||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Valdosta State U promises prison sentences for students who use P2P

Go, Georgia! From Torrent Freak by way of Boing Boing:

Georgia’s Valdosta State University has a new policy on P2P use: if their network spyware detects a student using P2P software, that student will be turned over to the police. The student newspaper promises felony punishments of up to five years imprisonment and fines up to $250,000 “per offense.”

[…]

The new system is undoubtedly going to cause collateral damage, since an effective P2P detection tool will be unable to make a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate use of P2P software.

To some these measures may appear as a witch-hunt against students using P2P software, but Joe Newton, VSU Director of Information Technology, sees it as a form of education.