August 16, 2007
A Fight That Feels Futile
As The Boston Globe reports, several local colleges are preparing for the fall by stepping up their efforts to prevent illegal music and movie downloading. But officials at those institutions don’t seem terribly optimistic that their next wave of antipiracy programs will actually work.
“I thought we were pretty strenuous before, but it hasn’t worked,” said John Dubach, chief information officer at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which placed high on a recent list of colleges that had received the most copyright complaints from the recording industry. The university has urged students to use Ruckus, a free download service, and campus officials are putting antipiracy posters in residence halls.
But so far, nothing has worked. “This whole system has got to change somehow,” Mr. Dubach told The Globe.
Nearby Brandeis is trying a different tactic: The institution is hosting a series of “digital self-defense” seminars for students, with the pragmatic title “Don’t Get Sued.” But Perry Hanson, Brandeis’s vice president and vice provost for libraries and information technology, described a “total disconnect” between what campus officials have said about piracy and what students have seemed to believe. Is there any type of antipiracy education program that colleges can actually feel sanguine about? —Brock Read
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College kids are not stupid. Why pay $12 to see a movie; $18 to hear a song or two?
There are too many people in the long pipeline that leach the profits associated with entertainmemt. Until prices come down, peer-sharing practices will stay high. That seems only right in an unfair practice environment.
As Shakespeare said: Kill all the lawyers!
— Joseph J. Aug 17, 09:01 AM #
Those college kids who want to get jobs in industries that depend on intellectual property—which covers all publishing and entertainment media, not to mention all those companies whose patents are the basis of their business—better learn to respect IP or their prospects for being hired will not be great. So, yes, those college kids are stupid!
— Sandy Thatcher Aug 17, 12:50 PM #
College kids are not stupid. Why pay $12 to see a movie; $18 to hear a song or two?
There are too many people in the long pipeline that leach the profits associated with entertainmemt. Until prices come down, peer-sharing practices will stay high. That seems only right in an unfair practice environment.
As Shakespeare said: Kill all the lawyers! JoeJ
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JoeJ
Shakespeare did not ‘say it’ / nor was he promoting it…. he wrote a story where a player said it.
In context, it’s a story about bringing down the government/ and existing societal norms [possibly creating chaos] by the player suggesting: ‘first, we kill the attorneys – then we …..’
See also Comment 2 here —- from SandyT.
JackC // an attorney
— Jackc Aug 18, 01:15 AM #