Cory Doctorow is pissed. Apparently he has his panties in a wad over what he perceives as the University of Southern California (the one he teaches his stupid DRM class at) policing students for the big bad evil entertainment industry.

Here’s the sticker that USC puts on desktop backgrounds of on-campus computers:

Okay, Cory… What’s the problem?

This is some warning. So much for “education” — why bother teaching UCLA students about copyright when you can just scare. Prison sentences, no less!

How about including information on understanding fair use, with particular reference to the special freedoms copyright law affords to scholars?

Or UCLA could explain how “copyrighted material” includes things like class lectures, which, one assumes, students can download without being sent to the big house.

Surely that would be more productive than this inane, shrill “warning.”

Need I say it again? Cory Doctorow is a fucking idiot and this time so obviously so that you barely need to read into what he wrote to see why.

Point 1: Why bother teaching about copyright? Because you don’t have to teach kids about copyright to teach ‘em that doing something against the law (ie: VIOLATING COPYRIGHT). That’s his first point, utterly smashed.

Point 2: Including information on fair use with references? Are you fucking kidding me? Fair use is assumed to be an exception to copyright law by anyone with a brain, and most likely anyone in a college. The warning label is an obvious heads up to the kids who jump on bit torrent, morpheus, or whatever the hell kids are using these days, and grab 200 albums for nothing related to anything educational. Fair use does not include copyright violation. It’s one thing if you own an album and you want to use it for something. It’s even okay to grab a recording from somewhere to analyze or critique it, but that’s not what 99% of the file-sharing college students are using these services for.

The warning is posted for a simple reason, and it’s rooted in the story that Mr. Doctorow cares so much about these days: The heavy-handed animals at the RIAA and MPAA are suing everything that moves including universities. The college is warning students that violating the law is not going to be tolerated because it will open them up to liability.

Is that so wrong?

And finally Point 3: He makes the ridiculous argument that the coursework is copyrighted. No shit, sherlock, and everyone who has access to those computers has permission from the copyright holder to have that information. Imagine that. No point there, Mr. D.

I hate the MPAA and RIAA and their “sue-everything” heavy-handed bullshit. That being said, I hate people like Cory Doctorow even more because he’s the poster boy that people in those industries hold up when pointing out why copyright law needs to be tightened rather than relaxed.