College Aid Bill Includes Piracy Provision. Why?

Slashdot is carrying discussion of a news.com article about a bill, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act.  This bill, according to the C|Net article, "dictates universities that participate in federal financial aid programs 'shall' devise plans for 'alternative' offerings to unlawful downloading, such as subscription-based services, or 'technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.'"

Know what that sounds like to me?

It sounds suspiciously like a law that not only links a non-educational activity to educational funding, but tries to make colleges use some of their funding to promote the "alternative" service ... which, of course, means the "alternative" services' owners - the music industry - get a free promotional ride paid for by your tax dollars.

Privacy advocates are up in arms, of course, and the requisite set of talking points are now being distributed by the committee trying to defuse criticism of the provision.

The question I really have is at a different level than the whole piracy-vs-sharing discussion: Who is Congress serving by adding any language at all about this sort of thing?

•  Interesting

  I'm not really surprised by it.  I'm sure that congress has the MPAA and the RIAA breathing down its collective neck about piracy issues, whether at universities or otherwise.

  Is there any information about who inserted that provision into the bill?

  by otto on Fri Nov 16, 2007 at 09:01:13 AM PDT

•  No surprise...

  ...the entertainment industry is the fourth branch of government... they get whatever they want from whomever they want... Republicans love them 'cos they are big business, and Democrats like the idea of "protecting artists" even though artists get screwed by the RIAA and MPAA all the time...

  Since there are so many Democrats from Southern California, our party is slightly more beholden to the entertainment companies....

  It is a shame that Democrats are on the wrong side of this issue...  but, I think that we can stop them.  A similar bill was introduced in the senate a few months ago, and thanks to overwhelming voter opposition, that provision was removed.

  We must do the same here... Entertainment companies are inherently evil monopolists who must be stopped.  They want to control every aspect of your lives, and make sure you pay out the nose without any rights to the items you've purchased.  Look at how long they've extended copyright.

  If the RIAA and MPAA made buggy whips, they would have lobbied to make cars illegal.... and, probably would have succeeded....

  Time to make some phone calls.

  Thanks,

  Mike

  by LordMike on Fri Nov 16, 2007 at 09:08:57 AM PDT

•  Federal "strings" always attached

  I'm wondering if there ever was a day when there were no strings attached to federal funding.  Maybe it's just a figment of my imagination.

  Yeah, the music and recording industry has very powerful lobbyists in Washington.  At least they're not writing the bills any more.

  by MikeTheLiberal on Fri Nov 16, 2007 at 09:09:51 AM PDT

•  And the 'alternative offerings'...

  ...tend to be quite useless for those of us who prefer to run Mac OS or Linux, as they're wrapped up in Microsoft-sponsored DRM.

  So they're basically forcing colleges to offer a service that some students won't even be able to use.

  (Rumor has it that Ruckus, one of those services, is eventually going to add Mac support... but I'll probably be out of graduate school by the time that happens, and forget about any support on Linux.)

  by codeman38 on Fri Nov 16, 2007 at 10:12:16 AM PDT

  •  And 'technology-based deterrents'...

    Good luck distinguishing between a BitTorrent download of pirated material and one of something released under a Creative Commons or public-domain license.

    Heck, the Business Software Alliance can't even distinguish between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.  I am not making this up.  They sent a cease-and-desist notice to the University of Münster in Germany a while back because they found OpenOffice on one of their FTP servers and mistook it for a copy of MS Office.

    And most 'technology-based deterrents' I've seen in college environments are even more broad-based than that... things like blocking all BitTorrent ports entirely, or throttling the bandwidth so that it takes weeks to download something.

    by codeman38 on Fri Nov 16, 2007 at 10:22:23 AM PDT