Open Debate Between RIAA VP And DMCA Critic

A GW student writes "The George Washington University's School of Engineering and Applied Science along with the Cyberspace Policy Institute are sponsoring some kind (hasn't really been decided yet) of debate between Stanley Pierre-Louis, Vice President Legal Affairs for the Recording Industry Association of America and Professor James Boyle of Duke Law School. Remember, Prof. Boyle just received an anonymous $1 million to fight the DMCA. The event is open to the public. It will take place on Tuesday October 8 in Washington, DC on GW's campus. The abstract and other details are here. Stick around, and the next day you can go to the Supreme Court to see Lawrence Lessig argue Eldred v. Ashcroft."

Comments

A link to his book

[Henry V .009]

James Boyle's book Shamans, Software and Spleens : Law and the Construction of the Information Society looks like something that I will be getting a hold of. The article mentions a public domain book that I would like to take a look at as well. Anybody got the link?

GWU P2P Policy

[KingDork2K3]

If anyone is curious as to GW's P2P policy, check out the following email which was sent to all students this week.

From: note@gwu.edu
Subject: New KaZaA Application Causes Network Problems

Over the past week, the GW data network has experienced heavy traffic and sporadic problems as a direct result of usage of the new KaZaA Version 2. KaZaA is a popular program used for direct file sharing, usually of media files (music, videos, etc.).

GW's network does not block peer-to-peer applications like Napster, KaZaA and Morpheus in an effort to maintain an open academic environment. However, network administrators do impose some bandwidth shaping on applications such as Napster, KaZaA and Morpheus to lower their priority and keep them from overwhelming all other GW data network traffic.

Unfortunately, the recent release of KaZaA Version 2 is causing network problems. KaZaA v2 is extremely adaptive, and appears to maliciously circumvent all controls and restrictions in place to limit use of bandwidth. As a result, the GW network is being overwhelmed by KaZaA v2 traffic.

Network traffic nearly doubled over the course of a week, overflowing the total capacity. As a result, network latency (the time it takes to return a
response) from GW to our nearest Internet provider increased over 200 times. This led to slowdowns to Webmail, the overall GWMail system and other applications.

ISS network administrators have determined that controls built into KaZaA Version 2 prohibit administrators from imposing bandwidth limitations. As a result, ISS has been forced to impose an overall rate-limit on the student residence halls, which produce the vast majority of KaZaA v2 traffic.

Network bandwidth is a shared common resource. Students who abuse this resource are sapping bandwidth from their peers. Please keep your usage of KaZaA v2 at a minimum and within the legal boundaries.

Please also be aware that KaZaA and other file sharing applications allow other users from around the world to download files *from you*, off of your bandwidth, which adds to the overall load on the GW network. GW strongly recommends that all users disable the file sharing option.

Network administrators and ISS management will continue to explore other solutions and, in the meantime, urge each member of the GW community to do their part in managing this shared resource.

Thank you.

(This message has been sent in accordance with George Washington University mass e-mail policy and procedure. This procedure is available online at http://helpdesk.gwu.edu for review. This message was requested by Information Systems and Services and was approved by the Chief Information Officer.)

Protect your freedom to share freely-get involved.

[jbn-o]

I [am] convinced that the only way to do that is by insisting on civil-disobedience of copyright laws whenever possible. It is only then, when we drain them of their revenue stream and power that we will win...

However draining their revenue is one of their biggest lies, we should not believe that sharing actually causes the harm they'd like us to believe it causes. Consider what Lawrence Lessig said in a recent speech about sharing online. He had just outlined some of the tactics the large copyright holders propose using against those that share in response to the "harm" caused by sharing (taking down computers over a network was the chief example he gave which he called "digital vigilantism").

"What is that harm? What is the harm which is being done by these terrible P2P networks out there? Take their own numbers: They said last year 5 times the number of CDs sold were traded on the net for free--5 times. Then take the numbers about "the harm" caused by 5 times the number sold being traded for free: a drop in sales of 5%. Five percent. Now, there was a recession last year and they raised their prices and they changed the way they counted, all of those might actually account for the five percent. But even if they didn't the total harm caused by 5 times being traded for free was 5%."

I'm going to use his point to serve a different need in this conversation: it would appear that sharing a lot doesn't actually hurt their sales much. When virtually unrestricted sharing was going on the revenue from sales did not drop much.

Another problem with this approach is the harm it creates for a good cause. By purposefully going against the law you are helping the large copyright holders win by making their argument for them. Violating copyright can be a criminal act in the US and prison is unpleasant. Lawrence Lessig addressed this point directly on /. not too long ago. Heed his words in the speech and in his books: we have right on our side but it alone is insufficient to win. We have the better arguments. But we need to get the people whipped up about it. Don't wait for Lessig to win in the upcoming Supreme Court case.

How many of you contribute by dispelling myths about sharing via your local community radio and TV stations? I'm working at my local community radio station to do just that. There is already a fellow there working on a show with similar aims so I am joining him by interviewing interesting people and contributing to his show. I also do guest spots on other people's shows to tell people about the Free Software movement, the pernicious US patent system, and the struggle for what Siva Vaidhyanathan (in his excellent book "Copyrights and Copywrongs") calls "thin" copyright. I encourage all of you to get off your computer chairs and do the same thing--please note I am not talking about setting up yet another webcast. The people we need to speak to listen to AM and FM radio and watch TV. For this purpose, webcasting is a good augmentation of, not a replacement for, traditional media.

...otherwise we will just be feeding and strengthening the beast intent on killing us.

When it comes to "feeding and strengthening the beast", keep that in mind when the next Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or Star Trek movie comes out. Keep that in mind when you're pricing a laptop computer or fancy display and you are dazzled by Sony's high-resolution LCD laptop screens. Keep that in mind and buy used major-label CDs or borrow them from the local library instead of buying them new. Your purchases have ethical consequences.

There are better things to do with that money. As Lessig asks later in the aforementioned speech, "How many [of you] have given to EFF more money than you give to your local telecom to give you shitty DSL service?". These movies, computers, CDs, and fancy Internet connections are distributed or managed by the corporations which work very hard to take away your freedom to use extant technology to share information freely. They want to own our culture and rent it to us on very restrictive terms. And so far too many of the people who know most about the problem have done too little to stop our loss of freedom.

So please donate to the EFF. Writing fancy software isn't going to help you when corporations that hate you control the routers your software must communicate through. This is a political problem that requires immediate political action. Supporting EFF is an easy way to help.