Intellectual Property Law

Combating music piracy at Tennessee's public university system is more important than hiring teachers and keeping down tuition costs.

Just-signed legislation requires the 222,000-student system to spend an estimated $9.5 million (.pdf) for file sharing "monitoring software," "monitoring hardware" and an additional "recurring cost of $1,575,000 for 21 staff positions and benefits (@75,000 each) to monitor network traffic" of its students.

Tennessee's measure, (.pdf) approved Wednesday by Gov. Phil Bredesen, was the nation's first in a bid to combat online file sharing within state-funded universities. The law, similar versions of which the Recording Industry Association of America wants throughout the United States, comes as the Tennessee public university system is increasing tuition, laying off teachers and leaving unfilled vacant instructor positions to battle a $43.7 million shortfall.

"This bill, the first of its kind in the nation, addressed the issue of campus music theft in a state where the impact is felt more harshly than most," said Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA's chairman and CEO.

Bredesen, governor of the nation's country music capital, said "The illegal downloading of music has a profoundly negative effect on the music industry. As home to so many record companies, music publishers, writers and artists, I am proud that Tennessee is taking action to prevent it."

The governor signed the bill the same day the Country Music Association doled out its annual music awards in Tennessee.

Cara Duckworth, an RIAA spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that the music companies' lobbying and litigation arm would be "happy to talk to any policymaker about these issues.  It's up to them to decide appropriate action. "

Tennessee's law demands the state's public universities "implement a policy" that "prohibits the infringement of copyrighted works over the school's computer and network resources."

Still, it's likely the state's output of public resources for the anti-piracy program could end up a boondoggle if students move to encrypted (.pdf) file sharing programs. The Electronic Frontier Foundation added that, even if the filtering technology "magically" worked, students are gonna swap music.

The students may have more time to pilfer copyrighted works because their classes might be canceled for lack of funding. Using conservative estimates, the piracy measure is equal to the price of about 100 Tennessee professors' wages and benefits.

Illustration: Modernhumorist