Young Students an Easy and Convenient Target

In March the RIAA (Recording Industry) started a crackdown again on illegal downloads. In the previous three years the RIAA filed suits against about a thousand college network file sharing users. In March they planned to do a thousand in just a few months time.

Since then, over 30 students at the University of Kansas and a student at Washburn University in Topeka have been targets clocking 35 people in the state of Kansas alone that have been sued. And that’s only in Kansas!! Around 26,000 people nationally have been sued.

If you saw my blog about developing a more creative culture and the democratization of techniques used to “say things differently,” as Larry Lessig said, then you know about my gripe with generations who are clearly out of touch with our generations means of expression. The RIAA is another.

"Anyone with a $1500 computer who can take sounds and images from around us and use them to say things differently. These tools of creativity have become tools of speech. It is a literacy for this generation. This is how our kids speak. This is how our kids think. It is what your kids are. As they increasingly understand digital technologies and their relationships to themselves." (emphasis added)

Now in response to this new use of culture, using digital technologies, the law has not greeted this (John Phillip) Sousa revival with very much common sense. Instead the architecture of copyright law and the architecture of digital technologies as they interact have produced the presumption that these activates are illegal. Because if copyright law at its core regulates things called “copies” that in the digital world the one fact we can’t escape is that every single use of culture produces a copy. Every single use requires permission, you are a trespasser. . . . "

After talking over lunch with a friend of mine who is in the throws of a Media and Law class, she told me that essentially everything is copyrighted – and everything is illegal. It made me wonder how we could go back to a world without Jesus the Musical or the Endless Love of Bush and Blair

She went on to say that the RIAA is essentially targeting dumbasses (folks who don’t quite understand the severity of the law) as part of an education campaign rather than working to keep their technology current enough to satisfy their users who clearly must go outside the accepted norms. Most people who know what they are doing, rarely get caught.

Now it’s important to mention before I quote Lessig again, he is speaking more about mash-ups and the use of these kinds of technologies to create new pieces of art. I’m talking more about the specific targeting of young people by the RIAA to charge with piracy when there are larger and more serious people who are running operations that hurt the recording industry.

Lessig continues:

"Common sense here though, has not yet revolted - in response to this response the law has offered to these forms of creativity. Instead what we’ve seen is something much worse, than a revolt. There is a growing extremism that comes from both sides in this debate in response to this conflict with the law and the use of these technologies.

One side builds new technologies such as one recently announced that will automatically allow them to take down from sites like YouTube any content that has any copyrighted content in it whether or not there is a judgment of fair use that might be applied to that content.

And on the other side. Among our kids. There is a growing copyright abolitionism. A generation of that rejects the very notion of what copyright is supposed to do. Rejects copyright and believes that the law is nothing more than an ass to be ignored and to be fought at every opportunity possible. . ."

Life is opensource. Why can’t creativity and the products of such also be?

Jonathan Gater’s blog at the NYTimes has a link to this letter from officials at 4 universities:

“While [universities] generally support a separate provision in the bill that would require them to disclose their policies on file-sharing and to inform students of what is and is not legal, they do not want to be in the position of having to block certain online activities by their students – even though they say that they do not want their on-campus networks clogged by students illegally downloading copyrighted movies, television shows and music.

"You have the federal government requiring a nonprofit educational institution to develop plans to help a for-profit industry to earn more revenue from their students," said Matt Owens, assistant director of federal relations at the Association of American Universities. "It makes no sense. That's not what we're in the business of doing."

My frustration is in colleges and universities being easy targets for these folks. If you target them, chances are the administration will give you all the information you want to charge the student. And chances are that there is someone on a campus illegally downloading. Live off campus and the chances are lower that you’ll get targeted, arrested, or charged. Either way, its age profiling. Like pulling over someone with a graduation tassle hanging from their rearview mirror because the chances are they’re young and doing something wrong, targeting colleges and universities just as an easy place to screw a few kids over.

Lessig continues

“Now the balance I try to fight for, (I as any good liberal tried to fight by going to the government). Total mistake. Looked first to the courts and the legislatures to try and get them to do something to make this system make more sense. It failed partly because the courts are too passive, partly because the legislatures are too corrupted by which I don’t mean that there is bribery operating to stop real change but more the economy of influence that governs how Congress functions means that policy makers here will not understand this until its too late to fix it. So we need something different, we need a different kind of solution and the solution here in my view is a private solution that looks to legalize what it is to be young again and to realize the economic potential of that.”

Now the HEA Reauthorization Bill includes the following:

A massive education bill (747-page PDF) introduced into Congress contains a provision that would force colleges and universities to offer "technology-based deterrents" to file-sharing under the pain of losing all federal financial aid. Section 494 of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 is entitled "Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention" that could have just as easily been called "Motion Picture and Recording Industry Subsidies," as it could force schools into signing up for subscription-based services like Napster and Rhapsody.

Under the terms of the act, which is cosponsored by Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX), schools will have to inform students of their official policies about copyright infringement during the financial aid application and disbursement process. In addition, students will be warned about the possible civil and criminal penalties for file-sharing as well as the steps the schools take to prevent and detect illicit P2P traffic.

As the Consumerist puts it

“Have we no worse educational problems to worry about? Is Congress really prepared to tell a school, "Sorry, you've lost your funding because Billy is letting people download music on your network?"

Another person commenting says that he is ok with them informing students about policies but forcing schools into Napster and Rhapsody like services is pretty extreme.

This is interesting given the people who are getting kickbacks from the RIAA and MPA. Wonder if that money has anything to do with it…. Either way, its BS and its another way that both the RIAA and Congress is out of touch with our generation.