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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.
...make it the law!
Why don't we make this all a lot easier to follow and understand: Simply replace the Senate with the MPAA and the House with the RIAA. We'll save some money by not having to pay the middle-men.
Ban anyone from breathing if the join the RIAA.
No offence, but why should one illegal activity like that be treated above all others? Here's one, one that's more useful, ban the funding to colleges that don't do enough to prevent rape on campus. That would actually be a good crime-prevention to tie to funding, and it is a problem.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like stealing (or the less wieldly intellectual property infringement if you prefer), and it's bad. But this industry that has long since lost 95% of it's creativity and intelligence, is now trying to force money from people, threatening the creativity and intelligence of those people also? Make people dumber so they like your stuff more? Make Brittany Spears and Backdoor Boys more popular?
That is the stupidest waste of legal paper I've seen in a long time.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Just about eveyrhting that can be shared through P2P is copyrighted. For example those Linux ISOs I downloaded last night, they were copyrighted, now they were under the GPL which allows me to share them, but it still is copyrighted. So are the creative commons works, so now can we not share them like the licence allows us to do due to this bill? It is so much like the *IAA to try to distroy innovation. People are wondering why America has lost business and tech domonence yet would vote for this bill. They would egarly press for more education in computers, yet favor Microsoft which got us here in the first place. Our new motto for our country should be "Don't innovate, don't share and don't learn unless you have paid your patent protection fees and copyrights to the *IAA"
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Every time I see another MPAA/RIAA story I can't help but picture Homer Simpson singing "I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-R-T! I mean, S-M-A-R-T!" as he burns his house down.
let's throw out the existing governmental system, you know the one that is bought and paid for by the corporations, or anyone with the cash on hand to do so and replace it with SOMETHING THAT FREAKING WORKS. I'm sick to death of the government pandering to these idiots who can't keep up with the times and the technology. For those, the only method of survival is bribery to dismantle any competitive alternative to themselves (you hear that Verizon and all you other morons?). Elections aren't working, since the parties are in the pay of the same group of a*holes as well. This truly is extortion on a country-wide scale. Bastards.
Pax Vobiscum
here
Also note the status of the bill, it has just been introduced.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
It's time for a governmental wide recall.
Here are the emails for the county officials and city council for the largest cities in George Miller's district. Make sure to send Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) so they might actually read it.
Subject: George Miller hides language in H.R.4137 that would remove federal funding from colleges unable to stop file-sharing
BCC: LDare@cao.cccounty.us, pburk@contracostatv.org, cwamp@contracostatv.org, bkondylis@solanocounty.com, ceward@solanocounty.com, jfsilva@solanocounty.com, mpalmaffy@solanocounty.com, JPSpering@solanocounty.com, sgoerkeshrode@solanocounty.com, cmcook@solanocounty.com, jmvasquez@solanocounty.com, pknelson@solanocounty.com, mjreagan@solanocounty.com, FCZaragoza@SolanoCounty.com, cao-clerk@solanocounty.com, bwagenknecht@co.napa.ca.us, mluce@co.napa.ca.us, ddillon@co.napa.ca.us, bdodd@co.napa.ca.us, hmoskowite@co.napa.ca.us, Diane_Holmes@ci.richmond.ca.us, natbates@comcast.net, tom.butt@intres.com, Lopez.Ludmyrna@comcast.net, johnemarquez@aol.com, elirapty@aol.com, harpreet.sandhu@comcast.net, tony_thurmond@ci.richmond.ca.us, Maria_Viramontes@ci.richmond.ca.us, aevenson@ci.pittsburg.ca.us, mayor@ci.vallejo.ca.us, jdavis@ci.vallejo.ca.us, tpearsall0285@aol.com, sgomes@ci.vallejo.ca.us, tbartee@ci.vallejo.ca.us, hsunga@ci.vallejo.ca.us, garycloutier@sbcglobal.net, citycouncil@ci.concord.ca.us
Dear Sir or Madam,
News source: http://www.news.com/2102-1028_3-6217943.html?tag=st.util.print
Bill source: http://edlabor.house.gov/bills/HEAReauthorizationText.pdf
This is unbelievably unconscionable and corrupt on the part of your elected representative. The MPAA is applauding Rep. George Miller for introducing an anti-piracy bill that threatens the nation's colleges with the loss of $100 Billion a year in federal financial aid, should they fail to have a technology plan to stop illegal file sharing.
The proposal, which is embedded in a 747-page bill, has alarmed university officials. "Such an extraordinarily inappropriate and punitive outcome would result in all students on that campus losing their federal financial aid -- including Pell grants and student loans that are essential to their ability to attend college, advance their education, and acquire the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century economy," said university officials in a letter to Congress. "Lower-income students, those most in need of federal financial aid, would be harmed most under the entertainment industry's proposal."
In all seriousness, are you all completely f*cking MAD??! How can anyone in your country sit by and watch this sort of thing? How can anyone with two brain cels to rub together cast a vote for either Democrats or Republicans? I don't even really care about P2P use by students - this is just a supremely stupid bit of legislation.
Seriously, if your elected politicians will vote for this, what else are they doing that defies all sense?
Three Squirrels
Except for the time to acheave an insightful comment on Slashdot and put the effort in witting to your Representative you may perhaps beable to stop it.... I already send a message to my Rep... Have you?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Call or write your congressman or senator. Colleges should not be forced to play law enforcement. That's the government's and/or prosecutor's job.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Ask admission if they are in collusion with the recording industry instead of the business of higher education. Then if necessary take your business elsewhere. Feel free to copy your rejection letter to the local media. They love a good story.
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?
The saddest part of this flawed logic, to me, is that the established schools that would qualify for this federal money will suffer the most from this. My generation was a part of that 'absolutely everyone must go to college or they will forever be unemployed' push. Back then, only drop-outs and teen moms ever went to 'night school' or 'community college'. This, in recent years, has changed a lot.
There are now a lot of ways to get a degree, and since the employee market is flooded with them now, they don't have nearly as much meaning as they once did. And the traditional schools pumping out so many psychology and sociology majors (my self included) without any job market to support them has added to this problem. Degrees are like driver's licenses these days. Your boss wants a copy for their file, but never really looks at it again.
Locally we've seen huge growth in 'technical colleges' and 'education centers'. My wife goes to Kaplan online. A good friend of mine used the University of Pheonix. Have they suffered for those choices? Not really, because the name on the degree isn't that important any more. Just like with comic books, when you print too many of the damn things the value goes way, way down.
With that in mind, imagine the bevy of options a young person would have these days in terms of education. Imagine also that they get to their dorm room and realize that they can't use the internet. Well, technically they can, but they lose access to a lot of content that is important to them. Their lives for the next five years (and yes, the profit model really does encourage at least four and a half...) will be less enjoyable for a number of reasons. Should access to the internet be one of them?
And in this mindset, how many will begin to wonder if their credits will transfer?
this room isn't smokey enough. Oh and don't worry about the college kids. As I said before college students are not known for rebelling against draconian measures aimed specifically at them.
Ya I admit this sucks but theres always work arounds for things. You'll just have to start using programs like Tor to mask your IP and start using encrypted p2p traffic. How are you going to catch someone you can't see?
Subject: George Miller hides language in College Opportunity and Affordability Act that removes federal funding from colleges unable to stop file-sharing
Just go ahead and add "Avoiding the music industry's nanny state / racketeering" to the list of good reasons to live off campus.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
"My generation was a part of that 'absolutely everyone must go to college or they will forever be unemployed' push."
Every generation is subject to that bullshit. The joke is that with low unemployment today is the ideal time to skip college and get into the workforce early.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
If universities are doing content filtering to weed out P2P traffic, then they obviously aren't functioning as a common carrier.
Does this make them liable for anything else illegal done with their network? What about the transmission of viruses?
I don't think they want to go this route.
Yep. Best time to work is when the economy is going well, so get a job, save some money, and when it starts tanking...as it inevitably will, being a cyclical phenomenon, go to school. By that point you may have a better idea of what you want to do for a living, and not end up settling for a placeholder "I dun went to colege" degree.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
The only way they know that we as a population are opposed is to let them know. So drop them a line to let them know how stupid it is that things have gotten this far, and to oppose it going any further.
Of course they wont listen to you, all they care about is the Money that the RIAA, and MPAA is slipping them under the table.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
... you realize how utterly backwards your country is when funding for higher education is based upon compliance with irrational self-aggrandizing laws written by a for-profit entertainment industry.
Fantastic. Where do I sign up?
Which provision in particular does the article refer to? I'm trying to find it but there are references to copyright infringement all over this bill.
These are younger and still impressionable people. You damage their youth experience and place them directly in front of the **AA Steam-roller and you will witness the birth of an ARMY of Republican voters. Do these people *NOT* realize that College-age people are also VOTERS? And as less mature voters, they're a lot more easily swayed by their direct experience and their emotions.
The Democrats have historically been directed by "big media" and when their targets were hazy, people were less offended. But now the targets are clearly defined and those targets VOTE... especially when they are being targeted and have someone to vote out of office.
let's throw out the existing governmental system, you know the one that is bought and paid for by the corporations, or anyone with the cash on hand to do so and replace it with SOMETHING THAT FREAKING WORKS
;-)
Republicans, the real one - not the one's running the show today, prefer a smaller federal government due to legislation like this. It is not that they do not believe that government has some responsibility towards educations. It is that they believe that many things are better handled by more local government - state, county, city, school board - where we have more of a say in things. In other words local control rather than distant control from Washington, DC. If you take federal money you better damn well expect that there will be federal strings attached.
Actually our "wise" elected leaders do not pander merely to money, they pander to those without money just as well when the contribution-challenged represent a likely voting block. I'm about to use the "R' word, please try to keep your emotions in check and read the entire comment before firing off a flaming response. Thanks.
Democrats, the real one - not the one's running the show today, used to agree on that last point about federal strings. John F Kennedy, during the 1960 presidential debate, was against federal support of public schools for this reason. He argued that if the federal government helps it should be with one time costs, like construction of a school, and not with ongoing costs such as salary, books, etc. He warned that the later will invariable come with strings. As the US election season gets going keep an eye open for the 1960 Nixon/Kennedy debate on those political cable channel, or check youtube. It is awesome. Two intelligent candidates intelligently and substantively debating issues. We haven't seen that in a while, and it doesn't seem like we'll being seeing that any time soon either.
Let's choose a lobby, any lobby...let me think....no, scratch that, let's go for the gold, let's choose AIPAC (pro-Israel lobby).
Ok, now, let's have this lobby sponsor an amendment to one of these education bills, calling for the schools to take action and develop plans to ensure there is no anti-Israel "hate speech" anywhere on campus. Further, the schools who don't take sufficient action risk losing funding. Schools develop fucking SWAT teams to check every book in the library, every dorm room, scan every poster or flyer, oversee the school newspapers, etc.
Or let's also throw in the soup lobby, the carrot lobby, the evangelists, big tobacco, big pharma, television, hell, every lobby you can think of, adding their respective amendments about bloody everything.
Where this is even possible, schools of higher learning, the bastions of freedom of thought and expression, the foundations of critical thought, where the right to hold alternative beliefs and opinions is sacred, are no more. When it comes to education there should be nothing remotely resembling lobby group amendments.
Listen up people: *START VOTING* !!!
The *IAA has the money, no doubt; BUT THEY CAN'T VOTE! AND IN THE END, ONLY VOTES COUNT!!!
If you don't have the money to donate to candidates who look after your interests, AT LEAST GET OUT AND SUPPORT THEM IN KIND! VOLUNTEER FOR THEM, WORK FOR THEM.
Shit. I hate to shout, but I am *sick* and *tired* of this bullshit. When will people wake up and pay attention? Most of "citizens" could probably name all the "Dancing with the stars" contestants, but would have no idea who their congressman is. More motherfuckers voted for "American Idol" than in the last election!
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.
Thank you for posting something useful to this discussion. /. has over (using Dr Evil voice) 5 MILLION patrons but all the most can do is complain about how wrong this is. I usually sit back and watch both sides dems/republicans liberal/right wing duke it out in hilariously stupid fashion but this time peoples lives and futures are being threatened because an industry has a huge lobbiest group and deep pockets. I will be contacting my congressman and voicing my concerns on this matter. Imagine if over 5 MILLION people did the same thing?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
to see the plans of the universities to deter the threats on science and reason, like the ID-movement.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Won't this simply drive students into off-campus housing?
Seriously, people do like downloading files, but many more appear to be happy to browse sites like youtube and its clones for videos, and imeem and it's blossoming collection of immitators for their music needs - not to mention the various agregator sites. Why download a client, share your bandwidth and put yourself at risk from getting sued by the RIAA/MPAA or at risk from wierd viruses from the sofware you're downloading when you can just upload your media to a website and proclaim to the world that you love it? I mean the big record labels have signed on to allow free sharing of music via imeem and that in itself must take a huge number of potential file sharers out of the equation. Sure the videos aren't really dvd quality yet, and while the music may be cd quality it's still bound up in a browser, but you can't beat the price, convenience or the fact that it's instant and on demand.
of why centralized government funding of things is generally a bad idea.
When the Federal government becomes the source of significant funding for education, it also automatically becomes a magnet for those who wish to impose their will on the educational system -- whether related to the educational process or not.
It works everywhere. For example, states have to bow to the Federal government in the design of their roads and driver's licenses and what-have-you because otherwise they risk losing the rebate of tax money that was originally partially collected from their state -- in the form of Federal highway funds.
The collapse of the USSR demonstrated the inherent inability of highly centralized, heavy-handed bureaucracies to cope with the extremely varied and variable conditions of the real world. It's somewhat baffling to see that the US public has apparently not gotten that lesson at all and continues to support the trend toward emulating the Soviet mistakes.
Then again, oh wait, I get it. It's not baffling at all. The US public was mostly "educated" in the system of government-run schools, which feeds children a steady diet of propaganda so that by the time they grow up they're convinced that Big Brother Knows Best and they should Sit Down and Shut Up.
Sad to see how the "land of the free and the home of the brave" has become the "land of the cowardly slaves."
Under the same logic your screwed to minimum wage regardless of skill without the magical piece of paper. If everyone has them then everyone needs them for a job.
So if some kid is screwed out of college its walmart time and welfare.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
Congress Removes $100 Billion in Funding from Colleges
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...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
And of course, everytime you steal from earlier comics you should lose all your property and go to jail. This includes homage splashes in the style of other more famous artists and in-jokes based on the intellectual property of others. Right?
Require a Quorum to be there as all of the bill are read *out loud* before voting on them.
Would solve a ton of issues quickly, and make congress slow down.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Slashdot forums: Come here for horrible advice!
Because the youth of America would rather sit an bitch about it on Slashdot, Blogs, etc.. without actually doing anything about it. Older folks have NO IDEA what P2P is!
I just contacted my rep. It took all of five minutes to write this up. Have YOU contacted yours? Speak up, or this thing WILL be passed as-is.
(My rep's name is Jeff Flake.. I wasn't insulting the guy.)
... that they already do this for marijauana, through Section 438 of the Higher Education Act Amendments of 1998 ?
Here is a PDF legal brief on this.
If they can do it in one case they can do it in every case.
As long as a corporation can buy the laws it wants others to follow the country is heading for ruin (or already there).
The difference here is that as much as we bitch about it nothing really gets done to change it... it's very much drowned in apathy. Especially when the stigma to the layman is that if you oppose this then you ARE a distributor of illegal "insert whatever here". We seriously need to see forward thinking education to the masses on why this is such a bad idea. Same as the DMCA and other "let's get it through fast" legislation. They introduce these bills & laws without fully understanding what they are doing or the REAL affect it will have on society. We need to reach the layman and let them know WTF is going on. It's great to share bitch-fests with other techies on /. but my mother, cousin Jenny working at the supermarket, and Bob the mailman down the road need to know why we bitch with so much zeal.
When is the time to rise up and to do something for real change? We are the people that have a deep inside knowledge of this matter, maybe it's time to "hack the planet" and get the message out to more than just our own SIGs.
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
Gene Simmons? Is that you?
Even if they manage to shutdown the network aspect completely (not likely), another avenue will arise. Imagine is someone made a "file swapping device" that had a lot of storage and several interfaces. It could have a db of md5 hashes of all the files it knows about and whenever it connects with a similar device, it could swap the list of what it has. Then the devices could silently sync themselves with all the files that differ. After every "swap meet", you would have hundreds of new files to peruse and either keep or delete. The deleted ones would leave their hash in the db as a rejected file and you would never get that one downloaded again. Imagine this with a multi-terabyte drive, swapping music, movies, anything. Your only work is to delete the stuff you don't want to make room for more files. Backups would only need to be the db of hashes, because you could likely get almost all the files back from a few connections with your friends.
It seemed like a better idea to me to write to the proposer's constituents. Miller is clearly not representing their interests, and they would likely ride his ass for this, threatening a future reelection attempt. Not to mention that these people likely get much less email than the representative, and are thus much more likely to actually read your statement, rather than filter it to the trash.
In general writing to the people who are supposed to be represented by a given congressional fuckwit seems like a good idea. They created the problem when they voted for him, and if they are made sufficiently aware of the problem, they may in the future fix it (or at least delay its return).
but the truth is that everyone that is creating stuff today-artists, writers, musicians (and that includes writers of software too) is hurting badly because of the rampant pirating of our work
Let's say that you are absolutely correct about that. But so what?
Authors do not have a god-given right to copyrights. They're artificial monopolies which are used to subsidize artists (in a slightly peculiar way, in that the value of the subsidy hinges on the popularity of the work) in order to achieve a net public benefit that is greater than if we didn't have copyrights. It is entirely reasonable and very responsible for the public to reduce or even eliminate copyright protection if it serves the public interest to do so. If that harms authors, it doesn't matter, save for the effect on the public interest, which is all that matters. The same logic applies to creating or increasing copyright: it isn't done to benefit authors, but to benefit the public.
Social norms play a role in this. There is a norm to the effect that commercial piracy is harmful to the public interest. But there is also a norm, which we have been seeing more and more lately, that non-commercial piracy engaged in by natural persons is perfectly acceptable. Along with this, we have also been seeing growing interest in copyright law, and growing dissatisfaction in it by large masses of people who feel it has grown too large.
So what I think is likely to happen is that copyrights will shrink, and while they might protect authors against commercial pirates, there will be no meaningful restrictions on ordinary people. This may quite possibly result in that 'hurting badly' becoming the normal state of affairs, if it isn't already. So long as the public is better served by having more freedom to do as they like even taking into account that there might be fewer works created and published, this is not only an acceptable outcome, it is actually a desirable one!
I wish the law is even stricter and anyone caught pirating anything be made to pay dearly. This includes taking any of the property they own(house, car, etc) and if they cannot pay send their ass to jail. Enough IS enough.
Naturally you wish for that, since you are self-interested. And it's good that you are, since copyright is all about exploiting your sense of self interest. But the public is equally self-interested, and from how people are behaving, it seems likely that they wish the law was looser, such that your average individual who pirates doesn't even get a slap on the wrist or even social opprobrium. Seeing as how the audience outnumbers the authors, I think the audience is going to win on that one.
Copyrights are too easily granted, last too long, bar too much behavior, apply to too many types of works, over-reward authors, and carry too-harsh penalties for infringement. Enough is enough.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
If you're implying that Backstreet Boys are popular because their fans pay for albums whereas the fans of more obscure bands do not, your reasoning is flawed. For one thing, as a band approaches obscurity, it would be increasingly difficult to find a p2p seed for their material. For another thing, taste tends to broaden with age, as do people's paychecks, making them more likely to turn to the more convenient amazon.com rather than lurking for hours in search of a seed for an early Bob Dylan album. Thirdly, label-constructed boy bands already dominated the airwaves before the advent of p2p.
It's more likely that the Backstreet Boys dominate the radio because if you want to make a lot of money with only one act or one station, your best bet is to appeal to large groups of people with homogenous tastes - not various groups of people with differing tastes.
In fact, leaving the low-bandwidth medium of radio to lowest common denominator acts and promoting more nuanced bands through the internet is probably the best way to do it from everyone's perspective. It's a waste of time for the labels to take on small bands, and it's a waste of time for the small bands to try to get signed to labels who aren't interested in them.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
P2P has become like anyting else lately. It's targeted because people like it, use it in excess, and think there's no repercussions for using it illegally. Kind of like underage drinking, smoking, and illicit drug use, or illegaly owning a firearm. If you don't want to get caught drinking, you drink in the company of people you trust. If you don't want your parents knowing you smoke or use drugs, you take measures to make sure they don't find your stash or catch you using it. If you don't have a permit to carry a gun, you don't wear it on your hip. In the same respect, if you're filesharing, you should take measures to make sure you can trust who you're sharing with, make sure that you conceal it using a secure VPN or tunnelized network, and you keep it encrypted or hidden so that if someone sees it they don't know what is or how to look at it. SECURITY is your best defense at sharing data, any kind of data, be it legal or not. If you want to protect your ass, you need to protect your assets. The only way to do that is to make sure you either secure your little P2P stealth-net or simply don't do it at all. Since most of us would elect the former than the latter, that means using the skills you have and the knowledge you can share and creating a secure, tunnelized P2P network that uses encryption. Be smart people.
To avoid corruption, one must remain dishonest.
Are we seriously still harping on the whole "college kids are the only people who pirate content" issue? Because it's pretty outdated now. That whole trend happened fast and then began to taper off really quick. The reason? Well, when Napster (the real one) hit the scene and blew the p2p doors wide open, not everyone had a broadband connection in their home. Colleges and Universities, on the other hand, had some of the fastest connections around. Broadband was the key here. It may not seem like it nowadays, but mp3's were big. It would take me at least a half hour or more to download one song on my dial-up connection (on a good day), and that was one at a time. At the same time, my older sister, who was in college, could start a download, begin listening to it while it downloads, and the download would finish before she's done listening. Essentially a feux-stream. It wasn't even until a few years later that dsl was available in my area and it was still expensive and unreliable. I had one friend who got it at his house and we pretty much spent all of our spare time over there downloading music and eventually movies, tv shows, and music videos when the p2p clients evolved enough. When we weren't infringing copyright, we were playing online video games like Team Fortress. But this activity was isolated to only this kids house. When we weren't there, we could not do these things because no one else had broadband. Then I went to college. All of a sudden, me and a good 75% of the rest of the freshman population had 24hr access to high speed internet for the first time. We all had something downloading at all times. Not because we wanted to deliberately rip off the music and movie industry, but just because we could. It's like when you get your driver's license. You may not have anywhere to go, but you'll go out for a drive anyway. Just because you can. Anyhow, soon the residential broadband market caught up. Cable internet was more affordable, DSL was more widely available and much more reliable (I know Verizon improved the DSL scene in my area greatly). So now it wasn't just the college kids who had unlimited access to all of the content they wanted for free. Furthermore, the college networks are no longer the fastest out there. Technology improved, but also the college networks were choked with all of the massive downloading (damn tubes!).
So where are we now? Well, everyone, college and non-college folk alike, have the same unfettered access to p2p technology. What they decide to do with that technology is not determined by whether they are on a college campus or not. In fact, once that initial hype over being able to download anything in seconds subsided, I became much more selective about what I downloaded. This was the case with many people I knew. After a while, you start to ask yourself, "Do I really NEED to download this?" where before it didn't matter if you needed to, you just did anyway, because you could. At the same time, the **AA was rattling their sabers over lawsuits and iTunes hit a level of maturity. People began go legit in droves. So is college any different than anyone else?
So some may argue that college campuses do a lot of incestuous p2p sharing. Where someone sets up a Direct Connect server and the massive student population just shares among themselves. Well yes this happens, but it's not as widespread as you may think. First and foremost, this activity violates many schools network use policies. P2p servers are also easy to spot because you notice 90% of the schools bandwidth is being taken up by a single ip address on the third floor of a dormitory. This means that a p2p server will not last long, as the IT department will either block the traffic or just outright revoke that individuals internet privileges. Even early on when p2p hit big, a lot of schools banned p2p apps from their networks. This was usually a futile effort because once a new app came out, everyone jumped on the new one and the game of cat and mouse began.
O
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Then maybe congress should try working on these slightly more important issues. Drafting legislation that threatens to make universities into a police force should be resisted by the people.
Tell the reps to work on the important issues instead of telling the people resisting the nonsense to shut up. Although, if we just roll over and give them free reign to do whatever they feel like they may get around to the important stuff a bit more quickly... if they deem things other than padding their pockets as important.
Hmm - like making sure that underprivileged college students are able to get financial aid? Oh...wait...
Congress is just as justified in spending time ensuring people can download music for free as it is legislating into stability an antiquated business model of *completely* non-essential corporate juggernauts. We have in this country an ostensibly free market system - as in any system governed by free market economics, the adage "adapt or perish" applies. If people aren't buying your product, there's something wrong with your product. There is plenty of evidence out there to suggest that people will pay for both music and movies, when they're in a convenient, unencumbered format, at a reasonable price. So, rather than whining to the government, the record companies need to slim down, change their business models, and, god forbid, cut the budgets of their million dollar record release parties.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Just one question for the government: (Score:0, Troll)
Where's Bin Laden ?
Holy shit, Al Quaida has mod points!
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
here is a complete list of all senate and house, as well as president GW Bush and VP. ./ to bring down server when everyone goes to the page to look at the articles. now is a chance to use that same power to hit so many elected officials as well as media outlets that even if 10% listen to our emails that is a lot of coverage.
.com;roger@regularguy.com;guntalk@guntalk.com;2roger@rogerhedgecock.com;hhewitt@hughhewitt.com;alrantel@kabc.com;heykevinjames@aol.com;b
.com;opinions@aol.com;opinion@bakersfield.com;letters@fresnobee.com;newsroom@lompocrecord.com;letters@latimes.com;letters@modbee.com;edt
;letters@sptimes.com;letters@sun-sentinel.com;tribletters@tampatrib.com;conedit@ajc.com;jrnledit@ajc.com;letters@augustachronicle.com;le
There is also a ton of media sources on this email list.
Use this to bcc.
We always talk about the power of
the list was gathered from this site. http://www.conservativeusa.org/megalink.htm
here is the list ready to be pasted into the BCC line of your email using ; as a delimiter.
comments@whitehouse.gov;vice_president@whitehouse.gov;chuck@chuckbaldwinlive.com;mail@bobbarr.org;me@glennbeck.com;belling@cyberlynknetw
ork.com;gra@inetport.com;2radio@hermancain.com;bq@radioamerica.org;drudge@drudgereport.com;larry@larryelder.com;comments@airamericaradio
rucejacobs@clearchannel.com;joecrummey@clearchannel.com;terrygilberg@clearchannel.com;marklevinshow@abc.com;FRAFF@radioamerica.org;rush@
eibnet.com;bob.mohan@kfyi.com;chuckm@chuckmorse.com;jill@lvcm.com;2oreilly@foxnews.com;jpa@wava.com;pov@usaradio.com;quinn@warroom.com;d
rshow@wamu.org;roberts@therightsideonline.com;leerodgers_ksfo@yahoo.com;2michaelsavage@paulreveresociety.com;2wxyt@wxyt.com;dickstaub@co
mpuserve.com;Talkback@cnn.com;journal@c-span.org;wilbur@kvi.com;wilkow@wgy.com;cccore@aol.com;thechrisplanteshow@starpower.net;correspon
dence@spectator.org;letters@georgemag.com;editors@humaneventsonline.com;insight@wt.infi.net;backtalk@mojones.com;letters@nationalreview.
com;letters@newsweek.com;letters@slate.com;Letters@time.com;letters@usnews.com;armylet@atpco.com;editor@covenantnews.com;iht@iht.com;rud
dy@newsmax.com;editor@usatoday.com;pilgri1@ibm.net;gkendall@up.net;letter.editor@edit.wsj.com;nated@wt.infi.net;jfarah@ibm.net;WorldNetD
aily.com;AKSTAR@MICRONET.net;letters@pop.adn.com;register@dibbs.net;htimes@htimes.com;Meredith_Oakley@adg.ardemgaz.com;letters@azstarnet
rib@angnewspapers.com;letters@link.freedom.com;letters@pe.net;SacGazette@aol.com;editor@sddt.com;letters@uniontrib.com;letters@sfexamine
r.com;letters@sjmercury.com;pdletters@aol.com;gtop@gazette.com;letters@denverpost.com;letters@denver-rmn.com;letters@courant.com;editor@
ctcentral.com;editor@bristolpress.com;editor@thechronicle.com;dtimes@webquill.com;letters.greenwichtime@scni.com;news@shorepublishing.co
m;news@shorepublishing.com;ledger@acorn-online.com;editor@middletownpress.com;editor@newbritain.com;nceditor@webquill.com;editor@newstim
es.com;ncnews@bcnnews.com;letters@record-journal.com;newspaper@ridgefield-ct.com;regcit@connix.com;newsroom@acorn-online.com;news@shorep
ublishing.com;news@shorepublishing.com;wptnews@bcnnews.com;newspaper@ridgefield-ct.com;bulletin@wilton-ct.com;letters@rollcall.com;lette
r@twtmail.com;dcook@newszap.com;3njletter@newsjournal.com;HeraldEd@herald.com;insight@orlandosentinel.com;editor.letters@herald-trib.com
tters@starbulletin.com;scj@siouxcityjournal.com;letters@lmtribune.com;letters@suntimes.com;tribletter@aol.com;fencepost@dailyherald.com;
forum@pjstar.com;letters@sj-r.com;NewsEditor@Starnews.com;StarEditor@starnews.com;letters@cjnetworks.com;weedit@wichitaeagle.com;editor@
murrayledger.com;bbankston@theadvocate.com;feedback@nolalive.com;letterstoeditor@bostonherald.com;letters@baltsun.com;capletts@annap.inf
i.net;timesnews@mindspring.com;mail@sta
Faster, Cheaper, Secure. Pick 2
Government supports education because education is a Public Good. Federal support lets more students go to college which makes them more productive which ultimately benefits everybody. At least that's the theory.
I'd say it has more to do with the increasing demand for a college education. A generation ago, a person could get along just fine with only a high school diploma. Today, life without a college degree would be pretty rough. The increase in demand would necessarily drive up the cost.
If "money talks", the problem here is, the recording industry isn't intelligent or patient enough to listen to it. The "massively popular" indie bands circulating the p2p networks and Usenet groups aren't *only* popular because people are downloading the content from these Internet-based sources! They're popular in those sectors because lots of people are enjoying their music. That means, the POTENTIAL to profit is right there, staring them in the face (if they bother to look).
The problem is, they've probably alienated these potential customers with their insistence on only selling the products THEIR way... on physical CDs that cost too much and often have anti-copying measures in place on them. Alternately, they MAY opt to sell SOME of the material via heavily DRM protected file formats, on specific "online music stores".
The people who least care about these limitations or restrictions are often the ones with less "taste" in music to begin with. I'm talking about the younger kids, just discovering the joys of music for the first time, and the very casual buyer who doesn't have more than a dozen albums in his/her collection, total. That would be your typical Backstreet Boys, Brittney Spears type listener.....
"I sell copies digital copies of my artwork online"
You sell bits and bytes. Not a good business model. Try selling prints or actual comics. maybe give the comic away for free like penny arcade. They make money through advertising and doing custom artwork.
"coping a digital copy is not stealing"
It's not, it's copyright infringement, an entirely seperate act, which is why we have diffent laws for it and different words for it. Stealing is where someone takes something and deprives other people of it.
"keeping up with the times"
This is a fair objection. The record labels(and movie studios) ignored digital music for a long time and now try to sell versions that restrict fair use. They are failing at selling in the modern world. This is no excuse for copyright infringement, but it is a fact.
"fair use"
Fair use needs to be protected. Copyright infringement is not fair use. Fair use is keeping backups and time/format shifting works you already have legal access to.
"but the truth is that everyone that is creating stuff today-artists, writers, musicians (and that includes writers of software too) is hurting badly because of the rampant pirating of our work."
Prove it. There have always been poor and struggling artists, convinced of the greatness of their own work, who have looked for reason's they are still poor. It's usually "they don't understand me" or "they have no soul" or " they just don't appreciate good art". Anything but "maybe my work is actually worthless". There are plenty of comic book guys (PA, scott adams) doing perfectly well for themselves.
"I wish the law is even stricter and anyone caught pirating anything be made to pay dearly. This includes taking any of the property they own(house, car, etc) and if they cannot pay send their ass to jail. Enough IS enough."
Then you're an asshole. And you clearly subscribe to the view that every infringement is a lost sale, which is patently false. Recent studies have shown that people who download music illegally buy more music than other folks, not less.
As for your work being entirely yours, well, this is a philosophical argument. One could attribute much of what goes into creating it and a large amount of what might make people want it to the rest of the culture around us, what has gone before, etc.
And don't forget, copyright is a work WE grant YOU. WE grant you copyright terms not because of some natural right but because it encourages you to produce and enrich the culture. Lately WE don't like those terms so much and are thinking about changing them. If that makes YOU less likely to produce artwork then we'll live with that and you'll have to find a real job.
With all the shit they should be doing but are not you would think they would have some time to deal with this trivial crap in a way that is fair to the taxpayers who pay their salaries and give them their jobs. But they're not doing that either. As far as I can tell, we could replace Congress with a bunch of pet rocks and it would be equally effective.
But yeah. I need to grow up.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I hope this does pass and colleges start waging war on Hollywood's behalf. It will further drive students away from mass produced entertainment and into the arms of Creative Commons licenses. Hollywood will find that their fence not only keeps the future consumer out of their backyard, it keeps Hollywood out of the next generation of do-it-yourself entertainment and mashups.
Go for it, bozos.
Fences work both ways.
Infuriate left and right
It does plenty to hurt non-pirates, and that's the problem with it. Universities that fail to "adequately" (as defined by *IAA, I'm sure) police illegal filesharing will lose all federal funding -- including that received by students who don't violate copyrights, as well as those who don't even use the school's network. I fall into the latter group and I cannot afford to pay tuition and other expenses without financial aid, so this poor piece of legislation certainly concerns me. The *IAA wants to punish everybody at a given institution for the actions of a few people whom they don't like because schools are starting to stand up to their often ill-founded lawsuits. What's fair about that? Why should entertainment companies be able to control education money?
Legalize it.
Representative Ellison:
I urge you to oppose a provision contained in H.R. 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, specifically in Section 494, entitled "Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention." This provision unfairly and needlessly places a burden on colleges and universities to subscribe to services that may have little or no educational value and/or to purchase, possibly with federal funds, software or equipment to impede file sharing on their computer networks.
It is not the job of colleges and universities to police student activities at the behest of private businesses, notably those represented by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America. The money spent by colleges and universities in compliance will inevitably be passed on to students through fees and costs, negating the very idea of "College Opportunity and Affordability" that the bill's title purports to create. Federal funds used to further this end could be better spent on actual student aid if it is truly the goal of Congress to help students financially through this bill.
Further, it is not technically feasible for filtering software to distinguish between legal peer-to-peer traffic and other peer-to-peer traffic on a network. Such software will either stifle all peer-to-peer traffic, including legal, protected speech necessary to academic freedom, or it will take an ineffective approach that may prevent some illegal file sharing traffic, but may also permit some such traffic as well as block legal file sharing traffic. Copyright holders can and often do permit distribution of their works through peer-to-peer and other distribution channels. Blocking any such distribution channel is tantamount to blocking academic freedom and free speech itself.
I urge you to get Section 494 stricken from H.R. 4137. Failing that, I urge you to vote against this bill. I eagerly await your reply.
Sincerely,
Saxophonist
(Well, I used my real name.)
Feel free to use any or all of this in your e-mail or letter. Of course, use your own representative's name. If you feel it would be more effective, call in addition. Let your opinion be heard.
Findinig a scapegoat for your own failures is very human. But you know what? If you are, indeed, a comic book artist I see no evidence of it. You have no sig. The link to your username only points to a slashdot page. Who the fuck are you anyway? You might as well post AC, because you're a John Doe.
I suspect that your comics are badly rendered and/or unfunny. I hope you can link to one and prove me wrong. But whether or not your comics are well rendered and funny, nobody's going to pay you to draw them if they never heard of you.
The artist's enemy is not the copyright infringer, it's obscurity. I used to keep a Diary and submit stories to K5 until one of the admins pissed me off enough to leave, and had folks there begging me to publish the Paxil Diaries in book form so they could buy copies!
Good art is like good drugs. Give 'em a free hit and they'll be back for more. Why do you think the RIAA labels let their so-called "artists" on the radio?
Come on out and let us know who you are!
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I'm wondering who gave the MAFIAA mod points? The GP you replied to was a flamebaiting troll if I've ever seen one, posted anonymously by a registered user ("extra anonymous modifier"), yet there is no moderation whatever.
Yet in this very same thread, and the Gene Simmosn thread, a couple of people ranted against the government and MAFIAA and were modded flamebait.
Your post wasn't moderated at all, you should have at least gotten a "funny". I have no mod points today, all I can give you is applause.
[Hanners1979- "OMFG mcgrew gave me the clap"]
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Yes, because banning file sharing will help the kids learn right from wrong....
You know nothing about kids.
Wal-Mart sells physical items. When you steal a physical item from Wal-Mart, someone looses money. When you copy information from someone, they still have everything they did before and suffer no loss. It's your pencil, your blank piece of paper. You should certainly be allowed to write whatever you want on it. You should certainly be allowed to hand out copies of that piece of paper without worrying about a $10,000 lawsuit. Intellectual Property law does nothing but hinder the growth of the publics' intellect.
The original purpose of copyright was to motivate people to produce creative works. It was not intended for these creative works to be restricted from public use until 70 years after the death of the author of the work. We also notice all over the internet that people are creating all sorts of creative works with no compensation. Look to sites such as jamendo, YTMND, or Something Awful. Look at all of the hundreds of thousands of blogs. Look at the Free Software movement. All of these communities are built upon sharing information and media with the community. There is no form of compensation to the users of these communities, yet they still produce works. There is no need for copyright.
I knew they **aa were reading /. but I never thought they would admit it. Even as an AC.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Simply "having a degree" doesn't mean much in terms of viability as an employee or predictor for economic success. However, degrees from top-rated universities are in more demand than they've ever been, for they provide valuable information as to who's legitimately talented, and who just "went to college." The graduating Stanford graduate starts with an average salary of $100,000+, and it only goes up from there. This is factoring in all of those who end up working low-paid "volunteer" jobs, such as those working as teachers in low-income communities or for charitable non-profits. As a senior at the University of Washington Business School, I've had absolutely no trouble getting scheduled for interviews. As a matter of fact, I'm swamped with 18 potential employers who've left messages on my answering machine that I've failed to call back as of present. While having a piece of paper saying "I graduated from college" isn't in high demand, graduating from a school with high standards, is.
If they don't spend thousands if not millions of dollars implementing a prevent p2p defense they will end up losing at least that much in students who won't enroll because they can't aid if they attend that particular university.
While your point is perfectly valid, it doesn't really argue with mine that those schools that aren't on as select a list as your own would suffer from this bill, due at least in part to increased competition.
:)
Or does it?
Or in other words: Grats on your shiny degree, care to discuss the topic at hand?
WTF? If you are a band that wants to give your music away FREE, nobody will or can stop you. If you want to sell your music for $0.01 $1 or $5 or $20 thats ENTIRELY up to you and nobody can or will prevent it happening. These are the facts. This is what I do for a living (with games, not music, but same principle). You can do it too. Right now.
Please show me evidence of how big business and the RIAA are preventing a small indie garage band selling their music direct for free. tell me how they will stop me. a direct example of how its done. Plenty of bands give away free music. None of them have been sued, intimidated, arrested or killed by the RIAA.
You are delusional if you think that any backwards-rationalising about business models can justify taking something that someone else made and distributing it without paying the price set by the creator of that content. That's just unethical, and a kick in the teeth to the guys who made the stuff.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
But my research area is P2P !!!
What should be the basic objective of Copyright? And what should the government use it's money to enforce. 1 Protect your work from being appropriated as someone else's work? Check. 2 Keep others from profiting off of your work without sending you a royalty? Check. 3 Make sure that legit purchasers of your works can't give them away to others for free - indefinitely? Um . . . I'm fine with 1 and 2, but I really don't think it's worth our country's taxes to use them to stop people from sharing. 3 was never on the radar until p2p. It's not like it's misrepresenting or actually making money off of giving away a copy. Think of it as a sale for $0. Which the royalty cut should be $0. It's not being stolen, it's just not being earned. The only lost money, is the large amounts of tax money spent to enforce 3, and keeping this bad business model alive. And mostly for the sake of middle-men (not for the consumer or the creator of such content). My point? don't protect middle-men (or women).
I'd impose a ban on all MAFIAA material on campus, pirated or not, just like how schools around here ban pornography. I'd also put up banners like "When you listen to RIAA's music or watch MPAA's movies, you are putting our school in danger. STOP!".
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)