Come on, we all know protesting isn't going to do a damn thing, if these guys
in the senate had any idea of how to go about downloading pirated material,
much less the situation surrounding it, I'd eat my let leg. The only way we'd
be able to overturn such a thing would be to somehow get the media to show how
bullshit this act is.
Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2008 12:37:15 -0500
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [FC-discuss] Senate passes the Higher Ed Act w/ anti-p2p
provisions
Welcome to sleep on my futon.
Kevin
--
Kevin Donovan
Georgetown '11: SFS
www.blurringborders.com
On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 11:46 AM, Fred Benenson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Bus trip to DC to protest?
On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 3:47 AM, Elizabeth Stark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Should we talk more about what can be done with this now that it's expected to
be signed into law?
>From Ars Technica:
College funding bill passed with anti-P2P provisions intact
By Ryan Paul
| Published: August 01, 2008 - 06:15AM
CT
The Senate and House have voted to reauthorize the Higher Education Act
and approved controversial new provisions that will require
universities to provide students with access to commercial music
downloading services and implement traffic filtering technologies in
order to deter peer-to-peer filesharing. The bill now goes to President
Bush, who is expected to sign it into law.
These provisions have strong support from the content industry, but
have been targeted with widespread criticism from the academic
community and advocacy groups such as Educause. The push for mandatory
filtering at universities began in 2007 when the RIAA published a list
of top piracy schools
and the MPAA claimed that piracy on university campuses accounts for 44
percent of the movie industry's annual losses to piracy. The group
later retracted this claim when it was discovered that the numbers were
grossly inflated. The RIAA followed up its top piracy school list with a
litigation and propaganda campaign which included the development of a web site
to handle automated settlements, but soon faced serious setbacks in court.
The MPAA also developed an Ubuntu-based software toolkit for detecting
file-sharing on university networks, but was forced to discontinue
distribution of the software when they were hit with a Digital
Millenium Copyright Act takedown notice. The MPAA had violated copyright law by
failing to adhere to the General Public License under which Ubuntu is
distributed.
The MPAA's high-tech anti-piracy solution
The RIAA and MPAA have vigorously lobbied for a legislative solution at both
the state and federal levels. Pressure from the content industry compelled
Congress to begin investigating the issue.
The lobbying efforts eventually resulted in the addition of anti-piracy
provisions in the College Opportunity and Affordability Act in the
House, which passed by a wide margin in February. The Senate version of this
bill passed today with bipartisan support.
A statement issued by the joint House and Senate committees responsible
for harmonizing the two versions of the bill explains that universities
will have to begin authoring formal piracy deterrence plans. The
statement also recommends several commercial anti-P2P technologies
including Audible Magic's CopySense Network Appliance and Red Lambda's
Integrity filtering tool.
"[The amendment includes] language requiring institutions to make
available the development of plans to detect and prevent unauthorized
distribution of copyrighted material on the institution of higher
education's information technology system," the statement says. "The
Conferees have combined elements from both bills to require
institutions to advise students about this issue and to certify that
all institutions have plans to combat and reduce illegal peer to peer
file sharing."
The MPAA hailed the bill's passage. "We work closely with leaders in
the higher education community because we both have a stake in ensuring
that intellectual property continues to be a strong, vibrant part of
our nation's economy," said MPAA president Dan Glickman. "By including
these important provisions in the Higher Education Act, Congress is
sending a strong message that intellectual property is worth
protecting."
The MPAA will shortly begin sending out what it describes as "campus
briefing books" that contain information on the anti-piracy provisions
of the new law and what schools need to do in order to be in
compliance. The books will also offer hints on how to clamp down on P2P
traffic and detect infringement.
There are presently no penalties for failing to comply with the
requirement, but Educause and many in the academic community fear that
the new provisions are a trojan horse that will open the door for
Congress to add penalties in future iterations. If this happens,
universities could potentially be denied funding if they don't agree to
play copyright cop.
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