Big Music, Hollywood and Colonel Congress
p2pnet news view MPAA | RIAA News:- “Hollywood studios’ MPAA and Big 4 labels’ RIAA have ‘prevailed’ in the ‘longstanding battle between the higher-education community and the entertainment industry over how aggressive colleges should be in trying to stop the swapping of music and video files over campus networks’,” p2pnet said yesterday.
Now, “M*A*S*H fans may remember the episode where Major Frank Burns, frustrated at the low turnout for his morning calisthenics, whines, ‘But Colonel Potter, we’d get so many more if you’d just order them to volunteer’,” writes Steve Worona (right) in Educause Connect.
Educause director of policy and networking programs and founding director of the Educause/Cornell Institute for computer policy and law, Worona goes on on »»»
For years, the entertainment industry has been promoting its own version of morning calisthenics to our college and university campuses, so-called commercial music services such as CDigix, Ruckus, and Napster. And the results have been similar: Even when offered for free, students stayed away in droves.
The selection of songs was too small or the music couldn’t be downloaded to iPods or the content couldn’t be moved from device to device.
And so, following Major Burns’ lead, Big Music and Big Hollywood have gone to Colonel Congress, and the Capitol Hill brass have delivered. Buried in the just-released Higher Education Act is a provision ordering every college and university in the country to “offer alternatives to illegal downloading”.
The inevitable result? P
recious tuition and tax dollars diverted from academic needs to corporate vendors for the purchase of services that no one will use.
When pressed, the entertainment industry explains the failure of campus-based commercial music services with the complaint, “You can’t compete with free!” But the $16 billion spent by Americans last year on bottled water and the 5 billion iTunes tracks sold to date by Apple put the lie to that explanation.
Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, has a much better explanation: “The best way to combat piracy is to bring content to market on a well-timed, well-priced basis.” But Congress is telling the entertainment industry not to bother following Iger’s advice; campuses are now required to buy whatever the market offers.
(Thanks, Steve)
.
.Stumble It!
p2pnet – MPAA, RIAA, score in Higher-Ed Bill, July 30, 2008
Educause Connect -Competing with free. And that’s an order!, July 30, 2008
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:51 am
“Campuses are now required to buy whatever the market offers”
“Offers” is way to kind a word for this crap. I think the sentence should read, “Campuses are now required to pay premium pricing for whatever big media jams down their throats”. Organized Crime would cream their slacks for a scam like this. I don’t care what “party” controls congress, they live in the hip pocket of big biz. Follow the money.