Institutions of Higher Earning?
Top Democratic leaders have introduced a new bill that would essentially force universities to sign up to paid music services, or face losing federal financial aid including that for students who don’t use a computer. The proposal is buried in a 700+ page spending and financial aid bill. They also have the option of using technology based deterrents to prevent illegal downloading, and would suffer the same consequences if they fail to implement such measures.
This amounts to little more than an extortion racket, and it’s not surprising that the music and movie industries are applauding it. Like water or roads, university networks are infrastructure, and to force such ramifications on a university is akin to removing funding for roadways because some people throw their empty Big Gulp containers out their car window. In other words, insane.
Whether it passes or not remains to be seen.
You can read more about it at cnet.com
Yeah, that’s right. If we stamp out P2P filesharing on university campuses, it’ll solve the whole piracy problem. It’s not like there is any CD burning tech available or widespread physical exchange is trivially easy in a college dorm environment, or anything. All we’re talking about here is hundreds of young people living together with almost no adult supervision. I’m sure restricting what they can do over a wire will completely confound them as to what to do next.
What a load of daydreaming dorks.
This is pure politics. You are moaning about a proposal that is not yet law and you then malign the industries which employ many of us as being rackets for extortion. This is not the place for such blatant editorial. It should be moved to the forums or some political blog.