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University of Utah Promises DMCA Crackdown
Milo Fungus writes "The University of Utah announced yesterday to all students, faculty, and staff that "the University will disable network access for any machine for which a DMCA complaint has been received" from the MPAA, RIAA, or member of the software industry. The full text of the memorandum can be found here. (Please be easy on the server and set up a mirror if you can.)"
--I posted that last night anonymous so it would go in at 0, but now that I see it got bumped up it doesn't matter.
You have a valid technical point, so do I. I actually have a lot of points.
Current alleged copyright affronts are analogous in a way to ridiculously mandated 55 mph speed limits, that after a few years of MILLIONS of people simply ignoring them, all of those people lawbreakers technically, our society and laws changed back to something a bit saner. I don't see any differences between sharing and massive civil disobedience of patently absurd laws like that. It used to be "illegal" for "persons of color" to enter here and there. When I was a real young kid, there was an entire small city near me that had SIGNS at the city line, along with the moose and kiwanis signs, that sign said NO N***s ALLOWED. I SAW that sign with my own young just starting to read eyeballs. Well, eventually those and other "laws" based on total stupidity got changed. It is stupid to keep making stupid things the law! Just because it says it's a law don't make it right. I can cite many other examples. that part is easy.
The basic premise of the "outrage" of the RIAA and their movie partners in monopoly profits is now flawed. It is so seriously flawed that it is past the same ridiculous level those signs were at back then. It is worse flawed than the 55 mph limit, or the new takes you two tries to flush commodes. They are hanging onto their buggywhip archaic profits model based on an entire generation's ago level of technology..
File sharing has clearly shown exactly what "songs" and "movies" are worth, given technology advances. These bloated luddite monopolists are just frantically trying to hold on to profits that are no longer justified. It has nothing to do with what is right or wrong as pertains copyrights, that is clearly tangential, although that is their cry they are being "stolen" from. Nope, THEY are the ones who across the board, across the nation, who have refused to drop their prices from the easy availablity of advanced technology. they are SO FAR into price gouging and other criminal acts it ain't funny. THEY are the clear cut badguys here, their "law" they cite is about as relevant in todays world as you must hire a small boy to walk in front of your horseless carriage swinging a lamp, a law that used to be on the books some places.
If your hard drives were still going for hundreds of dollars for a 10 meg hardrive, when you knew they could be made much cheaper, and the hard drive manufacturers had colluded in an organization called the HMA hard drive manufacturers association to lock in prices the same as always, this would be called extreme abuse, it would be illegal, they would be sued not only into compliance with normal business reality but most likely out of existence and new corporations and executives would be taking their place. If an underground industry had arisen that assembled their own hard drives and were swapping them with each other for cheap, what it actually cost, then would these hard drive tech swappers be "illegal hard drive pirates"?
Not so the music and movie industry. They got an obvious joke fine for collusion in their price fixing schemes. They have been busted so many times for payola to keep the over the air music market locked at the top 40 drivel label I have lost count. Their media monoply companies like clear channel and a few whopper news orgs have hijacked the PUBLIC airwaves and own them now. They are serious serial criminals hiding behind a facade of respectability, and allowed to stay there by inertia, threats, bribery, intimidation. Screw them guys, they are crooks, gangsters, and dangerous for society and our economy..
These universities with legal departments and some deeper pockets should be ashamed they are not part of a massive class action to tear down that RIAA and get them sued out of business based on that simple principle. Songs and movies are NOT WORTH what they are being charged for. No