Re: RIAA DMCA notices malformed this school year

["Paul B. Henson" <henson () ACM ORG>]

On Wed, 10 Sep 2008, Tracy Mitrano wrote:

> that is now the "discipline" for first time offenders.  [For repeat
> offenders, as you note per 512(a) we "terminate" ... their account for
> four weeks.]

What action would you take if a student claimed innocence? While they most
likely were sharing copyrighted files (I think it is a rare college student
nowadays that does not) the investigative techniques of the **AA are not
exactly technologically sound, and hardly satisfy the requirement of
reasonable doubt (or even preponderance of evidence for civil cases). We've
received complaints where the filename was similar to a song, but the
actual content was created by and belonged to a faculty member. We have
received complaints listing an IP address in our /16 for a subnet which was
not even allocated and which could not have possibly generated traffic. And
then there was the experiment (http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/) which
resulted in notices received for printers 8-/.


> approaches not only to DMCA but to the whole panoply of challenges that
> higher education faces in this area, and especially in light of the new
> provisions in the Reauthorized Higher Education Act.

Don't even get me started on the lunacy of the federal government
attempting to pervert institutions of higher education into private
corporation's personal copyright police :(. When did "government of the
people, by the people, for the people" turn into "government of the
politicians, by the lobbyists, for the corporations" ?

> So in short: we do act on the notices, but we do so as a matter of
> policy, and in the spirit of our educational missions, and not because we
> believe that the law requires us to do so specifically when we are the
> conduit and most definitely not out of a fear of content industry.

Copyright was originally intended to foster the public good. Authors were
granted exclusive control over their works for a limited period of time as
an encouragement to create such works, which would eventually become public
domain for the enrichment and betterment of all. It was never intended to
guarantee that Disney could milk Mickey Mouse for all eternity (considering
how many of their works are based on public domain material it's awfully
hypocritical of them). Currently copyright has been extended to seventy
years after death; anyone like to bet on the likelihood of another
extension around 2036?

Personally, I have no sympathy for the copyright woes of the RIAA and MPAA.
If they're going to change the rules of the game, why should people still
have to play? Technology has destroyed their business model, the government
should no more try to artificially prop it up than it should have attempted
to prevent the telephone from replacing the telegraph.

If I had my druthers, we would do the absolute minimum required by law
while educating our students about the historical purpose of copyright and
attempting to push the balance of government a bit farther back to the
"people" direction...


--
Paul B. Henson  |  (909) 979-6361  |  http://www.csupomona.edu/~henson/
Operating Systems and Network Analyst  |  henson () csupomona edu
California State Polytechnic University  |  Pomona CA 91768