Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Tennessee to spend $9.5 million, plus $1.5 million a year, to help the RIAA

According to an interesting report in p2pnet.net, the State of Tennessee will be forking over $9.5 million of taxpayer money, and an additional $1.5 million a year, to help the RIAA.



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4 comments:

Not Telling said...

"21 staff positions and benefits (@$75,000 each) to monitor network traffic"

This is on top of the "$2,794,500 for monitoring software".

If the software costs so much why does it need 21 people to operate it? At most, it would need 1 or 2 full time administrators.

And it's as if the University systems don't already employ individuals to operate their network.

The average cost per student is $175 for 55,000 students affected by this.

Matt Fitzpatrick said...

Aren't RIAA labels heavily invested in monitoring software, hardware, and staffing? That would make the RIAA Tennessee's Halliburton.

Looks like favors-for-contributions politics as usual. Watch for no-bid network monitoring contracts in Tennessee's near future.

Anonymous said...

The 21 people is for Tennessee Board of Regent system. Which makes up 13 community colleges.

http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/info/Leg_Archives/105GA/bills/FiscalNotes/SB3974.pdf

http://www.tbr.state.tn.us/schools/default.aspx?id=2650

Why do the community colleges need 1 1/2 people per college and their state university only need 1? Plus 75,000 a year including benefits seems really high. Why not pay an entry-mid level person to just monitor the alerts, and then forward it on back to the network staff already employed. I have a sneaky feeling that these staff positions will be for RIAA trained people, supposed experts on P2P.

Anonymous said...

Matt Fitzpatrick,

The bidder who will win will be the one who can guarantee RIAA compliance. This will be the bidder whose system has already been blessed by the RIAA themselves. There is no other reasonable alternative.

{The Common Man Speaking}