Howard Berman attacks US schools
p2pnet.net news:- Hollywood Howard Berman (right) and John Conyers, another Hollywood enthusiast, have chipped into the furor surrounding the mounting attacks by the entertainment cartels on American schools.
According to the current industry PR blitzkrieg repeated by the mainstream media, US schools are hard-core illegal online distribution centres with thousands of students, described as ‘thieves’ and ‘criminals,’ stealing from the honest, hard-working Big 4 labels at every opportunity.
“Annoyed” at recent movie and music cartel inspired reports that, “online campus piracy rates top 50 percent, lawmakers warned college and university administrators Thursday if they don’t do more to curb the theft, Congress would,” says InternetNews.
The ‘lawmakers’ cited are principally Berman and Conyers.
The entertainment industries have been leading contributors to Berman since 1993, topping up his coffers with amounts totalling close to $1,000,000 ($932,096, to be precise), says OpenSecrets.org.
“Unfortunately, many schools have turned a blind eye to piracy,” InternetNews has Berman, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, saying, “at a hearing to call administrators to task”.
“Current law isn’t giving universities enough incentive to comply,” says Berman, and piracy is still “rampant and widespread” with “too many schools do little or nothing about it,” declares Conyers. “That’s an unacceptable [to the cartels] response.”
The story goes on, “The numbers come more than five years after the music industry teamed with academia to launch college education programs to teach students about intellectual property rights.”
It’s referring to the infamous JCHEEC (Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities) founded by the corporate movie and music entertainment industries with the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in the lead to ‘persuade’ universities and other teaching institutions across America to act as cartel marketing, sales and enforcement units.
The JCHEEC uses publicly funded schools staffs and administrators to preach, and enforce, the corporate line according to EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (US), the members of the Big 4 Organized Music cartel, and, for the moment, to a slightly lesser degree, the major Hollywood studios.
Since the JCHEEC’s creation, “schools have incorporated copyright theft lessons in orientation sessions, preached the virtues of legal music services and researched technology that sniffs out illegal file swapping on campus networks.” says InterNet News.
But, “First, I should note that this is a ubiquitous problem, not one unique to higher education,” the story has John Vaughn, executive VP of the Association of American Universities, telling the panel. “P2P file sharing is widespread on the commercial networks serving a great many more customers than the roughly 17 million students served by higher education.”
Schools face a number of challenges in, “limiting illegal P2P file sharing, including cost, fostering an academic climate of free and open speech and the increasing use of legal P2P services,” Vaughn said, and, “The uses of P2P technologies for legitimate purposes heightens the importance of being able to differentiate legitimate and illegitimate uses for any technologies intended to block P2P file sharing.”
The story also has UCLA cto Jim Davis noting the vast majority of students live off-campus, “making them part of the great majority of students who use commercial Internet service providers outside of [UCLA's] purview,” continuing, “Our students perceive these legal services to be limited in content, dependent on specific vendors or operating system and/or providing an uneven user experience. Generally, digital rights management means downloads are often unusable or non-transferable into the vast majority of students’ portable players.”
But, “I would very much like to tell you today that we have made progress on this issue,” Variety has RIAA “prexy” Cary Cary Sherman telling the subcommittee. “In many ways we have,” he says. “But, unfortunately, this illegal activity still permeates college life, and only a handful of university administrations have begun to take seriously the reality of its repercussions.”
Sherman noted some new filtering technologies “show great promise for monitoring P2P traffic without violating privacy,” says the story, adding, “Vaughn, on the other hand, noted that filtering technologies are expensive, pointing to one system that costs $1 million to install and roughly $250,000 a year to operate.”
However, “In addition to Berman and Conyers, other lawmakers on the subcommittee sided with Sherman,” says InternetNews. “Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Tex.) agreed schools weren’t doing enough and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) suggested Congress might increase the schools’ legal liability for the theft of their students.
“Rep. Ric Keller (R-Fla.), though, issued the sternest warning:
“For those universities that don’t want to get serious about it, the hammer is coming,” he said.”
[The pic in the upper right is by J.D. Lasica on flickr.]
Also See:
furor – The RIAA fights a hopeless war, March 8, 2007
mounting attacks – The RIAA fights a hopeless war, March 8, 2007
American schools – Top universities under RIAA attack, March 9, 2007
InternetNews – Lawmakers Bash Colleges Over Campus Piracy, March 9, 2007
infamous JCHEEC – University p2p ‘report’, August 25, 2004
Variety – House subcommittee explores piracy, March 8, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
March 11th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
you posted a link to opensecret.org
its in fact opensecrets.org
the opensecret.org link… well not quite what you’d think.
March 11th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Thanks for pointing that out : )
Cheers!
March 11th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
i can nevber understand why the folks who voted these guys in don’t vote them out for representing the cartels instead of them
March 11th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Because they don’t know. I’m positive that most of the voters are completely ignorant of this.