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College Funding Bill Passes House, P2P Provision Intact
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the College Opportunity and Affordability Act passed through the House today with a vote of 354-58 and the anti-P2P provision is intact. That provision would require universities to filter P2P and to offer legal alternatives. They are claiming now, though, that universities would not lose federal funding if they fail to do this. Of course, an amendment that would have clarified that was withdrawn immediately after it was offered."
Our young adults are learning an important lesson - money talks.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
We need to find a way to make P2P distribution models legitimately profitable for the corporations that lobby in Washington for these asinine laws. I was under the impression that the Warcraft folks already had some kind of a P2P model going for distributing their patches and suchlike--perhaps other companies could be induced to do the same?
Elsewise, it might become very popular and profitable to set up some kind of P2P-friendly VPN service, with endpoints just outside the DMZ of various college networks...
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Hands up all who are surprised and shocked. Hokay, slap yourself in the face nooby. My goodness delilah, I cannot believe you actually put up your hand! Are you so attention starved that you would willingly humiliate yourself in front of EVERYBODY in a manner that is as degrading as that!? Now stop staring at me with those fish eyes of yours and go uninstall all those supposed "legal" computer software that is crawling through that porn infested pile of junk you call a PC. Do you really think you'll be a programmer one day? *storms off in a huff* /cox rant...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
http://edlabor.house.gov/bills/HEAReauthorizationText.pdf
The relevant section: which is a patch to this.
Looks like it simply means that the institution must disclose the policies etc. So they could simply say "we're doing nothing" and comply with the law.
FTB:
See how your representative voted.
Even so... IMHO this still opens the door to more Orwellian legislation, and provides further evidence of how industry pwnes our government.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
It also comes down to value for the dollar. A student can get much more entertainment value out of a $60 game than out of 4 music CDs.
The fact of the matter is, music has COMPETITION. The days of the $12 CD making sense are long, long gone. People aren't sitting around hoarding their money. No, they spend it on *other entertainment products* such as DVDs and video games. Look at how CD sales have dropped and how DVD/VG sales have risen over the past few years. To call it hypocrisy is BEYOND STUPID. You would have to stone cold batcrap bonkers to not realize it's a matter of the music industry being unable to compete for the entertainment dollars of its demographic.
And yes, buying music like that would indeed make someone poor, or at least *feel* poor, because it is a POOR FINANCIAL CHOICE in the face of what the competition is offering. A movie costs as much as, or less, than its soundtrack much of the time. A game can offer a dorm's entire floor hours of entertainment and the game industry THRIVES on that, whereas the music industry does what it can to make sure that if a dorm's entire floor is to enjoy hours of music, it will cost not $60 but far more, trying their best to tie it not only to an individual, but to a particular device that individual owns.
I don't even know why I'm taking the time to post this reply; if you had the intellectual capacity of a dixie cup you would have the sense to not post what you did.
I like basketball!!1!
"Anyone else besides me think the SCOTUS would wipe that particular provision off the books the moment that Harvard, Yale, et. al go to war with the RIAA?"
Not this SCOTUS. Bush loaded that quite well with pro-business judges. Young ones, too, so they'll be a probem for a half century or even more. Do not look for relief from the Imaginary Property crowd from those five. Reference Lawrence Lessig's noble attempt to void the 100+ year copyright by pointing out it was effectively eternal and thus violating the Constitution's design to release works into the public domain. The court's majority - not just Bushies, either -- stated that since the 100 years was a finite time period, the lockup was not technically eternal thus not violating the concept of release to the public domain. The sane counter that in 100 years time our descendants would not even understand what public domain was anymore, or that the future law would simply add another 100+ years, was lost on their ears. They are pro-business and pro-Imaginary Property.
The part about filtering P2P is disturbing but there's are plenty of good legal alternatives to RIAA crap. I'd love to see every university mirror the Internet Archive, Creative Commons and promote work from people in their community. Let's take that part of this stupid law and make something cool that will continue to bleed the RIAA out of existence.
Now now. Here at slashdot we have balanced discussion where most people read the articles, keep the discussions on topic and don't bring up stupid 'memes' (that they think are clever).
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.