That'd be the short title of a new bill introduced Friday, which says (pages 411-412) schools shall to the extent practicable
, develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.
It also says (p412) there may be grants to schools for related things including cost-effective technological solutions
. Besides possibly only applying to the deterrents and not alternatives, it's a competitive process which really means it's an unfunded mandate for many (most?) schools. Still not what I want my tax dollars going towards. While the arguments for education on copyright and legalities of sharing things for which they don't have permission could be valid, forcing providing alternatives and technology to attempt to stop it is ridiculous. With the way things are already moving as existing technological measures are implemented and improved, there will be no way to tell the difference between legitimate and illegal p2p transfers (unless one is a party in the transfer). Anything built to stop illegal transfers will have negative effects on legitimate activities.
There's a bit of an article about it at CNET too.
There is a technology available today that can differentiate between legitimate and contaminated P2P and Bit torrent networks. The technology can stop contaminated P2P and Bit torrent networks and allow all legitimate networks to pass unimpeded without invading user privacy. Go to www.safemedia.com and see the future
If the p2p traffic is unencrypted, yea it can be identified. Some products even claim to track encrypted streams using fingerprinting type techniques, but those would depend on weak encryption (a properly encrypted stream can't be differentiated from random data). Tracking is likely possible with some of the products today, especially if they're willing to sit in the middle of the transfer. As long as p2p software goes the direction of adding real encryption, and they have methods for confidence in the keys of the other end (protection against man-in-the-middle attacks), trying to identify traffic is not going to be possible.
How/Where did you find the bill??? I have been looking to read the bill and couldn't find it! Admittedly, my search skills leave something to be desired.
It doesn't seem quite finished. They will probably finish Wednesday. Even though the bill includes important reforms such as grants for Native American college students and persons with disabilites, it is flawed. I completely agree that severely limiting transfers will only impede the legitimate open access to ideas, etc.
The URL has been floating around on several higher-ed maliing lists since Friday. There's also a press release which can be found through edlabor.house.gov, but I'm not sure of the quickest way to find it if one didn't already know it was there.
Have a look at this article which probes the MPAA for more information about their decision to promote the bill and what the academic world's response to it has been. It is one of the more in depth articles about the proposed bill:
http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2007/11/27/govtActsOnFileSharing
Thanks for the link - it does give a lot more info on their side. Nothing in there seems to justify what they're asking though, except possibly in the very short term (which is probably all they care about anyways as they'll just switch tactics when things change, where as the schools have to deal with long-term implications of this).
No problem. I agree that even though writer Kamil Dada from Stanford gives us a lot of information, the article doesn't help justify the MPAA's position on the bill. I think it is completely unacceptable that the clauses have been added into the bill. I think the MPAA tried to put across a positive message, but people should be persistent in fighting against them and the RIAA. I am not saying that I necessarily agree with illegal p2p downloading, I'm just saying that going to Congress to deal with it isn't the best way to do it.
Also the House Education and Labor Committee unanimously passed the Act, so the bill is one step closer to being passed.
Copyright ©2000-2008 Jeremy Mooney (jeremy-at-qux-dot-net)
I don't agree with the bill at all. While I am not surprised by it, there are many other better things to do with tax dollars. Or they could just not take as much.