[CAnet - news] Free the Music at our universities and Save the Planet

For more information on this item please visit my blog at 
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/ or http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com
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 [Once again the MPAA and the RIAA are up to their dirty tricks of trying to
block downloading of music and videos to students at universities by
attempting to restrict funding to universities unless the institutions agree
to alternatives such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music and
motion picture industry.

One possible solution is for the universities and Educause to call the MPAA
and RIAA's bluff and take the high road by instituting "bits for carbon"
trading programs at their respective institutions.

Universities could offer voluntary programs where students pay a premium on
anything that creates a carbon footprint such as parking fees or residence
power consumption etc. In exchange the students would be granted free access
to the music and film industry libraries.  As well, part of the "bits for
carbon" fee  would be used by the university, working in partnership with
the national research and education networks to set up an extreme high speed
bandwidth connection to distributed content servers to enable fast download
of the RIAA and MPAA approved content.

The "bits for carbon" fee would encourage students to reduce use of their
automobiles and/or reduce their energy consumption within their residences
or other activities.  The university could also undertake energy audits on
the students activities to earn additional valuable carbon credits, in the
same businesses now earn carbon credits for promoting tele-working,
tele-presence etc

But instead of paying the RIAA and MPAA actual money for the designated
authorized music and video services, they instead would be paid in
equivalent value of carbon credits.  The music and motion picture could then
possibly double down their money by instituting their own carbon reduction
schemes and trade in these credits or they could sell them to a variety of
carbon trading brokers. -- BSA]





[Note:  This item expands on the call to action from EDUCAUSE that I  
posted earlier.  DLH]

Democrats: Colleges must police copyright, or else

By Declan McCullagh
<http://www.news.com/Democrats-Colleges-must-police-copyright%2C-or-else/210
0-1028_3-6217943.html 
 >

Story last modified Fri Nov 09 18:19:33 PST 2007


New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not  
just deterrents but also "alternatives" to peer-to-peer piracy, such  
as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their  
students, on penalty of losing all financial aid for their students. 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.

The prospect of losing a combined total of nearly $100 billion a year  
in federal financial aid, coupled with the possibility of overzealous  
copyright-bots limiting the sharing of legitimate content, has alarmed  
university officials.

"Such an extraordinarily inappropriate and punitive outcome would  
result in all students on that campus losing their federal financial  
aid--including Pell grants and student loans that are essential to  
their ability to attend college, advance their education, and acquire  
the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century economy," a letter  
from university officials to Congress written on Wednesday said.  
"Lower-income students, those most in need of federal financial aid,  
would be harmed most under the entertainment industry's proposal."

The letter was signed by the chancellor of the University of Maryland  
system, the president of Stanford University, the general counsel of  
Yale University, and the president of Penn State.

They stress that the "higher education community recognizes the  
seriousness of the problem of illegal peer-to-peer file sharing and  
has long been committed to working with the entertainment industry to  
find a workable solution to the problem." In addition, the letter says  
that colleges and universities are responsible for "only a small  
fraction of illegal file sharing."

The MPAA says the university presidents are overreacting. An MPAA  
representative sent CNET News.com a list of campuses that have begun  
filtering files transferred on their networks, including the  
University of Florida (Red Lambda technology); the University of Utah  
(network monitoring and Audible Magic); and Ohio's Wittenberg  
University (Audible Magic).

For each school taking such steps, the MPAA says, copyright complaints  
dramatically decreased, in some cases going from 50 a month to none.

The MPAA's Martinez did warn that the consequences of violating the  
proposed rules would be stiff: "Because it is added to the current  
reporting requirements that universities already have through the  
Secretary of Education, it would have the same penalties for  
noncompliance as any of the others requirements under current law."

Neither the Recording Industry Association of America nor the  
Association of American Universities was available for comment on  
Friday.

[snip]
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