http://copy-shop.org/knoxville/archives/81

SB3974 Amended & Passed 8-0

March 19th, 2008 | copyfight

Earlier today, SB3974 (the Bill) was passed unanimously. Remarkably, the Bill was amended to reflect the concerns of all those who had called, mailed, and gathered in protest. As a result, the Bill will no longer:

(1) Prohibit the non-infringing use of copyrighted material

(2) Restrict an educational institution's use of copyrighted material under the provisions of 17 U.S.C. �§ 107

Read the Amendment (.pdf)

Congratulations to all those who helped make this change!

SB3974 is a Bill written by the RIAA, and sponsored by Knoxville Sen. Tim Burchett, that forces any institution of higher learning to monitor all public university students and (according to the RIAA) expel any who access copyrighted content.

Copyshop has been organizing a protest against this Bill over the past weeks. Before the current amendment, the language of the Bill was so vague that it would have forced Universities to stop the transfer of almost all content over the School network. The current Amendment corrects many of these errors - although it continues to demand a system that will police and criminalize students.

nifty maybe sanity will spread to other places.

" SB3974 is a Bill... that forces any institution of “higher learning” to monitor all public university students and expel any who access copyrighted content."

Like textbooks? Makes that whole "study" concept seem rather pointless.

And what about the library? Access to as much copyrighted content as they have room for, adding new works all the time, most of which are there for the sole purpose of sharing them with others.

Just a wild-ass guess here, but it would seem to me that if this behavior somehow conflicted with the founding fathers' intent in creating the copyright laws, if the profitless sharing of copyrighted works was something those laws were designed to prevent, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would have brought that up when Benjamin Franklin opened the first one.

Oh.. go state go!

Not that it applies in my case, but what the hell. Kudos to them anyhow.