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Senate Passes Bill Targeting College Piracy
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Aug 02, 2008 07:08 AM
from the since-colleges-don't-have-anything-better-to-do dept.
from the since-colleges-don't-have-anything-better-to-do dept.
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.
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Bill Would Tie Financial Aid To Anti-Piracy Plans 425 comments
theodp writes "The MPAA is applauding top Democratic politicians for introducing an anti-piracy bill that threatens the nation's colleges with the loss of a $100B a year in federal financial aid should they fail to have a technology plan to combat illegal file sharing. The proposal, which is embedded in a 747-page bill, has alarmed university officials. 'Such an extraordinarily inappropriate and punitive outcome would result in all students on that campus losing their federal financial aid — including Pell grants and student loans that are essential to their ability to attend college, advance their education, and acquire the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century economy,' said university officials in a letter to Congress. 'Lower-income students, those most in need of federal financial aid, would be harmed most under the entertainment industry's proposal.'"
Submission: Controversial Anti-Piracy Bill Passes House by Anonymous Coward
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Sounds like a good bill (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't really disagree with you because you have a good/valid point.
Where I mostly have a problem is when the existence of copyright affects my freedom. Bandwidth throttling is a good example, because ISPs use piracy as an excuse to commit fraud and my government are spending my money to fight piracy instead of punishing rapists, murderers and fixing hospitals and roads.
As a Tax payer I object to any government involvement regarding piracy and believe that the government should serve in the interest of it
Re:Sounds like a good bill (Score:4, Funny)
On a department UNIX system, just look in each users home directory for the file:
".windows_settings/My Documents/My Music"
Those Windows auto-rippers will put everything there for everyone else to download...
Parent
No it isn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
You're spot on. Downloading and P2P are not illegal, copyright infringement is. Throttling downloads or P2P is the wrong answer.
Re:No it isn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
1.2TB of traffic in a month for 20 people? Your ISP thinks that kind of bandwidth usage is a problem? That comes out to about 23 KB/s per person. You can easily hit those values with a few active users playing games or watching videos without ever touching p2p. If an ISP can't handle that amount of traffic on their network, then they need to upgrade their network.
How can you sell "high-speed" connections when you punish or threaten your users for using what equates to little more than dialup speeds? Pathetic.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
When my brother was in college (late '80s), BMG would run the "12 CDs for the price of 1" deal constantly across college campuses (plus 3 more for signing up someone else). They knew that the kids didn't have the money to pay full price, and that they could start them using their CD distribution model for the rest of their lives. Even for a college kid, CDs for less than $2 each is bearable. I doubt however that in this day and age they'd want to bother with lugging 100 plastic discs around, but that's n
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Im a tax payer and I feel duped having my tax dollars go to private corporations.
Hostile partnerships? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry to reply to myself, but I wanted to add one other point:
"offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property
Specifically relating to movies, what alternatives is a college to offer for zero-day releases, screeners, and so forth? I'd love to know what the MPAA has up its sleeve there..
Neither the RIAA/MPAA nor the EFF would care... (Score:4, Informative)
"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 [washingtonpost.com]
"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 [washingtonpost.com]
"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 [washingtonpost.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently it is. Quoth that EFF dude again:
"Universities already pay blanket fees so that student a cappella groups can perform on campus, [...]"
Er, what? I'm not questioning what you said, as you're just citing, but I'm interested in an explanation. What the heck has performing on a campus to do with the university paying someone - and WHO do they pay? If the students are performing as a part of their own initiative, they can do that whereever they please, on the campus, on the top of Mt. Everest, on the lawn in front of the White House or just anywhere else except when it's explicitly forbidden by the landowner. Even if they're performing copyrigh
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if they're performing copyrighted works (doing an artistic interpretation), just in this case they can't do that for profit without obtaining the rightowner's permission. So it looks someone is extorting money from the universities...
Cite, please? In most jurisdictions, including the US as far as I'm aware, public performance is a protected right under copyright, and just because something is not for profit, that does not automatically qualify it as a fair use (or whatever your jurisdiction calls the equivalent exemption).
I think you missed his point. He didn't say it was legal for students to do this, but that perhaps it's not the university's job to police such things. Seriously, under what line of crazed reasoning does the university bear responsibility for three jackasses in the dorm stairwell singing "Dancing Queen"?
Simple solution. (Score:5, Informative)
Step 1:
Go here: http://www.govtrack.us/ [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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
One, Obama has spoken out against ear marks as well. Two, McCain is far more beholden to special interest money (i.e., lobbyist money) than Obama. Three, if we just adamantly "vote the bums out" over their votes on this issue, it might force us to vote against a legislator who has otherwise performed in a manner that we find respectable, or, conversely, voting for someone who's beliefs we don't share in order to stick it to the man (like the few handfuls of Clinton backers who vow that they will vote for
Not so simple at all (Score:2)
.
Chemical Society President Praises House Passage of Higher Education Act [marketwatch.com]
The president of the American Chemical Society today praised Congress as well as a coalition of science, business and education organizations for their work leading to House passage of the Higher Education Opportunity Act which supports STEM education.
ACS President Bruce Bursten, Ph.D., Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville said the final bill showed
Re:Not so simple at all (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
It's come up before, and it will continue to come up - people just don't like paying the money. Does the RIAA or even the Senate seriously believe that Ohio University is going to offer a better music catalog or design or ease of use than Apple? There's no way, nobody can be that dumb. The music/movie execs are glad to get a win, even if it's pointless, because now it's on the books with overwhelming support, and is a small step forward for them. (I can see the headline now - "Senate Approves Anti-Piracy
you dont get it (Score:2)
I have an idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone (I don't have the needed skills) should make a website that correlates information on campaign donations from opensecrets with voting records of public officials. This was obviously bought by IP-industry lobbyists, and I think that if the general public could see this corruption more easily it would be a lot easier to root out.
Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
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.
For the most part, we pay them to bring home the bacon.
Citizens will forgive just about anything as long as the Federal Funds flow.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
you should make a site over who throws these kinds of riders into the bills
From the limited explanation of rider [wikipedia.org], it appears that the practice is widespread for the purely political expedient of passing legislation that would otherwise have no chance of passage on its own merits. From another viewpoint they can serve as a "poison pill" to kill a bill that otherwise would pass.
I agree that it is a messy system, but we should attribute motive more to narrow self-interest and less to evil-for-the-hell-of-it.
my $.02
Re: (Score:2)
How utterly useless (Score:2)
Nobody learns from history I guess, especially our legislators. Because the following should be obvious by now, even to them:
Which will fail.
Which will fail. None will be as free or convenient. Until we can get all our spiffy new digital music, digital TV, digital movies, and digital books (especially digital college textbooks for those college folk) in 100% quality with no DRM for free paid for by means
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Your concerns don't represent the crowd this bill is targeting. They're not deterred by the rapidly diminishing inconveniences of P2P. They find wasting that precious dollar far more inconvenient than bit torrent. This is the type of crowd that only parts with money when they have to, because the vast majority are putting themselves further and further into debt with each passing semester. A disposable income is the dream a college student's future, not a reality. In my experience, most, if denied the abili
Alternatives? Psh (Score:2, Insightful)
As I'm currently in the "poor college student" demographic, I feel as if I can give a little insight into what these "alternative offerings" actually end up being.
I attend a rather well known college, and we were supposedly one of the first in the country to adopt a service that provided an 'alternative' to media piracy for students to obtain material by. This was originally provided by Napster, and for the the most part it wasn't a bad deal. At no extra cost to the students, you were able to get (mostly) D
Re: (Score:2)
Bad Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
What do you mean by "bad laws"? Do you mean unjust laws, or laws that happen to be a bad idea (yet, are technically justful)?
Because, if a law happens to be unjust, it can be invalidated in a court, correct?
If a law is bad, to not enforce the law is a slap in the face concerning the concept of the system we have. It would be better to enforce a bad law (one that is justful) than to ignore it, which breaks the system. Because the system does allow for us to change a bad law into a good law.
So, is it the para
Re: (Score:2)
In Capatilist America (Score:5, Insightful)
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 above, as below (Score:2)
you reap what you sow. simple as that.
Unfunded mandates are the most fun (Score:2)
"College Opportunity and Affordability Act"
You gotta love the humor of conservative lobbyists. "Opportunity" to "act" to reduce the "affordability" of your "college" tuition by hiring a guy to play whack-a-mole with your P2P ports "and" write reports about it? I guess they figure people who work in the college sector already get paid too much to do too little.
its all about priorities (Score:2)
instead of dealing with the energy crisis, the congress and senate would rather please its RIAA/MPAA Masters
Love how u.s. senators name bills (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They even tipped their hat to the groups who helped draft it, and made sure its name ended in *AA.
This is just the beginning (Score:2)
It's going to get a lot worse. Soon even your personal life will be invaded:
Want that home loan? Well you have to agree to be monitored. Want that job? Better not be on any IP 'watched list' ( much as bad credit can ruin you now )
Random street searches " we see you have an ipod, that is grounds for search. Do you have your licenses for every song on here in your possession?"
There is no piracy! (Score:2)
Don't tell me that every one knows why students use DC++ etc.. I want PROOF of piracy?
Drug war (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Who still listens to Big Labels? (Score:2)
It's a good sign that the RIAA is successfully preventing the public from hearing the product turned out by the big labels. Younger demographics, who are their target, do not listen to the radio nor watch TV. They get their music through their friends and online. The more successful the RIAA is at cutting off the online channel, the less access they have to the people they want to reach.
Older demographics already have all the Huey Lewis & the News and Led Zep tracks they could ever want, so they're no
P2P? Ha! Use sneakernet. (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Kharma whoring (Score:3, Informative)
On the final version of the bill that came out of conference committee and went to the White House
House: 380-49 [house.gov]
Senate: 83-8 [senate.gov]
Why do we need to link to the "open source!" info when the original source is also open to the public (and, in my opinion, more useful)?
hey (Score:2)
a lot of people here have the balls to defend ideas that are against overreaching patent/copyright malpractice and mishaps, even at times at the cost of getting sued.
but you dont have the balls to post something with your own username, despite it is certain that noone is going to sue you, bash you in the head or steal your panties ?
and,
why so serious ?
Re:I always know when I'm in a college town ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sigh.....I know you are probably a troll and I shouldn't feed the troll,but what the hell,this argument always stuck in my craw.
1. If you actually believe it is about musicians,I got some really nice swampland in AR to sell you,99% gator free! They rip off the bands something fierce, for example: Meatloaf had to sue for nearly 20 years because "Bat out of Hell I",which is STILL on the top 200,BTW,according to the record companies never made any money. They even have a "special" term for this,which is how wi
bud, were you living in mars ? (Score:2)
excuse me, but musician
Re: (Score:2)
You must be new to government operations.