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Rosen, Valenti Warn Colleges About P2P
fini writes "The RIAA and MPAA just sent a letter to 2,300 colleges or so, asking to crack down on P2P. Juicy nugget: 'Not only is piracy of copyrighted works illegal, it can take up a significant percentage of a university's costly bandwidth.' Also mentioned, some quasi-FUD on security issues. Six higher-ed honchos also sent a concurring letter. From the RIAA website, here's the story and the letters (PDF only). Mentioned as examples of model policies: Drake University, UNC Chapel Hill and University of Michigan . Interestingly enough, there is no threatening 'or else' stuff in those letters. Not yet..."
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
Doesn't _every_ college that provides high-speed internet to students already know this!?
Sounds more like they are sending letters to colleges as a message to somebody else. Not the administrations, not the students, that's for sure.
Now back on point... many times before has the subject of P2P programs in school been posted. AND, in the comments were the several aproaches that the schools have made to combat them, from straight out blocking the ports, to throttling the ports, and to sending notices to the people using the most bandwidth. This allows students to continue to use the internet for recreation (to a point) while allowing usable speeds on port 80. If the RIAA wants to tell schools "Stop it!" then they should without comming out with all these excuses and reasons. Especialy if there are better ways of addressing them then cracking down on students.
Though she's as bad as the rest, Courtney Love had it right when she asked how much she, as an artist, would be getting in refunds due to RIAA awards against MP3.com and similar services. If her balance hasn't been positive due to these offensive attacks then we can only assume this is only about fat, bald bureaucrats at the RIAA. I'd love to proven wrong but...
The cost of which will no doubt, be charged as "operating expenses" to the webcasting royalties they are collecting, before the artists get a dime. The only thing the RIAA and their members are adept at is spending the artists money to guarantee that they never recoup.
Before everyone goes off on P2P:
Right now there is a major server-side bandwidth shortage. It's expensive to run a major web site. There is a client-side bandwidth glut. It's cheap to browse the internet.
The server-side bandwidth cost means is very hard to host significant content for low cost, especially if you start to get popular. This hurts web content for everyone.
The solution? P2P-type networks. Move that client-side bandwidth over to the server side. Why should someone download a web page or file from a single server when they could download it from the last ten people who viewed that same page or file? Sending every web page you visit on to another person (or 5 people) does not incur a significant rise in the cost of you connection. Sending a web page to a million people a month from one server does.
And when P2P starts to open up the web for everyone, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to be pretty sorry that they were so narrow-minded that they made it easy for colleges, cable companies, and phone companies to restrict bandwidth for P2P networks just to save a few dollars.
Bandwidth which students deserve due to them paying absurdely ridiculous tuitions ranging from 15 - 30,000 dollars for a good university.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Oh please, its not a few students downloading MP3's hogging bandwidth from the rest who only use it to look up research articles.
It's EVERY STUDENT who's downloading MP3's. Thank god for that.
Fortunately, most college students are pro file-sharing. Since college students will shape the future, we can at least look forward to a less draconian future where everything isn't controlled by a few big paranoid information-nazi's like the MPAA and RIAA.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Juicy? It *can* take up a significant percentage of bandwidth. Bandwidth *is* costly. The copying of copyrighted works, according to current concensus, *is* illegal. Even if you don't agree with the illegality of it, how is the fact that the RIAA believes copying is illegal surprising or revealing?
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
Simple solution:
Cap all outgoing traffic from the dormitory networks, regardless of port or protocol. This would drastically cut down on out-of-campus users downloading from servers in the dorms (the largest part of the problem), while leaving non-dorm machines (cluster workstations, research labs, office computers, et al) untouched.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Colleges shape the way generations think. If they simply sit back and allow millions of students get accostomed to d/ling MP3s, then they have an uphill battle to fight later. They are scared to death of a new generation thinking there is nothing wrong with this.
Most of us here on the boards fit in the 20 to 50 year old category. We at least remember what it was like to have to *buy* a cd! Think about the impact of those below us who will grow up in a culture where, if you want an album, you download it and burn it yourself.
From the RIAA's point of view, it's easier to send a watered down "cease and desist" letter rather than rethinking ways to relate to this new demographic.
The whole situation reminds me of when electrical grids were just being set up, however metering was not widespread and the available meters crude.
Eventually when the technology improves, the system will have to move to a "pay what you weigh" billing scheme just like all of our other utilities.
I mean, let's face it. Internet access is becoming a utility, just like electricity, water gas, etc. Why then should it not be billed by the gallon, kW or whatever just like any other utility?
I know it sounds aweful to the all-you-can-eat salad bar culture, but it's probably inevitable.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
I was told something similar a few years ago when I was one of the student support staff at my alma mater (a larger private university). The IT director said the administration got letters from the RIAA all the time reporting student computers distributing copyrighted files, and asking for the student names and contact info. The university's response was to contact the student personally, make it very clear that they were not to do this or else they'd lose their network connection, verify that they'd removed copyrighted material from public view, and then reply to the RIAA that any problem that might have existed was resolved. No admission of wrongdoing, no personal information- they handle it internally and tell the RIAA to bug off.
This is by far the most sensible policy. The net admins have better things to do than monitor the network all the time, and the administration has no desire to turn over its students to entertainment lawyers. All they care about is keeping a well-ordered network, where students don't clog the T3 and don't get lawyergrams sent to the President's office. Students have in fact been thrown off the residential network for violations, but I don't think anyone's been in trouble with outside authorities.
A few years ago, P2P was a minor network application which paled in comparison to the deluge of traffic from people downloading off the web. Web traffic grew wildly for several years, but is limited by several factors, including the ability of a person to sit there and view content they've downloaded.
:-)
Even the most ambitious web surfer who plays online games will be hard-pressed to average more than 250kb/s over a 24-hour average. A typical end user, browsing popular sites and sending emails, will be far lower. Networks are built on these assumptions.
P2P kills this. A modest, unattended workstation suddenly can burn up 2-3mb of bandwidth, around the clock. A typical school with 2,000 students will normally get an OC3, probably billed on the basis of an average of 60-70mb/s. Cost of that will be roughly $20k a month.
Now, 10% of the students discover P2P. Even with some of that traffic staying on-net, they will still be looking at spending an extra $40,000 a month to support the MP3 habits of a couple hundred students.
Yep, the RIAA is heavy-handed, and would be more than happy to see anything with more storage than a 3.5" floppy banned. They're not going to get their way.
But the people who run the networks -- colleges, businesses, and cable companies -- look at the alternatives:
1. Buy $650,000 of new networking gear plus $300,000/month in bandwidth, and implement monitoring to comply with occasional court orders.
2. Ban any computing platform capable of P2P (i.e. linux) from network connections unless the user is willing to pay for usage.
Faced with a quote from Cisco for a 300-pound router on one side of the desk, and a petition demanding continued access to pirated software, I would rather tell the kids to go buy a CD than explain my capital budget request to the board.
It sure prob. is copyrighted!....and NO THERE ISN'T PLENTY OF PUBLIC DOMAIN STUFF....
Even if you are getting that music off a defunct "K-Tell" record from "Disco-77" you bet it's copyrighted....and Jack still says you gotta pay "K-Tell" for the right to use it....even if K-Tell isn't around anymore, you gotta pay him and his cousin Vinny.
Think it's hard now....think down the DRM road where the access is controlled "per-play" rather than "I have the album"....as soon as the consumer looses the right to "hold the album/rights to listen".....it's all over....
Think about it, that's where EULA's have been going with "revokable liscense agreements" and the rest of it. You no longer have the ability to keep using something that you bought, even if you still have the media.....time expired!