A4A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, April 12, 2004

OPINION


420 MAYNARD STREET
U0a l ANN ARBOR, MI 48109
opinion. michigandaily.com
tothedaily@michigandaily.com

EDITED AND MANAGED BY
STUDENTS AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
SINCE 1890

JORDAN SCHRADER
Editor in Chief
JASON Z. PESICK
Editorial Page Editor

NOTABLE
QUOTABLE
It all started with
the false accusations
and the shutdown of
the Al Hawza
newspaper."

Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of
the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not
necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily.

SAM BUTLER THE SOAPBOX
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- Raed al-Kadhim, deputy to radical
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, referring to the
US.-ordered shutdown of a Baghdad
newspaper, providing motivation for the
recent explosion of violence in Iraq, as
reported yesterday by CNN.

Incoherent Kerry
ZAC PESKOWITZ TiH LOWER FREQUENCIES
hat his were it not for Dean's sudden emergence. Clintonite who will take care of all those
critics see But Dean did not get to enjoy the fruits of economic problems that the Bush adminis-
as an his labor as Kerry somehow outmaneu- tration is foisting on our children and
inability to take strong, vered him in Iowa and easily jaunted grandchildren.
clear positions seems to through the primary states to become the In reality, Kerry has no substantive plan
us to reflect his apprecia- presumptive Democratic nominee. To the to deal with the Alternative Minimum Tax
tion that life is not sim- imitator go the spoils. and relies on the same prevarications as
ple." Regardless of Surely, this couldn't be true of the com- the Bush administration to claim that he
whether you think these petition between the political parties this will cut the federal deficit in half in a span
qualities make for a good election season? The day before classes of five years. Both Bush and Kerry ignore
president, as The New York Times's editorial began in Ann Arbor, President Bush told a the upward pressures on the deficit which
board memorably made clear in its endorse- crowd of workers in Richfield, Ohio that he will emerge after this narrow time frame
ment of Sen. John Kerry for the Democratic would appoint an assistant secretary level has passed and have nothing serious
presidential nomination, it does enhance "manufacturing czar" in the Department of planned to fix these structural shortcom-
your appreciation of political combat. Poli- Commerce. More than seven months and ings. (As an aside, it's also amusing to
tics is a complex business where it often one failed candidate later, the post was hear Kerry's top aides lionizing Robert
pays to co-opt shamelessly the ideas of your finally filled by a California carpet manu- Rubin, who took home $17.1 million from
enemies, even if you have to abandon your facturer. In one of the more ferocious Citigroup this past fiscal year, as "the best
carefully crafted identity. instances of wrangling on the jobs issue all secretary of the Treasury since Alexander
The outstanding example of this behav- year, the Kerry campaign sabotaged Bush's Hamilton" as their candidate righteously
ior was the rush of Democratic candidates first choice for the position, Anthony Rai- intones against corporate greed and unfair
to adopt the posture of former Gov. mondo, an executive who had set up a fac- executive compensation).
Howard Dean of Vermont. Kerry, Sen. tory in China. But these testy moments During the course of Kerry's time in the
John Edwards of North Carolina and punctuated by the strident rhetoric of cam- Senate and on the campaign trail he has slow-
retired Gen. Wesley Clark mimicked Dean paign strategists only obscures the similari- ly absorbed the lessons of the great political
with particular zest. With the rise of ties between the Bush and Kerry on the strategists of American history. A college
Howard Dean a perceptible change economic front. If elected, Kerry's recent classmate of a U.S. president once wrote,
emerged in everything from their stump promise to create 10 million jobs for the "No man, for any considerable period, can
speeches all the way down to their web- American economy will surely go unful- wear one face to himself and another to the
sites. And in the case of Kerry and filled. His reliance on a corporate tax over- multitude, without finally getting bewildered
Edwards the changes even emanated to haul and extraordinarily vague propositions as to which may be true." The greatest joy of
their Senate votes as the duo voted against to slash government travel expenses - political life is that you can ceaselessly try.
the $87 billion supplemental appropriation Kerry's crack economic team has conned a
for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, a sizable portion of the media into believing Peskowitz can be reached at
position that would have been unthinkable that he is a strait-talkin' deficit-cuttin' zpeskowi@umich.edu.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

S

RIAA responds, defends
its prosecution of
individual file sharers
To THE DAILY:
As a proud University alum (Law School,
Class of 1995), I was disappointed to read your
recent editorial about the Recording Industry
Association of America (Lawsuits against file
sharing is the wrong solution, 03/30/04) because it
was filled with so many factual inaccuracies.
Let me correct the record.
First and foremost, the RIAA is the trade
association that represents the nation's major
record companies, and speaks solely for them.
We have always made that clear. What is equal-
ly clear, however, is that illegal file sharing, like
other forms of music piracy, affects everyone in
the music community - artists, songwriters,
back-up musicians, producers, record stores
and thousands of other less celebrated individu-
als. Just ask the unsigned bands who have lost
their shot a record contract, record store owners
who have closed their doors and the thousands
of record company employees who have lost
their jobs over the past four years because of a
20 percent decline in CD sales.
We also recognize that when used legiti-
mately, peer-to-peer technology has enormous
positive potential. The problem today is that
this technology has been hijacked by businesses
- unlike Robin Hood, Kazaa's owners are
making millions - that are making money on
the backs of creators, while off-loading what
should be their legal liability onto individual
users. If you're looking for someone to blame,
you might want to start there.
The record labels are committed to and
enthusiastic about the Internet as a tool for
delivering music to consumers. Services like
iTunes, Napster 2.0, www.bestbuy.com, Music-
match, Rhapsody, Wal-Mart and countless oth-
ers give fans the ability to get the music they
want, when they want it - legally, and in a way
that fairly compensates creators.
After years of public education and warn-
ings, we took the difficult, but needed, step of
bringing lawsuits against egregious file sharers.
In response, we have and will continue to hear
from our critics who believe we are wrong and
think that because the Internet and technology
make it easy, stealing music okay. To those crit-
ics I would say - the last time I checked -
just because the Internet makes it easier to pla-
giarize your final paper, doesn't make it any
less wrong or punishable when you do it.
DAVID A. SUTPHEN
Alum
The letter writer is the senior vice president

going inside by a student who handed me a
flyer and asked me to not enter the build-
ing. I kindly explained that I supported
their strike, I hadn't gone to my classes,
but I had an important meeting to go to.
She physically blocked my way and said
that they wanted to stop people from going
into any University building for any reason
and actually started insulting me when I
went around her. I heard several other
accounts that day of picketers being ver-
bally abusive toward those who crossed
their lines, without any knowledge of who
they were or why they decided to go
inside.
If they really are concerned for our
quality of education, as they keep insist-
ing, how productive is it to ask us not to
go to the library? What about nonteaching
University employees and work-study stu-
dents, many of whom make much less than
the lecturers and won't get paid if they
don't show up for work? If directly asked,
most picketers would probably excuse
them, but these people were attacked and
intimidated just as equally.
It's probably simply a matter of LEO or
Students Organizing for Labor and Eco-
nomic Equality not being careful enough
in whom they ask to picket or the direc-
tions they give to the picketers (i.e., asking
them not to harass people). Though all of
the complaints I heard were about
younger, undergraduate-aged people, prob-
ably SOLE members, so I suspect that the
problem is more on their side. Even among
quite liberal people such as myself, the
reputation of SOLE and other left-leaning
campus groups is being slowly tarnished
by this and many other similar incidents. If
they really want to convince students of
their views and make an impact on cam-
pus, they should stop attacking others and
treating us as if we were morally inferior,
or at least be more careful about who rep-
resents them.
MEGHAN AHERN
LSA senior
Daily shows respect for
student activists
TO THE DAILY:
I was impressed with the Daily's deci-
sion to respect the Lecturers' Employee
Organization picket lines on Thursday. The
Daily surpassed my expectations as a politi-
cally active student at the University when
its staff stood outside of University build-
inac n hnr ;kv i .raer o rictrhnt h...i

In addition, this made it easy on stu-
dents who wished to respect the picket line
themselves. We were able to get ahold of a
paper without entering a University build-
ing, allowing us to stand in solidarity with
our teachers but still get our daily fix.
Considering the entire front page covered
labor issues, whether it was the strike
itself or the decision of the University to
improve its anti-sweatshop policy with
wage disclosure, I appreciated being able
to read it without being confronted with
that small but significant moral dilemma.
Despite all the chaos and conflict sur-
rounding every nuance of a newspaper so
important to the students at the University, for
your respect of LEO's picket line, thank you.
MIKE SWIRYN
LSA senior
Member, Students Organizing for Labor
and Economic Equality
Daily finally takes a fair
look at the Greek system
TO THE DAILY:
I would like to thank the Daily for one of the
few non-stereotypical articles with reference to
the Greek community written since I've been at
the University (Leave the Greeks alone,
04/06/04). To accuse an entire community of
students of being the same is no different
whether you are judging them by their affilia-
tion or their skin color. Personally, I came to this
campus thinking Greeks were a group of people
I would not want to be affiliated with, but after
joining a great house, I can see how wrong the
stereotypes are.
Sure, there are many problems with the sys-
tem, and to say there are not would be a lie,
though as a community we are confronting
these problems and working to fix them. But
please, don't let the actions of a few ruin your
thoughts of many, and please don't let the repu-
tation of some of the individuals discourage you
from joining. Fraternities and sororities are as
diverse as all of us on this, possibly the most
diverse campus in the country, and there is an
organization out there that you can learn a great
deal from and that also can learn a great deal
more from you. If you give these organizations
the joy of your presence, both will be better off
in the future.
Finally, my brothers and I would like to
extend an inexpressible amount of gratitude to
some different individuals. Last week Lambda
Chi Alpha had our 5th Annual Teeter-Totter-
A-Thon, and we were able to raise over $500.
Thank you to all the sororities that sat on that
uncnmfnrtable teeter-toter at crazv hours in

40

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