Ranting to /dev/null

There is, of course, as always, an easy way to get around this bill: don't accept any government funds (confiscated taxpayer income to be more accurate). There's no such thing as a government handout without strings attached.

Umm. Way to go for the technically correct but utterly unworkable solution there, Ben.

And of course it's "confiscated taxpayer income". That's what taxes are. What, you thought taxation was voluntary? That it was contractual?

Wake up and smell the roses. Taxation is the money that the sovereign decides to take from you. You may not like it, you may think it's counterproductive on some level, but that's what it is, and griping about it just gets you laughed at and prevents you from playing any real part in the political process. Which, in my opinion, is no bad thing.

In what sense is it unworkable not to accept government funds? Certainly not in a moral sense, in that it's morally wrong to use the threat of force to take property from another person. Why should poor people have to pay for me to go to college?

(As a side note, I wasn't complaining about taxation, I was complaining about institutions that use the federal government to do that which they can not legally do on their own: take property from others.)

Even in a practical sense, how is it not possible to simply not accept government funds? Plenty of educational institutions do that already.

It's a very simple concept: if you want government money, then accept the regulations that come with it. Otherwise, don't take it. I have little patience for institutions that accept government funds and then complain about the regulations that come with it. In what circumstance has federal funds ever come without regulations?

If by "plenty" you mean "two," then you may have a point. Places like BJU don't take government funds, but not out of principle: they aren't accredited. The only accredited institutions of higher education that don't accept government funds are Hillsdale and Grove City. So if you're a small, private liberal arts school, it's possible that that can work. Just don't complain when you can't be a research university.

The problem here isn't just that the government is attaching strings to its money. Of course it can. I'm not necessarily arguing that attaching copyright enforcement provisions to a financial aid bill is illegal,* just that it's a bad policy decision.

*Actually, it might be. This could well be a violation of the commerce power, as such a restriction might not be rationally related to the legitimate goal of improving access to education. Quite the opposite, in fact.