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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..."
Is this considered spam?
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
Are they dating yet?
College is where people are taught to turn off their minds and subscribe to politically-correct orthodoxy, so shearing the sheep at the shearing station is the right tack for Valenti et al.
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.
Interestingly enough, there is no threatening 'or else' stuff in those letters. Not yet...
But how could they add an 'or else' statement? The colleges haven't been doing anything. There's no way you can serve someone with a cease and desist or anything like that without THEM breaking laws. If anyone's breaking a law, it's the 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.
...but little do Rosen, Valenti, and the rest of the Consumer Control Cartel know that most college students trade amoungst themselves. Such was the case at my school and my friend's school.
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
Our tech person actually said that don't care what we do as long as they don't get any letters about us from the RIAA/MPAA attack dogs. So I got the file sharing type stuff running but it is restricted to the college's domain.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
what is wrong with encouraging universities to police the student use of the university's network?
IMHO, having a university do this is more moral than an ISP (since ISPs are providers of a payed service) being asked or forced to police its customers. it is also more moral by far that legislating a solution.
besides, 99% of the information that is downloaded to universities from p2p is illegal in either copyright law or university rules( downloading test answers or term papers etc.)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
How long until someone finds a way around the commercial filters software? All it would take it to make p2p traffic look like "legit" (http, ssh, etc) traffic. Packet shapers target by port. So how long until someone figures out a way to use the software to cut right around that?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I tried submitting a story similar to this to /., but I kid you not -- we in the local LUG were threatened with ARREST for protesting when Hillary Rosen personally came to speak to praise us for our policies.
No one was for it after we were told that by one of the CS teachers, and the protest was dissolved.
It was just like when Bush went to Ohio State , except it was for a rich corporate billionaire, not just post 9/11 presidential security!
how is this insightful and the parent sits at 0?
Students don't deserve anything, if a few people take up all the bandwidth, then they're limiting it for the people who aren't downloading warez 24/7.
Tuitions may be ridiculous but you're a goddamn fool if you pay it and can't afford it.
Do schools pay for bandwidth? I know a lot of schools get thiers for free, and those who do pay i'm sure don't have metered systems that cost more the more you use. I figure almost all get a certain amount and pay for that weather they use it all or not. Maybe I'm wrong. So does the bandwidth argument really matter?
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
I'm at Cornell University right now, and interestingly enough, the administration has seemed to be doing the exact opposite, relaxing their guidelines.
The first week, we had take an online class where we learned that if we got caught sharing, we would have community service and stuff.
Then last week, they basically send an e-mail saying that they didn't care if we downloaded stuff, as long as we didn't upload stuff. I'm too lazy to go and check the e-mail, but I believe it gave directions on how to turn off uploads in KaZaA. Weird.
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
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
someone mod parent up
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I, along with most others in residence at the University of Regina received a letter asking us to cease to use P2P programs on the campus network. Actually they told us to stop sharing copyrighted works, but that is about the same thing. Anyway, this was precipitated by a letter from Sony to the UofR. [rumour] /. "first posters". I still need to be able to download Enterprise, so I hope they don't choke us off too much.
I even heard that some students were "called into the principal's office" over file sharing, and had their wrists slapped.
This year, the bandwidth in one residence has been awful. It takes up to 30 seconds to load a webpage at peak hours! I complained to the helpdesk, because I'm paying for HIGH speed LAN, not 14.4 dialup! I haven't even been sharing files this year, although last year I'd upload about 4 GB a day. I figure now that I've got most of the mp3s I need, the UofR should install a packet shaper so I'll be the first to respond to
Did anyone else notice the dark, erie website design that the RIAA uses? Kinda makes you wonder who is pulling their strings... the Devil?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
This is only really a half-truth. In most cases, everyone pays for the bandwidth at a large corporation or school, but only a few people aggressively use this bandwidth. For instance, about a dozen individuals were consuming upwards of 75% of the school's bandwidth before port restricting measures were put into place. The bottorm line? Everyone pays for the luxury of having a fast connection, but generally a few inconsiderate users pay to get the most bang for their buck.
The RIAA isn't saying anything revolutionary by stating that P2P costs schools. Most schools already know this, and a number of them have begun to restrict such programs in various ways (port blocking, traffic shaping, etc.).
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
I'm a student at the University of Michigan, and there may be a policy against P2P file sharing of copyrighted material, but the University has done nothing to enforce it since I've been here (this is my 4th year). Policy doesn't do jack, and never will. Unless they're planning on going through each dorm room and checking each computer, they just shouldn't bother.
God forbid students use the bandwidth to actually learn or do research. Lets see what you say when your paper is due tomorrow and pages are timing out because a handful of people are saturating the connection.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
"A journey of a thousand lawsuits begins with a single letter."
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
They're not fighting a war on P2P. They're fighting to liberate the innocent Americans from the evil tyranny of intellectual property thieves. That is, once they've garnered the necessary support from a higher governing body.
(Or am I getting my news items mixed up? Music/film industry, U.S. government, it's all so confusing!)
I place the blame squarely upon tight pants.
www.phynd.net is a great solution to P2P. I'm sure the RIAA and MPAA will hate it just as much as P2P, but both colleges and college students love it. Here at UConn, someone has kindly donated the use of their Linux box to run Phynd, which scours the network and catalogs all types of shared files (not just mp3/ogg or movies). In a college with thousands of on campus residents, this saves hunge amounts of internet bandwidth [money] by keeping file sharing traffic entirely on campus. The students are happy because there are almost never any dead links, and files transfer at full speed.
Before this was implemented, P2P programs tied up HUGE amounts of bandwitdth. UConn was forced to administer a bandwidth quota per student, but fortunately that's only for off campus traffic, not local traffic.
But the best thing about it is that the students solved the problem all by themselves. And UConn loves it because it's saving them vast amounts of money.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Inform students of their moral and legal responsibilities to respect the rights of copyright owners
Universities *can't* do this! Why? The skewed views regarding morality and the law which exist on college campuses today.
I can see it now.....a panel of "trained" students and administrators who find a student "responsible" for questionable uses of the computer network because he was running LimeWire. For this, he will be "educated" by having to take "educational experiences" where he's asked to share his feelings on the subject, and recite whatever it is that the University decides it wants him to believe that day.
This is all B.S. It sounds nice and clean, but these things are also accompanied with C+D letters from record company attorneys. They basically say that the university will be a party to the lawsuit if they don't stamp out P2P. I've personally seen it happen.
And if there's one thing that University administrators can't stand, it's the possibility that they could have to go to court.
I don't know about some of the Universities that some /.'ers attend, but I would like to give an account of how mine handles p2p stuff. For obvious reasons, I would like to keep the name of the school anonymous. I work for my school's computer department on Linux clustering and research oriented computing. I have been with the department for about 8 months (almost since I started school). One thing that I really like about my school is how our network admins handle p2p. We have no 'real' policy on it. Basically, we leave it up to the users to determine what is right and wrong. There is a reason for this. We consider our network resources to be 'public domain'. They are paid for, in part, by the university endowment, but mostly it is paid for by tax payer dollars.
Now, since the government of my state has not placed a ban on p2p networks of any type, we are in no position to deny our users the right to use them. We are, however, allowed to throttle their traffic so that more of our bandwidth goes to university-related causes. Really, our department tries as much as possible to turn a blind eye to the p2p situation. We don't want to impede on our students abilities to use the internet in the way they see fit. The university will not, however, back a student who has been busted by the RIAA for illegally possessing copyrighted material.
Come on now. I know we don't like the RIAA, but do we really have to include the "they havn't done x...yet" line in every story. Did it ever occur to anyone here that maybe the reason they didn't do it in the first place is that they don't want to do it. That's right, maybe they don't want to sue everybody! Maybe they are just defending what they beleive is their rights, the same way we all defend our right to privacy, etc..
Give the bias a rest, please.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
I'm not sure if this is truly P2P but it is probably close enough (and was to a certain extent inspired by Napster) background.
The major biological databases (EMBL, GenBank, Swissprot etc.) are repositories for sequence data, the information that describes the order of the DNA or proteins (depending on the database). This is collected and curated by a relatively small number of people compared to the size of these databases.
This information is relatively useless without annotation. Annotation is the description of the biological role of the sequence and which bits are important. Unfortunately annotation is difficult and time consuming for people who are non experts to maintain. THis means that many of the entries in the databases are either poorly annotated (poor), have out of date annotation (poor) or blatently incorrect annotation (really bad).
A system of P2P sharing of annotation data has been devised where an expert working on gene Xyz can make available his own annotations without having to burden the overworked people at GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ to make updates to the central database. Interested parties can access this data in a P2P manner (ie a query on 'what does anyone know about Xyz').
One of the main protagonists of DAS (Distributed Annotation System) is Lincoln Stein at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (yes, of CGI.pm fame). It will also be presented at the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference in July this year (where I hope to find out a lot more about it too..)
This sounds like a perfect example of productive P2P.Have a look at http://stein.cshl.org/das/ for more information. I know that at least one of the authors on the paper referenced has been guilty of reading Slashdot in the past so maybe he would comment.
If my university prohibited Napster, as some othes Scandinavian schools did, the collection would probably have never started.
Worse than that, I would never know first-hand what P2P is. This is about academic freedom: you should be allowed to test whatever darn new thing is out there, for whatever reason, otherwise the school lags behind. What you use it for, is your responsibility, of course.
Oh yes, I'm first-hand aware of the associated headaches (cleaning up the lab computers from those pesky money-generating add-ons that pop up an ad at the timing-critical phase of your data acquisition :-).
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
When you Pirate MP3s You're Downloading COMMUNISM
:^)
Universities do pay for bandwidth, albeit at a lower cost than most commercial entities. These costs, of course, are passed along to students (and/or taxpayers).
I'm a bit disappointed in Chapel Hill's copyright policy and the way they adress MP3's (to paraphrase, 'most are illegal').
It's interesting to note that each of these policies treats fair use for education purposes a bit differently, and all are very vague and conservative in their treatment of fair use...
Some of the instructions are, quite frankly, wrong in their specifics (for example, U Mich's instructions on how to determine if a work is copyrighted, while factually accurate for current works really applies only to things created in the last decade or so).
I also work at a university, and we've gotten- and had to respond to- a few DMCA notifications from the RIAA. These events really are a pain, primarily in man hours. A big problem is that these types of events really make university officials want to attack P2P usage in general. Attacking bandwidth "costs" is often an excuse to ban P2P networks altogether, even though there are ways to restrict bandwidth... actually, is there any place that addresses this topic, specifically? It would be nice to have alternatives to show to university administrators...
And, why not? Rosen and Valenti are right: bandwidth isn't cheap. At my last year of college, there were times the Internet was unusable because of Napster users. Making P2P filesharing more difficult is in the best interests of every college, from both a legal and financial standpoint.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
What is P2P? It just means any connected node (called host) on the Internet can connect another one, without one system explicitly meant to be a server only, and the other one a client.
What is so special about that, why all the fuzz? Even the notion of defending P2P makes me sick and is absurd. The Internet is built on (mostly) the TCP protocol, which allows for any node to connect to any other node directly. The Internet *is* P2P and has been so from the beginning.
It is normal to telnet from machine A to machine B, and then telnet back from B to A. It is normal to act both as an ftp client and server, in fact before the web became popular, in the old days, almost any connected node to the Internet acted both as client and as server.
Why is this "evidence" needed? People trying to forbid P2P are trying to forbid Internet, or at least trying to fundamentally change its netowork protocol (which is impossible).
Only ISP's could block incoming connections, thus making "P2P" (how I hate that word, describing something that has been around for ages as if it were something new) impossible. Not many of them do (luckily), only having no fixed IP address makes acting as a server a bit more complicated, but things like dyndns get around that.
One might imagine a future where anyone with a dynamic IP address (hard to trace) is prohibited by the state to have incoming connections. That is a nightmare but I don't think such a draconic law is very probably, and it would be very hard to enforce too.
Deep down, the RIAA knows that it has absolutely no hope of forcing this upon universities, which is why these letters are absent any cease and desist language. They're just going to run it up the flagpole and see who looks.
The final word should be here that it is the job of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government to enforce Federal law. No other entity, whether state or local, has the jurisdiction nor obligation to enforce the CFR. If distributing copyrighted material is a federal crime, then it's the justice deparment, and no one else, who has the power to indict. Civilly, I find it hard to believe that the RIAA would be able to prove that distributing a song cost them any money. What downloader is going to take the stand and testify that he/she would have bought the CD had they not been able to download it? I sure wouldn't. In fact, I would testify that the ability to "try before you buy" has led to my purchasing several CDs that I normally would not have even known about, let alone bought.
Every single Borders bookstore allows you to listen to a CD, in CD quality, and in its entirety, without any inhibitions, before you buy it. Does that not constitute illegal distribution, i.e. allowing someone to listed to copyrighted music without paying? Why isn't Borders being served? How is this different than P2P, save the portability of the music?
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.
Packet shapers are bad because they lower the priority of anything that is not http. Ftp is useless, shh is useless even email with large files can take awhile since only http is optimized. They also do not address the still legal problem of filesharing because no matter how slow the connection becomes, students will still pirate.
The only solution is to ban p2p. I am sorry and I no this sounds unfair but its not right that I can not use the college's ethernet access for legitimate purposes so someone can steal mp3's and porn. Its true that alot of public colleges with limited resources have ethernet connections that if you lucky will let you download at 5/k a sec! If you play quake3 today, you will notice all the guys with high pings are not really modem users anymore but rather college ethernet users. Its true. All thanks to p2p. You have packet shappers and kazaa to thank for your lousy performance.
http://saveie6.com/
Which university are you talking about?
Using a computer to copy or store any copyrighted material (text, images, music, movies, etc.) is a violation of the law, and leaves you liable, on conviction, to heavy fines. - Drake University. ;-)
Wow, I just stored this on both slashdot's computer, my computer, and Google's. Hope it wasn't copyrighted.
Reserved Word.
If colleges bind together and work with each other, RIAA and MPAA will certainly not be able to shove them around.
Let's see which ones have backbones and which ones do not, this may get interesting.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Blocking ports and throttling really don't help at all. Sure it gets the lower computer user off, but upper ones will realize they can just use proxy servers to hide there work. And there are lots of proxy servers running on many different ports. Plus, there are a lot of users which use P2P to get pdf, txt's, and other assorted files, which have been released into public domain for free.
Reserved Word.
Peer to peer traffic is evil, network-wise.
For one webpage and N visits, you need N transfers.
If you add M caching proxies on strategic places, you end up with with not-really but close to N/M transfers. This will result in more local traffic and less non-local traffic.
This principle has been practised on the Internet a lot in the past. Take for example USENET. Instead of sending all messages to all people, they were collected on central servers and people could access them locally via there. This resulted in more local traffic and less non-local traffic.
Same with multicast radio. instead of sending N streams from one central server, they can send one stream which is distributed over the internet and forked at routers on which the traffic splits. Result: only one stream per channel.
So, if people started to make "peer-to-peer-caches" on strategic places, you could get all your music from there instead of having it to fetch from a far-away-country. Result: more local traffic, less non-local traffic.
If we only could map the law on this network-design, life would be so difficult and the internet would be so much faster for the data which can't be cached.
bash$
You need to find better web hosting. The digitalrice IIS garbage sends your index.shtml as application/octet-stream. Most people aren't able to view your pages.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 05:16:35 GMT
Content-Type: application/octet-stream
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Last-Modified: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 23:10:36 GMT
ETag: "322255ef76d7c11:845"
Content-Length: 11938
But after that garbage comes even more garbage, like this:
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
Oh well, it seems like you have nothing to say.
... now the admin at my school is going to get scared and block every port known to man.
Well if this whole thing is to make more money off us, at least they're finally thinking long-term, because I'm in college, and I sure as heck don't have any money to buy their stuff right now!
They can't get through their fucking skulls that if they made it more convenient (and, in cases like yours and mine, financially feasible) to buy music, then we'd buy it.
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--
How are murders information-nazis?:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
I worked for a couple networking depts on campus during my undergraduate "career" at UNC, among which was ResNet. I've learned a _ton_ during my years at UNC, and I continue to learn at work and in external studying. I worked with some truly great people in ATN and computer science, namely my bosses in ResNet and the security folks.
Early in my college stint, one of my Red Hat machines was hacked literally minutes after I ifup'ed eth0. Needless to say, I took an immense amount of heat because that computer was subsequently used as a waypoint to launch a DoS. What a turning point. Those who've interacted with me since have known me to be extremely critical of standard security procedures at universities; I've been very outspoken in pushing the use of strict ssh2, strong passwords, forced password expiration, keeping current with application and service updates, reading and generally being security-conscious, and other what I consider security essentials from an administrator's viewpoint. I say this because most students don't care about the difference between ssh2 and telnet; they just want to check their email and download mp3s.
Which brings me to my second point. During my junior year, I was part of one of the first large OpenNap networks. Although the particular server I operated had the enable_share parameter disabled, the nature of the network setup allowed information transfer over the entire network and thus anyone--even on a host with sharing disabled, like mine--could retrieve search results for a song search. The RIAA wasn't too happy (I don't doubt this was discovered through napigator), and in the end I had to sign a number of documents promising I would never infringe copyrights again, use excessive network resources, etc. This is despite the fact that I was operating a completely legal OpenNap server--my boss at ResNet affirmed that I wasn't sharing.
What this goes to show is that universities with _competent_ security and copyright-aware folks will throw up a safety net for you _if you're doing the right thing_. The EULA for ResNet at UNC and various links already cited in the posting above make explicit the methodology of dealing with suspected copyright violation. While I wasn't happy at the time, I have to acknowledge that UNC gave me a lot of support for which I'm grateful. The basic point is "don't do any stupid, and you won't regret it." If however, the RIAA decides to chase you down as they did me, as long as you're within your proper use, you should be ok.
I've heard separate stories about mistreatments on separate protests, but those are unfortunately not things for which I can vouch.
You're right about the current crap out there anyway. Think about how you heard abou all the great (underground) bands--your friends. You didn't hear them on the radio, you didn't see them on MTV, and you certainly didn't see them prominently displayed in the front of stores.
Now...think about what the P2P model does. It brings this "friends recommendation" thing to a whole new level. If I want to find more MP3s like a certain band, I find other P2P people who have those MP3s.
You'd think that they're realize the HUGE potential of this. You've got tons of people trading music...that's tons of data on people's music preferences waiting to be analyzed (and capitalized) every which way.
Their current approach is very short sited. They want to retain what they think is lost revenue. But to do that, they're treating consumers like shit!
Fuck you very much for your illegal suppresion of free thought and information. Believe it or not, there is a WORLD of "cool stuff" that is not under copyright, and is available on P2P systems.
There is more to life than the cunt Britney Spears(TM) you push into peoples eardrums.
I'm drinking water every day, 8 glasses full, because one day far far away I'm going to take a really long piss on someone's grave. Care to take a guess whose?
Regards,
World
"the evil p2p sucking up bandwidth" argument doesn't do didly squat. my school realized that p2p was sucking up 80% of bandwitdh... so now they rate limit p2p programs... and now p2p uses 4%.
students are happy, school is happy that students are happy, and school will only shut down a student if it is proven that the student has copyrighted material that she/he is uploading to other users... now, my school doesn't give a shit and they let RIAA worry about that...
once in a while RIAA catches a student with (c) stuff that they are uploading and sends an email to security... blah, blah, blah.
They also could collect everyone's music listening/sharing preferences. There are all sorts of ways to capitalize off that!
I think that you are referring to internet 2, which is paid for by the NSF to connect major universities and research institutions (and, as you said, some companies).
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
When I went to college the really high-tech people were running 1200 baud dial-up to BBSes.
Ahh, for a Commodore 64, a 1670 modem, and nibbleterm. Those were the days, my friends. Now every college weenie has KaZaA and thinks they're hot stuff. I don't think I paid for any software ever for the C-64, and most of it was swiped at 300 baud or at file sharing parties - we called them GT's (Get Togethers). I don't think I got the 1671 until 1986.
And we used to Phreak MCI and Sprint by hand.
Of course there was the day that the FBI came knocking at my door...
Music sharing? Albums recorded to cassette tape.
Kids today just don't get the finer points of stealing. It's all about instant gratification now. I say, cut the cord and take away their high-speed internet. Let 'em P2P at 300 baud over POTS like we use to.
A friend of mine is a professor at Lewis and Clark college in Portland, OR, and he tells me that they purposefully do not block P2P of any kind. They consider this sort of a student recruitment tool. It does tend to clog their network on Friday and Saturday evenings when students are busy downloading MP3s and pr0n, but their response to the issue is to add more bandwidth to the Internet.
As far as they're concerned, it's one of the costs of doing business as a college these days.
The reason why they are targeting colleges is because it is that
;)
1. college students make up the majority of their profit
2. college students make up the majority of P2P users
They would LOVE to target non students as well, but last time I checked there was no university for young people that aren't students.
I believe the P2P crackdown is analogous to when you have to make room on your hard drive. You start by deleting your 650+mb Divx files before you delete your configuration files.
Hmm...I bet doing the latter is what has messed up my computer
Anyway, same theory here, imo.
--Joey
Interestingly enough, there is no threatening 'or else' stuff in those letters
Duh. If a college employee hasn't yet learned to read between the lines, they're not long for their job. College, as a business, have more intrigue and politics than a junior-high school girls' clique.
Valenti needs to stop behind that "businessman" persona and start getting real. I mean, what
kind of self respecting Sicilian threatens others with the law?
Valenti, come out of the closet and start busting some balls man. These freckled white kids
need to see what descipline is suposed to be. Show these motherfucking little bastards WHO is
the daddy.
The RIAA needs its own army of made men to do business.
I work tech support for a small midwestern liberal arts college. We've got a 6 megabit outgoing. We had the subnets for KaZaa, WinMX, etc blocked. The first week of classes the connection was great. Then word got out that Morpheus was still working. Within a day the outgoing had slowed to a crawl. I like p2p as much as the next Slashbot but darn it, the network can't take that kind of abuse. We continue to allow LAN file sharing and AIM file transfers because they don't suck bandwidth, but the major p2p apps are just too wasteful...
~Chazzf
No statement is true, not even this one.
As many filtering programs work on extentions, I know that many people are just .tar'ing up entire cds/movies to bypass these restrictions. The RIAA/MPAA are not going to win this no matter who hard they try. They need to be thinking about the future, rather than trying to save the past. This is what happens when older generations fail to even try to adapt to the newer generation.
No one in any important position in America learns from their mistakes, they just repeat them with different varieties of ideas. (See: The President, Corp. America, Misc. Associations)
NOTE: While I am not supporting these things, I do believe the RIAA/MPAA/Government need to wake up and listen to the younger generation if they want to survive in the future. *Listen to the next generation, or you're not going to be on social security very long!*
All the dubious trading between students at my Uni is done via burners and CDR. No P2P in sight.
Of course, since certain organizations accept a cut from each blank sale, very few students appear to see anything wrong with it.
Which doesn't actually make it right. But then again, if we weren't using the blank media for such purposes, then those same organizations would be stealing from us, would they not?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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!
Those students were fighting against viet nam war and against the consumption society. They were all potheads.
Now those ex students push Bush for a new Gulf war, forbid you to get free (as in every incremental item is free) things for free, and push the "war against drug".
This is why open source efforts in P2P are so important..
MS cannot through Groove be trusted with this issue..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Get off it. There never will be anything like "copyright lapsing through neglect". Neglect by who? For how long? How measured?
The excuses for theft conjured up by music pirates are just as venal and self-serving as the RIAA's excuses for using copyright to enforce a middleman's monopoly.
If you want to fight the concept of copyright itself, come out of the closet. If all you really want is free music, stay in the closet and keep your mouth shut.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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.
Hmm ...
I pay a flat rate for unlimited local phone calls. I pay a shallow rate for gas, a scheme that keeps the monthly bill from fluctuating too wildly. I don't have cable, but I assume a flat rate is paid regardless of how much you watch.
And I've been paying a flat rate of one sort of another for internet access, from way back. $50/mo to hooked.net for telnet access from any CompuServe phone number 'til they stopped me from running SLIP emulators ;). Then flat rate for various dialups. Now flat rate for cable internet. And the whole time, doomsayers were saying it couldn't last. We'll see. It's worked so far.
Outside of college, I haven't found a whole lot of people who think, or really know the details of any orthodoxy.
Um, I live in a college town. I burst out with a guffaw every time I hear someone make a connection between being a college student, and thinking or being intelligent. I can't help it.
Just make sure I don't have a mouthful of soda if you're going to say something like that :)
More likely would be a simple man-in-the-middle attack that completely bypasses the MD5 check.
And that's harder than man-in-the-middling the current DNS how? Especially if your provider is in on it ($ under the table)? Until we get everybody n the Internet into a public-key circle of trust (Meet the Parents?), and these circles of trust become connected (in a graph theoretic sense) into a Web of Trust, I can see no way to prevent a man-in-the-middle attack on any anonymous network protocol.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Maybe it would be a good thing if everyone stopped "sharing" the RIAA's music. It would be even better if everyone stopped listening to it. Colleges could set up music servers containing only works for which free distribution has been authorized by the performers, composers, lyricists, etc. Geeks could write spiffy computer programs to reduce the administrative burdens of such arrangements. They could also develop popularity metrics and write programs to compute them.
All of this would help "localize" music. Often enough, local bands would want their music available freely on the local server in order to promote attendance at live performances. Fans would be better able to find suitable entertainment. Artists and fans would be able to meet other artists and fans with similar interests.
Obviously, a grand shift of this sort could have many economic, social and political consequences. When a formerly centralized industry becomes decentralized, the people formerly at the center lose. As Tuli Kupferburg wrote, "When the mode of the music changes, / The walls of the city shake." That might also be true of modes of distribution.
----------
Manifesto for the Peoples of the Third Millennium
Even though I am capped at 128kbits upload, people have still managed to pull between 500MB to roughly 750MB a day from it. Only amature car/street racing videos and the psyche iso's. NO illegal material at all. The RIAA/MPAA can kiss my ass. P2P has a purpose and I am using it in that manner.
What about FTP, usenet, IRC, IM's? The list goes on and on. Maybe the RIAA/MPAA should skip the middleman and complain to the retailers that are selling computers to students. That would solve the copyright and bandwidth problems.
5 step process for outdated business model, if you can't beat 'em:
Lobby lawmakers
Use PR money for FUD
Manipulate the numbers
Modify your business plan
Join them
They are running out of options!!
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
"American colleges are a hotbed of socialism and left thinking. Everything is a slippery slope to them, and they'll fight back."
Student-wise? Yes.
Professor-wise? Maybe.
Administration-wise? I don't think so.
-- jetlag --
I'm not surprised about Drake now being a "model" for the RIAA. But back in the 1980s, Drake would have been anything but a model. Software copying (notice I didn't use the p-word, as there are no oceans anywhere near Drake) was rampant, and the Journalism school and the Times Delphic were generally the source of all the software. But that was 15 years ago, and Drake must have cleaned up its act since then.
Still too bad, though. I don't agree with these measures, and Drake won't be getting any donations from this alum.
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....
For me it will be over. Simply put, i don't care enough to spend much money to watch or listen to copyrighted materials. Music i can live without already, most of it is crap. Movies i love, but i'll get over it. I'll just spend more time bar hopping or playing pool or whatever.
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!
Ya EULA's can kiss my ass. The fact that the terms of it ARE NOT available until after the purchase voids them. Some notice saying 'there's a contract inside' doesn't cut it either. Unless i am presented with the EULA at time of purchse and agree then to it (by signing something) i didn't agree to it. Simply reading or making a hand gesture doesn't mean i've agreed to it.
If some idiot judge thinks it does...well i'll post a large sign on my property that says 'by reading this you agree to pay me $500' and a camera to help for enforcement.
A quick Google search produced these links:
_ GOP_workers_trigger.shtml _ protests000804.html / news/special_packages/school_of_the_americas/21663 30.htm b ank_protesters_arrest.htm
http://www.iacenter.org/maj_1201balt.htm
http://www.sptimes.com/News/061501/Hillsborough/2
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/GOPCV
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer
http://www.appalachianfocus.org/global/600_world_
Many of those links refer to something recent when the IMF/WorldBank conviened in Washington, D.C.
Just because it's legal to do it doesn't mean someone's not going to illegally detain you all the same. Happens all the time.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Bullshit. I don't want to hear anything about how these poor colleges can't afford the bandwidth when they're charging the tuitions they're charging.
The bandwidth should be allocated evenly between all users requesting it at any given time; this way, all bandwidth is utilized, and all students get their fair share of bandwidth when they request it.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I guess it's not suprising to see the University of Michigan up there. They tend to give in to that sort of pressure, basically rolling over for the opposition. Just like their racist admission policies. Take two students, one a white male and one a black male, from the same exact high school with the same exact GPA, same ACT/SAT scores, same high school curriculum, same financial situation, and same extra curricular and community involvement... Guess who gets admitted? The black male, 100% of the time. UMich seems to be forgetting who and what we are fighting. Forget about equality and let's all be racists. Forget about fair use rights and that P2P is not just for illegal sharing, let's just restrain our student's freedoms. UMich seems to continually forget that it is the STUDENTS that pays for a large portion of their $3.6 Billion yearly budget.
First of all this policy is not used to police ANYTHING that happens on campus. As I looked at the network in the dorm I was in there were no fewer than 200 different MP3's, 50 or so different animie movies, and a handfull of different games. One personal friend of mine used the network to download every Gameboy, SNES, Genisis, DreamCast, PS game that he could find, along with EVERY ISO game he could find. We called him our "supplier". Also before I graduated from Drake last year there were really two seperate networks on campus. One was for the dorms of Goodwin-Kirk and Stalnaker, and the other network was for the rest of the dorms. The administrators have NO idea what is going on for the network. An example of this is my roommate couldn't get on the network (he was running Windows ME..go figure). Anyway I showed him my network and that I could see all the other computers. He didn't believe that I could do that! How is that for informed administrators?
So yeah, RIAA and MPAA might quote Drake's policy as being "good", but if it isn't enforced than what good is it?
Drake CS Grad 2002
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Boy, with an invitation like that, they couldn't keep me away. There's nothing like a good old unlawful arrest to brighten up your day.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
I support the real artists by going to see them when they come through my town, dipshit. Those that are too big and important to get their ass down here don't get seen, and they don't get my money. And I probably wouldn't want to listen to their shitty CD anyway.
I suggest you and all the others willing to pay X amount extra per year get together and ask your college if you can pay extra to have your own dedicated T1 or whatever you guys can afford and create your own network.
Buy your own equipment and take care of maintenance yourself. Set up a wireless network to spread the T1 out to your dorm.
Just remember, that T1 will likely cost you at least around the $1000 range per MONTH including the months you aren't at school.
So here is a little plan you can take and modify to fit your needs:
1) Form a school club. Call it the P2P Club or something.
2) Pool your startup money and start a college account.
3) Convince the college you have enough money to get things started and can pay your monthly charges. In fact, have the bill in your club name.
4) Setup your network.
5) Share your files.
6) Have money ready for lawyers if you ever get caught.
Colleges and universities depend on academic freedom, that is the free flow of ideas and information. Enforcing copyrights for Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti is a step down a slippery slope that will eventually kill academic freedom. Use of copyrighted material in an academic climate has always been fair use. We cannot let greedy corporate robber barons destroy higher education to protect their bases of power, and their ottom lines.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Even if the music itself is public domain, you own your performance of it. That radio stations can rebroadcase is because they have a special exemption allowing them to not pay the artist for the performance right. That is because radio is seen as advertising - so much so that studios have developed a payola system on behalf of their performers.
Get off it. There never will be anything like "copyright lapsing through neglect". Neglect by who? For how long? How measured?
Probably not again, but yes, there used to be. Original provisions of copyright called for a 14 year term when you registered a copyright (neglect to register == no copyright) and renewable once (neglect to renew == no more copyright). As I said in my previous reply there, this sort of system was still in place until fairly recently. Automagic copyrighting of anything and everything anyone does is not how it has always been.
The excuses for theft conjured up by music pirates are just as venal and self-serving as the RIAA's excuses for using copyright to enforce a middleman's monopoly.
If you want to fight the concept of copyright itself, come out of the closet. If all you really want is free music, stay in the closet and keep your mouth shut.
A) I am not a music Pirate. I am, or was, one of the RIAAs better customers. Between my wife and I we own nearly a thousand CDs.
B) I do not wish to fight the concept of copyright itself. As Lessig, and most other modern minds interested in this debate, I feel that at it's heart copyright is a good idea. Allowing an author/inventor/artist to benefit directly from their creations is good for society. However as our copyright law has been written by big business interests and rubber stamped by congress the balance between the creator and society has gone far, far away from what it should be. So I am, and have been, coming out of the closet in that regard for years.
jello.
aka aron.
I should know. I intern as a tech for their their on campus response center(basically it's where the students take their computers when they have problems). One of our most common problems is slowness caused by spyware from p2p apps.
Recently a student that I helped had over a hundred peices of spyware, most of them from p2p.
Having a policiy on the books and enforcing it worth a damn are two totally difrent things.
procrastination is a way of life aka i'll think up a sig later
Well then, with that clarification, we're very much on the same wavelength. I contend that the RIAA is using copyright as a device to enforce its members' lock on distribution. As a result, they've managed to turn attention away from the real problem -- that lock on distribution -- to a argument about copyright. Nothing that Congress may or may not do with the language of the copyright law will affect that lock.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I find it terribly amusing through this whole thing that most state universities (and ALL state universities in Texas) are pretty much thumbing their nose at the RIAA and their demands.
take note that these are state universities where tax payer dollars pay for most of the tuition, and a hefty chunk of the networking and connectivity costs.
Does this count as the government (albeit state, not federal) ignoring the DMCA?
Kyndar: Exotic Imports, Jewelry, Candles, and Incense http://www.kyndar.com
The thing that is so revealing about the RIAA's statement is that if they say something untrue often enough, people begin to believe it. The simple fact that you are allowed to own a VCR to copy copyrighted material off the television is proof of that. It's the people who broadcast or distribute the material who may or may not be violating the copyright. This is exactly why, as other posters have mentioned, many of the universities are placing restrictions on uploading, but don't care about downloading. In other words, if you upload material, you may or may not be breaking the law. If you download, you almost certainly are not. Of course, before the RIAA is done, it probably will be a crime to download, but it is not yet the case. IANAL, YMMV, etc...
Yeah, even worse point, loser. I'm not going to listen to EVERY musician anyway. Christ, you're stupid.
Unlike you I make a 6 figure income, and so can afford CDs. I also don't have a taste for the mainstream music that you find overrepresented on P2P networks. So in the last month I spent over $200 on CDs.
Yeah, I make a six figure income, to two decimal precision. I can't afford CD's. However, I do find a lot of the stuff i'm looking for on P2P - indie punk has a fairly large representation on kazaa.
~Unlike you I make a 6 figure income, and so can afford CDs. I also don't have a taste for the mainstream music that you find overrepresented on P2P networks. So in the last month I spent over $200 on CDs.
~W
sig?
You must be a freshman because last year there were claims of arrests and lawsuits because of piracy. We also got the same emails telling everyone in the dorms not to allow uploading. (Think: lots of stupid people never turning off Kazaa or their computers = lots of wasted electricity and bandwith). Also, be careful when downloading lots of data. If you download something like more than 20 gigs in a few days you get put on a shit-list.
Adios.
"I am a student. Please do not fold, spindle, or mutilate me." -Slogan of the Free Speech Movement, 1964.
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Yes, I'm aware that my host sucks. As soon as I stop being lazy, I'll just host it myself. My IP address almost never changes, and I don't get to much trafic.
>Get off it. There never will be anything like "copyright lapsing through neglect". Neglect by who? For how long? How measured?
What are you talking about? It's very simple. You have to register your work if you want the privelege of exclusivity. You have to renew it every 14 years (just as an example). If you don't renew it, it goes into the public domain. The 14 years can be flexible. If someone gets in his application a little late, but it's obvious he meant to renew it, then you can give it to him.
Also, maybe we can charge a small (a few thousand dollars) fee to renew the copyright. If it's making so little money, that it's not worth renewing, then maybe it should go into the public domain. We wouldn't charge any fee upon initial registration, but only for renewals.
Actually, registration is not mandatory. Under U.S. law, copyright exists from the moment a work is created. However, you can't bring suit for infringement if you have not registered. Nor is publication necessary for copyright protection. (Publication is usually defined, in terms of copyright, as making copies available to the public.)
Renewal is not required for works created after January 1, 1978. The Bono Act extended copyright terms to what many consider a unjustifiable length. There is no 14-year term.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Actually, registration is not mandatory. Under U.S. law, copyright exists from the moment a work is created. However, you can't bring suit for infringement if you have not registered. Nor is publication necessary for copyright protection. (Publication is usually defined, in terms of copyright, as making copies available to the public.)
Oh yeah I know. I was phrasing it as if things were already that way, but I meant that this is how copyright "lapsing through neglect" could be implemented.
>Get off it. There never will be anything like "copyright lapsing through neglect". Neglect by who? For how long? How measured?
I was just replying to that, explaining who would be neglecting, and how long before it lapses, and how it's measured.
gee.. and whos paying for this oh so costly bandwidth? the criminals themselves.