I realize that the American legislative and judicial system is flawed. Money drives both systems: lobbyist groups can “encourage” legislators to re-write laws to suit them, and wealthy individuals or companies can sue the innocent and wronged into oblivion before their case is even heard in a court.
But this is just too much. Basically, what the new legislation would do is shut off funding to colleges and universities that didn’t implement draconian rules and controls to prevent file sharing/file piracy. These rules would threaten up to $100 billion a year in educational funding.
The RIAA and MPAA, organizations that claim to be defending the “rights” of copyright holders, make outrageous claims regarding the cost of piracy…numbers on the order of $5 or $8 billion a year. Everyone with more than half a wit knows that these numbers are downright fundamentally wrong, inflated beyond all reasonable margins. But let’s say they are right: somehow, legislators have been “convinced” that this $5 billion dollar a year loss in sales of music by such luminaries as Brittany Spears and movies like “Snakes on a Plane” are worth shutting down $100 billion a year in funding for schools and students.
To quote the incredibly irritating slogan of mouth-breathing evangelists everywhere…”THINK OF THE CHILDREN!”