list of universities and colleges thus ensuring they wont receive such notices that are being reffered to in this article from the EFF, in short we are seeing just another extortion racket scheme, although this time its going to cost 10 Million dollars in "protection payoffs", anyone here can do the maths of this being repeated across all the states if worst comes to worst.

This is the guy likley to be on the receiving end of many of the payoffs, the same one who calls himself an expert witness in many RIAA copyright cases.

http://www.isupark.org/news/index.cfm?step=view&articleid=294

[Forested665]

I live in TN and what that article doesn't point out. Is that many of the schools in TN are title 1 schools meaning they are directly supported by the government because the counties cannot support them. and last year at my school alone 5 new teachers were added not only to relieve overcrowding but title 1 schools are not aloud to have more then 32 students per classroom.
so i dont actually see this happening except in larger counties that are self supporting such as Knox county.

[GhostShip]

The article above does not mention the shortfall of revenue this year of the Tennessee school board of $75M this will ensure that there will be staff layoffs and I,m sure a certain amount be will going soley to pay for this protection scheme, mandatory filtering and poor filtering at that is always a good money spinner for those selling their "snake oil" technologies.