Tennessee Squanders Money on an Impossible Program

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/11/tennessee-adopt.html

The state of Tennessee just agreed to spend 9.5 million dollars on monitoring software, hardware and additional costs for 21 staff to monitor student's online activities against piracy. The state is spending this money at a time when the school needs money to pay for additional teachers and keeping down tuition costs. The 222,000 student system will be closely monitored instead of taught, for something that has been shown to be beneficial to the music industry. The governor of Tennessee, Phil Bredesen, was the first to act against piracy in public universities when he signed Tennessee's Measure. The Recording Industry of America wants similar bills instated across the nation. Meanwhile the Tennessee public university system is raising tuition, firing teachers and emptying classrooms to battle a $43.7 million shortfall.

"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." says the governor. Does the governor know that little known artists profit from piracy? Does he know that the money the records labels are trying to make by preventing piracy mostly goes to the record label and not the artist. Does he know that record labels limit artist's creativity and steal the rights to the music which is rightfully the artists? Why is government protecting an industry that is so obviously corrupt?

It is pointed out within the article that students could easily just switch to encrypted file sharing and that no matter what students are going to file swap. Did they not know that you don't need to be online in order to share or what they'd like to call steal music?

Personally I think the record labels just bribed (lobby) the governor. Thanks record labels for slowing creativity and stealing people's educations. Good Job! Go make more money.