EFFector Vol. 17, No. 33 September 10, 2004 warns that the Piracy Deterrence and
Education Act "is now ready for a vote by the entire House of Representatives."
And I'm sure most of us would agree that the following statistics make sense:
The PDEA would impose criminal penalties on those who share more than 1,000 infringing files on a peer-to-peer network. Recent surveys by Ruckus Network show that the average college student who uses P2P file-sharing software shares 1,100 files.
Stallman's The Right to Read comes to mind, doesn't it? Personally, I don't think protesting this will do much other than postpone it and maybe lessen the severity of P2P prosecution legislation in the long run. If it doesn't make it through this time, the content industries will just lobby for it again. And again. And again. It will eventually pass in one form or another.
Don't think I wouldn't mind at all being wrong in this prediction. But historically the trend seems to be going the wrong way when it comes to intellectual property.
The EFF sometimes takes a while to make their email newsletter available online, but you should be able to read the full message through their archives in the next few days.
Marx
I'm taking a course over in the philosophy department again this semester (my 4th so far). This one is Marxist theory, and yeah, you know I'm just bubbling over with ways to use this theory to describe what's happening right now with digital rights management. It's almost hard to sit still when you read passages describing how the old guard tried to use law and government to protected outmoded economic systems and enslave the proles. If everybody agreed to obey whatever law the tyrants passed down to them, we'd still have a king and most likely be tilling a farm for some duke or earl.
I see absolutely no reason why our government should be protecting companies represented by the RIAA. Why? What have these companies done for the public to warrant state protection? It is so easy to forget what these companies actually do: They record and distribute music. If there is another way to do this that is faster, better, and cheaper, then why the hell not go with it? The RIAA simply can't compete with P2P, but these businessmen aren't just going to go home and look for another job. No, they're going to swing money around Congress and try to last as long as possible. The same can be said for the publishing industry, and we're playing into that bullshit everytime we start ranting and raving about plagiarism, but that's another story.
I'm sure Ma Bell was upset when so many people started using cell phones and were able to totally bypass their proprietary copper wire network. Wouldn't it be great if Ma Bell was able to bribe enough congress persons to make cell phones illegal? Or force cell phone users to pay Ma Bell for every call, even if the system totally bypassed Ma Bell's network? Of course, not. But people are too damn stupid to see that the same thing is happening with the RIAA and P2P.