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EPIC Response To RIAA Letters
Mephie writes "News.com is reporting that, in response to letters the RIAA sent to universities warning about P2P file sharing, the Eletronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is sending letters to universities warning against cracking down on file swapping. EPIC calls attempts to do so "fundamentally incompatable with the mission" of "foster[ing] critical thinking.""
now I can breathe a big sigh of relief. p2p here I come!
What a big stinkin' pile. The universities aren't stifling "critical thinking", they are rescuing their bandwidth from the pr0n-swappers.
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
I have to say that while I'm not a tremendous fan of monitoring, and the RIAA/MPAA have definitely been pulling dirty stunts before, EPIC's claim about them damaging "critical thinking" is kind of bogus. The "chilling effect" bit is kind of silly, as is the attempt to squeeze in fair use (which is quite important, and is even relevant to some of the things the RIAA/MPAA has done, but has nothing to do with Britney Spears music bootlegging on a campus connection).
Also, I suspect that most univ. administrators couldn't care less about potential "security" or "privacy" issues that EPIC is calling "purported risks of P2P". They care about massive bandwidth usage, though.
Frankly, EPIC would be better off going after legislation (which *is* an issue) that our *AA friends are trying to push through.
May we never see th
Is this response missing the point, or is it just me? I mean, the issue is really whether the colleges are responsible for the behavior of the users of their networks, and whether they have to be proactive in that policing. Like it or not, as it currently stands, P2P files sharing is a form of re-distribution, and copyright exists to prevent re-distribution. Like it or not, as long as the case-law supports the application of analog media rights to both the digital form of analog works and wholly digital works, the copyright holders are entitled to reparations. The issue is who is responsible for the police work required to cite and punish offenders. The government doesn't want to do it. The copyright holders would like to, but that amounts to vigilantism, so no one thinks that is a good idea. The ISP's and GSP's are common-carriers, so can't be held responsible for the behavior of users. So, of course, corporate and educational WANs, with their many users and fat-pipe connections are logical targets. The argument against imposing such responsibilities upon these institutions aren't so much about privacy, its about not having to be proactive. Being proactive incurs expense without return, and these Institutions are only liable for the behavior of members when they act in the name of the Institution, not when they abuse internal resources to engage in private activities. There is little incentive to crack down on these internal abuses because the cost of enforcement is, in the big picture, greater than the return. They should say to the copyright holder, "Without violating the integrity of my network, bring me the hardware address of the suspect, and we will grant them due process, and if we believe they are in violation of the law, we will give the appropriate logs to the civil prosecutor in our jurisdiction." If the technology isn't available for the grieved party to identify their aggressor, then perhaps they should not release their digitized-analog and wholly-digital works into the wild. (Shepherds are not compensated for sending their flocks into the domain of the lion and wolf without protection, they are chastised.)
So I went and read the original letters, in response to which the EPIC letter was written. One was from "America's creative community," that is, the RIAA, MPAA, National Music Publishers Association, and the Songwriters Guild of America. The other letter was from the presidents of various acedemic organizations, like the Association of American Universities, and similiarly named organisations.
The first letter uses the term piracy quite liberally, while the second discusses "the inappropriate use of campus facilities to disseminate copywritten materials."
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
to go from "foster critical thinking" to "foster criminal thinking".
coincidence?
Why does bandwidth cost so much money to begin with? Has anyone taken a look into price fixing for bandwidth? Nope. Anyone see any concrete figures on how much bandwidth costs? Show me what this "cost" supposedly is, why is it so high, who is keeping it high, and then... maybe then... I'll let you whine about P2P taking up too much of this "expensive" bandwidth.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Lovely metaphor, as far as it goes.
Of course, to the RIAA and the MPAA, *all* file sharing is piracy, no matter what the desires of the artist. They want their sticky fingers in all of it, even if they have to bribe our Congressional morons to get it.
Oh come on EPIC, let's call a spade a spade. "Fundamentally incompatible with the mission of educational institutions to foster critical thinking and exploration?" I am a third year college student, and I have never, not once in my entire life, met a fellow college student who used peer-to-peer filesharing to do anything but a) view pornography, b) steal music, or c) download copyrighted software. This is not so say that there aren't any college students out there using P2P to explore and think critically. But the vast majority--like, probably in the high 90s--aren't. Ditto the "potentially harming overall network integrity and performance" trope in terms of overall bullshit-level. Having personally witnessed a 45mbps connection being brought to a literal standstill at the height of Napster as 5000 college freshmen set out to download the latest Eminem single, I can say that the RIAA is clearly correct about P2P apps' consumption of campus bandwidth. It's hard to imagine network integrity and performance getting much worse in the absence of a cap or limiter.
And philosophically I'm actually aligned with EPIC on this one; I am completely opposed to RIAA because I know that when they try to stop users from "stealing IP from artists," what they are really concerned with is preserving their own distributional monopoly over music in the United States and not with the individual artists at all. But EPIC engages in the exact same type of doublespeak when they advance claims like a few contained in this letter, thus lowering themselves to the level of that which they are opposing. And that doesn't help us--me--those opposed to RIAA--at all.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Pandoras box has already been opened. All monitoring will do is have the P2P traders just encrypt the connections, thus adding more overhead. In addition the personel the Univ. is going to hire is going to be the same students that are transfering the files.
The only way they will stop it is to get involved in the file sharing and start going after people. People have the 'I won't get caught' mentality.... actully is it even illegal yet? Since no one is charging and all.