Deathlizard's Journal: The Amish Method

I posted this a few weeks ago on a news story about the College Opportunity and Affordability Act. It's so good I'm keeping it here for archival purposes, since at some point it might happen and I can say "I told you so!".

Frankly there's only two ways you can stop piracy from happening on college grounds.

1) Buy everyone in the school music accounts to download music thus raising the tuition, Which enrages students and punishes students who prefer going to buy their music at music stores, and will ultimately result in retention levels dropping in an already competitive market as it is.

Or

2) The Amish Method. Cut the Internet cable since there's nothing on the market that can assure 100% piracy free Internet, ban all computers since they can make MP3's using a line in jack and a CD player, and ultimately ban electric power from everywhere on campus, since they could possibly use electricity to copy a tape with a boombox or operate an electric guitar.

But if you just cut the LAN Internet cord and force the students to go elsewhere such as DSL or Cable modems to get their Internet the problem is solved right? Wrong! It doesn't matter. Have a computer lab in the college? well that can be used to download music or burn CD's or even make an MP3 file using the sound card's line in jack. you better have that policy in place to spy / restrict that lab to only authorized personnel. Of course I guess you can disable the Internet and sound card and CDROM's and USB ports so that it's basically a dumb terminal, or use DOS 6.22, (Can't use Windows. Sound recorder is there and it makes it easy to pirate. Maybe Windows 386 would work.) but if you go that far down the line, you might as well switch over to typewriters. They have far less maintenance, are cheaper, and are surely more pirate proof when it comes to movies and music.

And remember. They can pirate with that Stereo in their room or play their favorite music rift on their electric guitar using college supplied electricity. So once they do pirate the music using their liability free network connection, they can burn it to CD and play it in their stereos or instruments and BAM! Everyone in that Dorm that heard it is a pirate! You better have a policy to arrest that guy, since he used your power grid network to broadcast his pirate booty to the entire dorm. Maybe fine the entire dorm since someone may hum or whistle it down the hall.

At least the english, math and history professors would be happy with #2, since calculators would be banned and people would have to be forced to write their thesis's on parchment. Of course, Victrola's would have to be banned too, but it's hard finding a wind up one these days. Maybe they'll come back in vogue.