Penn Kids Carrying On In Fine Tradition Of, Uh, Me

While the music industry appears to be loosening restrictions on DRM — MP3s have been widely traded online longer than most things — the movie industry is tightening its grip.

The Motion Picture Association of America recently released its Top 25 schools for movie sharing, and two local schools are on the list: Penn at #2 and Drexel at #22. It’s one giant West Philly vortex of filesharing.

I remember back in the early days of downloading movies during my freshman year at Penn. Ahh, memories. The list, by the way, is woefully undercounted — Penn is second with only 934 students sharing movies, while Drexel has 455. If you think that only 455 Drexel students or 934 Penn students are sharing movies, then insert your own cliche here.

The list was formed after Rep. Howard Berman, chair of the House committee on courts, the Internet and intellectual property, asked for it. (Apparently if you get lots of campaign contributions from Hollywood, you can also get them to do things for you.)

So, apparently, college kids trade movies! In other news, the sky is freaking blue.

MPAA names its Top 25 movie piracy schools [Ars Technica]
EMI to allow Apple to sell songs online [AP/Yahoo!]