(Via ArsTechnica)

I swear — our lawmakers’ lack of tech knowledge will eventually be our downfall:

Despite the MPAA's recent admission that its collegiate file-swapping numbers were wildly inaccurate, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act sailed through the House today by a 354-58 margin with its controversial intellectual property provisions still in place.

COAA makes a host of changes to the higher education landscape in the US, but for our purposes, the most interesting was the requirement that schools make plans to offer some form of legal alternative to P2P file-swapping and that they also make plans to implement network filtering. Not making such plans would carry no consequences, however, and we're told by House staffers that no one's federal financial aid is in danger.

Yeah right. If it’s not there, then how on Earth would the Feds enforce this? And why are attempts to ensure that no one jacks with federal funding being driven away in a cloud of procedural obfuscation and spin?

Intense opposition has also come from groups that believe the measure would cut federal funding to schools that don’t comply (see this Santa Clara University newspaper article for an example).

While Congressional staffers insist this isn’t true, others in Congress have gone so far as to offer amendments spelling it out explicitly. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) introduced and then pulled such an amendment yesterday, with his staff telling reporters that Cohen wanted to offer the amendment himself; when that proved impossible due to his travel schedule, he apparently decided to pull it. It’s an odd explanation, but it’s the only one were getting right now.

Shut down the P2P network traffic inbound to universities and you’ll stop what—a couple per cent of all illegal P2P? Why even waste the country’s time? Oh wait. I know why. The RIAA. They can’t get ISPs to do their dirty work, so they come up with a plan B — get lobbying stooges to lean on the feds and pick on universities to force compliance or risk losing federal money.

The big joke in DC is that our nation’s laws are written by the 20-something staffers that work for Senators and reps, so I have to ask how a piece of legislation so ignorant of the internet’s functioning gets created in the first place. I mean we know that these people’s bosses don’t know anything about the “series of tubes,” but we can depend on the twentysomethings to be savvy, can’t we?