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Congress to Fight Piracy with Education Funds
Nomihn0 writes "The RIAA has announced that the House Education and Labor committee is considering an amendment, HR1689, to the Higher Education Act of 1965. The proposal would allocate federal education funds to anti-piracy measures on college campuses. Most concerning is the bill's wording. It's claimed that the proposal would 'save telecommunications bandwidth costs.' In other words, the government will fund private packet filtering and preferential bandwidth allocation. 'The Higher Education Act (HEA) generally allows schools to spend the money they receive only on certain prescribed areas such as financial aid grants and Pell loans. The new bill would allow that money to be used for more things, but does not contain a request for additional funding. Whether schools would be interested in using a limited pool of federal money to police student file-swapping remains to be seen.'"
Anyone noticing that the RIAA and their associated music companies (keep in mind that their name is supposed to be hated, we're not supposed to hate sony/universal/emi and warner) tend to do things to piss off the most educated people, while the least educated don't notice? Also notice that the least educated people tend to listen to rap "music", and the associated pop music that these companies churn out? Personally, I'm sure that some executive is thinking, somewhere, that having a less educated country means more people to listen to their music. Besides the fact that they're using someone else's money to fight their battles for them.
Remember when Ars Technica used to be 20 page articles about the details of new processor designs...?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
... financing education we will spend tax dollars on policing students, in order to save a dying industry? This is heavily F'd up, pell grants and loans don't pay for that much as it is. This deal must be great for the RIAA, less students receive funding to get into school (less piracy), and that money is spent harrassing those that can still afford to get there. Once again our tax dollars are going to work for industry rather than the people.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Kids will not listen to the federal government telling them not to steal music. They're used to "music as commodity." In fact, I'd say most of the kids in college today never used a computer without knowing you could get "free" music off of it. To them, this is like the federal government telling people to stop using cell phones because landlines are losing money.
The content industry needs to pull its head out of its ass. Times have changed. Your monopoly and ridiculous, antiquated system of telling people who gets what music or movies where is untenable in this day and age. Now that people have the ability to get the content they want from wherever it's produced, they'll do it. Why can't I buy Dr. Who from iTunes the day after it's released? I'd gladly do it. But because of an agreement that was struck decades ago, I have to wait for a butchered version to show up on Sci Fi if I want to get it legally. Why should Australians have to wait a year to get BSG on their TVs?
The content producers seem to have chosen to sue their fans rather than provide them with the content they want. And if they want too long, other, independent, content providers are going to eat their lunch.
(I know I'll get modded insightful, but I don't understand why. I'm just pointing out the obvious.)
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
"Whether schools would be interested in using a limited pool of federal money to police student file-swapping remains to be seen."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the school "is your ISP", and therefore has common-carrier status. Why would they want to go to the trouble of censoring you? They would become liable for mistakes in doing so.
First off, how exactly would it be possible to enforce this other than through willing submissions from universities? Short of a bunch of Men in Black (mibs) physically checking the server to ensure that these funds are going to implement the said packet filtration system, is there really a way to remotely check and/or enforce this? Would there have to be only one unified method used to perform the filtering, and if so, what about colleges with a system that is incompatible with that unified method?
I'm not really too keen on student money being sent towards incriminating students and limiting bandwidth, but I'm really wondering about the realism behind this bill; how the hell would it be enforced with private colleges and universities?
"Congress to Fight Piracy with Education Funds"
Why is Congress fighting anything? They are a legislative branch, not a law enforcement branch! Yes, sure, they have to be informed to create appropriate legislative action, but NO NEW LAWS are required.
Federal financial aid to educational institutions should not be messed with to "fight piracy"
If they want to fight piracy, authorize some more money. When new taxes are levied to 'fight piracy' perhaps joe public will pay attention. Additionally, like the war on drugs, this war on piracy is misguided at best.
Copyright laws seem to be working just fine for everyone but the **AA. Why is that? This is what Congress should be doing; asking why the **AA are having so much trouble when other people are not.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
If you don't deploy some kind of filtering or attitude readjustment, most of your traffic will be file sharing (and the majority of that will be of questionable legality). If you can slash your network traffic to one fifth or even less, you can delay the provision of new equipment and new connectivity for quite some time. Traditionally, this means that the nominal bandwidth you can offer to students and researchers is no longer competitive, so there is a strong incentive not to police traffic too much. Nobody will fund you 10GE if you are running at less than a third of GE (peak of the five-minute average).
It could well be that the public as a whole is better off if this vicious circle can be broken. Diverting funding might be an option to achieve that. But HR 1689 doesn't really address the core issue. Saving bandwidth doesn't cost money, just reputation.
This amendment was introduced by Rep. Ric Keller (R-FL). Given that he is in the minority party, and the bill apparently does not have a Democratic co-sponsor (although I didn't look very hard), it is likely that it will die in committee, as most bills do.
Spending tax dollars to protect the interests of a specific private business (or set of such businesses) does not make sense.
Oh, and by the way, it is not "piracy." It is not even like piracy. It is data duplication. We should call it that.
Maybe they should make sure the students can READ before they start sucking money up for this.
Even if what you said is true, which I highly doubt (since from what I understand packet filtering and QoS is more expensive to run than adding bandwidth, and end to end encryption would defeat it I would think), who is to say the money saved from such an endeavor will go back into the Pell grants and the like?
Technical arguments aside, taking money away from student loans to finance this seems risky at best. If there is no clause that requires accounting of the money saved, and it's redirecting back towards student loans, this is certainly a Bad Investment(tm).
That also doesnt even begin touch on how it's morally wrong to use education money for the private interests of copyright holders.
meep
I know this is a joke, but this is precisely the sort of solution that appeals to a certain mentality.
Zero tolerance is the favorite strategy of the self-righteously stupid.
The reason for education grants is that the nation needs an educated citizenry to compete in the global economy. The days when our competitors were either bombed out or lacking a pot to piss in are over. There's nothing like feeling you are striking a blow for justice, even if you're only shooting yourself in the foot.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Public Funding of elections is what is really needed to stop this.
If you want politicians to be even more insulated from the needs of their constituents, public funding is the way to go. If you want elections to be even more biased in favor of incumbents, public funding is the way to go (unless you somehow believe the politicians would setup a funding source that puts themselves at a disadvantage).
The way to stop things like this is to limit power and cut budgets. The government shouldn't have the power or the money to do something like this in the first place.
Everyone should get at least a semester of it! Start with the history -- original copyright and patent lengths and intentions, the subversion of those intentions by corporate lobbies and what you are and are not allowed to do with various media. There's a lot of ignorance surrounding the current situation and I think that people do need to be educated about it. I think that if a lot more people were aware of what a tangled mess the current set of laws are, they'd get straightened out eventually. Oh wait... that's not what the industry wants?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You trust those fuckers?
The NRCLB Act of 2007 will ensure that under-performing record companies get their fair share of taxpayer funds in order to prop up their dying business models. A Congressional Spokeman stated "this act guarantees that these poor companies and their starving executives continue to provide campaign funds to us congress-critters that are so desperately needed during these lean times." He added "its a win-win situation for them and for us." When asked about how this impacts actual funds for higher education for actual students, he quipped "for who?".
Hey, this bill was introduced by an anti-labor, pro-war Republican, with zero co-sponsors. Yes, the RIAA might dream of using educational funds to prevent sharing of information, but what with even major music companies bailing out from RIAA, I don't think they can strong-arm anything through. What with guys like the sponsor of this stupid bill in the minority, it really is worth slashdotters who obviously feel strongly about this to take a few minutes to let the members of the committee know how you feel.
This is nothing more than a move by the RIAA to get the government to actively PAY for protecting its business interests. On top of that, they want the money to be used from areas that would go to Grants and Loans.
So in plain terms: The RIAA racket, is lobbying Congress to use USEFUL Higher Ed. funds, to protect a dying business model.
Well thats one way to keep the CONSUMER model in place. Cut off LEARNING, so you can dumb down your largest target demographic!!!