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FreeCulture.org - Students for Free Culture wrote:
> Writes rich on our blog:
>
> Well, crap, guys. How did we let this one slip by?
>
> [HR 4137][1], the College Opportunity and Affordability Act just passed
> Congress and is expected to be signed into law very soon.
>
> Inside the bill is the Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention act, a
> provision which requires colleges to subscribe to RIAA-approved services
> like the new Napster and to install software on the network which
> monitors and interrupt transfers which they decide they don't like. This
> is a mandate for a non-neutral internet on college campuses. Students
> are being targeted by a cooperation between the government and the
> intellectual property industry to spy on us, filter our internet and the
> resources of our schools by spending our tuition costs on their DRM'd
> service. And unfortunately, we let this slip under the radar.
>
> For the full story about the passing is available on [Ars Technica][2],
> who have done a better write up than I could do. I also wrote about this
> [on my personal site][3] just over one year ago. It seems the bill has
> been watered down slightly from the original amendment, but the effect
> is the same.
>
> But where was the opposition from Free Culture? I'm not trying to blame
> anyone but myself, but I think that **we must develop a way to
> constantly monitor and publicly oppose this type of legislation.**
> Otherwise, what is the point of our organization if we continue to allow
> things like this to happen?! We're going to be an absolute laughing
> stock if we have [silly events][4] which celebrate the death of DRM when
> we don't make a sound about federal legislation which requires all of
> our schools to purchase products which use it. There was only [one blog
> post][5] about the bill, 8 months ago. Not a peep since then, no page on
> the front page about pending legislation. So I can't say that we missed
> this entirely, but a single blog post doesn't affect anything outside of
> our own community, which is where the problem lies. It isn't working
> because it isn't enough.
>
> So what are we supposed to do in the meantime?
>
> First, I think we should develop a page (perhaps on the wiki?) and a
> squad to monitor the progress of legislation which could be a threat to
> us.
>
> Second, we should be supporting Lawrence Lessig's [Change-Congress
> Movement][6] which will stop corporations from having so much influence
> over Congressmen. Particularly Democratic congressmen from California.
>
> Third, I would personally recommend that any student should be using
> secure protocols for all of their data transfers to prevent their being
> snooped on and tampered with. One such upcoming protocol is [Anomos][7],
> a secure and anonymous multi-peer-to-peer file distribution platform.
> I'm a lead developer on this project and I will write a post on this
> blog about it once our alpha release candidate is announced.
>
> Does anybody else have any ideas about steps we can take from things
> like this going unnoticed again? Let's gets some discussion going in the
> comments.
>
> Rich, [Boston University Free Culture][8]
>
>    [1]: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-4137
>
>    [2]: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080801-college-funding-
> bill-passed-with-anti-p2p-provisions-intact.html
>
>    [3]: http://www.thenewfreedom.net/wp/2007/07/24/harry-reid-d-nvs-
> corrupt-campus-based-digital-theft-prevention-amendment/
>
>    [4]: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/zuneral
>
>    [5]: http://freeculture.org/blog/2007/12/14/students-open-response-
> to-hr-4137-and-hr/
>
>    [6]: http://change-congress.org/
>
>    [7]: http://www.anomos.info
>
>    [8]: http://bu.freeculture.org
>
> URL: http://freeculture.org/blog/2008/08/02/a-free-culture-failure-campus-based-digital-theft-prevention-passes-congress/
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>

I think it was actually killed once before with the help of groups like FC.
CRK
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