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Online Quiz As a Gateway to P2P
Andy Guess points out an interesting approach taken by a Missouri university to limiting (and limiting legal exposure because of) on-campus, on-line copyright violations, as described at Inside Higher Ed: "In order to download (or upload) files on any peer-to-peer network whatsoever, all on-campus users at Missouri S&T have to pass an online quiz on copyright infringement. But not just once. Passing the test — with a perfect score — enables peer-to-peer access for six hours on the user's on-campus registered machines."
How long before some smart kids come up with a script to automatically complete the quiz? (and possibly sell it to fellow students)
The Mothership
all on-campus users at Missouri S&T have to pass an online quiz on copyright infringement
If I headed this university, I'd make my students take quizzes on math, chemistry, physics and whatever else the university teaches, to get access to P2P. I mean, if they want their music bad enough, they'd have a great incentive to do well at school.
But quizzes on copyright infringement? talk about brainwashing. As if they had nothing more productive to cram their brains with. Sheesh... On top of it, it's a trap: if a student is caught downloading illegal material, he can't claim ignorance.
All in all, a rotten idea that could have been a great one. You can feel the twisted minds of **AA execs behind this sorry scheme...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I have taken many tests and I have found that getting a perfect score is not so much about knowing the material as about knowing the expectations of the person who wrote the test.The answer would vary depending upon how well the person "grading" the test understood "stealing" and "copyright infringement" and your local, state and national laws.
I've got a better idea: let's require everyone to pass a test before using the internet at all.
(brb, selling MySpace stock)
Exactly, these questions that will surely be asked on the test will try to make it seem like copyright infringement is stealing as much as 2+2=4 rather then asking a moral question that can be taken either way. I am surprised to see that whenever a professor expresses views that might be objectionable the media attacks them, but with "piracy" they seem to make it seem like it is stealing when it clearly is not.
If the question is why is stealing bad, the answer would be that the person being stolen from doesn't have what got stolen. For example if someone stole your car, the bad part wouldn't be that someone has a new car but rather you don't have a car. With piracy though its the opposite, for downloading a song no one has any less songs as they can be copied and you have a new song, the RIAA seem to punish the fact you have a new song rather then the infinite supply of songs is running out. This seems to beg the question, if we can ever create a replicator that will make a perfect copy of things without doing any harm to the original will making a new item be called stealing? Because, has history is showing us, in a way that already has happened just with music and not physical goods.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I didn't get the cognitive dissonance angle at all from this. I figured it's more like one of those waivers you have to sign at things like rock climbing gyms, or high risk activities, where you don't just sign your name at the end of a stack of papers, but you initial every paragraph. I've even seen one where I had to rewrite by hand an entire paragraph about how I wouldn't sue the place if I got injured, etc.
If they include this quiz, and only allow users who score 100%, then maybe the network can't be held responsible for copyright infringement, since they've screened for users who don't know what's off limits.
So how did "Click here if you're over 18, we can't allow access to kids" cognitive dissonance work?
A blazing success, I hear.
Ignore this signature. By order.
When you exercise a privilege to which you are not entitled, you negate the value of the privilege for those who are entitled to it.
Law, and custom, dicate that the creator of an artistic work is entitled to the privilege of sole distribution rights to that work, and sole rights to profit from the distribution of that work. When you appropriate that work without their permission, they no longer have the privilege granted to them by law. You are, in fact, taking something away from them.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Funny how question #4 doesn't differentiate between open/free music and commercial record-label music. The answer could be either C or D.
Well, I suppose it could be A or B depending on weird screwed-up license terms.