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Why couldn't the OP link to the Eff story directly?

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/06/record-labels-awarde

I appreciate Techdirt 'getting the word out' and all, but their article hardly adds anything to what they include of the original piece.

After the appeals and such run out, she may or may not be able to file bankruptcy. IANAL, but i found these bits of info interesting. 1)The jury found Thomas-Rasset's conduct to be willful, which means that statutory damages under the Copyright Act can range from $750 per infringement up to $150,000. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/jammie-thomas-retrial-verdict.ars 2)Debts arising from copyright infringement judgments are generally dischargeable in personal bankruptcy proceedings unless the creditor (i.e., the copyright owner) can prove that the judgment constitutes a debt for a "willful and malicious injury" within the meaning of 11 U.S.C. 523(a)(6). Moreover, because the legal standards for "willful and malicious injury" differ from those governing "willful infringement" under the Copyright Act, even a willful infringement judgment may be dischargeable in bankruptcy. http://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/RIAA_v_ThePeople/P2P_bktcy_memo.pdf

Perhaps this [pdf] will shed light on why she will most likely be unable to wiggle out of the 1.92M.

The First Amendment is commonly interpreted to imply a right to anonymity-- otherwise there would be a significant burden to free speech, and the First Amendment precludes "abridging" speech. Here's what the EFF and
Citizen Media Law have to say.

Just like the 2nd amendment is interpreted to apply mainly to guns even though the word "gun" (or even firearm) doesn't appear within it, anonymity is assumed to be part of one's freedom to speak openly in defiance of the majority opinion.

Choose from NSA http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying, privacy http://www.eff.org/issues/privacy and a whole load of other stuff http://www.eff.org/about.

Choose from NSA http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying, privacy http://www.eff.org/issues/privacy and a whole load of other stuff http://www.eff.org/about.

Choose from NSA http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying, privacy http://www.eff.org/issues/privacy and a whole load of other stuff http://www.eff.org/about.

Sometimes voting does not work, look at Iran. I'm not saying such blatant rigging of an election could occur in Germany nowadays but other less obvious abuses of power such as this go almost unnoticed by the average citizen. Does the EFF do international issues or just US stuff? It would be wise methinks to get an international organization involved so we could get some leverage on having a say on any future treaties that involve these sorts of shenanigans.

> I thought we were for copyright reform here... i.e. a return to reasonable copyright periods. When did we decide that we wanted to completely abolish copyright? What about the GNU copyrights? Do we start ignoring them too?

Well, there are a few different sets of people here. I, personally, lean towards abolition, though I'm open to exploring reasonable compromises, alternative models, and other ways to compensate authors. (Who doesn't want to see authors compensated?) I'm just not open to jackbooted private internet police (e.g. MediaSentry, RIAA lawyers, DMCA abuse, copyright czars, etc.)

Anyhow, for the specific case of GNU copyrights, I suggest reading the GNU philosophy section, specifically this essay, where they discuss how the GPL could work in a copyright-free world. Basically, we'd adapt, because we're a collection of people who believe in working together. Most of the contributions to GPL'd software don't come from people who are forced to contribute because of the license. And even if people stopped sharing private forks of GPL'd software, those of us who believe in working together would still be able to make a better product and we'd still have our own code.

I know this is a fairly common question, so feel free to copy anything from here to answer it in the future.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

No kidding, this is a terrible (possibly disingenuous) analysis of the ruling. Guaranteed to get people on slashdot talking though.

Please, everyone read the whole thing.

It might not be: They haven't (yet) been successful; but Team Content are well aware of the analog hole, and they sure would like to do something about it.

The proposal would be to make watermark detection a mandatory feature of all ADCs. See here.

I just wanted to say, for what it is worth thanks Mr. Beckerman. Having to deal with corps that are SO greedy that their people can get up in court and say with a straight face that you can't rip your own CD to your iPod because you didn't cut them another check, must be depressing and a PITA. I bet when you read their arguments half the time you have this face just from having to deal with all the weasel wording and corporate codewords for "we want more money!".

So for myself and all the other guys that just want to keep our DVDs on our cheap fat HDDs without breaking the law, or simply be able to use the product that we paid for without jumping through hoops like I have to do pretty much daily because their DRM schemes don't support my 64bit OS, thanks. I personally don't see how you don't keep from pulling your hair out from dealing with all the corporate weasels. It must be like being surrounded by clones of the PHB from Dilbert all day. So thanks for keeping up the fight. Maybe one day Steamboat Willie and that stupid mouse will be out of copyright and we can start to look at building sane copyright laws again.

Now if they can only come around on Warrantless Wiretapping.

After reading his piece, I have a hard time arguing that it should be handed over to some international body.

That's because, like him, you're a nationalist xenophobe.

I mean, the argument boils down to this: America has the First Amendment, therefore we are the only entity capable of not censoring the internet via withholding access to an arbitrary (though ubiquitously popular) namespace. The insinuation is that other countries do not have the First Amendment and therefore, all of them collectively would present the possibility of such (questionably effective) censorship.

Well, how does this argument stand up against the real (though non-American and therefore unreliable) world? Let's take the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 19.

        * Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Well, that's just a UN Resolution with no binding effect, and only reflects a general sense of the body rather than something they all commit to, right? As Rabkin says, "Most countries lack our First Amendment tradition." Well, let's take the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty that 150 countries signed 30 years ago:

Article 19

      1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
      2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

But none of these statements ensuring freedom of speech compare to the sheer Holy Writ that is the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Many other First World countries already have government-imposed restrictions on Internet speech that we would not contemplate here.

Because the United States has never, ever, ever, contemplated restrictions on free speech, proving just how trustworthy we are with the world's speech. Of course, Rabkin does not offer any specific examples of un-contemplatable restrictions on speech imposed by other First World nations, nor does he bother to prove the point that the U.S. has never done anything similar (because he can't).

Nor is he at all concerned with people in other countries who may also enjoy free speech, including speech that isn't legal in the United States -- the compelling need is not to ensure the freedom of the world's people, but as he makes clear: "If we wish to protect the free speech rights of Americans online, we should not allow Internet domain names to be hostage to foreign standards." Aha! It's the bogeyman of "foreign standards", which all good Americans rightly fear, because they are all, by virtue of being foreign, simply inferior to our own standards (whatever they may be).

But what disgusts me most about Rabkin's screed is that someone capable of putting his name on something so baseless, undefensible, xenophobic, fear-mongering, and full of straw-man arguments, was accepted to a doctoral program, and printed in a major magazine. Of course, it's The Standard, what did I expect? Not well-thought out global technology pieces, that's for sure.

My understanding: Under the DMCA, you can be in trouble for possessing technologies that could be used to circumvent technological protections on copyrighted material So it's not that the technology itself is copyrighted, it's probably that it's part of a copyright protection scheme and thus falls under DMCA.

The EFF's account of the Skylarov case (which is instructive and chilling) is fully documented here.

It sounds to me like the EFF is overreacting again. When the new iPod shuffle came out, the they sounded the alarm about headphones requiring "DRM authentication". They later retracted their statement. Turns out that the "DRM" was just an electrical signaling protocol that allowed the headphones to send button press events to the iPod. You knowâ"the kind that any EE would design. The headphones and the iPod have to communicate somehow.

It sounds to me like this is more of the same. From the article:

car manufacturers now severely limit the number of repair shops that are allowed to have the tools, diagnostic codes and updated repair information essential to being able to repair late-model cars

A lack of information, or the need for sophisticated test equipment does not automatically imply DRM.

I'm all for making information on car diagnostic protocols and diagnostic code semantics more freely available, but let's call it what it really is.

--Bruce

http://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity

Print is only technically traceable. Your local PD will not have access to a database that links the inkjet patterns to your name. If, in fact, such a mythical database even exists (doubtful, requires competence from the government and honesty from corporations), it is not a simple matter to perform a lookup. GP's suggestion is near perfect.

If you are familiar with the EFF you would have realized that your statement is wrong. Here's at least one EFF link, Printers, and another Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents. As everybody knows, companies do keep information on purchasers, sometimes indefinitely, and credit card details etc can easily be matched up with a database of serial numbers.

There is nothing magical or mythical here.

In a case of this nature, the guy's best bet is, in my opinion, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts or EFF.

The guy needs to contact the EFF himself. They don't often just pick up cases because they get reported on Slashdot. They might take a look if he contacts them though. It doesn't take much effort to do so: http://www.eff.org/about/contact

Incidentally, the ASCAP has a long history of doing dumb stuff. Back in the mid 1990s they got a lot of public flack for trying to sue the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/communications/ASCAP.html

Because he isn't talking about the guy downloading from P2P as much as he is talking about artists like Danger Mouse who can't sell their albums because greed has made sampling all but dead. Which frankly sucks. This of course was kinda the whole reason for HAVING a Public Domain in the first place, which was stolen from us by Disney to make sure that damned mouse will NEVER be free as long as politicians are corrupt.

But the simple fact is the copyright laws have become SO long and SO nasty that pretty much anybody and everybody is a pirate. Don't forget we are talking about evil bloodsucking leech corporations that honestly believe that ripping your CD to your iPod is illegal and that you should have to pay them OVER and OVER and OVER again for the exact same content. And I'm sorry I can find the link right now but there was a great interview with the head of one of the record labels (I think BMG) where he said their ultimate goal is to make EVERYTHING into "jukebox content" where you will have to pay per listen, by simply getting nastier with laws like DMCA and DRM.

So whether we go with this idea, or the one I would prefer which is forcing copyright back to the term limits of 1900, or maybe even less, we simply have to scream bloody murder until something changes. Because as it is now YOU are a criminal and I am a criminal and your kids are criminals, simply because the laws have gotten so damned nasty that there really isn't any way to avoid it. Cue the guy with the Ayn Rand quote.

The difference is with Windows Mobile, you can load applications on without going through the store. With Apple, there is no legitimate way to do so (jailbreaking is illegal according to Apple)

A federal judge told the cops that they need a warrant to track your location via cell phone. I fail to see how this is any different than tracking your location by GPS. Unless the police have more power than the feds...?

http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/celltracking/lenihanorder.pdf

An example of the difference: I can pretty much make a libel suit impossible by clearly framing every statement I make as my opinion, rather than as fact. As far as I can tell, this bill doesn't appear to care whether the speech was presented as fact or opinion.

IANAL, this isn't legal advice.
You're wrong. If I write "It is my opinion that John Doe robbed a bank." on my blog, he can and probably will sue me for libel, and I would probably lose.

Well, I'm glad someone out there with lawyers is taking advantage of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). To see how the EFF has taken advantage of it, their main FOIA with the subpage on this entire DOJ Investigative Data Warehouse topic and all the documents they've collected (some are linked in main story).

If you are a US citizen, you yourself are able to make a FOIA request.

Well, I'm glad someone out there with lawyers is taking advantage of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). To see how the EFF has taken advantage of it, their main FOIA with the subpage on this entire DOJ Investigative Data Warehouse topic and all the documents they've collected (some are linked in main story).

If you are a US citizen, you yourself are able to make a FOIA request.

Well, I'm glad someone out there with lawyers is taking advantage of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). To see how the EFF has taken advantage of it, their main FOIA with the subpage on this entire DOJ Investigative Data Warehouse topic and all the documents they've collected (some are linked in main story).

If you are a US citizen, you yourself are able to make a FOIA request.

So thank them.

But then it wouldn't be thankless. Are you trying to put the poor sap into a race condition???

So thank them.

Read the answer by Mike Godwin (Gerneral Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation) to reproaches by the EFF.

Freedom of speech is not freedom to steal. If you want to make point, boycot abusive companies, don't continue using their products, because even if you steal it, you still support em. Go to competition.

People should support real heroes of this fight ( http://www.eff.org/ ), not couple of populists who just surf wave of people wanting free stuff and who are now scared of consequences.

Tor.

Might take a bit 'til you find an exit node in China, but then you're free.

It was actually "black screen with white font" but close enough.

And I bet you haven't contributed anything to them either. Well, get off your butt and go here:

https://secure.eff.org/site/Donation2?idb=138949259&df_id=1220&1220.donation=form1

to contribute. The page says "End Warrantless Wiretapping!" but it is actually a membership page. Sign the hell up and give them some money. You are not limited to their fixed amounts, they will take any donation.

There is one flaw that I see in the Safe Harbor provisions, and that flaw is simply that there is no recourse against a false claim of infringement. Processing these requests does cost time, money, and at least some period where content can be made unavailable.

Au contraire, subsection (f) of the various safe harbors states that:

Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section--
(1) that material or activity is infringing, or
(2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner's authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.

This provision was used in Online Policy Group v. Diebold in an order finding Diebold liable for misuse of the DMCA (Diebold settled). Then there is the ongoing case of Stephanie Lenz. Last August the court kept her 512(f) claim against Universal open, but it is not clear whether the court will find Universal liable and, if so, for how much.

Perhaps it should be necessary to post a bond for the maximum amount of "claimed damages" prior to sending the notice, just to prevent damage to innocent non-infringers?

It is an interesting idea. Of course, laws generally are supposed to be, and should be, neutral with regards to the parties who bring claims. A bond requirement would probably hurt those with empty pockets more than those with deep pockets. Moreover, if a bond had to be posted for every notice submitted, then all copyright infringers would have to do to multiple the amount of money required up front would be to post the infringed work on many different sites (doing that already has the effect of making it difficult to find all infringing copies of a work).

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/obama-doj-worse-than-bush "The Obama Administration goes two steps further than Bush did, and claims that the US PATRIOT Act also renders the U.S. immune from suit under the two remaining key federal surveillance laws: the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act. Essentially, the Obama Adminstration has claimed that the government cannot be held accountable for illegal surveillance under any federal statutes."

Reading the actual warrent request is a hoot.
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/inresearchBC/EXHIBIT-A.pdf

I just read it, and there is definitely a bit more to it than the EFF claims, although all evidence except for one bit is all testimony from the roommate.

The most serious thing he's apparently done is change grades. It sounds to me like typical schoolboy fantasy hacking, but if he's done that, he's in trouble. Other than that, his main problem is that he has apparently illegally downloaded quite a lot of movies and music. The prosecution would do well to get the RIAA on their side, because this may be the only thing they have.

Also, the email that outs the roommate as being gay has been traced to our hacker. Evidence is convincing enough (and not just dependent on statements by the roommate). No idea if that's illegal, though.

Mostly it's just a disagreement between two roommates, and one of them got lucky by getting law enforcement on his side, and the other might be screwed for having illegal downloads on his machine.

Ther last part of the warrant request looks really amateurish about his layman's opinion that people store passwords on their computer and about a sergeant who taught him some indisputable facts of computer crime, but I skipped most of that.

The technical term is prompt commands.

Is there probable cause? Maybe not.

http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/inresearchBC/CalixteMemSupport.pdf

The warrent is posted right here. RTFA before making such vague claims.

If you would just read it you would notice that the entire affidavit is just a list of cursory accusations against the student (Calixte) and does not show probably cause for anything that is a crime. The main accusation is that sending email to a open list server is somehow a willful violation of security, and even those accusations are made in a way the side-steps the question of weather any such activities are illegal.

RTFA, for example here, before making such cursory judgments.

The warrent is posted right here. RTFA before making such vague claims.

If you would just read it you would notice that the entire affidavit is just a list of cursory accusations against the student (Calixte) and does not show probably cause for anything that is a crime. The main accusation is that sending email to a open list server is somehow a willful violation of security, and even those accusations are made in a way the side-steps the question of weather any such activities are illegal.

RTFA, for example here, before making such cursory judgments.

The warrent is posted right here. RTFA before making such vague claims.

If you would just read it you would notice that the entire affidavit is just a list of cursory accusations against the student (Calixte) and does not show probably cause for anything that is a crime. The main accusation is that sending email to a open list server is somehow a willful violation of security, and even those accusations are made in a way the side-steps the question of weather any such activities are illegal.

RTFA, for example here, before making such cursory judgments.

Really? Care to link to the ruling?

There was a link to one such ruling in TFA. I'm sure the EFF will happily supply you with many more.

Any of them been found guilty in a court of law?

No, and here's a small newsflash for you -- that's the whole problem . If our current legal system wasn't severely flawed in the area of copyright, then the EFF wouldn't exist.

You are wrong and the grandparent is right. The EFF says that "the ... officer argued that the computer expertise of the student itself supported a finding of probable cause." Matt Zimmerman, "Boston College Campus Police: 'Using Prompt Commands' May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity," EFF Deeplinks Blog, April 14, 2009, available at http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/boston-college-prompt-commands-are-suspicious. This is on their website, written by a Senior Staff Attorney, see EFF, Profile of Matt Zimmerman, http://www.eff.org/about/staff/matt-zimmerman. It is indisputably a "representation of what the EFF said." Their characterization is plainly false if you read the warrant application; the officer argued that a number of factors, all told, supported a finding of probable cause that a crime was being or had been committed.

Furthermore, my opinion is that there is probable cause to believe a crime was being or had been committed. A reliable witness told the officer so! That's strong enough to support a search warrant even under the older Aguilar-Spinelli test, and a fortiori enough to support a search warrant under the newer, looser "totality of the circumstances" test (though this is irrelevant, as Massachusetts law still requires an analogue of the Aguilar-Spinelli test, see Commonwealth v. Upton, 394 Mass. 363, 373 (1985)). The officer doesn't have to get the statute right; that's the prosecutor's job. The fact that the officer doesn't have the legal acumen to distinguish between "hacking" and, say, harassment of the roommate (which is a chargeable offense under Massachusetts law, see Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 265, sec. 43A, available at http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/265-43a.htm) is utterly immaterial to the question of whether the search warrant was valid.

Your bias is evident, as is your ignorance.

You are wrong and the grandparent is right. The EFF says that "the ... officer argued that the computer expertise of the student itself supported a finding of probable cause." Matt Zimmerman, "Boston College Campus Police: 'Using Prompt Commands' May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity," EFF Deeplinks Blog, April 14, 2009, available at http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/boston-college-prompt-commands-are-suspicious. This is on their website, written by a Senior Staff Attorney, see EFF, Profile of Matt Zimmerman, http://www.eff.org/about/staff/matt-zimmerman. It is indisputably a "representation of what the EFF said." Their characterization is plainly false if you read the warrant application; the officer argued that a number of factors, all told, supported a finding of probable cause that a crime was being or had been committed.

Furthermore, my opinion is that there is probable cause to believe a crime was being or had been committed. A reliable witness told the officer so! That's strong enough to support a search warrant even under the older Aguilar-Spinelli test, and a fortiori enough to support a search warrant under the newer, looser "totality of the circumstances" test (though this is irrelevant, as Massachusetts law still requires an analogue of the Aguilar-Spinelli test, see Commonwealth v. Upton, 394 Mass. 363, 373 (1985)). The officer doesn't have to get the statute right; that's the prosecutor's job. The fact that the officer doesn't have the legal acumen to distinguish between "hacking" and, say, harassment of the roommate (which is a chargeable offense under Massachusetts law, see Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 265, sec. 43A, available at http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/265-43a.htm) is utterly immaterial to the question of whether the search warrant was valid.

Your bias is evident, as is your ignorance.

Perhaps you should also follow at least one link on TFA and go here to hear the other side. Audiatur et altera pars, you know. And I wouldn't just take the statement of a disgruntled roommate that he'd cracked the grading system as probable cause without any further inquiry.

If you bothered to read the warrant application, I can only assume you also read the Press Release. This would be the only valid basis for your accusation, since it's the only representation of what the EFF said. You seem, however, to be saying that the EFF is stating, like TFS, that the use of the "black with white font (zOMG!)" OS was the reason for the warrant. Were that the case, you would be right, and they would be liars. You're wrong, and they aren't. In fact, in the lengthy press release, they only once mention the use of a CLI, and it is only a very minor part of a larger argument relating to the reliability of the witness. You're ignoring the rest of the legal arguments, and the 15 page motion, which clearly show the invalid nature of the warrant. Your assertion that they're lying, and that there is probable cause, is "Just. Plain. Wrong."

For all the 'I'm so insightful because I read the warrant' people out there... let me point you to the EFF motion which may make things a bit clearer for you.

Yeah, the summary is crap. Did you read the EFF motion as well before coming to your conclusions, I hear the writer(s) may have some experience with law.

While it is obvious that the summary is crap, you may want to read the EFF motion before passing judgement.