New TN Law Forces Universities To Patrol For Copyright Violations 331
CSMatt points with this excerpt from the EFF's page: "Last week, the RIAA celebrated the signing of a ridiculous new law in Tennessee that says: 'Each public and private institution of higher education in the state that has student residential computer networks shall: [...] [R]easonably attempt to prevent the infringement of copyrighted works over the institution's computer and network resources, if such institution receives fifty (50) or more legally valid notices of infringement as prescribed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 within the preceding year.' While the entertainment industry failed to get 'hard' requirements for universities in the Higher Education Act passed by Congress earlier this year, the RIAA succeeded in Tennessee (and is pushing in other states) with this provision that gives Big Content the ability to hold universities hostage through the use of infringement notices. Moreover, the new rules will cost Tennessee a pretty penny — in the cost review attached to the Tennessee bill, the state's Fiscal Review Committee estimates that the new obligations will initially cost the state a whopping $9.5 million for software, hardware, and personnel, with recurring annual costs of more than $1.5 million for personnel and maintenance."
Nashville's recording industry (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this surprising? The recording industry is a multi-billion dollar industry in Nashville.
Re:Nashville's recording industry (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nashville's recording industry (Score:5, Interesting)
Country music is the most popular form of music in America according to Arbitron radio ratings.
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Terrestrial radio? How quaint.
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Quaint, yes, but also free (I like that word). And it's not blocked by my idiot employer.
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It is not "free" , stop believing the lies. Every time you sit through a commercial you have "paid".
No. You're just not the customer. You're the user (well, assuming you like country music) but it is the advertiser who is the customer.
Public radio (Score:3, Interesting)
Good thing I have 10 stations programmed into my radio dial so I can skip commercials.
I have begun to hate commercials with a passion, since I stopped watching normal TV and started downloading shows. The radio ads got to me just as much after a while.
I now exclusively listen to my local listener-supported classical radio station (http://allclassical.org -- 89.9 FM in Portland, OR). They, along with many other listener-supported stations, simply read aloud written messages from some business sponsors; I find this massively less obnoxious than normal radio ads. There are apparently a few of t
Re:Nashville's recording industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Country music is the most popular form of music in America according to Arbitron radio ratings.
And McDonald's is the most popular restaurant. Which just proves the American people have no taste in either music or food...
Re:Nashville's recording industry (Score:4, Insightful)
McDonalds is popular because of consistancy and market penetration combined with geed marketing.
Country Music is popular because it stretches across a broader range of influences. You have blues and bluegrass on one end and pop on the other with combination of everything in the middle. All the other forms of music is severely limited in ranges and style and attract more people because of the influences in the style then genre itself. Someone who listens to bluegrass will likely also listen to pop country too. Someone who listens to light rock will probably not listen to speed metal or death metal. To them, crossing to country is probably more appealing. Anyways, if you can't stand country, it is probably because you haven't heard enough songs across the range (IE, People like the Dixie chicks or kenney Chesney because they are closer to rock country or pop country but they don't like the yodeling works of Jimmie Rodgers. Here are a few pages [countrymus...offame.com] talking about the differences in styles within [thinkquest.org] the genres.
Of course I sort of feel the same way as you expresses about rap music. But I have to admit, there are some rap songs that I can tollorate and actually like, I just can't stand the others long enough to buy those CDs or listen to the radio stations waiting for the songs.
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Well it sure as heck isn't if you look at torrent populations.
Pop, rap, rock, punk, classical, the freaking Wiggles, etc. are all easier to find than country.
Either it's just not popular, or something about the people that like it keeps them from....
Oh.
Nevermind.
Re:Nashville's recording industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong question.
Right question: who in their right mind would want to steal music dumbed down to music industry specifications?
Hank Williams Sr., Bill Monroe, Roy Acuff, the Carters, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins -- the list goes on of worthwhile country musicians. The industry isn't run by creative people, it does its best to strangle of the life out of any kind of music it touches.
Re:Nashville's recording industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely. Hell, Les Paul basically invented multi-track recording. He was decades ahead of his time.
Re:Nashville's recording industry (Score:5, Funny)
how bigoted of you. People in that region listen to more than just country music. They have both kinds of music, country and western.
Nashville has more than country (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nashville's recording industry (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, y'all, git da hail out'n my trailer park! Damn city slickers! Whut's the differnce 'tween a violin and a fiddle?
People LIKES fiddle music!
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It seems they value that more than education. (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that they're more interested in protecting the music industry than supporting the education of their people.
Anyone want to predict what the outcome will be in about 20 years?
Re:It seems they value that more than education. (Score:5, Insightful)
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TN colleges will need to "cut policing costs" and respond by limiting students' dorm access to 128 kbit/s (or thereabouts) such that downloading music or videos becomes impractical. TN administrators will argue that 128 kbit/s is "good enough" for accessing the required course-related websites (mostly text), and engineering or computer science students will need to apply for a professor-signed waiver to get faster access.
Those students will later come into positions of power, remember the hell of limited d
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If I lived in such a dorm, I'd switch to dialup. V.44-compressed dialup is equivalent to a 300kbit/s uncompressed broadband line... therefore faster.
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V.44-compressed dialup is equivalent to a 300kbit/s uncompressed broadband line... therefore faster.
I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but in order to not give anyone else any ideas.. no, you won't get anything *near* 300kbit/s with any file that are worth downloading. You can read why if you check for example the wikipedia article about V.44 [wikipedia.org], and some basics about data compression.
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If I lived in such a dorm, I'd switch to dialup. V.44-compressed dialup is equivalent to a 300kbit/s uncompressed broadband line... therefore faster.
v.44 works great for easily compressed data such as text files. Not so much for already-compressed data like...mp3s. Binary data might see 50%-60% increased throughput over regular old 53Kb uncompressed speed. The only way that you're going to see 300Kb/s transfer rates is on a plain old text file. Sorry.
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No. However I have observed that my own Netscape dialup connection loads webpages almost as fast as my 750kbit/s DSL line. So the effective speeds are fairly close to one another.
Social networking would still work, after a fashio (Score:2, Interesting)
The students could still run a website where people would advertise what content they had, and how to contact them to gain "access" to it, face-to-face. The university would be compliant, since this website, AFAICS, would not violate the DMCA itself. It might be in violation of "encouraging copyright infringement", but that's different, I think.
If the students are clever, and advertise the site as something which helps you meet other students with similar tastes in music, I think it might be hard to get any
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I used to do that back in the days of BBSes (using a speedy 2.4 kbit/s connection).
We posted publicly what CDs we owned, and then had "copy parties" to record tapes of each other's possessions. It was an effective method albeit time-consuming.
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If I were the colleges, I would just farm out the student connections - thus removing my liability. Access to the local network would be via VPN.
Why not nat the dorms with a waiver to get IP / fo (Score:2)
Why not nat the dorms with a waiver to get a IP that can be used network wide / forwarded ports?
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I don't know what the stats are for universities in Tennessee, but here on the University of Washington campus we hear about the rates of sexual abuse being 1 in 4 for females and 1 in 10 for males.
Whenever this shit happens, I always wonder why people don't just start wandering around by the state house, muttering things like "How much rape could 9 million dollars prevent?"
Maybe with a ballot in their hand or something. I don't know.
(prophetic CAPTCHA: "plenty")
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Now that the University of Tennessee system has taken a budget cut of $21.2 million dollars, one might expect that the state would be carefully deciding how to spend the money that is available. However, this is apparently not the case. On November 12th, two days after the Daily Beacon covered the story of the UT system's budget cuts, Governor Bredesen signed senate bill 3974 into law, and committed the Tennessee highe
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I just don't understand how you can see the two connected in ways that are detrimental to each other.
They are both competing for time and resources. Money used for stopping illegal file sharing is money that won't be spent on education.
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Strawman!
The question you have to ask is WHY is file sharing illegal. To protect the recording industry's outdated business model.
The enxt question is WHY is the population (because it is them through their taxes) asked to PAY for enforcing a law that makes them and their children criminals in order to line the pockets of music executives?
Why is an university forced to limit the freedom (academic or otherwise) because the music industry decided it should?
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Strawman? What? I just asked if someone can explain the logic behind a statement. Since when if that a straw man? Ohh.. I get it now, the statement I was replying to is a strawman.
That actually has nothing to do with this law. There is a law that makes certain types of file sharing illegal and it need to be followed or changed. This law was passed on some sort of effort to make sure it
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You people keep asking the wrong questions.
Why is it a law?
Re:Nashville's recording industry (Score:5, Insightful)
The timing and pricetag are rather surprising, considering the state's current 800 Million dollar projected budget shortfall.
-ellie
do you sing? no,... really (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, do you sing? You listen to recordings of other people singing and find them pleasurable. You make copies of these recordings so that you can get the same pleasure later. You actively listen to new radio and television shows in order to hear new songs to repeat this cycle. You go to bars and concerts to hear other people sing, even without hearing their recordings previously.
But you don't really sing yourself. It feels weird. You look weird doing it. Everyone looks at you weird should you do it. Everyone accepts that music and singing is what's on a disk that comes from an 'artist' and is something that you buy from a disk shop. Or download on a bit torrent. And get hassled and extorted by the RIAA who occasionally spy on your downloading. Something that they gave themselves the right to do without asking you.
This is your-our cultural input conduit. It is based on the economic concept that the best singers and song makers will physically go to a centralized city, meet with the best music instrument players, sing and play together, and the recording of this will be put on a disk. A corporation will make millions of copies, send these disk copies to all corners of the globe, sell them to people who enjoy the best singing and playing, keep most of the money for themselves and give the singers a few pennies maybe from every dollar that they collect from selling these magic music disks.
A hundred years go by and this strange economic model transcends mere commerce and becomes the primary cultural conduit for most people in the developed world.
But it is an aberration. It's only a 20th century phenomenon. It didn't exist in the hundred centuries before the 20th. And now the 20th is over. And the centralized cultural distribution model is getting better at putting you in jail, extorting your financial resources, and getting you thrown out of school than it is at meeting your basic human cultural needs.
So get a new model; get a new cultural conduit. Go back to the ways before the 20th century that people used to develop their cultural resources. Where are you going to find new music if not from recordings? From books. There is a system for writing and reading music. It works. Learn it. Where am I going to hear and share new songs? From listening to people sing them to you. And by you singing new songs to them. Sure it hurts the ears at first. Sure it feels weird and silly and uncomfortable. But these are only 20th century cultural conditionings. And the 20th century is over. Time to leave it behind.
This is the only way that we are going to stop the RIAA. By developing a parallel culture that meets our needs. And then keeping it secret from the 20th century music corporations.
Learn to sing.
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And again, and again, and again. Two names: William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Most people don't sound any better than those two.
Besides, none of this avoids copyright. There's copyright on sheet music; it
Money "well" spent (Score:2, Insightful)
But come fu*king on! Why the hell would you spend millions of dollars on protection like this?? That money could sure as hell be spent elsewhere, since not only could the rest of the world use it but also even the USA themselves...
Re:Money "well" spent (Score:5, Interesting)
Regarding budget cuts, from the campus paper linked above:
The University of Tennessee system sustained an initial $21.2 million budget cut in June, followed by an additional October impoundment of $17 million. All campuses have been affected and have taken similar measures, of varying degrees of severity, to offset these reductions.
As a result of the initial cut, the Knoxville campus reduced its budget by $11,452,500; the Chattanooga campus by $2,682,200; the Martin campus by $1,965,000; and the UT Health Sciences Center by $2,751,500, according to the proposed budget for the 2009 fiscal year, released by the UT System Budget and Finance Office. Other UT branches affected included the Space Institute, the Institute of Agriculture, the Institute for Public Administration and the Systems Administration division.
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What is legally valid? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to a recently lawsuit [thecrimson.com] against the RIAA on the legality of their tactics, I would question if the notices are legally valid or not.
Re:What is legally valid? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's even funnier is that the DMCA isn't the law at issue here - it's the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 that is being used against filesharers.
I wonder if there is some wit in the Tennessee legislature having a good laugh at the expense of the RIAA?
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I was thinking the same thing, what does the DMCA have to do with file-sharing?
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I submitted a story (still pending) to slashdot yesterday about that very law. Its constitutionality is being tested in court. [google.com] A Google list of stories about it is linked.
I saw it in the Chicago Tribune yesterday, I believe it was an AP story. It quoted slashdot's own "New York County Lawyer" Ray Beckerman and linked his blog.
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Re:What is legally valid? (Score:5, Interesting)
Right, now they have an incentive to spend up to $1.5M per year challenging bogus DMCA notices instead of rolling over.
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I sense a huge uptick in the number of infringement notices sent to Tennessee schools.
Who determines if they're legally valid?
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Of course the third (and most expensive) option is to pay off the legislators, as I'm sure the RIAA did.
Re:What is legally valid? (Score:4, Informative)
Neither. The law specifically states that if their reasonable efforts aren't enough, no one can do anything to them.
Here's the portion that's relevant. [state.tn.us]
(b) Nothing in this section shall:
(3) Waive the protections available to Internet service
providers under 17 U.S.C. 512;
(4) Subject public institutions of higher education to any
suit whether for monetary damages, injunctive relief, or any cause
of action whatsoever;
(5) Be deemed or construed to waive or abrogate in any
way the sovereign immunity of the state, the public institutions of
higher education, or any officer or employee of the state or the
public institutions of higher education or waive or abrogate in any
way the immunity of the state, the public institutions of higher
education, or any officer or employee of the state or the public
institution of higher education from suit under the 11th
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Even though it is law, there is no threat to not following it or not doing enough or whatever. They follow the DMCA notices as required by law, Keep their immunities, and do something insignificant and call it reasonable.
Of course I would doubt that the making reasonable efforts would even come into play at all. The law says notices of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. This has nothing to do with P2P or file sharing in general. The file sharing would come under the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999. Of course if some one knows their content is being hosted there, the DMCA take down would be valid. It will be interesting to see how this actually plays out.
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It's a good question -- I know that DMCA takedown notices generally must be acted on immediately, whether actually valid or not, and the burden then falls on the accused to fire a counter-notice.
One of the more disgusting parts is that the takedown notice doesn't carry any kind of penalty, while the counter-notice requires the accused to claim "under penalty of perjury" that they do, in fact, have the right to do that.
So, does this require said notices to actually be proven valid? If so, I'd suggest univers
Indie Music (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop listening to garbage music that corporate America wants you to buy. Indie music is free and you can't be sued for downloading it freely, because it's offered as a promotional gimmick to sell concert tickets. Many Indie bands advocate people sharing purchased copies of their albums, because musicians know that this freely sharing of music creates more fans. Look at Radiohead... how much did they earn on that album they released as donor-ware?
Sure you can apply all the regulations you want but you're just excluding people from your products in the long run.
Closed P2P (Score:2, Insightful)
Another approach to fighting RIAA and MPAA would be to create a kind of digital fingerprint process that would allow Indie bands and film makers to freely release their stuff over a closed P2P utilizing user accounts. This type of thing has been attempted in the past with great failure, but it's possible that with the proper interest, a push to exclude greedy practices from infiltrating P2P networks would be essential.
A theory of mine is that many record labels would want to release their stuff for free on
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Surely just a good torrent site where you know that everything tracked is provided by the artists, and the copyright status is known and allows sharing etc. would do the trick. In fact something like it probably exists already.
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If by "fingerprint" you mean something giving you access, you're talking about DRM, which is unacceptable.
If by "fingerprint" you mean a watermark, to identify people who share songs, that might work, but it generally means either adding a bit of metadata (which is easily stripped out), or some sort of stenography (which may decrease quality and impact compressibility).
And a watermark wouldn't actually work with P2P, since if it's metadata applied by the client, it's that much easier to realize it's happeni
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If by "fingerprint" you mean something giving you access, you're talking about DRM, which is unacceptable.
Unacceptable to whom? Not to most of the music-listening public.
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[quote]Many Indie bands advocate people sharing purchased copies of their albums, because musicians know that this freely sharing of music creates more fans.[/quote]
They do that until they get big, then they often start complaining about all this sharin' goin' on. Most people generally advocate what they think is best for them right now, even if that's different than what helped them get where they are.
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Indie Music is free? Since when ?
Many bands on independent labels or bands pushing their own recorded cds actually charge for this.
While bands may advocate sharing, I would not go so far as to say it is free, especially not in the legal sense of the word.
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Look, I don't care what music you listen to. I don't care. Stop turning this into a religious argument.
I like mainstream music. I don't care what you think about it - don't deride me for liking it, or put more eloquently, don't persecute me because my beliefs are different than yours.
Wishfull thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes I need some detachment from slashdot to be able to keep reading. I know it's stupid and insensitive and wrong on many levels but I have to say it.
News like this give me the same feelings as horrible wars in third world countries. The more I learn the more revulsion I feel and it reaches a point where I simply detach and start thinking about something else. I transport myself to the little world around myself where those things simply don't happen.
I know about the "...now they come after me and there's nobody else left to care." parable, but still, I need a beer and a quiet mind to deal with extreme evil, or, as in this case, with extreme idiocy/corruption.
Thats too bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
It just seems like the population doesn't get to participate in democracy anymore. Other than record companies, who could possibly think this makes sense? Or demand that such a law should be passed?
As far as music goes, I haven't heard anything worth buying in a while anyway. And I certainly wouldn't expect to hear it on the radio (they aren't giving us any other options atm). For now I'll just keep my torrents seeding and buy merch from the bands I do like, which funny enough, are mostly all from 1980 or before, so they've all got their mansions already anyhow.
Hey record labels, your biggest market (for touring bands anyway) is college students. Why do you guys want to get rid of all of that free marketing? (word of mouth, mix CD's etc.) Get a clue.
Re:Thats too bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
The population has access to all the democratic participation that they can afford.
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Got that right :(
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I wouldn't call that "democratic", I'd call it "plutocratic".
I'd rather live in a democracy than a plutocracy... too late?
As a Tennessean, may I say (Score:4, Interesting)
The end of residential computer networks (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were a university, I'd take this as my cue to disconnect the residential university network from the campus network and outsource the connectivity. The students would have to VPN in if they wanted access to campus services.
This would probably be cheaper than complying with this law, and even if it weren't, it would send a message to the lawmakers to be mindful of the law of unintended consequences.
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...or send a bill to the RIAA for implementing their protection system
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Residential networks make it easy to set up services that students need without the hassle of diving out VPN software and having to troubleshoot that all day.
From experience, it seems that every university is going to have a bit of its own software to distribute anyway. From SSH clients to Kerberos-enabled printers...
Furthermore, your average college student won't even know what VPN means let alone how to install, run, and use one.
Your average college student knows how to use WoW, and P2P, and many other things that operate on the same principle -- start this program, (possibly) type a password, then you have access to these services.
Now, granted, the simpler and smarter solution is to provide all network services over something which can be secured -- most of it as HTTPS web
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I agree. If this law is focused on universities then what you do is transfer ownership of the P2P abusers Internet access to a 3rd party. Be it the local city (MUNI WIFI), DSL, or Cable Modems. Someone this law is not applicable to.
Make a deal so every dorm get's Internet access, but it is not provided by the University. I'm sure some hole in the law exists which enables removing this burden.
Block Internet Access on the student/residential VLAN, providing only local networking. Then prohibit P2P on the
Like they don't have anything bettet to do.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Unconstitutional = unreasonable (Score:3, Interesting)
[R]easonably attempt to prevent the infringement of copyrighted works over the institution's computer and network resources
Well violating the students' constitutional rights seems pretty unreasonable to me, so the whole law is moot IMHO.
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You have a constitutional right to infringe copyrights?
Or maybe you have a constitutional right to use the University's network in any way you wish?
Or maybe you think that 'privacy' applies on private networks and land?
There are plenty of reasons that this won't work as the RIAA wants, but this isn't one of them.
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A blanket of 50 John Doe notices of infringement based on IP addresses do not count as valid identification of infringement. It has been refuted many times already.
Or maybe you think that 'privacy' applies on private networks and land?
Yes, that's generally what the terms private and privacy mean.
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The problem is making taxpayers carry the burden of a dying industry to keep their executives well paid, not your delusions of privacy where you've explicitly been told you have none.
Try reading the terms of service you've agreed to before you go for that "unconstitutional" angle so quickly.
Making others do your policing (Score:2)
I hate laws that essentially force others to pick up the bill for a special interest group's policing.
If the RIAA wants universities patrolled, let the RIAA pony up the money. For example, the RIAA could create some kind of contract with universities to have this done, if they really care that much. (Of course, I'd rather the RIAA just go away.)
The role of a university is education, and their budgets are limited enough. The idea that future tuition will probably be hiked to offset this kind of unnecessar
Terrorism (Score:2)
Ladies and gentlemen, RIAA are the mafia of the 21th century.
Doing the maths (Score:2)
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How will it cost to give the mail cops more real cop powers?
Tennessee? (Score:3, Insightful)
At first I thought, "With the economy being what it is, I can't believe that a state would pass such an expensive statute." Then I remembered that Tennessee is the home of Nashville. So perhaps that is why the RIAA has so much pull there.
Best of luck RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
As an IT professional working at one of these TN universities I can report that the budget crunch currently going on in education (the aggresive growth policies that served the endowments so well in the past were mostly real estate driven) will limit the resources these new directives are allocated. In fact, we're actually considering open source solutions for the first time since I've worked here. Pretty sure the RIAA's financial well being is not at the top of our list.
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The problem is it's not "best of luck" I'm pretty sure the law has some teeth should you not comply. It doesn't matter that there's no money for it; any discretionary budget will get soaked up - think upgrades (you really didn't need that new comp lab did you?)
Unless this law is struck down your uni will either do what the STATE wants or lose state support, perhaps accreditation, funding. This is a compliance issue now, not a "good luck" issue.
If you think you're in a budget crisis now, tell the RIAA "be
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Unless this law is struck down your uni will either do what the STATE wants or lose state support, perhaps accreditation, funding. This is a compliance issue now, not a "good luck" issue.
The state is not responsible for accreditation. We are not a state institution and do not rely on the state for any funding. The contention is between the development of our alumni relations (donations) and spending money on enforcing another organizations business model. I would be shocked if we voluntarily spent money
ennessee Budget Shortfall Could Reach $800 Million (Score:4, Interesting)
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Corporate welfare at its best! (Or worst?) (Score:2)
Residential network = ISP? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hit them where it hurts (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop buying music and movies. Yes that includes the ones in iTunes.
No mattr how loud you complain, if you still are giving them your money, nothing will get solved.
You have to be the change you want to see in the world - Ghandi
Arguably Unconstitutional (Score:3, Informative)
With the 1978 complete rewrite of the copyright law, and especially the Berne Convention Accession in the 1980s, it's arguable that as far as copyright is concerned, Congress has decided to completely preempt the field of copyright with respect to everything except pre-February 15, 1972 sound recordings (which aren't federally copyrighted anyway) and thus no state has authority to require or permit anything with respect to copyright (except to set rules on the copying of uncopyrightable sound recordings), and this law is in all probability unconstitutional. (The place to go to regulate copyrighted works or their use or misuse is Congress.)
This seems to be on the same level as attempts by local organizations to regulate use of WiFi, such as universities prohibiting students from running their own wireless routers, or airports trying to prohibit lessees from running their own WiFi, only to have the FCC publicly announce that neither homeowners associations, nor municipalities, nor special districts, nor state governments have any authority to regulate the use of spectrum and only the FCC has any authority to regulate what spectrum may be used and to set the terms and conditions for its use.
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Really.... "reasonably attempt" and only if there are fifty or more "legally valid" notices...
The kind of legislation made by lawyers to increase the amount of time they get to charge customers for litigation.
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Good luck with that.
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Apparently someone shot you in the head.
Only the right side died.
So you're a judge, also? (Score:2, Interesting)
> I'm not an idiot, I can tell when content is infringing copyright or not, and I'll deal with it.
That's a good one! Look at the movie "Charade", for example. It was hosted for quite a while on archive.org because it was originally screened without a copyright notice. The MPAA found some loophole and got it taken down....
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No loophole. Under the Berne convention, all works are automatically copyrighted, notice or no notice, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Re:So you're a judge, also? (Score:4, Insightful)
How the US managed to pass a law that retroactively (and, therefore, unconstitutionally) extended copyright terms 10 years ago is beyond me, but it happened.
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Really now? You somehow know the inviolate checksums of every possible variation of every copyrighted work ever produced? WoW!!! I mean WOW!!! That's just amazing...
Do you happen to have a calendar of all future cataclismic events as well? Just asking, cause you could save the human race a lot of suffering if you'd share it...
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Really now? You somehow know the inviolate checksums of every possible variation of every copyrighted work ever produced? WoW!!! I mean WOW!!! That's just amazing... Do you happen to have a calendar of all future cataclismic events as well? Just asking, cause you could save the human race a lot of suffering if you'd share it...
I couldn't have put it in better words :)
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The problem is that they're already getting their funding cut back by roughly $21 million and they're being legally forced to allocate $7.5 million to this bullshit, along with $1.5 million per year until this get repealed, money would I could think of far far better uses for.
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[R]easonably attempt to prevent the infringement of copyrighted works over the institution's computer and network resources.
First off, it's not clear who gets to define what "reasonably" means in this context. Secondly, student equipment would be your problem under the wording above, as it appears to cover anything using your network, not just devices you directly manage.
And finally, it's government. I'd be willing to bet that most of the network admins who wou