MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-03-20 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] Lock 'em Up
|
I agree
If they started rounding people up as felons, people would finally understand how fucken stupid the law is
Lockem all up, and their parents
Ruben
On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 09:47:03AM -0500, rc wrote:
>
> Marking File Traders as Felons
> By Katie Dean
>
> Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58081,00.html
>
> 02:00 AM Mar. 19, 2003 PT
>
> College students, listen up: Don't mess with Texas.
>
> Texas Rep. John Carter, that is.
>
> During a recent hearing of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and
> Intellectual Property, the Republican congressman said jailing college
> students who download copyrighted music would help stop piracy.
>
> "What these kids don't realize is that every time they pull up music and
> movies and make a copy, they are committing a felony under the United
> States code," Carter said in an interview. "If you were to prosecute
> someone and give them three years, I think this would act as a
> deterrent."
>
> But some university officials say they have stepped up efforts to stop
> piracy on their networks, and packing kids off to prison won't solve
> the problem.
>
> "I can't see turning millions of college students into criminals," said
> Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University. "We'd have
> to build a lot of new prisons to hold the lawbreakers engaged in piracy
> of copyrighted materials."
>
> Carter said making an example of a few college students could go a long
> way toward bringing home the message that sharing and duplicating
> copyrighted materials is wrong.
>
> "Sometimes it takes the shock value of someone actually being punished,"
> Carter said. "In this particular instance it might also send a message
> to these kids that are operating on these networks that, 'Hey, I better
> stop.'"
>
> Students would learn quickly that copying even one album is not worth
> the potential punishment, he said.
>
> "That information sent out to kids would be a real eye opener," he said.
> "I think you would have a 50 percent falloff, at least, of these people
> (who are pirating files).
>
> "I'm not out to get the kids, I'm out to get their attention."
>
> Carter, now in his first term in the House, served as a state district
> judge for 20 years in Williamson County, known as the Lone Star State's
> toughest county for criminals. If rampant file sharing was going on
> back home, he said, people would likely be prosecuted.
>
> "A felony conviction is a terrible thing to have on your record," Carter
> said. Among other things, he said, a person would not be able to become
> an officer in the U.S. military if convicted of a felony.
>
> A statement from the Recording Industry Association of America seems to
> back Carter's point of view.
>
> "We support criminal prosecution of those who break the law and believe
> that effective deterrence is a necessary part of combating piracy," an
> RIAA spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail.
>
> In October, the RIAA sent a letter to 2,300 colleges and universities
> urging them to "impose effective remedies against violators." In
> response, colleges have "dramatically" stepped up their responses to
> piracy problems, according to Sheldon Steinbach, general counsel for
> the American Council on Education.
>
> "Although one would like to have a simple solution to the problem of
> misuse of university bandwidth, the congressman's proposed solution
> does not go to the core elements of the issue," Steinbach said of
> Carter's push to prosecute college file traders. "There is no simple
> answer."
>
> Some students have been downloading copyrighted files since they were in
> junior high and seem to think it's a perfectly legitimate activity,
> Steinbach said. When they get to college, their ability to keep doing
> it is facilitated by many universities' large network capacity.
>
> "We have a unique opportunity and obligation to teach young men and
> women about the rights and obligations surrounding intellectual
> property," he said.
>
> Spanier said Penn State's approach is to educate students about illegal
> file trading and to enforce the rules within the university judicial
> system.
>
> At Penn State, students are limited to 1.5 GB of inbound or outbound
> traffic per week. If students exceed that allotment, they are given a
> series of warnings. After the third warning, their network access is
> terminated.
>
> If the school receives a notice from the RIAA, Motion Picture
> Association of America or other group that a student has violated
> copyright, the student will lose his or her network access and the
> school's office of judicial affairs will investigate the allegations.
>
> Penn State also has an ongoing educational program on the topic of file
> sharing.
>
> Universities could also explore developing a licensing arrangement with
> a music service that could give students free but legal access to
> music, Spanier said. The IT staff at Penn State is looking into this
> very idea.
>
> "In the eyes of some members of Congress, it would have a way of turning
> thousands of criminals into good citizens overnight," he said.
>
> One college network administrator said threatening jail time is not
> likely to stop illegal file trading.
>
> "I'm not sure that approaching this with a bigger hammer is going to
> help very much," said John Lerchey, computer and network security
> administrator at Carnegie Mellon University. "Whatever they are going
> to do (to discourage illegal file trading) has got to be consistent,
> and it's got to be very widespread.
>
> "I've heard from students that as long as the chance of them getting
> caught remains low, they're likely to continue to do peer-to-peer file
> sharing, regardless if they are violating copyright laws," Lerchey
> said.
>
> Colleges have not found an effective way to stop the problem of online
> piracy despite an increase in notices of violations from copyright
> holders.
>
> Lerchey said that in the past few months, Carnegie Mellon has received,
> on average, about four requests per week from groups like the MPAA and
> RIAA to take action against pirates. Over the past few weeks, though,
> Universal Studios has bumped up the number of notices it sends to CMU
> to 20 or 30 per day, he said.
>
> When a request comes in, the offending machine is disconnected from the
> network, and the user typically loses network access for a set period
> of time. The school has not had a problem with repeat offenders.
>
> Still, for the time being, illegal file trading continues to grow on
> college campuses. Penn State's Spanier testified before the
> congressional subcommittee on intellectual property that it's a fair
> estimate that thousands of students on Penn's campus -- and other
> universities around the country -- illegally download copyrighted
> materials.
>
> "I actually think (piracy is) aggravating for everyone involved,"
> Lerchey said. "It does take up time and energy -- there is a lot of
> things that I would rather be doing with my time. It's certainly an
> inconvenience for the people who get busted, and it's likely costing
> the MPAA and RIAA money because they are spending a lot of time looking
> for this stuff."
> --
> The Microsoft Crackpipe - Everyone uses it, what harm could it be?
> --
> Geek Code v3.12
> GB/MC/MU/PA d- s+:+ a C++ L+++ P E- W+++ N++ o? K? w+ O? M? V? PS+ PE+
> Y+ PGP t+ 5 X R- tv++ b++ DI D G e++ h-- r++ y+
> --
>
>
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