dc0de wrote:

Decius wrote:

[1] Meet up with us next Wednesday (March 5th) to go to Nashville and protest! (5:00 AM - March 5th) we will have a bus - we will leave at 5AM in Knoxville (meet at COPYSHOP).

Gather at 8AM (if you can get there by yourself)
on the corner of 6th and Union St in Nashville!

The primary broken thing about the rule being protested here is that it would require Universities to institute a surveillance system that watched network traffic and identified transfers of copyrighted content.

What about the state networks, why stop there? Pass a law that makes EVERYONE monitor content... why just the colleges and universities?

Well, because similar requirements placed on other networks would be unconstitutional. I wrote this on se2600:

Incidentally, my biggest issue with this law is not that they require schools to have a policy on copyrighted material (which most have anyway) but that it requires schools to establish a surveillance system that examines student network traffic for copyrighted material. Thats grossly big brotherish and there currently isn't a technological means to comply. It will cause an arms race werein schools are forced to ban certain sites and technologies and those sites and technologies adapt to become more difficult to detect, with all the usual unintended consiquences such as authoritarian administrators banning ssh because it cannot be spied upon or good students being expelled because they got caught using bit torrent. All of this would, of course, be completely unconstitutional if applied to a commercial isp network, but somehow we've managed to rationalize that because universities own student computing resources the normal boudaries between the government and citizens need not apply, and its a great opportunity for private industry's interests to be served through mechanisms you couldn't dream of requiring in any other context.

RE: Copyright protest in Nashville March 5th - COPYFIGHT NOW!