Veering off the path.
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007We are taking a swerve away from the GBLTQ spectrum today; if you’re here for your daily dose of GBLTQ news and rantage, go spend some time with Lyndsey or have a gander at a few of the latest headlines - or come back tomorrow, when things are back on topic. I’d like to take a moment to discuss something that I believe deserves a few moments of my attention - and yours. Its potential effect is primarily on US college students and future students, but even those who don’t reside on American soil or aren’t currently entrenched in our education system may want to be aware of this turn of events and the sickening precedent that it could set.
Apparently the MPAA now thinks it can push legislation that will affect whether or not a school will receive federal funding for financial aid, based on whether or not said school complies with the MPAA’s demands regarding technology aimed at preventing P2P filesharing on campus networks.
The worst part?
The Democratic majority are all for it.
Democrats: Colleges must police copyright, or else - CNet News
The U.S. House of Representatives bill (PDF), which was introduced late Friday by top Democratic politicians, could give the movie and music industries a new revenue stream by pressuring schools into signing up for monthly subscription services such as Ruckus and Napster. Ruckus is advertising-supported, and Napster charges a monthly fee per student.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) applauded the proposal, which is embedded in a 747-page spending and financial aid bill. “We very much support the language in the bill, which requires universities to provide evidence that they have a plan for implementing a technology to address illegal file sharing,” said Angela Martinez, a spokeswoman for the MPAA.
According to the bill, if universities did not agree to test “technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity,” all of their students–even ones who don’t own a computer–would lose federal financial aid.
Yes, you read that correctly. We’re dealing with a multibillion-dollar war that is failing ever more spectacularly with each day; we can’t even get our legislature for GBLTQ rights straight; our government is suggesting that we voluntarily forfeit our right to privacy…and the House is wasting 747 pages and valuable time on harmful legislature that no one will actually read, and will probably sign without realizing what it entails because it’s part of a bill with a pretty name like “College Opportunity and Affordability Act”, which has to be good, right? Hell, that’s halfway how the Patriot Act got through. 300+ pages of tl;dr and a spiffy title that can easily be turned against any politician who protests it by saying “So you’re against patriotism?”
I’m against this damned legislation. This will cripple the American education system - and it’s already limping and floundering - over an issue that shouldn’t even be related to student financial aid. Government bodies should not damned well be answering to the MPAA or the RIAA! Students too poor to even own a computer, let alone afford to attend university without financial aid, could find themselves out on the street because the entertainment industry is overstepping its bounds and taking deliberate malicious action involving punishment far above and beyond any committed “crimes”. Media piracy and copyright infringement are not worth sweeping pulls of financial aid.
I don’t really advocate media piracy. I’m a fence-straddler; I use low-cost subscription services like Vongo to watch legally downloaded movies, and if Vongo doesn’t have what I want to watch on demand then I’ll go buy the DVD later when it’s no longer $20 a pop. I cringe at spending $10 to see a movie on the big screen, but will do it if my friends drag me. I don’t buy overpriced CDs, but I don’t like my music DRM-laden (I don’t even like having DRM-enabling technology on my machine, such as Windows Media Player 11) …so I’ll spend 99 cents per song at Buy.com or some other music sale service that doesn’t require monthly subscriptions or annoying software, download the DRM-burdened version of a track just to say I paid for my music, and then turn around and download a non-DRM version off Shareaza so I don’t have to go through a load of BS to copy it between my computers, cellphone, and my various portable media devices.
Basically, I’ve found an economical way to avoid piracy without paying what I feel are wholly unreasonable prices for media. I think that the entertainment industry has grown far too bloated and greedy, and current tactics of “pay for our overpriced drivel or else” border on extortion. I don’t think that downloading and sharing music for free constitutes harmful theft as they’d have us believe, but I also don’t think it’s the answer to getting around the problem that they present. What it most certainly is not, however, is a crime worthy of the exorbitant RIAA shakedowns that take place on a regular basis - and it’s definitely not a crime worthy of nearly shutting down entire schools for lack of federal funding because one student’s decision to download a movie from The Pirate Bay could potentially affect the entire campus.
It’s a situation where two wrongs don’t make a right, but in this case the entertainment industry is climbing up a vast, towering pillar of wrongness that far eclipses anything a filesharer might have done. It’s no secret that politicians wallow in the pockets of various industries, whether it’s big oil or the entertainment industry. Puppets on strings - but the MPAA isn’t even trying to hide that they’re pulling the strings anymore. It’s exorbitant, it’s disgusting, it’s blatant extortion, and I hope the bill dies amidst derision on the House floor.
Thank you, Democrats, for reminding me of why I refuse to align with any particular party - and for reminding me that no matter the label, a politician is still a politician and can be bought by just about anyone. Maybe if I had more money than the MPAA I could divert your attention from this and get you to spend a bit more time focusing on gay marriage and GBLTQ rights, hm?
The MPAA and their supporters in the House of Representatives are threatening current and future generations of students, all so they can line their pockets and feed a few more gasping breaths into a dying business model that isn’t equipped to handle current information sharing technology. They should be adapting to current technology, not trying to force the technology, under pain of torture, to suit the old business model. It’s a case of the punishment not fitting the crime, and of treating your own customers like criminals. The consumer is the enemy, and must be subjugated under corporate rule.
We have veered horribly off the path and forgotten not the letter, but the spirit of the law and its processes, and this fiasco is only one small symptom of the many horrible abuses of the legislative process that take place every day.
I feel like I’m watching Pirates of the Caribbean. “Take what ye can; give nothing back.”
Only it’s not the so-called “media pirates” following that guideline.
media piracy, copyright law, copyright violation, mpaa, riaa, copyright infringement, p2p networks, file sharing
