[FC-discuss] House passes COAA with p2p provisions intact

[Matthew J. Agnello]

> I'm not at all trying to discourage organization and mobilization on
> this issue, I'm just trying to carefully identify the factors I view  
> as
> most problematic, so they can be dealt with. I'm glad this was brought
> up here.

I tried explaining the problem to my mom. It's not an easy thing for  
adults to swallow. But they do identify with the prospect of losing  
federal funding for something morally questionable.

So there are a couple things that any campaign around this issue need  
to address: 1) Establish spying on students as morally questionable,  
2) separate the p2p issue from piracy, and 3) tie refusal to spy to  
losing federal funding.

If a university shows some moral integrity and refuses to implement  
filtering/spying tech, they lose federal funding. These two have to be  
tied together as strongly as possible in people's minds. As a privacy  
issue and a piracy issue, it's questionable what to support. But when  
passing this bill means a tuition hike, which means YOU are paying to  
catch a couple bad kids (MPAA stats are a lot lower than they used to  
be now)[1], people are more likely to look beyond the philosophical  
question of privacy and piracy, which are weaker arguments than the  
government punishing universities that stick up for their students.

Best,
// Matt

[1] http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080122-oops-mpaa-admits-college-piracy-numbers-grossly-inflated.html


----------
Matt Agnello
http://www.hungryfilmmaker.com
< matt.agnello at gmail.com >



On Feb 10, 2008, at 11:12 AM, Conor Schaefer wrote:

> I'm not at all trying to discourage organization and mobilization on
> this issue, I'm just trying to carefully identify the factors I view  
> as
> most problematic, so they can be dealt with. I'm glad this was brought
> up here.

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