Slashdot Mirror
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."
I would assume that there are a few slashdot users out there, who work in different mainstream media outlets. Maybe your in the news department or in tech support. Try and bring this event to the attention of a news director, or reporter. Digital Music is hip and sexy, but the DMCA is invisible. There is what about a 1% penetration in to the American conciousness about it. Sadly nobody cares unless Stone Phillips tells them to. Lets get the word out people.
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.)
Anyone renember studying the older debates between anti-slave and free slave supporters, or more recently the debate between communisim and capitalisim. It wasn't long before each side was avoiding debates, or getting into worthless squabbles. It's just a fact of life, sometimes only action can resolve problems.
With both issues, people would cry out, if we could only get along! If we could only communicate! but the problem was not commnication, it was that one side is trying to gain benefit at the expense of others by force or coercion.
The same is true here. There is no equivalancy relationship here. There is no misunderstanding between civilized individuals. There is simply a raw conflict of interest and no amount of debate is going to change that. We should not be debating with them, but within ourselves - what are we going to do about them? How can we break, beat, or contain them?
Im 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 - otherwise we will just be feeding and strengthening the beast intent on killing us.