Senate Majority Leader Takes On File Sharing

An anonymous reader writes "Colleges are up in arms — and the entertainment industry is ecstatic — over Sen. Harry Reid's plan to crack down on file sharing by students. Floor votes could be imminent." A commenter on the post said, "Unfortunately we are likely to see neither sense nor principle from the Democrats on this issue, as Hollywood is their biggest cash machine."

Comments

No way to combat filesharing

[Opportunist]

Let's be honest here, P2P will continue. Legally or illegally. The only difference is that if it becomes "illegal", only illegal content will be distributed via P2P and distributors of Linux and other legal distribution of software and content suffers. Currently, a lot of distributions benefit from being able to use their users' connection for distribution, taking pressure from their own lines. If P2P is "outlawed" (or not outright outlawed, but disallowed by universities and ISPs), people wanting to share illegal content will find a way around this filtering (because, well, whatever the ISP could do against you is peanuts against being sued by the mafiaa), while people who now spread Linux distributions will not risk breaking the law just to keep spreading their legally spreadable software.

What do you want to do to avoid it? Log the IP addresses of people using it? People will start onion routing their packets, using also existing onion routers so you can't tell that an IP you got is actually a culprit. Also people will start using "private" trackers and networks more than they already do. To avoid packet identification through mandatory logging at ISPs, packets will get wrapped in other headers (HTTP offers itself due to being the perfect "noise" to duck into).

Re:No way to combat filesharing

[kamapuaa]

Let's be honest here, P2P will continue. Legally or illegally. The only difference is that if it becomes "illegal", only illegal content will be distributed via P2P and distributors

The report talks about colleges enforcing illegal downloading, not P2P technology. It's funny that even a defender would confuse the two.

Re:No way to combat filesharing

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's be honest here, P2P will continue. Legally or illegally. The only difference is that if it becomes "illegal", only illegal content will be distributed via P2P and distributors of Linux and other legal distribution of software and content suffers. Currently, a lot of distributions benefit from being able to use their users' connection for distribution, taking pressure from their own lines. If P2P is "outlawed" (or not outright outlawed, but disallowed by universities and ISPs), people wanting to share illegal content will find a way around this filtering (because, well, whatever the ISP could do against you is peanuts against being sued by the mafiaa), while people who now spread Linux distributions will not risk breaking the law just to keep spreading their legally spreadable software.

What do you want to do to avoid it? Log the IP addresses of people using it? People will start onion routing their packets, using also existing onion routers so you can't tell that an IP you got is actually a culprit. Also people will start using "private" trackers and networks more than they already do. To avoid packet identification through mandatory logging at ISPs, packets will get wrapped in other headers (HTTP offers itself due to being the perfect "noise" to duck into). Hmm... According to TFA this plan proposes that colleges be required to:

• Report annually to the U.S. Education Department on policies related to illegal downloading.
  
• Review their procedures to be sure that they are effective.
  
• "Provide evidence" to the Education Department that they have "developed a plan for implementing a technology-based deterrent to prevent the illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property."
  

The article does not say that P2P networks will become illegal which would be strange since there is nothing so fundamentally wrong with P2P computer networks that they have to be banned any more than there is a reason to ban hammers because they are occasionally used to murder people. Using P2P networks to distribute pirated multimedia content and pirated software is however illegal. Unfortunately, at the moment, the only really effective way to stop illegal sharing of pirated software and multimedia content over P2P networks is for educational institutions, government institutions, businesses and even ISPs to disable P2P completely. From my point of view this is unfortunate since I don't pirate software or media content, I cover most of my software needs with FOSS and purchase any additional software and what little multimedia content I use. The fact that people use things like Bittorent to distribute pirated material is unfortunate since it has made it impossible for me to download Linux distributions and other FOSS software that is distributed via Bittorrent when I am at work which has impacted my productivity as a worker. Until recently Linux distributions like Centos, for example, relied heavily on Bittorent for distributing their DVD ISO images and it's only recently that these became fairly widely available via FTP/HTTP. Distributing pirated material off P2P networks isn't a fundamental human right, it's not legal, it's something people are able to do because they can get away with and now draconian measures are being taken to kill off the distribution of pirated material over P2P networks to the huge inconvenience of those of us who use P2P for legitimate purposes. Another reason why this amendment is crap, apart from it's detrimental impact on the legitimate use of P2P, is because it singles out colleges when there are communities and institutions who are much worse than college students when it comes to distributing pirated content and software via P2P so to that extent I agree with you.

Just my €0.02.

Re:No way to combat filesharing

[Opportunist]

The problem is, what is an "illegal download"? How do you distinguish it, technically, from a legit one?

Simply: You can't. So what colleges will do (and already do) is to simply disallow any kind of P2P traffic altogether.

Re:No way to combat filesharing

[Opportunist]

Ok, let me rephrase that. I will not become illegal to use P2P, but the only way for colleges to stop the illegal transfer of data through P2P is to disallow them, essentially resulting in the same.

Re:No way to combat filesharing

[t_ban]

The report talks about colleges enforcing illegal downloading

Really? That's where I'm sending my kids, then :-)

Re:No way to combat filesharing

[jedidiah]

Yet somehow PC games have managed to survive all of the doom and gloom. It's been 20 years already with rampant piracy the whole way and they're still around.

That just goes to show that if you put out a good product and don't abuse your customers too much, people will still pay for your stuff even if it is readily available for free.

That is the "business model shift" that both the RIAA and the MPAA need to make. They need to stop acting like they are entitled to success. They have to act like they are willing to work for it. This goes equally for AMC that thinks it can get away with showing commercials for some lame ass sitcom before Harry Potter 5.

The RIAA simply needs to stop being an ass. Admittedly, this may be impossible for them to do. They've been doing it for so long.

As I like to say: When it comes to ripping off artists, consumers really are amateurs compared to the labels.

Yeah, so I suppose ...

[pallmall1]

... that this is somehow going to end up being blamed on George Bush.

You want some copyrighted lyrics? How about this, from The Who:

"meet the new boss
same as the old boss"

Re:Yeah, so I suppose ...

[Swampash]

Here is a story.

It's the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were born and died. And they lived much the same as you and I do.

They even had a Congress. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats.

Now I'm not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws--that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouseholes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds--so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much effort.

All the laws were good laws. For cats. But, oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn't put up with it any more, they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats.

Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said: "All that Mouseland needs is more vision." They said:"The trouble with Mouseland is those round mouseholes we got. If you put us in we'll establish square mouseholes." And they did. And the square mouseholes were twice as big as the round mouseholes, and now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever.

And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. Then to the black cats. They even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up of cats with spots on them: they were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but ate like a cat.

You see, my friends, the trouble wasn't with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice.

With apologies to Clare Gillis.

When the Democrats swept into power in Congress I listened to all the liberal commentators talking about how it was Good News and how Things Would Be Different Now and how the Bad Guys were out and the Good Guys were in. And I shook my head and thought of Mouseland.

Corporate political sponsorship

[The One and Only]

So now it's come to this--the Hollywood Perpetual Copyright Party vs. the Petroleum Industry Party. Except the Petroleum Industry Party also wants perpetual copyrights for Hollywood, both parties want to prop up the farm industry, and for all we know, the Hollywood Perpetual Copyright Party will end up helping out the oil industry as an added bonus (or a bone-us to the common people).

*gasp* democrats can be evil?

[OKCfunky]

Not shocked in the least. This is merely another showing of the American political arrangement favors not the citizen, but the biggest donor.

Raise your hand if you thought your congressman would listen to you.

Who would you listen to: a very small donor at best, or the group who bankrolled your campaign(especially the "care about the people" PR)?

Why is this shocking news? Hell as a former die hard repub, I've lost pretty much all faith in the nation and it's future

Re:*gasp* democrats can be evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, to quote Michael Moore, of all people ...

"In the last presidential election (2004), the richest 2% of Americans had TWO political parties representing their interests, while the other 98% had NO political parties representing their interests. And that 98% included all of the folks running around waving flags and saying 'I'm free, I'm free, I live in a democracy'"

You know we're in serious trouble wheh Michael Moore sounds (at least on this one occasion) like a beacon of reason ...

That is consequence of the one party system

[vivaoporto]

His relationship with powerful lobbyists makes him (or any other Democrat congressman) no better than the ones in the other side. They are all puppets, hold in the hands of the same puppeteer. Naive are the ones that thing that party allegiance is guarantee of anything at all.

The politic system is rotten, third party can't win (even if they had more support, there are so many hurdles for an independent candidate to overcome), majors parties are in fact one, people are cattle and vote based on frivolous fads and superstitions instead of on important issues and past actions.

The "manifest destiny" ended up being a self defeating prophecy, U.S. people got so used to the idea that U.S. fate is to lead the world that forgot to care about their own house and get a decent leadership for themselves.

Not that anyone asked, but...

[Arceliar]

"Unfortunately we are likely to see neither sense nor principle from the Democrats on this issue, as Hollywood is their biggest cash machine."

Call me cynical, but if a politician shows sense, they won't get enough of the conservative vote to ever get elected. And if they show principle, well, they're probably so lacking in even common sense to ever get liberal vote. So why should we expect either in any measurable form?

That trolling asside, from TFA:

Bainwol noted that many campus networks are created with taxpayer funds and are intended for "academic and research purposes," but end up, he said, giving students "a means to steal."

Roads also facilitate theft. Roads also have police to patrol and set up roadblocks if necessary, that sort of thing. But funds are appropriated for such services. If one is to mandate that measures be taken to prevent intellectual property theft, one should provide a plan for funding of such an endeavor. It's not a universities fault that students steal any more than it is a construction worker's fault of someone later uses a road to facilitate a crime because the road happens to go past a bank.

At least, that's the way I see it.

Unsure

[Stevecrox]

I'm from the UK the place with a far less insane record industry but I'm not certain how Universitys think this is unfair. I've just finished a 3 year course at University of Plymouth in order to connect to the network you had to go through a VPN which only allowed HTTP and FTP access. We had a extremely fast network I remember downloading Ubunutu at 1MB/s as well as Myst Online at 1.3MB/s. I could check my email, manage a domain I own and could view every website on the internet without issue including sites like http://www.stage6.com/ , http://www.youtube.com/ and at various times I saw other students looking at xxx sites. I did get HL2: Deathmatch and Myst Online working (intially the later required a blocked port) but bittyrant or limewire didn't work.

I can understand that bittyrant does help spread the load of linux distributions but I don't understand why other university's and colleges can't implement this as well. How does it hurt people? I don't know why people are fighting so hard. The university's policy did not stop me from learning nor did it stop me from playing (if I had lived in halls) it just stopped activities which either used high amounts of bandwidth or could land the univeristy in legal trouble.

Then again with iPods, portable usb drives and the messenger share folders most students could share music/video if they wanted to and I did see people moving to these methods in my final year.

FUD, yes, but useful FUD

[misanthrope101]

By continually bemoaning that the Dems are "just as bad" as the Republicans, we can muddy the waters enough that some people may, just may, forget what party gutted habeus corpus, thinks torture is OK, continues to block votes on Iraq, ran up the biggest defecit in national history, and so on. Psshaw! Going after filesharing is just as bad as Abu Ghraib!

If you can't bring your party up to where people could vote for them with a clean conscience, you can at least bring the other party down and pretend that they're at the same level. Responses, if any, will be along the lines of "yeah, because Democrats are such angels, perfect in every way, and they always do what the people want" which is not what I said. I have long said that Dems and Repubs are about the same when it comes to pork spending, subservience to lobbyists, and general corruption (including legal but unethical stuff), but Repubs are essentially The Torture Party as far as I'm concerned. You don't have to impress me much to beat out The Torture Party.

If the Dems just run as the "We Think Habeus Corpus is Important" party, that's good enough for me, even with the usual complement of pork spending and knee-jerk overreaction that we always expect from congress. I wish Dems were better, but this equivocation where going after filesharers proves that the Dems are just as bad as the Republicans is a bit ridiculous. If torture, habeus corpus, and warrantless surveillance aren't part of the discussion about which party is better, at least right now, then we aren't really having a discussion.

A commenter writes...

[rilister]

A commenter on the post said, "Unfortunately we are likely to see neither sense nor principle from the Democrats on this issue, as Hollywood is their biggest cash machine."

...you think that's bad? you should see some of the crap I've posted as comments here...

That thing about Hollywood is strictly horseshit

[Get Behind the Mule]

"Hollywood is the main source of cash for Democrats" is just another legend in the rich and bizarre mythology of conservatism, and as such it is typically puerile and easily refuted.

Opensecrets reports that the top industries donating to the DNC, based on contributions from PACs, Levin money donors, and individuals who self-identify their employer, are:

1. Retired ($7,389,597)

2. Lawyers/Law Firms ($3,250,708)

3. Securities & Investment ($2,301,530)

4. Real Estate ($1,570,877)

5. Education ($1,429,546)

6. Misc Finance ($1,176,402)

7. Business Services ($1,108,889)

8. Health Professionals ($1,044,045)

9. TV/Movies/Music ($1,042,810)

Thus the "industry" making the largest contributions to the DNC are retired individuals, contributing over $7 million to a total of about $37 million. The entertainment industry, which is presumably what the myth-entranced poster meant by "Hollywood", comes in 9th place with just about one measly million.

For the DCCC, which is responsible for elections in the House, it breaks down like this:

1. Candidate Committees ($28,987,184)

2. Retired ($6,473,164)

3. Securities & Investment ($5,237,572)

4. Lawyers/Law Firms ($4,730,490)

5. Real Estate ($2,846,870)

6. TV/Movies/Music ($2,299,387)

So the top contributors to the general DCCC funds are, by far, the individual campaign committees (who of course must get their own contributors). "Hollywood" comes in sixth place with about $2 million out of a total of over $80 million.

For the DSCC, responsible for Senate campaigns, the picture is about exactly the same as for the DCCC:

1. Candidate Committees ($10,312,550)

2. Lawyers/Law Firms ($9,989,631)

3. Securities & Investment ($7,938,319)

4. Retired ($6,967,505)

5. Real Estate ($4,864,610)

6. Misc Finance ($2,585,026)

7. TV/Movies/Music ($2,286,687)

This time, "Hollywood" comes in 7th place, again with about $2 million out of over $80 million.

However we much we may dislike what Harry Reid is doing, the claim about "Hollywood" and the Democrats is load of peanut butter. We need to get these reality-challenged conservative canards out of our public discussion; they certainly have no business of the front page of Slashdot.

Re:Normal democracy in a capitalist nation?

[niktemadur]

Isn't that just the normal form of democracy in a capitalist nation?

Not quite. During most of the XX century, more often than not, Washington managed to strike a balance between business interests and the interests of society as a whole - think of the cries of corporate outrage when recordable cassettes and VCRs came out, how it supposedly signaled the end of the world as we now it, etc, and how Washington stood its' ground, deeming the technology legal for public consumption.

However, since the advent of the internet, something snapped. Panicking, ignorant fossils (democrats and republicans alike) who think in terms of dump trucks and series of tubes and don't even know how to bookmark a page in their browsers, have now allowed a few major corporate players to determine, one insidious step at a time, how the internet should work and what constitutes fair use and theft, in the exact opposite direction of what used to be the norm.

A corporate iron grip on western culture is almost complete, on paper, on an unprecedented scale. And now, the do-nothing, good-for-nothing distinguished congressman from Nevada is giving us a glimpse of just who owns everything - those who own him. I am convinced that he is completely ignorant on american legal history of intellectual property and ownership.

Re:that's incrediby retarded

[Mr2001]

What, voting for a third party is somehow going to help? They're just a different color of cat.

The problem is with the system: Duverger's law. We have a two-party system because our voting method pushes us in that direction, and once you're down to two parties, it doesn't really matter who they are. They'll be subject to all the same influences as the Republicans and Democrats are now, because they'll be the only ones in power. An interest group that wants a favor will donate to the majority party; a group that's been slighted by the current government will donate to the opposition. It'll be the same thing we have now, with different letters after the names on TV.

If you really want to do something smart, do two things:

• Figure out which major party you like more (or hate less), join it, and work from within to change it into the kind of party that represents you. This is how you effect change in the short term.
  
• Push for a new voting method. Approval voting, instant runoff, proportional representation... they're all better than what we have now. This is how you effect change in the long term, with an election structure that makes it easy for more than two parties to thrive.
  

Re:oh really?

[captainjaroslav]

I think you missed his point. He's not claiming that Hollywood doesn't favor Democrats over Republicans. It's the statement "Hollywood is their biggest cash machine" that rings false. According to opensecrets.org's listing of contributions by industry, the sector that they call "TV/Movies/Music" gave the Dems about $14M in 2006 and $22M in 2004. It's true that they only gave Republicans $8M and $10M in those same years, however, here are the contributions to Democrats for other sectors in those same years:

Construction
2006 $16M (more than TV/Movies/Music)
2004 $20M (less)

Finance/Insurance/Real Estate
2006 $110M
2004 $140M

Health
2006 $36M
2004 $48M

Lawyers/Lobbyists
2006 $96M
2004 $150M

Misc. Business
2006 $57M
2004 $85M

Labor
2006 $57M
2004 $53M

Ideology/Single-Issue Money
2006 $98M
2004 $110M

So, according to these numbers, the Democrats have several bigger "cash machines" than Hollywood, even if you include the music industry in there. Your mind may stop being boggled now.

This proposal has already been withdrawn

[Doug_Tygar]

Slashdot is simply out of date. From the Chronicle of Higher Education's Today's News (for subscribers): Facing widespread outrage from college officials, a prominent senator withdrew legislative language on Monday that would have required some institutions to buy technological tools to curtail illegal file sharing on their campuses....

Here we go again...

[lag00natic]

As predictable as the day is long, yet another post defending the Democrats regardless of what they do. Post an article that is critical of the Republican leadership and everyone jumps on the neocon bashing bandwagon. Post an article that is critical of Democratic leadership and everyone jumps to their defense.

Listen, both the Democrats and Republicans are bought and paid for by special interest groups. You are only kidding yourself if you think otherwise.