-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 FreeCulture.org - Students for Free Culture wrote: > Writes rich on our blog: > > Well, crap, guys. How did we let this one slip by? > > [HR 4137][1], the College Opportunity and Affordability Act just passed > Congress and is expected to be signed into law very soon. > > Inside the bill is the Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention act, a > provision which requires colleges to subscribe to RIAA-approved services > like the new Napster and to install software on the network which > monitors and interrupt transfers which they decide they don't like. This > is a mandate for a non-neutral internet on college campuses. Students > are being targeted by a cooperation between the government and the > intellectual property industry to spy on us, filter our internet and the > resources of our schools by spending our tuition costs on their DRM'd > service. And unfortunately, we let this slip under the radar. > > For the full story about the passing is available on [Ars Technica][2], > who have done a better write up than I could do. I also wrote about this > [on my personal site][3] just over one year ago. It seems the bill has > been watered down slightly from the original amendment, but the effect > is the same. > > But where was the opposition from Free Culture? I'm not trying to blame > anyone but myself, but I think that **we must develop a way to > constantly monitor and publicly oppose this type of legislation.** > Otherwise, what is the point of our organization if we continue to allow > things like this to happen?! We're going to be an absolute laughing > stock if we have [silly events][4] which celebrate the death of DRM when > we don't make a sound about federal legislation which requires all of > our schools to purchase products which use it. There was only [one blog > post][5] about the bill, 8 months ago. Not a peep since then, no page on > the front page about pending legislation. So I can't say that we missed > this entirely, but a single blog post doesn't affect anything outside of > our own community, which is where the problem lies. It isn't working > because it isn't enough. > > So what are we supposed to do in the meantime? > > First, I think we should develop a page (perhaps on the wiki?) and a > squad to monitor the progress of legislation which could be a threat to > us. > > Second, we should be supporting Lawrence Lessig's [Change-Congress > Movement][6] which will stop corporations from having so much influence > over Congressmen. Particularly Democratic congressmen from California. > > Third, I would personally recommend that any student should be using > secure protocols for all of their data transfers to prevent their being > snooped on and tampered with. One such upcoming protocol is [Anomos][7], > a secure and anonymous multi-peer-to-peer file distribution platform. > I'm a lead developer on this project and I will write a post on this > blog about it once our alpha release candidate is announced. > > Does anybody else have any ideas about steps we can take from things > like this going unnoticed again? Let's gets some discussion going in the > comments. > > Rich, [Boston University Free Culture][8] > > [1]: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-4137 > > [2]: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080801-college-funding- > bill-passed-with-anti-p2p-provisions-intact.html > > [3]: http://www.thenewfreedom.net/wp/2007/07/24/harry-reid-d-nvs- > corrupt-campus-based-digital-theft-prevention-amendment/ > > [4]: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/zuneral > > [5]: http://freeculture.org/blog/2007/12/14/students-open-response- > to-hr-4137-and-hr/ > > [6]: http://change-congress.org/ > > [7]: http://www.anomos.info > > [8]: http://bu.freeculture.org > > URL: > http://freeculture.org/blog/2008/08/02/a-free-culture-failure-campus-based-digital-theft-prevention-passes-congress/ > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > I think it was actually killed once before with the help of groups like FC. CRK -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFIlN8pmBTzXUpNYqQRAuz3AJ49Yuof77mYcq2LZ8ScDOhCuKnCYwCfb+ej XtB3dnrlbxNfLFkqoVQvf8k= =MYwP -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
