As a college student at a private university I rely on financial aid from any place I can get it. One of those places is the federal government, but now that government (the same one that made it easier to get loans) now wants to base the amount of aid each college can get, and their enforcement of illegal p2p file sharing.

According to the bill, if universities did not agree to test “technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity,” all of their students–even ones who don’t own a computer–would lose federal financial aid.

“Such an extraordinarily inappropriate and punitive outcome would result in all students on that campus losing their federal financial aid–including Pell grants and student loans that are essential to their ability to attend college, advance their education, and acquire the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century economy,” a letter from university officials to Congress written on Wednesday said. “Lower-income students, those most in need of federal financial aid, would be harmed most under the entertainment industry’s proposal.”

This is just complete stupidity, first not every person uses p2p, in fact most people get there music from legal means. Second, by forcing schools to block or restrict p2p is going to hurt people, like me who actively use it for legal reasons. I use fedora as my OS and just yesterday downloaded fedora 8 through a torrent. But probably the worst thing this bill does is remove 100 billion dollars worth of loans and grants from the people that need it the most.

And if this bill finds a way on of committee, it would surely die at the hands of the people who actually understand the internet, and realize that actually finding the person that downloaded the illegal file is near impossible.

Bill (PDF)

Oh and in other news, the Canadians don’t care what you download.