Senate Passes Bill Targeting College Piracy 157
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.
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]
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.
Re:How utterly useless (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 ability to partake without paying would simply not partake.
Re:I have an idea (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:Sounds like a good bill (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 not the issue anyway.
I'm a more recent collegiate, and still visit friends on campus on occasion. I have never EVER seen those deals advertised on campus, even before Napster came out while I was in the dorms.
I'd like to say they've given up on the market, but then their constant suing doesn't make sense. It's truly a mystery to me what they're thinking.
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)?
Whoosh (Score:1, Informative)
Reread: "College piracy" == Piracy of colleges/college degrees
Re:Sounds like a good bill (Score:3, Informative)
Im a tax payer and I feel duped having my tax dollars go to private corporations.