Bill would force "top 25 piracy schools" to adopt anti-P2P technology (Reid shills for the RIAA)

Ars Technica ^ | 07/23/2007 | Ken Fisher

[abt87]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is making waves with a planned amendment to the Higher Education Reauthorization Act being introduced in time for the next school year. Reid's amendment holds select educational funds hostage for US colleges and universities that do not meet a set of criteria meant to bolster the war on file-sharing on college campuses. This is the legislative carrot-and-stick move that many colleges have feared would arise.

The amendment would essentially put US colleges in the business of aggressively policing copyright on their network in order to stay off of a "blacklist" that would be comprised primarily of RIAA and MPAA accusations. More disturbing, the US Secretary of Education would conduct an annual review of the top 25 file-sharing schools according to that "blacklist" and place those schools on "probation" pending their mandatory adoption of technological measures meant to block file-sharing. According to the most recent version of the amendment, such schools must "provide evidence to the Secretary that the institution has developed a plan for implementing a technology-based deterrent to prevent the illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property."

[abt87]

So let me get this straight: Reid is introducing legislation that will deputize university IT officials into acing as copyright police for an outside private organization? And the entire "top 25" list that will be used to penalize universities by taking away funding will be one entirely presented by the RIAA and MPAA? The RIAA is the same group that has sued dead people and people who don't own computers! They recently lost a lawsuit to an Oklahoma woman named Debbie Foster, and were forced to pay her $70,000 in attorney's fees. In one lawsuit, they even targeted the unsuspecting 10 year-old daughter of a defendant by contacting her elementary school and pretending to be her grandmother!

Unfortunately, the Copyright Cops' use of Reid is not surprising, considering their control of the Democrat Party.It should be noted that then-MPAA head and LBJ aide Jack Valenti tried to get the VCR banned in the early '80s. In 1998 then-RIAA CEO and Clintonista, Hilary Rosen, led the charge in filing a suit to block the ship of the first mp3 player. So, had the Dems had their way, you'd be sued to using your iPod or TiVo.

[TWohlford]

My theory is that Legislators make demands and introduce bills that are more wild as the chances of their passage goes down.

Reid can’t get his office trash bin emptied, and he knows that this will never pass, so he can say anything he wants.

[kingu]

Call it an overreaction, but sorry, I see no purpose whatsoever in continuing to protect such works. Let alone the concept that a copyright, as intended by the framers, was a limited monopoly to self publish for a limited amount of time, we’re now up to the lifetime of the artist, plus seventy years.

Limited time does not even in the wildest imaginations imply anything close to a century. I’d call fifteen years a hard argument. Think of how much innovation would have to come from artists, knowing that they’d have a scant fifteen years to bank on an old album before having to come up with new stuff that was equally attractive to their market.

Gosh, might even be something like a free market... Who ever thought of such a thing...

[bikerMD]

He thought he could manage illegal immigration. He thought he could manage the War in Iraq. Now he thinks he can manage file sharing and the internet. WRONG! Tell him what his parting gift is Don Pardow.

Well Bob it's a blind date with one of our Gold Star Mothers - CINDY SHEEHAN!! Pay no attention to the pecker tracks left by Jesse and Hugo.

[Diogenesis]

"Never send a monkey to do a man's job."
~ Captain Leo Davidson

[abt87]

Milton Friedman put it best when he joined in an amicus brief in a SCOTUS case against the 1998 Disney copyright giveaway (which unfortunately, was decided in Hollywood’s favor):

On Eldred v. Ashcroft

17 Economists: Roy T. Englert, Jr. George A. Akerlof, Kenneth J. Arrow, Timothy F. Bresnahan, James M. Buchanan, Ronald H. Coase, Linda R. Cohen, Milton Friedman, Jerry R. Green, Robert W. Hahn, Thomas W. Hazlett, C. Scott Hemphill, Robert E. Litan, Roger G. Noll, Richard Schmalensee, Steven Shavell, Hal R. Varian, and Richard J. Zeckhauser

From the Amici Brief:

“Taken as a whole, it is highly unlikely that the economic benefits from copyright extension under the CTEA outweigh the additional costs. Moreover, in the case of term extension for existing works, the sizeable increase in cost is not balanced to any significant degree by an improvement in incentives for creating new works. Considering the criterion of consumer welfare instead of efficiency leads to the same conslusion, with the alteration that the CTEA’s large transfer of resources from consumers to copyright holders is an additional; factor that reduces consumer welfare.”

[DBrow]

If he cracks down hard enough we’ll go back to tape trees, but with CDs and memory sticks as the medium, with little or no trackable net content.

Hey, I can get a 2 gig stick and stuff it full of Waylon Jennings and take in trade somebody else’s 2 gig stick full of Guns n Roses, and work the meetup via the campus bulletin board or word of mouth.

[Paladin2]

File sharing or copying copyrighted material?

[Logophile]

Call it an overreaction, but sorry, I see no purpose whatsoever in continuing to protect such works. Let alone the concept that a copyright, as intended by the framers, was a limited monopoly to self publish for a limited amount of time, we’re now up to the lifetime of the artist, plus seventy years. . . . Think of how much innovation would have to come from artists, knowing that they’d have a scant fifteen years to bank on an old album before having to come up with new stuff that was equally attractive to their market.

As a writer, I would have no objection to a shorter copyright term. However, that would not prevent IP piracy.

Those who complain the loudest about the length of copyrights refuse to acknowledge the copyright holder's legitimate concerns about piracy. (I recently encountered a FReeper who called me a "leech" and an "abuser" of the system because I did not give away my copyrighted work for free.)

Gosh, might even be something like a free market... Who ever thought of such a thing...

A free market is a situation in which buyers and sellers are free to negotiate prices—not one in which some people can help themselves to others' IP without paying for it.

[Paladin2]

That's it.

We just point out that Hilary is going to stop file sharing if Hillary! gets elected POTUS.

[Paladin2]

Please define:

IP (as covered by the law)

piracy (as associated with non-real property).

[driftdiver]

“A free market is a situation in which buyers and sellers are free to negotiate prices—not one in which some people can help themselves to others’ IP without paying for it.”

His version is a market where everything is free. NOT free enterprise.

I have no problem paying artists, ( or developers) for their work. I do have a problem with paying for CD’s where none of the money goes to the artist. I also have a problem with the price fixing they’ve put in place keeping CD prices artificially high.

So pretty much I dont buy CD’s. I listen to the radio and XM.

[Logophile]

IP (as covered by the law)

In my case, I am talking about copyrighted work (principally books).

More generally, "intellectual property" or IP is a "term often used to refer generically to property rights created through intellectual and/or discovery efforts of a creator that are generally protectable under patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, trade dress or other law." (www.techtransfer.umich.edu/index/glossary.html.)

piracy (as associated with non-real property).

As I am using the term, "piracy" means copyright violation.

Surely these terms cannot be unfamiliar to you.

[Logophile]

His version is a market where everything is free. NOT free enterprise.

I fear you may be right.

I have no problem paying artists, ( or developers) for their work. I do have a problem with paying for CD’s where none of the money goes to the artist. I also have a problem with the price fixing they’ve put in place keeping CD prices artificially high. . . . So pretty much I dont buy CD’s. I listen to the radio and XM.

Good for you. If you do not like the price or the conditions under which a product is offered, you refrain from buying it. You do not copy the work without paying for it.

[Paladin2]

IP turns out to be too nebulous to use, especially when talking about the RIAA.

That definition of piracy grates like the use of gay to mean something other than extremely happy. Piracy is spin.

[Dinsdale]

The obvious solution for university IT department is to firewall off the world more severely.

That way the students and staff can do what they want locally and RIAA will be none the wiser with their scans.

In any case this law has little chance of passing. Less chance of making any difference.

[abt87]

Next thing you know, Reid will introduce legislation that requires universities to do random baggage checks of students to confiscate any USB thumb drives or CD-R’s (possible deputizing dormitory security during night hours.)

[Logophile]

IP turns out to be too nebulous to use, especially when talking about the RIAA.

Perhaps I am missing something. In what way is IP a nebulous term?

That definition of piracy grates like the use of gay to mean something other than extremely happy. Piracy is spin.

I am sorry that it annoys you, but "piracy" does seem to be the current term. Which word would you prefer?

[abt87]

Especially since it’s costly for university IT departments to install anti-p2p technology, technology is can be cracked, and screws over people who are not downloading or uploading music or movies (at one school that already voluntarily uses such filtering, they accidentally cut off students who were using VoIP.)

[ChinaThreat]

As a former journalist, i can appreciate your concern about copyright law. If you take away the incentive to produce works of art, you take away the art. Generally speaking.

But i have problems with this legislation on so many levels. The first thing that stands out is the hypocrisy. I am a system administrator at a private university, and the only way to truly ferret illegal digital content is to be invasive. They have a problem listening in on terrorist phone calls to Yemen, but go right ahead and dig through private material of american citizens to pay their hollywood friends (aka Donors) back for their support.

Second of all, the root of this problem lies not with the students and their tendency to want to listen to cool music. The root of the problem is a result of music companies that are refusing to adapt to the modern market for digital content. Its not the college students that create these kind of technologies, its the rich 19 year old guys that own some of America’s strongest companies like YouTube, Myspace, Photobucket that are recognizing and seizing the customers in the modern media. This is just another arm of the dinasour media that if not subsidized by folks like Sen. Reid would die out a natural death.

It is actually quite interesting to look at the evolution of the digital information market. The world is changing. It is better to harness that energy and use it to our advantage than to subsidize things that should die a natural death.

Typical leftist ideological approach - treat the symptoms and not the disease.