p2pnet.net News:- The RIAA, owned by France’s Vivendi Universal, Britain’s EMI, and Sony BMG from Japan and Germany, with the only American company, Warner Music, bringing up the rear, quite literally accuses school kids of all ages of being criminals and thieves.

Every time one of them shares or downloads a digital music file, somehow, a sale is lost, claim the Big Four, without a shred of evidence.

And among the worst of these hundreds of millions of file sharing criminals are American college and university students, says the RIAA through chief spikesmen Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman.

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), with the MPAA offering full frontal support, created a self-serving organization called the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities (JCHEEC).

Penn State president Graham Spanier and RIAA president Sherman are joint chairmen, with Barry K. Robinson, RIAA senior counsel for corporate affairs, appointed as a Penn State trustee.

Should two entities, one supposedly concerned with teaching US students and the other solely concerned with keeping shareholders fat and happy, co-exist on a committee? Clearly, they shouldn’t. But thanks to entertainment cartel chicanery, they do.

And with the JCHEEC lurking in the background, the RIAA fires thousands of blackmail subpoenas at students, the effect being: if school administrators don’t figure out ways to get students to buy Big Four ‘product’ through services, such as iTunes or Napster, which the Big Four supply, the students will be sued.

With this in mind, “During last spring’s debate over the renewal of the Higher Education Act, Democrats in the House proposed an amendment that would have required colleges to take steps to crack down on illegal file sharing, which college leaders opposed as unnecessary federal regulation [see David Ward letter below], (Many college officials insist that they are already doing plenty to deal with this issue, especially since the problem, some of them argue, is less severe among college students than among other segments of the population.)” says Inside Higher Ed, going on:

“The amendment failed, but the lawmakers who proposed it (led by Rep. Howard P. Berman of California, who is the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property) continued to pursue a GAO study of file sharing in higher education. College officials said they supported the idea of a study, which would help gauge [sic] the extent of the problem.”

Berman is a cartel favourite who so far this year has been helped by Time Warner ($21,000), News Corp ($15,000), Viacom ($14,400), Walt Disney ($13,550), Vivendi ($13,500) and Sony ($13,000) and who in the previous cycles has received totals of $144,000 (2004) and $222,791 (2002) from the TV, movie and music industries, says OpenSecrets.

But, “as the investigative agency sent out the survey in recent days to more than 100 colleges, some college officials realized that the questionnaire and the accompanying cover note did not say, as such surveys almost always do, that the replies would be kept confidential” says Higher Ed, continuing:

“When Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, checked with officials at the GAO, he was told that that aides to the Judiciary subcommittee had insisted that the GAO collect and report back to the panel on the responses of individual institutions. (It isn’t clear whether the information about individual institutions would be made public, or if the eventual public report, like most GAO studies, would present information only in the aggregate.)

“Paul Anderson, assistant director of the GAO, said Monday that agency policy prohibited him from discussing details about the nature of any of its active surveys, beyond basic information about who had requested the study and its scope. A spokesman for the Judiciary Committee said he would check into the matter but did not provide any details.”

The story quotes Mark A. Luker, vp of Educause, “higher education’s main technology association,” as saying Educause is alerting its members to the fact that their responses to the GAO survey won’t be kept confidential.

And while this goes on, school staff are acting as unpaid entertainment industry sales people and corporate cops, supported by school fees and working with school resources.

American Council on Education
Office of the President

March 27, 2006

The Honorable Howard P. “Buck” McKeon
U.S. House of Representatives
2351 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman McKeon:

I write on behalf of the higher education associations listed below to express our grave concern about an amendment that may be offered by Mr. Berman and Mr. Hoyer when H.R. 609, the College Access and Opportunity Act reaches the floor this week. The amendment would impose federal regulatory requirements on colleges and universities related to illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. We ask you to oppose this amendment, which would require new and unwarranted regulations on all institutions of higher education.

You have repeatedly expressed your desire to minimize excessive and unnecessary federal regulation of colleges and universities. Many of your FED UP initiatives have been included in H.R. 609.

In light of this goal, it would be a step in the wrong direction to include new regulatory mandates that have never been raised as problems in the education and the Workforce Committee’s extensive hearings on higher education reauthorization; have never been subjected to analysis; would not benefit students and parents; and would provide unprecedented authority for other federal agencies to regulate institutional participation in the Higher Education Act. More specifically:

• This issue has never come before the Education and the Workforce Committee and has never before been suggested as an area that needs regulation through the Higher Education Act.
• The amendment would involve the Attorney General and the U.S. Justice Department in the Program Participation Agreements (Section 487) filed by institutions of higher education to participate in the federal student aid programs. At present, none of the 23 requirements of this section involve regulations imposed by federal agencies other than the U.S. Department of Education.
• There is no indication that this regulation would provide information that would help students and their parents, which is the fundamental objective of the Higher Education Act.
• Federal regulation of this issue through the Higher Education Act is unnecessary and undesirable.

The Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over these issues and has held hearings on this topic. Nonetheless, the extent of the problem is not well known. Indeed, the House Judiciary Committee has recently met with the Government Accountability Office to discuss conducting a study of this issue.

RE: Amendment to H.R. 609 March 27, 2006

We underscore that illegal P2P file sharing is a serious matter. The higher education community has already demonstrated its commitment to address this issue. There are extensive copyright and related intellectual property laws governing the misuse of copyrighted works. The recording and motion picture

industries have appropriately employed these laws to request information from colleges and universities concerning suspected illegal file sharing. As the entertainment industry will confirm, institutional compliance with such requests is widespread. Numerous lawsuits have been filed when illegal file

sharing has been identified. The Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities has been working cooperatively for more than two years to develop ways to reduced illegal file sharing and develop legal alternatives. Indeed, I believe colleges and universities have voluntarily

undertaken more efforts in this area than any other industry.

Imposing new federal regulations that have not been discussed or subjected to any analysis is never a good first step, and this case is no exception. Therefore, we ask you to oppose costly new federal regulations under the Higher Education Act.

Sincerely,
David Ward, President
DW/cms

On behalf of:
American Association of Community Colleges
American Association of State Colleges and Universities
American Council on Education
Association of American Universities
EDUCAUSE
National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges

Meanwhile, “The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) recently sent letters to the presidents of 40 U.S. universities in 24 states … regarding file sharing activities on university local area networks. According to the letters, these two groups suspect that college students are using their universities’ internal networks to share copyrighted files with each other, thereby avoiding the Internet and staying hidden from entertainment industry investigators.

“The notices, dated April 27, inform university presidents about file sharing activities on their internal networks and recommends launching internal investigations to ferret out offenders. The letters also mention specific software utilities used in these alleged copyright violations, such as DC++, a popular file-sharing application.”

Stay tuned.

Also See:
self-serving organization - Big Music university shill report, September 21, 2005
Inside Higher Ed - Too Much Sharing About File Sharing, July 25, 2006
40 U.S. universities in 24 states - RIAA, MPAA, victimize students, July 17, 2006

---

p2pnet newsfeeds for your site.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss
Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 10:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 4475 times