The entertainment industry's controversial efforts to get universities to be more proactive about policing peer-to-peer piracy have begun to spread from Capitol Hill to the states.

On Thursday, what appears to be the first such proposal in the country became law in Tennessee--home to Nashville, the country music capital of the world. A similar measure is currently being considered in Illinois. And California held an "informational hearing" last month featuring a Recording Industry Association of America representative, although no legislation has been introduced there yet.

It requires any higher education institution in the state, whether public or private, to develop and enforce a policy that prohibits its students, staff, and faculty from committing copyright infringement. It also requires schools to make "reasonable" attempts to prevent copyright infringement on their networks if they receive 50 or more infringement notices during a preceding year, but it does not explicitly define what those steps are.

Similar legislation is pending in the Illinois state legislature, except it appears to be stricter at this point. It would require universities to "undertake reasonable efforts to install and implement a technology-based deterrent system to attempt to prevent the infringement of copyrighted works" over its networks if it receives at least 10 infringement notices in a given year.