Cartels boost attack on US schools
p2pnet.net news:- The hammer is coming, US congressman Ric Keller has warned colleges and universities, telling them to “get serious” about p2p music and movie downloads (he calls it “theft”) on campuses.
Chairman of the US House Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness, he’s ably supported by Hollywood enthusiasts Howard Berman and John Conyers who’ve joined in on the increasingly discredited entertainment cartel bid to sue students into becoming submissive consumers.
But before the stick comes the carrot, which would be paid for by US taxpayers on behalf of the movie and music mega-companies.
“The Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act of 2007 (H.R. 1689) would expand the allowable use of funds by the Department of Education to include technology solutions to piracy,” says internetnews.com, going on:
“Keller’s proposal comes as academia is taking increased fire over its efforts to curb the piracy that Congress and the music industry claims is rampant. Despite years of lawsuits targeting campus pirates, more than half of all college students still download music and movies illegally, according to the University of Richmond’s Intellectual Property Institute.”
The story’s author, Roy Mark, doesn’t say where he got the number for his unqualified statement that “more than half” download music and movies “illegally,” but one can guess. And last year “nearly half of the [entertainment] industry’s domestic losses can be attributed to college students,” said an InsideHigher Ed story, “failing to say why it reports unqualified industry statements as fact”.
“My legislation encourages colleges to be part of the solution by allowing them to apply for federal grants to help purchase innovative technologies that will stem piracy on their computer networks,” the internetnews.com story has Keller stating.
Last October, “Keller not only acted as a cartel demo clerk, he also asked leading questions and stressed how US taxpayers would help pay the Big Four record labels (only one of which, Warner Music, is actually American) and the Hollywood movie studio cartel, which admittedly includes a higher proportion of US companies than Big Music, to continue their efforts to sue American students into becoming compliant consumers,” posted p2pnet.
Or as InsideHigher Ed put it, “Colleges have shown a wide-ranging level of interest and success in stopping illegal file sharing on their campuses, a panel of higher education experts and entertainment industry executives told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on Tuesday.”
“Some institutions have clear policies on what constitutes piracy,” says the story. But some don’t and even worse, “Some college presidents are receptive to the entertainment industry’s call for preventive action, and some aren’t.”
American universities are currently under heavy attack from EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and, last and least, Warner Music (US), the members of the Big 4 music cartel who are trying to get universities to pass extortionate RIAA ’settlement’ letters to students.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) hopes to get students to go to a web site where they’ll sign documents admitting they’ve committed non-existent crimes and pay the RIAA not to sue them, at the same time providing information about themselves.
So far, the bulk of students, some 75%, according to the RIAA’s own figures, are ignoring the threats and three universities have plainly told the Big Music enforcement organization they’re not prepared to act as copyright cops for the labels.
Meanwhile, “Bryan Malenius, Keller’s chief of staff, told internetnews.com the bill allows Congress to ‘put its money where its mouth is,’ laying the groundwork for schools to afford the pricey filtering technology.”
The story also has UCLA cto Jim Davis pointing out students complain that legal services are “limited in content, dependent on specific vendors or operating systems and the tunes are often non-transferable to portable players”.
“Such concerns are not trivial to students,” he said. “As creators of intellectual property ourselves, we understand the complexity in business models, particularly in a nascent area.
“But we also feel there are not good answers to give, because the business models are not yet viable.”
An earlier internetnew.com story also has 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 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 John Vaughn, executive VP of the Association of American Universities, “noted that filtering technologies are expensive, pointing to one system that costs $1 million to install and roughly $250,000 a year to operate.”
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.”
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.”
Also See:
internetnews.com – Bill Would Hand Colleges Cash For Anti-Piracy, March 28, 2007
nearly half – Entertainent cartels vs US Students, October 6, 2006
InsideHigher Ed – House Panel Tackles Piracy, September 27, 2006
extortionate RIAA ’settlement’ letters – RIAA college settlement plan, February 28, 2006
copyright cops – Third school says No! to the RIAA, March 28, 2007
internetnew.com – Lawmakers Bash Colleges Over Campus Piracy, March 9, 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.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site
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 30th, 2007 at 7:53 am
I thought college was supposed to be about education, not finding more clever ways to prosecute students.