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Congress to Fight Piracy with Education Funds
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Apr 06, 2007 09:22 AM
from the wait-we-need-those-for-books dept.
from the wait-we-need-those-for-books dept.
Nomihn0 writes "The RIAA has announced that the House Education and Labor committee is considering an amendment, HR1689, to the Higher Education Act of 1965. The proposal would allocate federal education funds to anti-piracy measures on college campuses. Most concerning is the bill's wording. It's claimed that the proposal would 'save telecommunications bandwidth costs.' In other words, the government will fund private packet filtering and preferential bandwidth allocation. 'The Higher Education Act (HEA) generally allows schools to spend the money they receive only on certain prescribed areas such as financial aid grants and Pell loans. The new bill would allow that money to be used for more things, but does not contain a request for additional funding. Whether schools would be interested in using a limited pool of federal money to police student file-swapping remains to be seen.'"
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Students can't read, helps rap industry. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
And RIAA (sony/universal/emi/warner) is kind of easy to remember. RIAA(S/U/E/ W?) not sure about the W but RIAA (sony/universal/emi) forms a nice mnemonic!
Re: (Score:2)
good enough for the mnemonic?
-nB
Re:Students can't read, helps rap industry. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Hmmm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yuk. (Score:4, Funny)
Students will learn from virtual classrooms, because the RIAA had taken all of the money for real campuses to fight online piracy.
In the year 2000, in the year 2000!
So instead of... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:So instead of... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Unlike the usual government spending. That's why we send the government our money. Because they are so much better at spending it than we are, with their vast wisdom, ruthless efficiency, and sterling track record for absolute success.
Once again our tax dollars are going to work for industry rather than the people.
So... Um... Maybe stop sending them? Perhaps try keeping the money in the hands of the folks who earned it?
(Oh, then it won't be working for "the people" either I guess,
Re: (Score:2)
Why is the Federal Government collecting tax money at all? I resent my hard earned dollars being taken from me (a $1600 swing this year because I got married late in 2005) when they have no right to do so other than having the power of force that we citizens don't possess.
Why not (Score:4, Interesting)
Heck, just start a class that teaches "musical awareness," where you learn more about bands who distribute their music without the aid of said corporations.
Re: (Score:2)
Why not earn your own money and use it for your own reasons on whatever you want?
hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Downloading music is perfectly legal. Perhaps you refer to downloading copyrighted music from RIAA signed bands? Why anyone would want to download music from major label musicians (much less buy that shit), is beyond me. I want to relate to an artists view of the world; I want to share their experiences and ideas through their music. Knowing that they signed to the RIAA disgusts me so much that I just can't listen to them anymore. They become corporate shills instead of real human beings.
Why should you get kicked out of school for smoking pot? It's safer than alcohol and tobacco.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Meanwhile the lawmakers are drinking their double brandies and smoking their cigars (and tooting a little coke on the side)
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Weed may have more carcinogens and no filter, but who's ever heard of a pack a day pot smoker? Marijuana users don't need to smoke as much as tobacco users to get the desired effect. Pot is also less addictive than tobacco. The link to mental illness hasn't been proven to be causal, just a correlation. Perhaps the population of weed users has a higher i
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Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Zero tolerance is the favorite strategy of the self-righteously stupid.
The reason for education grants is that the nation needs an educated citizenry to compete in the global economy. The days when our competitors were either bombed out or lacking a pot to piss in are over. There's nothing like feeling you are striking a blow for justice, even if you're only shooting yourself in the foot.
Parent
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This country is not going to hell. We're there already.
They can have mine (Score:2)
I'm sick of paying on them anyways!
Fascists (Score:5, Interesting)
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Would you happen to be one of those "smart people" who couldn't go to college because of lack of funds? The reason I'm asking is that you think the word is waist instead of waste .
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Carrot and Stick (Score:2)
The real question is - where's the stick?
This is ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids will not listen to the federal government telling them not to steal music. They're used to "music as commodity." In fact, I'd say most of the kids in college today never used a computer without knowing you could get "free" music off of it. To them, this is like the federal government telling people to stop using cell phones because landlines are losing money.
The content industry needs to pull its head out of its ass. Times have changed. Your monopoly and ridiculous, antiquated system of telling people who gets what music or movies where is untenable in this day and age. Now that people have the ability to get the content they want from wherever it's produced, they'll do it. Why can't I buy Dr. Who from iTunes the day after it's released? I'd gladly do it. But because of an agreement that was struck decades ago, I have to wait for a butchered version to show up on Sci Fi if I want to get it legally. Why should Australians have to wait a year to get BSG on their TVs?
The content producers seem to have chosen to sue their fans rather than provide them with the content they want. And if they want too long, other, independent, content providers are going to eat their lunch.
(I know I'll get modded insightful, but I don't understand why. I'm just pointing out the obvious.)
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How do we make sure the artists get paid, so they can afford to keep being artists? Otherwise they need to pay the bills too, and may more likely end up in retail sales, slinging burgers, etc. Some say "concerts" and maybe that's the right model. But maybe not, because from what I've heard, some types of tours are so inherently expensive to pull off that they basically don't make significant money -
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the way we get artists paid is two fold.
First, I think that iTunes showed that if you make the online store easy enough to use, people would rather buy from there rather than steal music. I know that I'd much rather spend a buck to get a song I like there than hunt down a good copy on a P2P service. And now that I can get certain songs DRM free and at virtually CD quality, why would I even use a P2P service?
Second, the Internet has empowered artists to go directly to the people. Folks like George
College Costs (Score:2)
Common carrier. (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the school "is your ISP", and therefore has common-carrier status. Why would they want to go to the trouble of censoring you? They would become liable for mistakes in doing so.
Not a common carrier (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a common carrier because the only people who have any access to the network are people who attend the school or work there. In dorm rooms, the university simply extends the privilages to those in the dorms and provides you a more liberal usage policy as compared to a business.
John Q. Smith on the street can't simply walk into campus and say "give me a connection." There may be some gray areas here, such as extending service to alumni or some other groups, but in general campus ISPs are not considered common carriers.
Parent
This is ridiculous...a few questions... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not really too keen on student money being sent towards incriminating students and limiting bandwidth, but I'm really wondering about the realism behind this bill; how the hell would it be enforced with private colleges and universities?
The title says all you need to know (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is Congress fighting anything? They are a legislative branch, not a law enforcement branch! Yes, sure, they have to be informed to create appropriate legislative action, but NO NEW LAWS are required.
Federal financial aid to educational institutions should not be messed with to "fight piracy"
If they want to fight piracy, authorize some more money. When new taxes are levied to 'fight piracy' perhaps joe public will pay attention. Additionally, like the war on drugs, this war on piracy is misguided at best.
Copyright laws seem to be working just fine for everyone but the **AA. Why is that? This is what Congress should be doing; asking why the **AA are having so much trouble when other people are not.
Can any one say D.A.R.E.? (Score:2, Funny)
The bandwidth savings a real (Score:4, Insightful)
It could well be that the public as a whole is better off if this vicious circle can be broken. Diverting funding might be an option to achieve that. But HR 1689 doesn't really address the core issue. Saving bandwidth doesn't cost money, just reputation.
RIAA sensing the end? (Score:2)
So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I surely hope so... (Score:2)
As opposed to other wastes like... (Score:2)
So why am I not outraged? This **MIGHT** actual
This is just plain wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the problem of the RIAA and MPAA not the government.
If the &^AA thinks they find individual probles , let them take action using civil law.
Subsidizing the biased terror tactics of the &^AA's and the BSA is clearly using our government power to unjustly enrich these greedy and evil entity's.
Public Funding of elections is what is really needed to stop this.
Cheers
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want politicians to be even more insulated from the needs of their constituents, public funding is the way to go. If you want elections to be even more biased in favor of incumbents, public funding is the way to go (unless you somehow believe the politicians would setup a funding source that puts themselves at a disadvantage).
The way to stop things like this is to limit power and cut budgets. The government shouldn't have the power o
Go, go, go! (Score:2)
Problem with Congress' Legislative Infrastructure (Score:2)
IS2M a deeper issue is not whether the policy of discouraging downloading is good or bad, but whether Congress should combine that issue with the issue of funding Pell grants. These are really two separate matters that could be addressed in different bills.
It is as if Congress were to put 2 different bugs into a single bug ticket. Trying to figure out whether the proposed fix will work gets harder the more things you put into a single fix.
Great... (Score:3, Funny)
There is a bigger problem (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm All For IP Law Education! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
YOU seem to have a full lack of understanding about how the Internet works.
Why not simply save money by . . . limiting access to common bittorrent ports and the like. .
Portblocking is totally ineffective at stopping file sharing. If you understand anything about TCP/IP, you realize that it's trivial to run any service on any port, or to use some kind of packetfilter to dynamically redirect port
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Technical arguments aside, taking money away from student loans to finance this seems risky at best. If there is no clause that requires accounting of the money saved, and it's redirecting back towards student loans, this is certainly a Bad Investment(tm).
That also doesnt even begin touch on how it's morally wrong to use education money for the private interests of copyright holders.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)