I have a lunch meeting with an attorney about piracy...

[aldamon]

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: aldamon
Pay the school to block the ports and bandwidth. Moral issues don't pay the bills.

No, the students do. Don't limit them. They paid for their bandwidth.

LOL. No they didn't. They paid to use the school's resources under the school's rules/terms.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: aldamon
LOL. No they didn't. They paid to use the school's resources under the school's rules/terms.

They do pay for it and yes, it is under the school's rules and terms. However, the OP pointed out that he believes that the school doesn't really care what the students download and that this whole thing is supposed to contribute to teaching the students a lesson about piracy. My argument is that it will teach them nothing. If the students living on campus can't download free music in their dorms then they will just copy the illegally downloaded media from their friends that live off campus then share it amongst each other throughout the dorms. I don't support a bunch of money spent to teach them something which ultimately doesn't have anything to do with improving the morals of the students. These businesses that want this to happen do not care about morality anyways. They just want to see their profit margins increase.

Fine. If they want to increase there profit margins by trying to reduce piracy then they can try to do so, but all I am asking here is that they don't use the student's tuition money to make that happen. That is messed up. Nor do I believe it is fair to restrict bandwidth uses because all students use a lot of bandwidth these days between sites that legally stream audio, video, and online gaming. While these are not academic related, everyone knows that part of college is having fun and these students don't have money. Entertainment through the use of the internet is a cheap way for them to relax so they can recharge and continue to do well in their studies without getting burnt out.

 

[BeeVo]

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: BeeVo

I don't believe the universities are that overly concernced with what students are downloading. I think that the industries see it as a hot bed for piracy and want to try to convince these schools either on moral issues or monetary issues to help them combat it.

If that is the case, then my advice is to skip your lunch with the attorney and drop the issue. Otherwise, you will just be wasting a lot of money which could be much better used elsewhere. As people have already stated in this thread, nothing you do will stop them from pirating so trying to teach them in this manner is dumb. Besides, this is a college. The student's tuition money should not be going towards programs whose purpose is to ultimately increase the profits of other large multi billion dollar businesses.

If bandwidth is an issue then just limit access to P2P. If you set any kind of bandwidth limits on the students then you are going to severely limit much more than pirated downloads which is not fair to them. Again, they do pay for it through tuition so it is their right to use it how they please.

I don't think you understand. The MPAA and RIAA go into all of this knowing it is a lost cause. They know that they can't stop piracy. If they don't actively defend their copyrights and intellectual property then any cases they bring before a judge will lose. That is one of the major points of copyrights and intellectual property, how aggresively are you trying to defend them?

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: BeeVo
I don't think you understand. The MPAA and RIAA go into all of this knowing it is a lost cause. They know that they can't stop piracy. If they don't actively defend their copyrights and intellectual property then any cases they bring before a judge will lose. That is one of the major points of copyrights and intellectual property, how aggresively are you trying to defend them?

That makes sense to me. While I don't share their opinions, I respect them and their right to defend them. Still, why should student's have their college tuition used for such things when it could be used for more useful purposes pertaining to the degree they are paying for? Why can't the RIAA/MPAA float the entire bill instead if this is going to happen on a college campus regardless? I don't feel this is fair to the students and I don't think that a lot of scholarship foundations would like to see their money that they gave the students for tuition being spent that way.

 

[BeeVo]

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: BeeVo
I don't think you understand. The MPAA and RIAA go into all of this knowing it is a lost cause. They know that they can't stop piracy. If they don't actively defend their copyrights and intellectual property then any cases they bring before a judge will lose. That is one of the major points of copyrights and intellectual property, how aggresively are you trying to defend them?

That makes sense to me. While I don't share their opinions, I respect them and their right to defend them. Still, why should student's have their college tuition used for such things when it could be used for more useful purposes pertaining to the degree they are paying for? Why can't the RIAA/MPAA float the entire bill instead if this is going to happen on a college campus regardless? I don't feel this is fair to the students and I don't think that a lot of scholarship foundations would like to see their money that they gave the students for tuition being spent that way.

I don't share their opinions but I can see the need to protect themselves to some degree. Also the MPAA/RIAA would be floating the bill for any technologies that they try and get the schools to implement.

 

[Darwin333]

Obviously, you can't stop piracy on a college campus. Most companies are well aware of this.

The idea was to deter people, who might otherwise purchase the product, from pirating it. I don't think that worked out to well for the RIAA nor has it appeared to produce positive results.

The new idea is to make it as difficult as possible for the average person to pirate material. A consumer who would be willing to purchase the product generally will if its not absurdly easy to pirate it. Some of us remember when the main sources of pirated material where Newsgroups and IRC. While they are still used today, thanks to things like newzbin, it is much easier to use. But back when it wasn't nearly as easy or quick your average person wouldn't learn how to use IRC just to download the latest boy band CD.

Before Napster (at least that general time frame) you still had rampant piracy but it had a learning curve and it was rather slow (Man, anyone remember week long queues in IRC?) therefore relatively few people (compared to today) pirated copyrighted material. Fast forward to now and a large portion of the younger population does/has pirated material. Its just so damn easy (both in action and in getting away with it) that it is hard to deter people. Hell, its usually quicker and easier to get a song by illegal means then by legal methods.

My point is, there are some people that you can't practically stop and its a waste of time and money to try. However, if you make it as inconvenient as possible you can stop some of the "casual" pirates.

Personally, I believe they would see better results if they spent their money completely revamping their packaging, product and delivery methods. Most people who currently download songs wouldn't mind logging onto a site and paying a buck for a good quality mp3 that they can use how they wish. Unfortunately, by and large, the industry just doesn't get it. Sure, people may try their new site but when the song they actually paid for doesn't work on their mp3 player or they can't burn it onto their new mix CD they simply go back to their P2P program of choice. Not only does P2P usually offer greater convenience it often offers a better product. Using music as an example:

P2P offers almost every song you want in one place. They are usually good quality and you can use it however you please, burn or copy it as many times as you wish, etc.. Even though the industry can spend money combating piracy I believe their dollars would be much better spent in developing a competing product and delivery method. People WILL pay for convenience if the product/packaging/price is reasonable.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: Darwin333
Before Napster (at least that general time frame) you still had rampant piracy but it had a learning curve and it was rather slow (Man, anyone remember week long queues in IRC?) therefore relatively few people (compared to today) pirated copyrighted material. Fast forward to now and a large portion of the younger population does/has pirated material. Its just so damn easy (both in action and in getting away with it) that it is hard to deter people. Hell, its usually quicker and easier to get a song by illegal means then by legal methods.

And before THAT, we just dubbed tapes.
"Hey, I like that album, will you copy it for me?"
"Sure, just give me a blank tape."

 

[txrandom]

It's pretty easy to bypass port blocking.

 

[crimson117]

Get the college to host more concerts from popular musicians. Then the musicians can make money, the students can get good live music, and the record companies can go *** themselves!

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Originally posted by: dainthomas

Originally posted by: BeeVo
I have a lunch meeting with an attorney to discuss some issues related to piracy. Specifically how it would need to be combated on a college campus. What would you guys do to combat it?

I would advocate a strong naval presence along with a ban on eye patches and rum.

Aaaaaarrrrrrrggghhhhh!! :|

Tell the school they need more Corsairs and Schooners manned with men Loyal to the Crown.

 

[FleshLight]

Only allow internet access at the library computers. Have campus security on standby with tazers.

 

[DrPizza]

Why not focus your efforts and resources on reducing binge drinking, promoting safe sex, giving students plenty of opportunities to engage in a larger variety of activities.

 

[RyanW2050]

Would these students be buying this music if they couldn't pirate it?
Are these students using pirated software to make money?



I would say the answer to both is likely no. Considering that, I would say that trying to stop it is a waste of money. Kind of like the RIAA suing 12 year olds.

 

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog

Originally posted by: Darwin333
Before Napster (at least that general time frame) you still had rampant piracy but it had a learning curve and it was rather slow (Man, anyone remember week long queues in IRC?) therefore relatively few people (compared to today) pirated copyrighted material. Fast forward to now and a large portion of the younger population does/has pirated material. Its just so damn easy (both in action and in getting away with it) that it is hard to deter people. Hell, its usually quicker and easier to get a song by illegal means then by legal methods.

And before THAT, we just dubbed tapes.
"Hey, I like that album, will you copy it for me?"
"Sure, just give me a blank tape."

Yeah, but you ever get a copy of a copy of a copy and it wasn't nearly as widespread.

It did bring up a funny thought though. Back when CD burners where "new" and expensive as hell I was a broke (eating Ramon noodles and the cheapass macaroni broke) so I hooked up my stereo to the output of my sound card and would record it to tape.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: txrandom
It's pretty easy to bypass port blocking.

It's pretty easy to detect when students are circumventing your network restrictions and shut them down entirely.

 

[MyThirdEye]

They have really been cracking down at the University of Nebraska about that crap. To be honest, I think that it shouldn't be the University's responsibility to stop the downloading, if they're going to go as far as block torrent sites, they should just take legal action against the more active users.

 

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: RyanW2050
Would these students be buying this music if they couldn't pirate it?

Definitely.
Not all of course, but a portion.

Originally posted by: RyanW2050
Are these students using pirated software to make money?

Very likely.

 

[Hacp]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
The best way to combat it on campus would probably be to introduce a cheap, flexible all-you-can-consume online distribution model. Of course, the students will still pirate no matter WHAT you do.

Isn't that what Napster is?


Re: combatting - I think the best thing a college can do is block access to bittorrent and other P2P protocols. Most already do this. It has the added benefit of greatly reducing necessary network capacity. Yes, there are legitimate uses for P2P protocols, but if you're looking for legitimate stuff (linux distros is the one everyone seems to bring up) you can probably find it via FTP or HTTP as well.

You know, my college did that to me last semester. They limited P2P files to an absurdly low download rate. It took 3 days for me to download my WoW patches. I was crying.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: txrandom
It's pretty easy to bypass port blocking.

Not the packeteer. I used it in a campus environment in the hay day of napsterand limewire etc and it worked wonders. No matter how many ports it changed it identified the traffic and stopped it

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski

Originally posted by: dainthomas

Originally posted by: BeeVo
I have a lunch meeting with an attorney to discuss some issues related to piracy. Specifically how it would need to be combated on a college campus. What would you guys do to combat it?

I would advocate a strong naval presence along with a ban on eye patches and rum.

Aaaaaarrrrrrrggghhhhh!! :|

Tell the school they need more Corsairs and Schooners manned with men Loyal to the Crown.

I was thinking a small fleet of 64 gun Man of Wars. Give Letters of Marque to any that are just pesky and send them to other college campus that regularly steal your mascot.