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Colleges Risk Losing Federal Funding If They Don't Fight Piracy
crimeandpunishment writes
"The US government is making colleges and universities join in the fight against digital piracy by threatening to pull federal funding. Beginning this month, a provision of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 requires colleges to have plans to combat unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials on their networks. Colleges that don't do enough could lose their eligibility for federal student aid. 'Their options include taking steps to limit how much bandwidth can be consumed by peer-to-peer networking, monitoring traffic, using a commercial product to reduce or block illegal file sharing or "vigorously" responding to copyright infringement notices from copyright holders.'"
All get together and agree to do nothing. Watch as the government doesn't withdraw federal funding for all schools.
If you live in a dorm hundreds of miles from your parents, school is home.
Proper net neutrality regulation should essentially be:
"An ISP may not prioritize or de-prioritize network traffic based upon either its source or its destination".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Looking over this largely beneficial legislation, sponsored by all Democrats, it is shameful to see this turd hidden in the fine print of section 493. This is not an amendment slipped in at the last moment. This was by design from the beginning, so kudos to the Ds for upholding the tradition of congress being corporate tools.
I am not surprised, but severely depressed that there is such a soulless and unethical disregard for the well being of this country by all of congress.
By essentially requiring universities to perform the investigation, response, or protection against piracy, the RIAA and MPAA are receiving a government supplied subsidy. If a thief stole a diamond ring and passed it to a friend who resided in a college dorm, would the jeweler ask the University Housing department to handle the investigation? Shouldn't they be entitled to the same assistance from the federal government? From actual university work experience, the RIAA is a royal pain in the rear. They issue notices and expect the university to determine who broke the law. They expect this service without providing adequate information in many cases. Most universities don't have the human or budgetary resources to spare for this pointless endeavor. There should be a clause in the law to allow the colleges to bill the RIAA/MPAA for time spent on investigative services. At $100 per hour, they might decide it's not worth going after the kid who downloaded Britney Spears latest craptacular single to listen once and then delete it forever.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein
Rant Much?
Regulation is also often used by large corporations to keep small businesses out of the marketplace and in this case large business is using regulations to force universities to become the net police.
Large corporations love regulations, it keeps other players out of the game.
While I don't have any statistics, I suspect that the percentage of traffic dedicated to file sharing on a college campus is quite high. The savings from a smaller internet pipe after file sharing is minimized could make the cost of adding such network hardware you speak of a good investment. Not to mention the time and effort that is saved from someone addressing all the mail from RIAA and MPAA notifying them of copyright infringement.
Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil are spewing into the Gulf of Mexico each day, an entire ecology is dying, and these assholes are fucking worried that some moneyless students aren't buying enough Britney Spears.