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

[Gavin Baker]

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Matthew J. Agnello 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.
|
| 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.

I would think the easy way to explain this is, "Special interests want
Congress to force universities to spy on students and play copyright
cops, at risk of losing student aid. If a school didn't play along, the
whole SCHOOL could lose financial aid, regardless of the individual
actions of the students."

Forget about explaining non-infringing uses blah blah.. Go for the gut.
That's exactly what this provision is designed to do, and we have to
treat it that way.

Innocent students could lose their financial aid -- their ticket to a
good career and a better life. That's no way to run educational policy.

| 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 <mailto: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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|
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- --
Gavin Baker
http://www.gavinbaker.com/
gavin at gavinbaker.com

an invitation to lunch
HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?
when I only have 16 cents and 2
packages of yoghurt
there's a lesson in that, isn't there
like in Chinese poetry when a leaf falls?
hold off on the yoghurt till the very
last, when everything may improve
~    Frank O'Hara
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