And people say the Republicans are crooked — they’re all the same..

I must let tell you that me & virtually everyone I’ve spoke to strongly opposes the “Digital Theft Prevention” requirements within the Higher Education Bill. It’s morally wrong to have such provisions in a education bill. I’m not saying I support digital theft but I do have very strong support for civil liberties on the Internet. Now I understand civil liberties get you nowhere with your special interest groups but there must be a time or something inside you that once stood up for the people instead of multinationals?

Filtering the Internet is wrong on campus or off campus because from it’s conception the Internet has been designed to be neutral network of information exchange. Also you should realize that it is the tech savvy generation that controls this beautiful machine not governments. If the government or educational institutions begin invading everyones privacy everything will begin to move to an encrypted design. How are you going to filter encrypted data? Inevitably any filters designed will be rendered obsolete by technical countermeasures. Of course your friends from the RIAA won’t tell you this they’re holding on for dear life to their crumbling business model. But so is life things come and go things change and they need to adapt to survive not destroy privacy & freedom of expression on the Internet to stop the inevitably day when music is no longer sold on plastic CDs but songs are downloaded from the convenience of home DRM-free at prices people can afford. I think the Internet has clearly shown the people demand it and if it’s not given to them they’ll find a way. Studies show that consumers are more then willing to pay for convenience and right now the alternatives provided by the music industry are over priced and DRM infected. If you think my idea is crazy take a look at allofmp3.com. They sold music DRM free at an affordable price and were one of the worlds most popular web sites within months. They competed against free music and won due the convenience. The problem with allofmp3 is it was a Russian based company that wasn’t paying right holders properly but if the music industry did the same thing properly it would be huge.

How can one morally include provisions that take away EDUCATION FUNDING in the interest of MONEY (copyrights)? How can one morally include provisions that force educational institutions to solicit a corporations “approved” downloading services to students? I read the response from the MPAA lawyer in Washington who justified it by saying

“When the government is subsidizing universities…and it discovers that those universities are spending a lot of taxpayers’ money to build digital networks that are being used primarily to allow college students to traffic in infringing content I think it’s perfectly legitimate for Congress to say wait a minute if we’re giving you money we don’t want it to be used to help college kids infringe copyright”

I’ve been running Internet networks for over a decade and this is one of the most preposterous things I’ve ever heard. They really count on you guys knowing absolutely nothing about how things like this actually cost! I could walk into a entire dorm that is completely disconnected from the Internet and have Internet to everyone in the building for less then $100. Now I understand computers etc cost money but the MPAA is claiming the network capacity to transfer the data is “a lot of taxpayers money” which is simply not true todays technology have rendered the costs minute. It’s especially not a lot of money when we’re talking about millions of dollars in education money they’re basically arguing to take away 100% of the education money because 1% is being used for the network infrastructure that can facilitate downloading copyrighted material.

Filters are also unreliable because they filter information that they should not. Have they explained to you exactly how they know the difference between a copyrighted movie and a home video a student is sending home to Mom? Believe me if these groups (RIAA MPA IFPI) had it there way they wouldn’t even try and figure out the difference they would just remove our civil liberty of sharing information across the Internet. You don’t believe me? This is exactly what they finished lobbying to do in the European parliament they had amendments added to simply block P2P sharing at an ISP level. The Committee on Culture and Education rejected all these amendments in the end however but they did come close. But my point is you will never please these people if you give in to their control they’ll only want more.