The experimental high speed internet project Internet2 has two new members today: a pair of acronyms guaranteed to have researchers rifling anxiously through their "Stuff" directories. Both the Recording Industry Ass. of America, the RIAA, and Hollywood lobby group the Motion Picture Ass. of America, the MPAA, have signed up to the project to explore high-bandwidth DRM.

Earlier this year, the RIAA sued 400 researchers on the network for copyright infringement. "We cannot let this high-speed network become a zone of lawlessness where the normal rules don't apply," RIAA president Cary Sherman said at the time.

"Both leading industry associations plan to collaborate with the Internet2 community to consider innovative content distribution and digital rights management technologies, and to study emerging trends on high-performance networks to enable future business models," the two groups said in a statement.

"The MPAA views this partnership with Internet2 as an important opportunity for collaboration as we seek to link new delivery models with content protection," added MPAA prez Dan Glickman.

Active since 1996, Internet2 connects over 200 US academic institutions. The Abilene portion of the network on the mainland United States is capable of transfers of 10Gbps. But a year ago, I2 moved 859GB of data across the network between Geneva, Switzerland and Pasadena, California in less than 17 minutes, a transfer rate of 6.63 Gbits/s. ®

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