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.
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:Sounds like a good bill (Score:2, Insightful)
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) DRM free music for your listening pleasure (or, it could be stripped out easily; through various methods)
Fast Foreward to 2007 -
As soon as my university's contract ran out for the Napster service, they picked up another service called "Ruckus" which, unlike Napster, is a dismal failure in what a digital media service should be. The catch line was "Expanded digital offerings then just music", but the reality of the situation ended up being:
- Almost no mainstream record companies signed up with the service. Most of what was provided is from independent or self publishing labels. Not the popular music people want
- There are 'movies' you can download with the service, but they consist almost entirely of music videos, again, of those strange bands you've never heard of. They also delete themselves after 2 days.
- Massive, MASSIVE amounts of DRM. Everything WMA or WMP formatted, and cannot be ported to multiple devices. Files expire after x period, etc.
The result of this means that for the student, you're back to square one, with piracy usually the most desirable option for obtaining media. It's not uncommon for underground networks to pop up, such as Dtella in such an environment, and if anything seems to further encourage such behaviour.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
Re:Neither the RIAA/MPAA nor the EFF would care... (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"?
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.
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.
Of course Obamam and McCain are "no votes" (Score:2, Insightful)
So I will assume that all the other "no votes" are potential vice presidential candidates :-)
Re:Sounds like a good bill (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like a good bill (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like a good bill (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 people and fight ISPs who violate their users privacy to aid corporations.
So my problem is not so much the artist trying to make an honest buck for their work, its the people who try to screw me over in the name of copyright.