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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.'"
I can't wait for the day when the government is allowed to regulate internet traffic through "net neutrality" legislation. I'm sure the RIAA and MPAA won't lobby politicians to police torrent traffic. Governments are never corrupt! Nothing could possibly go wrong, and this story isn't a shining example of the government's surplus of power.
*ahem*. Federal funding composes over 90% of the funding for every single university in the nation. What you're proposing would render every school bankrupt as only the children of the obscenely wealthy would be able to afford to pay ten times the tuition they pay now.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
for breeding greater industrial strength p2p apps
more obfuscated, more sparse, more steganography, more secure, better hidden...
oh, you thought you were going to stop piracy instead?
you thought you were going to take a bunch of poor, technically astute, media hungry young folk, and get them to go "gee, all this arm twisting... maybe i should spend $200 a month i don't have on the media i want rather than stick it to an authoritarian internet freedom destroying parasitical antiquated UNNECESSARY corporate entity"
yeah, good luck with that RIMPAA
pass all the laws you want. all of them. this is the best you can do? you can't think of something more authoritarian and controlling for the sake of shoehorning yourself into our cultural space? c'mon, you can do better than that! buy some more legislators, hire some more lawyers. be all that you can be! go for the gold!
UNENFORCEABLE
let me repeat that, in case you didn't hear me
UN-EN-FORCE-ABLE
you ignorant, irrelevant pricks
go. snort your last coke off your last hookers' ass
YOU'RE OUT OF BUSINESS
YOU LOSE
BUHBYE
don't let the packet hit you on your ass on the way out the router
fucking parasites
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually it means "We - the elite - can".
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
If by "a group of people who have the benefit of unlimited time and resources" you mean the industry, you're right.
Check it out: they're winning. And they're winning because there is no meaningful fight going on. Everytime the media mob buys a law or takes down someone the answer is always "someone else will spring up, we'll use encryption" and assorted yadda yadda.
What is happening is that the enemy tanks are in town and everybody is saying "oh, but when our secret weapons will show up we'll prevail" or "oh, doesn't matter, we'll go run into the sewers".
They can - and they will - legislate the Internet into Cable TV 2.0. They will control the ISPs and choke it into braindead status. They have shown the ability to force entire countries into compliance - that's real power. That's what they can do. It's not possible to fight them with law, because it's been bought. It's not possible to fight them with technological resources - their own are limitless. The only thing that is viable is direct action.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
Umm...Bull fucking shit. [citation needed] you hallucinating motherfucker.