Anti-P2P College Bill Moving Through House

An anonymous reader writes "A news.com article is covering an amendment to the College Opportunity and Affordability Act (pdf) that should make folks in Hollywood, the RIAA, and the MPAA well pleased. The tiny section seeks to hinge government approval of an institution of higher learning on whether or not they adequately dissuade Peer-to-Peer filesharing of copyrighted materials. The Act came out of the House Education and Labor Committee, which agreed on the terms unanimously. There is still some question, though, as to what penalties should be handed down for institutions that don't do enough to protect intellectual property. 'Some university representatives and fair-use advocates worry that schools run the risk of losing aid for their students if they fail to come up with the required plans. "The language in the bill appears to be clear that failure to carry out the mandates would make an institution ineligible for participation in at least some part of Title IV (which deals with federal financial aid programs)," Steven Worona, director of policy and networking programs for the group Educause, said in a telephone interview Thursday.'" Update: 11/16 16:36 GMT by Z : PDF link corrected.

Comments

Where's the Constitutionality?

[dada21]

I still am trying to figure out how the Supreme Court allows Congress to support, or directly provide, loans at the Federal level for college students. It makes absolutely no sense to me that anyone can find support for money taken from me so that you can get your college education.

My father came to this country penniless, and worked as a waiter to get through college. He didn't have Federal support for college, so upon graduating he had no debt. Today, most of my friends who graduated in 1996-1998 still are paying off their bills, and I'm sure I'm partially paying for some of it through whatever fraudulent taxation system the Feds use to acquire my funds to pay for others.

Can't people see that Federally-financed loans are one of the primary reasons that tuition is so high? Before Federal loans, colleges would loan students their own money (at 1-2% interest) to go to school. The colleges had good reason to keep tuition low since they were taking a risk with their own money. Now we have people paying for college loans until they're 35 -- and those who never went to college and never wanted to are supporting others as well.

Combine that with no Constitutional mandate for regulation of the Internet, or for criminalizing non-physical content sharing, and you have a really hilarious law that would make the Founders roll in their graves non-stop.

This bill is a non-issue. It protects the inherent rights of no individual, but provides subsidies to special interest groups. Where's the Supreme Court when you need them?

Re:Where's the Constitutionality?

[malkavian]

Well, I come from the UK where we used to have completely funded University education by Grants.
Now we have loans, which I consider to be a huge step backwards.

The idea of funding (in the Federal level in the US) is to ensure that if someone proves themself to be extraordinarily bright, the fact that they may not have enough money to attend university should not be a barrier to them receiving a damn good education. The principle behind this is that this bright person may well come up with the solution to a problem that cures cancer, solves the energy problems of the world or some other wonderful thing.
They may also create the next plague, be an evil mastermind or some other thing. But the point is that while they're pursuing their dream, they're quite probably going to be in a highly paid job doing some extremely high brow work. And while they're working, they're getting taxed. And over time this elevated level of tax paid more than pays back the money they were allocated by having their tuition fees paid for.. And all the while potentially helping improve the quality of life for all.

So, I've no problems with grants, or anything else like that which funds education. That's a good use of money that stands an elevated chance of making the world a better place.

Now, to turn round and say "If you don't kow tow to the special interests of a business entity, we'll remove your accreditation to effectively teach people and educate them", what you're essentially saying is that you don't care about the future potential money that may be generated by all the people being taught in the future, especially the very bright, but poorer ones who NEED the funding.
You'd rather hamstring your technological base of the future, and future competitiveness in the world market to satiate the demands of a corporate entity that produces NO technology, merely entertainment (which is fast becoming of questionably value world wide).
This is a very good strategy, long term, to ensure you become a second class country with an inferior technology base. Money in the pockets of a few non-entities at the sacrifice of the progress of all.
Rank blackmail and extortion.

Re:Outdated business model cramping your style?

[Technician]

The one that got me was this one...

I open a store and say "Come on in and pay whatever you want." Are you on f---ing crack? Do you really believe that's a business model that works?

Movies came to the home market at $65 to $160 each. Piracy was a problem even though a blank T120 VHS tape sold for $15 - $20 each. I know, been there and done that. CD's on the other hand have added rootkits and DRM to make them incompatible with your playback equipment (iPod) by trying to prevent ripping. At the time I can buy full length movies at 2 for $20 or 4 for $20 in the pre viewed section at Blockbuster, many CDs are still less than an hour in length and are over $10 each. They are often not marked that they contain defective by design problems. Movies have THX certification for quality assurance of both the video and audio quality. CDs on the other hand are engineered to compete in the loudness war at the expense of dynamic range and harmonic distortion (Clipping).

Go a head and open a store. Provide in inferior product that won't play on my portable MP3 player for an extreme price and tell me again how this business model works? I buy movies instead.

I can buy oldies (movies) at Wal*Mart for 5.99. Try to find any good 20 year old Kiss, Pink Floyd, Styx, Queen, etc for 5.99 that hasn't been compressed.

700 pages? F that

[daeg]

A 700 page bill is akin to me doing a 700 file commit to SVN. There's no way in hell any manager should approve that large of a change. Either break it down into 5 page commits as individual pieces that can be debated and passed/rejected one-by-one, or get the fuck out of Congress. They are just giving ammo to non-Democrats. Remember how no one "read" the Patriot Act? This is the same deal.

Passing a bill without reading and understanding it should be treated as treason, plain and simple. Don't like it? Don't run for Congress or don't vote on the bill. Period.

sneaker net

[queequeg1]

I wonder if forcing college kids to use sneaker net will increase or reduce the problem. I have actually become scared by the RIAA's tactics, even though I would occassionally download only a song or two (who wants to pay a $3,000 settlement for downloading a few cheesy 80s tunes). So, to avoid getting caught, I asked a neighbor for a copy of some of his 80s tunes. He brought over an external hard drive with everything he has, totalling over 700GB (more than 17,000 flac files). Too many to go through before giving the drive back so I just copied the entire drive. I have since listened to much more than I originally intended to get from my neighbor.

I have to wonder if, given how inexpensive external drives are and how close college students live to one another, forcing people into a mode where the standard is to share thousands (or tens of thousands) of songs in a single transaction is an effective way to reduce piracy. Sure, the number of people who do this might shrink, but the number of songs pirated might go up.

Re:I have another bill that should be passed

[cliffski]

actually the reason that britney and the backstreet boys are on TV and you don't like them is that they sell records. If you pirate music, you are invisible to the market, and your purchasing decision doesn't register. The record execs don't sign bands that they think people like, the sign bands that make money.
You could have some cool indie band that was massively popular amongst the slashdot reading demographic, but they will never get a record deal or national tour sponsored, because they do not generate money.
Removing yourself from the marketplace for music means losing any influence whatsoever on the supply side decisions. Money talks.

No

[Greyfox]

Don't send a letter. Vote out of office. And the guy you vote in... vote him out of office in the next election, until you find one that doesn't suck corporate cock.

The best way to promote change and make sure your Congressman listens to you over some corporation is to make sure he knows that his job depends on him doing so, and the best way to do that is to demonstrate it by repeatedly swapping congressmen out of office after one term.

Of course, one person alone can't do that much so you might need to band together with likeminded people. Perhaps you should form a PaC. That worked pretty well for the AARP (They all vote, too. That's an important bit.)

Oh, except then you'd be a big corporate interest and your congressman still won't listen to you! Oh... the irony...

Re:Outdated business model cramping your style?

[GodWasAnAlien]

He is talking about obsolete business models.

Say it's 1403, and you form an association that collaborates, organizes and controls all written documents. You call it the "Stationers Company/Guild".

Then decades later, in 1436 or so, someone invents a printing press, and it makes it easier printing documents with much less effort.

At first, you market the quality of hand printed works. Later you buy some of these machines, print documents cheaper, but try to keep control.

But at the end of the early to mid 1500's there are too many other groups that have the printing machines, and the control of your company is dwindling.

So the obvious thing to do? Use the money that you have, to buy some government. So in 1557, the government gives you a royal charter, a monopoly for all printing. You milk that for as long as you can (for 130 years it that case).

Now fast forward to the 20th century.
Your MPAA or RIAA has pretty tight control of the production and distribution of movies and music. Printing high quality records and film is an expensive business to get into, so it is natural for large company control.

Then this thing called the Internet is invented. A media production and distribution middle man no longer is necessary. Things like mp3.com and napster pop up, and information is flowing, uncontrolled.

Well, it this case, we repeat the methods of the Stationers. Buy some government. In addition to lawsuits based on already purchased copyright monopolies, we buy a copyright extension, buy a new DMCA law to protect our new DRM encryption scheme, and buy laws to increase penalties for those damn college students who refuse to allow us to have the control we had before the internet.