Industry watches new downloading law closely

Tennessee Voices

Gov. Phil Bredesen recently signed into law a bill requiring Tennessee universities to implement anti-piracy technologies and more stringent network oversight to prevent illegal downloading by students. The law applies to the governing boards of all public and private universities in Tennessee.

Universities will be required to report the "reasonable efforts … taken to attempt to defer infringement of copyrighted works over the school's computer and network resources" by April 1, 2009. After that, if a school receives more than 50 legally valid notices of infringement occurring on the institution's networks within a given year, the school will be required to submit a report detailing the specific efforts taken to curb such infringement, including the implementation of technology....more