Democrats: Colleges must police copyright, or else | CNET News.com

Democrats: Colleges must police copyright, or else | CNET News.com
Ridiculous! Democrats can not find the huevos to stop Bush breaking the law regarding American's right to privacy and from illegal searches, but they can crack down on peer-to-peer networks (not the individuals who participate mind you but the colleges that may have only one student illegally downloading music and movies). The Democratic Congress is threaten to withdraw all federal finacial aid and benefits to institutions of higher learning that will not name-names of students who download copyrighted material. The Congressional Democrats cannot get it together stop the Iraq War which they were given the majority last November for, but they twiddle their thumbs and do the bidding of copyright holders! American universities and colleges do not have anything better to do that track every move their students make online? Really!?! Because I remember in 2004 Kerry, and the Democratic platform had nothing but bad things to say about unfunded mandates regarding education... what happened to that old saw? It is not the government's job insure the movie and music industries' profits. It is not the government's job to be the movie and music industries' thug to scare individuals. We do not have the FBI or local cops standing in the doorway of Wal-Marts to prevent Wal-Mart customers from shoplifting. Our government does not pull up the roads that lead to the Wal-Mart to punish the shoplifters.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are throwing a temper tantrum over the fact that their industries are changing. Despite the legal concept of safe harbor (ie media hosting services such as YouTube.com who pull copyrighted material after notified or internet service providers not being culpable of their customers' actions online) the media industries cannot seem to get over the fact they are going to have start suing all of their potentional customers or deal with the fact that they will always have some of their copyrighted media loose on the net.