MPAA: Linking college funding, piracy is 'perfectly legitimate'
WASHINGTON--What's wrong with Congress being a little stingy about doling out taxpayer dollars to universities if they let peer-to-peer file-sharing pirates run amok on campus networks?
Not a thing, says the Motion Picture Association of America's top lawyer in the nation's capital.
MPAA Washington general counsel Fritz Attaway
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/mccullagh.org)On the heels of a House of Representatives committee's passage of a higher-education funding bill that includes new antipiracy obligations for universities that participate in federal financial aid programs, MPAA Washington general counsel Fritz Attaway suggested it's reasonable to condition federal education funding on copyright enforcement efforts.
"When the government is subsidizing universities...and it discovers that those universities are spending a lot of taxpayers' money to build digital networks that are being used primarily to allow college students to traffic in infringing content, I think it's perfectly legitimate for Congress to say, wait a minute, if we're giving you money, we don't want it to be used to help college kids infringe copyright," Attaway said during a panel discussion here Monday that was organized by the Federal Communications Bar Association.
At the same time, Attaway attempted to diffuse alarms universities and fair-use advocates are sounding about the House's higher-education bill. Embedded in the more-than-700-page bill is a requirement that universities devise plans for providing their students alternatives to illegal downloading and developing technology-based filters to keep offending content out of students' hands in the first place.
The MPAA vice president emphasized that there's technically no requirement under the bill that universities actually sign up for such "alternatives," namely subscription-based music services like Ruckus.com and Napster, nor that they actually activate the filters they're planning to develop. Committee aides close to the bill-drafting process have denied that schools would see their funding yanked if they didn't come up with satisfactory plans, even if Attaway seemed to suggest that wouldn't be a bad idea.
University representatives who oppose the provision have acknowledged, too, that they're not sure what exactly the punishment would be for failing to craft such plans, although some have read the bill to say their schools would no longer be eligible for at least some student financial aid programs.
Attaway's defense of the bill drew a sharp rebuke, however, from Gigi Sohn, president of the digital-rights advocacy group Public Knowledge. "Why do you put things in bills that you don't want to enforce at some point?" she asked. "Even if I agree, and I don't, that it's toothless, I don't want that language in there for some other Congress to give it some teeth."
There's still a chance that the Hollywood-backed provision won't survive any final version of the legislation. That's what happened when a similar proposal came before the U.S. Senate this summer. The full House is expected to debate the broader higher-education funding bill soon after it returns from its Thanksgiving recess in early December.
Is this guy quite possibly the biggest idiot alive?
College students use the Internet for PRIMARILY facebook.
Secondly we use it to actually do work.
Thirdly, universities aren't even PRIMARILY the biggest copyright infringement offenders.
This guy needs to check his facts.
He sounds PRIMARILY like a demagogue trying to stir up a big pot of bitter-tasting rhetoric stew.
Congress should reword the bill if they plan to pass it so student get a refund from the RIAA and MPAA after they graduate if the students don't get to keep what they download. After all, most of what the RIAA and MPAA offer no academic value. This would be like charging for the dining service when you'll never eat at the school. Hell, school don't even make you buy your books. You'll probably fail if you don't get the books, but you can also get the book from somewhere else if you want also so you can shop around and get them for the cheapest price. The RIAA and MPAA are trying to create an obscenely illegal monoply in schools, so I'm sure heads will roll when parents learn that they're going to have to give people money and have no choice about it.
Just remember how the Democratic Party is always on the side of
students and education. They take us for granted. We will not like
what they do to us but on election day we will still go out and
vote for them. They can count on it!! Until higher education
wises up they will treat us worse than the Republicans.
You can't have it both ways.
Either your parents are rich enough to put you through college,
or you don't go at all and have to be poor the rest of your life
because you can't get a good job without that diploma, and
you can't get the diploma without being rich.
College education should be available to all, at least the "all"
who show the right amount of determination to learn and make
good grades. But the costs continue to skyrocket, and the
dollar weakens. Each step we take in the wrong direction
should be re-evaluated, and this article shows us one.
The reason this idea is wrong, tying funding to P2P, is that it
would hurt the innocent! There are plenty, like me, who never
use the university network for file sharing. If my college was
hurt financially by this proposed legislation, it would be unjust
for me and all the others who didn't use the network to share
files.
There should be a Constitutional amendment that no law shall
be passed that punishes the innocent. Seems obvious, no?
If you walk into a music store where CD's are being sold, you have the means to attempt to steal them and, therefore, should be arrested upon entering the store!
Free country? Give me a break!
There is nothing in the US Constitution that gives your association/cartel the right to exist in spite of a failing business model, crap content, and anti-consumer attitude.
/P
And not all their business is going to piracy. I, for example, stick to works that are copyleft licensed. Sure, I don't have much choice of content yet, but you better believe that's changing fast.
jamendo.com
http://www.eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?
video_id=306&title=Ron_Paul_talks_about_Big_Business
No more tax breaks for tobacco farmers until they take all the carcinogens out of their product?
No more funding for highway projects until they figure out how to stop highway deaths?
No more funding of wars until they end the collateral damage?
No more funding of nuclear plants until . . . etc.
Hey, this could really work!
He's kidding, right? "primarily" to infringe? Some great research comes out of our universities and colleges and their networks are one of the tools they use to aid them in that great research.
How does this guy come off saying that? Where is he getting this information? Does he have statistics showing infringing use versus legitimate use?
I'm not sticking up for illegally downloading music or anything else, but that seems so far fetched that it's not even funny.
Charles R. Whealton
Charles Whealton @ pleasedontspam.com
How ironic.
MPAA: Keep your nose out of the education system.
Paul
Seriously, this lawyer is full of crap. By withholding funds from colleges, they're screwing over the kids, not just the colleges. Whether we like it or not, higher education is a money-fueled business.
More importantly, if my tax dollars aren't going to funding college tuitions, what ARE they funding? Bombs?
Clearly no one, not even the MPAA disputes this.
Their logic is that if the university isn't paying up to the MPAA on behalf of their students, then they are defacto supporting students in their copyright infringements.
Their argument is that the govt shouldn't fund education to universities that do not "teach the proper moral values."
Clearly this is misguided lobbying on the part of MPAA. Because some students decide to break the law, doesn't mean that the universities condone their action.
The universities are not the police and are not the MPAA.
Yes, ironically the MPAA does have a point. If you are sharing music that you didn't purchase, you're violating copyrights and should be held accountable.
But this point is lost due to their grandstanding.
Two wongs don't make a wright. ;-)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13062.htm
I just don't think it's worth it for them to make a-holes out of themselves when it's not as bad a situation as it is for music.
In either case, both music companies and movie companies need to learn to work with the new technical realities or they will die. Legislation is not going to fix their situation.
It is this mans duty to advance his clients interest. If the client presents a gray area that can be used for precident on future actions, a sad state of affairs surely but it is where we find ourselves. If this chafes your sense of justice, Good, go ask your Professors what were the ideals and principles behind Jeffersonian Lawyers. Or better yet research them yourself, this Republic could use more of them. No I am not a Lawyer, just have a love for the lost art of Law
The MPAA needs to get slapped down, as does the RIAA, HARD. They're out of freaking control.
- yeah lets defund already defunded colleges
- by dondarko November 22, 2007 9:40 AM PST
- and make the cost of going to college even more expensive and unattainable. that's perfect recipe for future disaster in this country. While the rest of the world continues to expand and make higher education more affordable we're going the opposite way.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (39 Comments)RIAA and music industry need to take a look at themselves and why piracy is happening to them first and foremost.