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Senate Passes Bill Targeting College Piracy
An anonymous reader brings news that the College Opportunity and Affordability Act has passed in the US Senate and now awaits only the President's signature before becoming law. Hidden away in the lengthy bill are sections which tie college funding to "offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity." The EFF issued a statement expressing concern over the bill earlier this year, shortly before the House of Representatives approved it. We discussed the introduction of the bill last November. The Senate vote was 83-8, with 9 not voting. The full text of the bill is available. The relevant section is 494, at the end of the general provisions.
College piracy really is getting out of hand these days. I just graduate college recently, and it's ridiculous how easy and casual it is.
Copyright infringement is illegal and costs companies money. As a legitimate consumer, I feel duped when others are trading around something I paid good money far.
I'm all in favor of trying to prevent and deter this unlawful activity.
Hidden away in the lengthy bill are sections which tie college funding to "offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity."
I haven't read the bill yet, but that sounds like an attempt to force colleges into hostile partnerships with MPAA/RIAA agencies/affiliates. If that is the case, then I urge the colleges to satisfy the requirement of "offering alternatives" by partnering exclusively with indie, creative-commons, and public domain distributors.
BTW - why in the world do colleges need to be involved in "offering alternatives" when there are dozens of well known websites already offering alternatives. iTunes anyone? Rhapsody? eMusic? If people aren't using these already what makes anyone thing that a college offering the same will suddenly be more successful? It is no business of a college, which people pay to attend, to be factoring into their cost model marketing and/or service costs of music/movie distribution.
"I urge the colleges to satisfy the requirement of "offering alternatives" by partnering exclusively with indie, creative-commons, and public domain distributors."
Which would not stop students from downloading works that the MPAA governs at the same time.
"BTW - why in the world do colleges need to be involved in "offering alternatives" when there are dozens of well known websites already offering alternatives. iTunes anyone? Rhapsody? eMusic?"
Because, according to the EFF themselves:
"The recording industry is already willing to offer unlimited downloads with subscription plans for $10 to $15 per month through services such as Napster and Rhapsody. But these services have been a failure on campuses, for a number of reasons, including these: They don't work with the iPod, they cause downloaded music to "expire" after students leave the school, and they don't include all the music students want." - Fred von Lohmann, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060501761.html
"If people aren't using these already what makes anyone thing that a college offering the same will suddenly be more successful?"
Because if they had a local library then students could access the library off of their campus, instead of having to download over the internet. They wouldn't have to worry about trojans, or whether the music file would even play on their player, etc. The aforementioned may make it seem like I think students are stupid - perhaps, because the Washington Post thinks university system administrators are stupid; some gems:
"Unless a school using the tool has firewalls on the borders of its network designed to block unsolicited Internet traffic -- and a great many universities do not"
"The toolkit allows an administrator to require a username and password for access to the Web server. The problem is that the person responsible for running the toolkit is never prompted to create a username and password."
And at least Dave Taylor at the U of P agrees: "even with a firewall keeping non-university students from accessing the toolkit's Web server, any student on the network armed with the Internet address of the Web server could view all of the traffic on his or her segment of the network, said Penn's Dave Taylor."
- http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/11/mpaa_university_toolkit_opens_1.html
"It is no business of a college, which people pay to attend, to be factoring into their cost model marketing and/or service costs of music/movie distribution."
Apparently it is. Quoth that EFF dude again:
"Universities already pay blanket fees so that student a cappella groups can perform on campus, and they also pay for cable TV subscriptions and site licenses for software."
Moreover, the EFF dude thinks that's an excellent thing to apply to music downloads as well:
"By the same token, they could collect a reasonable amount from their students for "all you can eat" downloading." - Fred von Lohmann, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060501761.html
Step 1:
Go here: http://www.govtrack.us/
Step 2:
See if your Senator voted in favor of this bill.
Step 3:
Notify your Senator that you'll be voting for his opponent the next time he's up for re-election.
On a sidenote, this is why earmarking legislation is a major problem. Corrupt legislators know they can smuggle crap that would NEVER pass in a million years, if they hide it in a bill that has otherwise good intentions. It's one of the few things drawing me to voting for McCain, since he's one of the more outspoken people about this particular practice.
With all due respect, I just opened the full text to see how long it'd be. I'm betting 99%+ of the senators didn't make their decision based on section 494. If you really wanted to make such a site, you should make a site over who throws these kinds of riders into the bills. As long as the laws are so huge, most senators probably ask their staff "is this a good law or not and give me the gist of it". I'm sure there's a hundred organizations like the EFF that have filed comments on pretty much every part of the bill, all of which claiming to be important. It's much more important to find out who's poisoning the laws than trying to make something out of the vote.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Bad laws should be enforced, even if it requires new laws.
Bad laws that are not strictly enforced remain in power.
Bad laws that are not enforced give enforcers too much power (whether to turn a "blind eye").
Bad laws that are not enforced create a distrust of law in general, and lawlessness.
Maybe once copyright is TRULY enforced on all of society, people will realize that these restrictions are simply not worth it and finally abolish copyrights.
You can tell America has been bought and paid for when the government is willing to sacrifice the next generation's education so that the copyright of big corporations is no longer infringed upon.
As long as the laws are so huge, most senators probably ask their staff "is this a good law or not and give me the gist of it".
I have no doubt this happens, but I have to wonder exactly what we pay these guys for if they can't even be bothered to read legislation.
I agree, except I'm speaking honestly. Fuck musicians. If they want to eat, make them work like everyone else. They shouldn't be entitled to free income for the rest of their life + 75 years for writing one song.
On the GPL comment. People deliberately breaching the GPL are generally software companies that would be very quick to point out that you are pirating their stuff. They have to play by the rules if they expect us to.
hear that title now : "College Opportunity and Affordability Act"
if you look at it, all the keywords are there. wow, now see : "OPPORTUNITY" a positive word. "AFFORDABILITY" another good, positive word. "COLLEGE" wow, higher education too.
if you read it, you may be tempted to think this is something that provides opportunity, affordable college education and such. HOW can it be bad ?
they do that all the time. check this now : Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
examining it gives you all the necessary feelings : "digital" - wow it has to be something progressive. Millenium - oh boy, we are in 21st century yay. "copyright" -> it has "right" in it, so it has to be good. if you add the bait that is "it will provide/protect jobs" while advertising for it, you are sure to fool the public.
but of course, for them to be fooling american public for SO long with same ploys, and successfully too, there has to be a number of preconditions, providing for the fooling. i am not sure which hold true :
a) American people are UTTERLY stupid
b) American people "dont care" c) American people care little, but only for selfish reasons - see "it will protect jobs". and plan very short sighted.
d) American people are powerless
f) All of the above
g) Mixture from all the above in varying degrees.
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The small business I work for provides short term student accommodation (universities here in Belgium don't have dorms like in the States, private companies or student associations organize housing). In one of our residences, 20 students in downloaded 1.2 terabytes in the month of July. The volume causes all kinds of trouble for me as the IT guy because our ISP is perpetually threatening to cut us off if we don't upgrade to $superExpensivePlanOfTheMonth. We all know here that the overwhelming majority of this traffic is p2p.
In other words, I am very sensitive to anti-piracy arguments because I have felt the pain of dealing with it. I have toyed with the idea of putting some sort of traffic shaping technology between the students and the net or limiting their access, but ultimately I have decided to put up with the headache.
This is why: Students need freedom to grow, even if they abuse it at times (or even most of the time). If I implement traffic shaping or limit bandwidth, that one CS student who uses bittorrent to distribute his project will be screwed out of an education, and the world might be screwed out of a really cool innovation. That one aspiring film maker won't be able to distribute the movie that will make her famous and change the world of art. Sooner or later all of those students will be paying for their own bandwidth and they will learn the lesson about how their abuse is hurting the rest of us, but never again in their lives will they have the opportunities to create and learn that they have now, and unfettered access to the net is part of that.
I cannot imagine any kind of traffic control that will not pose these kinds of problems. If we allow schools to shape bandwidth, the quality of the education they offer will suffer. I hope that US universities stand up for what is right on this one.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
They did the same thing when the drug war was all the rage, and all those laws are still in place.
We know it hasn't worked, but it was never about something that works. If it damages the economy or puts millions in prison, they just don't care. Think of this as setting the boundaries of discourse. Even if it doesn't help the music industry in the short term, the majority of Americans will absorb the following:
Its not about making sales or promoting a store, its about changing hearts and minds. The music industry will benefit from the assumptions: they have to exist because otherwise music is stealing, and decent people are against stealing music, and organizations work to stop stealing music.
Sure, we smoked in college and downloaded music, but now we're adults. We don't sit in meetings and suggest that drug tests at work are wrong... do we?
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Is P2P even all that relevant when a 1TB USB HDD costs about a hundred fifty bucks? Load drive with songs/movies/media/whatever, walk 10 ft to dorm door next to yours, select all, copy, paste, wash, rinse, repeat.
Just stop trying to pretend that it can be stopped or traced. Stop writing worthless laws to try and curtail it. It's too late. It's too easy and too widespread and P2P isn't really that much of a factor when such massive amounts of data can be transferred so quickly and cheaply by actually picking up a hard drive and carrying it to your buddy's place. It's only a matter of time before multi-terabytes of storage are on a tiny memory stick for twenty bucks. Then what?
Artists and media companies need to start offering value again (like the awesome new Paul Westerberg album available at the DRM-free Amazon MP3 store for $0.49). Like it or not, the ease of copying (illegal as it may be) has caused the value of media to plummet. The more artists (like Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and Paul Westerberg) realize that and adjust accordingly, the better off they'll be. Instead the **AA will continue to be in the pockets of lawmakers for more continued (albeit unsuccessful) attempts to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
The odds are quite good that you will out of school and have other things to think about before your Senator comes up for relection. Your threat is just so much hot air.
Free music in the dorms is never going to rank high on his list of priorites.
Just for the record, I've been out of college for a considerable amount of time. I rarely if ever user P2P software.
However, if this isn't a blatant example of fine print being smuggled into existing legislation under the proverbial radar, then I don't know what is. To me, that's the bigger issue here. I'm tired of corporate interests sneaking their wishlists into well-meaning legislation by using those representatives they have in their proverbial pockets to do the deed.
Perhaps the threat of their removal from office is hollow for the Senate, but something definitely needs to be done here to express our disapproval with this. At very least, write your representation in both sections of Congress, and let them know you don't approve.
If that doesn't make them change their tune, then perhaps we need to begin playing dirty like the RIAA does.