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College Funding Bill Passes House, P2P Provision Intact
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Feb 08, 2008 04:47 PM
from the pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain dept.
from the pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the College Opportunity and Affordability Act passed through the House today with a vote of 354-58 and the anti-P2P provision is intact. That provision would require universities to filter P2P and to offer legal alternatives. They are claiming now, though, that universities would not lose federal funding if they fail to do this. Of course, an amendment that would have clarified that was withdrawn immediately after it was offered."
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Submission: Colleges Have to Filter P2P or Lose Funding by Anonymous Coward
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Of course (Score:3, Interesting)
Not really a win. (Score:5, Interesting)
The part about filtering P2P is disturbing but there's are plenty of good legal alternatives to RIAA crap [archive.org]. I'd love to see every university mirror the Internet Archive, Creative Commons and promote work from people in their community. Let's take that part of this stupid law and make something cool that will continue to bleed the RIAA out of existence.
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Re:Not really a win. (Score:5, Insightful)
Welfare for the rich, once again.
With our government increasingly owned and operated by big business, it's no wonder that the one CEO that was running for president has been run out the race by a disgusted electorate. It seems like although many citizens could never elaborate fully on their instinctive negative reaction to Mr. Governor CEO, they know in their bones that there's a very very good reason NOT to have someone with experience in the corporate executive suite in the White House. Remember, these are the kind of people who get captive Boards of Directors to vote them 9-figure bonuses when the Company does poorly, while expecting "givebacks" from their workers and closing plants. That's the last kind of person we need running government at the moment.
Forget separation of Church and State. It's time for separation of Industry and State. Increasingly, "Big Government" seems preferable to me to the "lean, mean, cut jobs, cut costs" approach that's brought on the "get mine and get out" attitudes of the leaders of commerce. It wasn't always this way. Yes, there were plenty of fat-cat Industrialists in the first part of the 20th century, but there was also a few truly patriotic business leaders who believed that you couldn't sell your product if your customers weren't working and making money to spend. This was replaced by the "if we can't sell cigarettes here, we'll sell them to the stupid third-worlders" mentality (notice the drastically increasing levels of tar and nicotine in the cigarettes sold in Africa and Asia).
If we ever slide into full-scale class warfare in this country, there's not going to be a lot of pity for CEOs or their hired lobbyists or their fully-pwned elected officials.
A bill in Congress for funding higher education that gives subsidies to the Entertainment Industry. Fucking Hell.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
With both parties being pro-industry, it seems at least in the US, that a lot of people are out of luck... As for class warfare, are you sure the war isn't over already, with the rich having "won"?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
good legal alternatives to RIAA crap
I know you're going for something different in your comment then what I'm about to reply with but...
There are alternatives to RIAA members. I am a big fan Epitaph/Hellcat records, and it seems really up in the air as to whether or not they are an RIAA member. Lord knows they don't exactly have bands signed that would put up with this nonsense. Anyways from Wikipeida:
In mid-2005 Epitaph was added to the official list of RIAA members along with several other high-profile independent labels. The reason for the listing is not clear, but one source points to an agreement for internet P2P distribution ("Independent Labels Sign Deal With Snocap"). Another source claims label management joined RIAA in order to get certified sales awards (ie, official "Gold" or "Platinum" record status) for releases. This sparked some controversy as some feel they should no longer be labeled independent if they are a member of the RIAA.
However, the only source that has actually been used for these claims of membership is the official RIAA membership list, which has been disputed. As of this writing, not only is Epitaph listed as an official member, but Lookout! Records are once again listed, even though they were already falsely listed before.
Sorry that quote was a little long in the tooth, just wanted to clarify my point. And my point is, there are some pretty excellent alternat
E Pluribus Denarium (Score:5, Insightful)
*sigh* (Score:2)
Re:*sigh* (Score:5, Funny)
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What's needed for this madness to stop (Score:5, Insightful)
Elsewise, it might become very popular and profitable to set up some kind of P2P-friendly VPN service, with endpoints just outside the DMZ of various college networks...
Re:What's needed for this madness to stop (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:What's needed for this madness to stop (Score:4, Informative)
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Sigh... (Score:4, Funny)
What Will Harvard Do? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't how it is claimed a law will be used (Score:3, Interesting)
In this case: even if the removal of funding doesn't occur immediately, if it is in the law it will most likely be used.
When was the last time that the government said "no, I don't need more power"?
A few major ones are Prohibition [wikipedia.org] and the 55 MPH speed limit [wikipedia.org]
bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
http://edlabor.house.gov/bills/HEAReauthorizationText.pdf [house.gov]
The relevant section: which is a patch to this [cornell.edu].
Looks like it simply means that the institution must disclose the policies etc. So they could simply say "we're doing nothing" and comply with the law.
Err, you may not remember the prior story... (Score:3, Informative)
"Legal alternatives" (Score:4, Insightful)
Since P2P filesharing is legal (though sharing particular files may not be), and there are no other alternatives with the same features, this seems to be nonsense.
Re: (Score:2)
Stupid laws (Score:2)
I wonder if the idiots that thought they could effectively block P2P have a brain?
If you block it, it will find a way around you one way or another. You could run P2P over DNS if you wanted to. Once that happens, 2 choices, break the law or cut the universities off the internet.
Can the universities send the RIAA the bill?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As bandwidth in/output rises, CPU time to investigate packets rises rather fast. It's easy with 1 or 10 hosts, but you start playing with N students where N = 50000... And as long as the source and destination know who is who, packets can then be munged heavily to hide the source, along with other TCP/IP tricks.
---2) the bandwidth
That's the reason for encryption. Plausible deniability.
3) put you behind nat
And as SKYPE and others have sh
The reason this was passed (Score:2)
Free speech considerations.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone else besides me think the SCOTUS would wipe that particular provision off the books the moment that Harvard, Yale, et. al go to war with the RIAA? Hint: those two schools alone have more legal ability backing them and all the financial resources required to go to legally go to war, and in fact, more than all the RIAA companies combined. Not to mention that the RIAA really really really doesn't want to piss of Stanford, because the majority of the RIAA companies are in California, and it's not that far a drive from Stanford to any State court where they would choose to go to war themselves.
My question is, why aren't our congressmen and women smart enough to vote that particular piece of junk OUT of the bill?
Re:Free speech considerations.... (Score:5, Informative)
Not this SCOTUS. Bush loaded that quite well with pro-business judges. Young ones, too, so they'll be a probem for a half century or even more. Do not look for relief from the Imaginary Property crowd from those five. Reference Lawrence Lessig's noble attempt to void the 100+ year copyright by pointing out it was effectively eternal and thus violating the Constitution's design to release works into the public domain. The court's majority - not just Bushies, either -- stated that since the 100 years was a finite time period, the lockup was not technically eternal thus not violating the concept of release to the public domain. The sane counter that in 100 years time our descendants would not even understand what public domain was anymore, or that the future law would simply add another 100+ years, was lost on their ears. They are pro-business and pro-Imaginary Property.
Parent
How is this going to make it any difference (Score:2)
Ask Slashdot... (Score:2)
Can you help me figure out a way to ply the illegally gotten contents of my hard drive against my almost 10 years old student loan? I would have pirated this stuff back then, if I could have...
Thanks!
What REALLY concerns me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
...is that the schools would be required to promote "legal alternatives" for music to students, i.e. iTunes, Napster and the like. Most universities already monitor their network to curb file sharing. But the university being forced to push commercial services on students is way over the line.
Who said they have to be commercial services? The plan could start with Michael Crawford's list [goingware.com].
Illegal? Where's the law. (Score:4, Insightful)
I was unaware that P2P is illegal. What law am I violating when I download Linux ISO via bittorrent? Or use World of Warcraft's built-in torrent system to download updates to my game?
Federal funding = federal chains (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember this, the next time you advocate government "helping" things by funding them. If a special interest has an axe to grind, a congressman or senator who is not accountable to you (best case: accountable to citizes in another state, worst case: accountable to the industries who fund him) will impose weird conditions for the money, and it will effect your life. You can violate the conditions and opt-out of the money, but the people of your state don't have the option of opting out of the federal taxes whence the funding came. Still want public education? You can still have it: you just have to pay for it twice.
Biotech? Sorry, only if nobody at the institution uses embryonic stem cells. Astronomy? Only if you don't publish anything that mentions Earth's weather. Education? Don't get me started. Oh, I guess this story is one of the numerous examples.
You'll know a true "science president" or "education president" when you see him. He'll be the one running on the platform of slashing all the funding, and vetoing the seemingly-pro-education bills. He'll say, "I will protect your education budget from those who aren't accountable to you." Let the state taxpayers keep that money in their state, and decide for themselves how they'll use it. That way, if industry buys some people in the next state over, at least you will still have a chance to get what you want.
Move the power to as close to home as possible, and it gets that much harder to pull bullshit like this.
How this bill could be unconstitutional . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright, by it's very nature, only protects that which is an embodiment of a creative idea. .
So lies == bullshit laws now (Score:3, Interesting)
Wealthy Universities (Score:3, Interesting)
Need to start somewhere (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
a college is not a classroom.
Re:GOOD (Score:4, Funny)
Regretably, some students treat it like a large lavatory, especially after the beer part is factored in.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Students will pirate music, yet buy $60 games (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Students will pirate music, yet buy $60 games (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is, music has COMPETITION. The days of the $12 CD making sense are long, long gone. People aren't sitting around hoarding their money. No, they spend it on *other entertainment products* such as DVDs and video games. Look at how CD sales have dropped and how DVD/VG sales have risen over the past few years. To call it hypocrisy is BEYOND STUPID. You would have to stone cold batcrap bonkers to not realize it's a matter of the music industry being unable to compete for the entertainment dollars of its demographic.
And yes, buying music like that would indeed make someone poor, or at least *feel* poor, because it is a POOR FINANCIAL CHOICE in the face of what the competition is offering. A movie costs as much as, or less, than its soundtrack much of the time. A game can offer a dorm's entire floor hours of entertainment and the game industry THRIVES on that, whereas the music industry does what it can to make sure that if a dorm's entire floor is to enjoy hours of music, it will cost not $60 but far more, trying their best to tie it not only to an individual, but to a particular device that individual owns.
I don't even know why I'm taking the time to post this reply; if you had the intellectual capacity of a dixie cup you would have the sense to not post what you did.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I just paid 35$ and 40$ for 2 cd's. Before I hear how stupid I am, listen.
They usually go for 3000 yen.. in Japan. They were on sale for 2700 yen, and shipping ate up the rest. Now, who are these people who I'm willing to spend ~=80$ for? Ali Project. They did the opening for Hack//Sign roots, Noir, and many other anime. They are also incredible (to my standards).
I found the first songs (from aristocracy and noblerot) on WinMX years ago.. and recently found the Ali Project
Get Off My Lawn! (Score:4, Funny)
Back in my day, we walked bare-pegged, uphill both ways, in shattered-glass covered knee deep snow in the desert, to trade 300 lb. boxes of punchcards!
Parent
Here is some Clarification (Score:5, Informative)
FTB:
See how your representative voted. [house.gov]
Even so... IMHO this still opens the door to more Orwellian legislation, and provides further evidence of how industry pwnes our government.
Parent
Re:Here is some Clarification (Score:5, Funny)
"Your alternative to illegal downloading is a ham sandwich. The plan is to have ham sandwiches be a mandatory part of the meal plan. "
and it would follow the letter of the law, if not the spirit.
There you go, every campus in the US. Where's my grant?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'd love to see them try that. There'd be lawsuits from every, single observant Jew and Moslem student on First Amendment grounds, and the school would lose them all. ROTFLMAO!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If I tell someone I'm "developing a plan to explore" implementing X, what I mean is that I will probably never get around to *actually* implementing X -- X is likely to be implemented roughly at the same time hell freezes over -- I just want you to go away and leave me alone, as I have more important things to do *right now*. (like reading
Re:Here is some Clarification (Score:5, Interesting)
Even so... IMHO this still opens the door to more Orwellian legislation, and provides further evidence of how industry pwnes our government.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't matter that the voting age was 18, or that you could be sent to a combat zone by the military at age 19. Statistically, the car insurance companies were having to pay off a disportionate amount of damage claims by 18-20 year old drunk customers, but if drinking was legally raised to 21, they would be able to skate on paying claims. "Hey, we're not liable if they broke the law!!" Kinda reminds me of why they wanted seat belts legislated into effect. Seat belts save lives, see, and
The phrase "intellectual property" (Score:3, Interesting)
[Each institution must] develop [1.] a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as [2.] a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.
Complying with 1 could begin with "Alternatives to illegal copying of music include iRate Radio, eMusic.com, iTunes Store, and dozens of other sites [goingware.com]." But what worries me here is the use of the phrase "intellectual property" [gnu.org] instead of the more precise "copyrighted works". Which patent, trademark, and trade secret owners have lobbied for this wording?
Re:College = education. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think examples such as the DMCA should make us wary of how well-intentioned legislation can go wrong when you have technologically illiterate politicians guided by industry lobbyists doing the writing.
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