10 free songs with every new loan approval.

Well this seems like it will suck. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is now recruiting on a campus near you, but not in a good way. Thanks to Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) of 2008 which just kicked in:

Sec. 494 Each eligible institution participating in the federal aid program shall:

* develop plans for offering alternative to illegal downloading or P2P distribution; and
* develop plans to deter illegal downloading.

That’s but one small snippet, but the rest of says if your university doesn’t do all it can to stop filesharing of songs and other content, they could will lose their federal funding for student loans. No prob, you’ll just go off campus to any number of wifi hot spots in cafes, right? Think about that though: This is a commercial industry (recording) telling a federal, publicly-funded school system what to do. This would be like beer conglomerate InBev forcing schools to require drinking on campus or lose their loan status. Bit of a stretch of course, but where do you draw the line with a group lobbying congress to influence something taxpayers pay for like access to education? But here’s where it’s not a stretch: The RIAA just did it. Who’s next?