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German Censorware Targets Music
If you only read one link, read Fitug's fact sheet (in English). It summarizes the situation pretty well. See Declan McCullagh's Politech for some more links.
Basically, the German recording industry is selling the idea that they should have carte blanche to block any incoming packets they see fit, at the router. As Lawrence Lessig and others have warned, the large ISPs are the weak link, subject to easy regulation. And as Fitug's paper says, only the large service providers need be forced to use this system: small providers get their feeds from the large ones, auto-censored for their pleasure.
Think for a moment about how this system will work in practice. Pirate websites, by definition, operate under the radar: they are hard to find. They are often up only briefly, or require a password to access. They aren't linked to search engines. Sharing copyrighted material is illegal is every major Western country, so these sites aren't going to list themselves on Yahoo.
But it's already been shown that censorware can't even block what's on Yahoo. That's not an exaggeration. I work with the Censorware Project, and we did a report on Bess in 1999. The software didn't just fail to block a lot of hardcore sex. It failed to block hardcoresex.com - and hundreds of other porn sites listed on Yahoo.
This new "Rights Protection System" is going to use the same technologies as existing censorware and have about the same results:
"Im Prinzip funktioniert das 'Right Protection System' also ähnlich wie das Programm Cyberpatrol..."
"So in principle, the 'Rights Protection System' will work like the program Cyber Patrol..."
Someone has to maintain this "Rights Protection System," just like someone has to maintain Cyber Patrol. What chance does it have to find even a fraction of the napster servers, hotline servers, IRC channels, and, yes, even websites where pirate MP3s are being traded?
And when a pirate site is found, the rock'n'roll will be blocked the same way existing censorware blocks sex or drugs. Let's say a directory full of copyrighted MP3s is at
http://BigUniversity.edu/users/joepirate/secret/
The RPS staffers have no way of knowing whether "joepirate" is going to have friends who share MP3s, is going to change user IDs, or is going to put his songs into some other directory. The block will be made not on the /secret/ directory. If the university is lucky, there will be a block on the /users/ directory.
But since the "filtering" takes place at the router, it is much more likely that the entire webserver will be blocked. Big University probably won't be getting many exchange students from Germany next year.
And on what basis is the country going to ask its service providers to put this extra software on their routers? According to a spokesperson for the German branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI):
"The packet forwarding process in the router is not a passive forwarding of the incoming signals. The packet is processed and manipulated by the router before it is transmitted onwards. So the [service providers] that purchase and install these routers have a heavy participatory role in the operation of the Internet."
In other words, since the hardware is already routing ("manipulating") packets from one network to another, it's really no different to add a blacklist that forbids certain URLs or IP numbers.
The executives speaking in favor of this proposal make it sound like it's going to benefit the little musician, the one struggling to make it. The IFPI points out magnanimously that it invests some of its profits in unknown artists (duh):
"Jede dritte Mark, die mit den Hits der Megastars erwirtschaftet wird, fließt heute in die Förderung junger Künstler."
"Today, every third Mark made by the megastars' hits goes toward the promotion of young artists."
Isn't that nice. But what about the "young artists" who haven't been signed with a label yet?
If I'm trying to make a name for myself by giving away my own music, and the RPS staffers spot a directory full of my MP3s, are they really going to compare each of my files' titles against their libraries? Are they going to listen to each MP3 they find? More likely, they will assume that files named "my_heart_will_go_on.mp3" and "song-001.mp3" are songs copyrighted by someone else, and not my own original work.
Simple solution: block my whole directory. Or my whole server. If there's a little collateral damage - well, less competition for their own artists.
And they won't bother to tell me about it, of course; so my music is now blocked from eighty million potential listeners - customers - and I will never know.
This doesn't help "young artists" - unless you think enslaving them to the existing labels is helping them. The IFPI chooses to ignore that giving away MP3s can help a struggling artist, not hurt.
Meanwhile, executives for the German Authors' Rights Society (GEMA) redefine arrogance. My German is rusty and Babelfish is almost no help, so bear with me. First, they count their money:
"Erfolgreiche Jahresbilanz. Zunächst aber habe ich die Ehre, Ihnen den Geschäftsbericht 1998 vorzulegen. Er dokumentiert mit seinem Gesamtertrag von DM 1,465 Mrd. und einer Verteilsumme von DM 1,263 Mrd. die wirtschaftliche Ertragskraft unserer musikalischen Verwertungsgesellschaft..."
"Successful Annual Balance. But first I have the honor to submit the business report for 1998. It documents total proceeds of 1.465 billion Marks and a distribution total of 1.263 billion Marks for our commercial music corporation..."
(Incidentally, Babelfish translates "unserer musikalischen Verwertungsgesellschaft" as "our musical exploitation corporation" - which may be accurate but probably isn't what was intended.)
Then, two sentences later:
"...auch die den kreativen Schöpfer bedrohenden Kräfte, die sich hinter Schlagworten wie 'arbeitsplatzschaffende Kommunikationsgesellschaft' oder 'Digitalisierung der Welt' verstecken, nicht aus den Augen verloren werden dürfen. Hier drohen uns - allerdings zu bewältigende - Gefahren. Und in der Tat, sie werden auch nicht eine Sekunde aus den Augen verloren, diese Gefahren. So wird denn die GEMA nicht müde, die globalisierungssüchtigen Verfechter absoluter Kommunikationsfreiheit und damit Verächter von Kultur und geistigem Eigentum immer wieder in die Schranken zu verweisen."
"...and we should not lose track of those powers who threaten creative people*, who hide themselves behind slogans like 'job-creating communications company' or 'digitalization of the world.' We are threatened by these dangers - which nevertheless can be overcome. Indeed, these dangers will not for one second be lost from our eyes. GEMA will never, ever tire of putting these globalization-addicted advocates of absolute freedom of communication - the depisers of culture and intellectual property - in their place."
Boy. How serious are these guys?
But of course they're serious. After all, negative billions are at stake.
Finally, consider what will happen once the German music industry, or any other, manages to install content-based blocking at the routers of the entire country.
Pirated music isn't the only illegal content in Germany. And once the software's in place, no politician will be able to resist adding one more type of content to block.
What will be the next category they enable on their nationwide blacklist? You might think sex. I'm betting it's Holocaust-denial. The denial of the Holocaust is something I've been working against for eight years (wearing one of my other "activist hats"). And for eight years I've been repeating that the most effective way to repudiate this dishonest political ideology is to expose it to the light of day.
Let people read the junk. And let them read refutations of the junk. That's the best way for people to recognize that deniers are liars: give them access to what everyone says, and let them make up their own minds.
But the German government disagrees. Unfortunately, they don't realize that the best way to convince a confused citizen that Holocaust-deniers are saying something valuable is to have the government ban it. "After all," goes the logic, "they wouldn't ban it if it weren't dangerous - and what could be more dangerous than the truth?"
Then, finally, after they make free-speech martyrs out of neo-Nazis, will come the effort to block sexual content. All of these blocking efforts - music, Holocaust-denial, sex - will work approximately as well as censorware has worked anywhere else. And will do approximately as much collateral damage.
This approach to censoring an entire country - block content at the incoming routers - has not yet been tried on a large scale in any Western country. Many Asian countries (notably excepting Japan) and most if not all fundamentalist Islam countries have adopted nationwide blocking. We'll see if this is the first step toward bringing the technology to the West.
If anyone has information about who will be creating and maintaining the blacklists used by the "Rights Protection System," please post a comment here or email me.
It's all a trap, to catch those people smuggling hardcore images from Germany to the US in MP3 files. Now you can be nabbed at either end, sentanced to life, extradited and sentanced to life again.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A government can go a step further and outlaw all on-line audio and video formats that don't incorporate copy protection; if you break those laws, they would be able to confiscate your equipment and assess penalties, and any dealer who sells or distributes such equipment would face stiff penalties as well.
This is clearly where the RIAA, the MPAA, and their equivalents in other countries would like things to go. They want to replace all open audio and video formats with proprietary formats, formats that incorporate copy protection and per-use payments. Restrictions on reverse engineering and "breaking copyright protections" make open implementations impossible. Patented compression and encryption schemes would further limit the ability of others to legally access that content.
Even personal content you create would be subject to those restrictions. If you want to be able to look at your kid growing up in copy-protected, proprietary video 20 years from now, think again. The proprietary players will not work on the new hardware and software, and since they never got documented or reverse engineered, your data will be lost. And if you are a small artist, you will, of course, have to pay the "inventors" of those proprietary formats a pretty penny for the privilege of using their technology; funny that the same "inventors" are also your big name competition in the media markets.
Media companies want to control the distribution channels (Sony music, Polygram, and all those others sites, of course, wouldn't get blocked, but small artists would) and the formats (have you tried making a consumer-readable DVD recently? why do you think it's so expensive?).
It's not surprising that these organizations have a sympathetic ear in Germany, where free speech is not quite as cherished as in the US. But in both countries, everybody should get scared by this. Allowing big media companies to control the formats by which we communicate is a direct attack on our most basic rights. Streaming MP3 and MPEG-2 will likely become the formats of choice for audio and video mail and conferencing once bandwidth catches up (their quality is too low for real music enjoyment anyway). MP3 and similar formats are the direct equivalent of the air, paper, and wires we communicate over today. Do we want to hand control over those to a few large companies?
I hope politicians will get sufficiently frightened by such a future to prevent it. Open media formats and open access to those media formats is essential in a free, democratic society. Most other considerations ought to be secondary.
When you consider how many of the world's largest copyright-dependent companies are German:
Deutsch Grammophon
Polygram
BMG
Bertlesmann
etc.
I wouldn't be surprised, in fact, if the entertainment industry comprised a larger percentage of Germany's GDP than it does our own...
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
There are exceptions to this rule. If you're a musician who's willing to work long hard hours touring, you can make an AWFUL LOT. This is exactly what the Grateful Dead did. They sold out arena after arena for years (decades even), and got very wealthy in the process
Even better, they essentially gave away their music. They pioneered the practice of encouraging people to record their shows, and make copies for their friends. You could get "taper's tickets", and get a nice spot behind the soundboard to set up your reel-to-reel, DAT, Minidisc, whatever.
And when you think about it, music is great stuff. But is one song worth all the money that is squeezed out of it?
I am a musician and a songwriter. I'm going to "do the dream" this june. I'm moving to Colorado with my band, and we're going to work very very hard. We have (what I think are) some great songs. I hope people like them. I don't think that I deserve millions of dollars for them. I already wrote and recorded them for chissake!
How much is a flash of inspiration really worth. I don't think it's worth millions of bucks.
On the other hand, touring is HARD WORK - and also requires *talent* - something studio musicians don't really need as much of. While touring you're working very long days in uncomfortable surroundings. It ain't all Sex and Drugs.
Furthermore, do you know why touring is "advertising"? It's because these one hit wonders have just that - one hit. Even if it's good, people aren't going to come back to see them perform it more than once or twice. Real, live musicians have a repitoire, they sometimes play different sets every night. They play the same song in different ways, and improvise. You hear a performance. Let talented musicians (those for whom performance != lip-syncing) work hard, be creatively challenged to keep the show interesting, and people will buy tickets for every night of a four night stand. hundreds of thousands of people have done this and will continue to Just my two cents. Click this link in my sig to hear 2-year old tracks from my band.
Censorship is a slippery slope; once you start down it, everything is vulnerable.
Well, everything can be claimed to be a slippery slope to some undesired destination. Mostly though we're able to avoid the undesired consequences if we wish to: in the case of censorship the implementation of antagonistic review bodies and safeguards operating in the public domain should be enough to prevent the destruction of democratic debate providing there are enough people that care about it. There's no way to implement a comprehensive set of rules that will function without superintendence - a constant struggle between interested parties carried out in the public eye is probably the best way to ensure that any abuse that happens is condoned by a large number of people in our society.
One holds it out for the world to see... and ridicule and spit upon and point and laugh and use as an object lesson for your kids
That sounds good. What happens though if there are people convinced by these arguments and they act upon them? It is claimed by some involved in Anti-Fascist movements that there is a correlation between public meetings led by such luminaries as the Holocaust denier David Irving and attacks on perceived enemies afterwards. Indeed Searchlight magazine, a british publication quotes Irving as stating that the setting up of "fascist cells" is the object of his League of St.George appearances. So, these things are not necessarily just academic debates about how many died. They are potentially the nucleus for the death or maiming of some "degenerate". IMHO it is the same problem that always attends discussion of free speech: the decision to allow it should take into account its likely effects. Your post seems to advocate an absolute right to speech without this consideration. Do I misunderstand you? If not how do you propose to avoid these problems?Your fist, my nose.
That is where the line is drawn. The old Flip Wilson line "The devil made me do it" is an abandonment of personal responsibility. One is free to say what one wants; one is also free to decide what to do about it. It is the rioters who are at fault, not the so-called inciter. If they use force against people or property, they should be brought to justice.
Now, it is the function of government to punish force, or fraud. If one can prove an inciter to riot used some sort of fraud (anything from fallacious argument to outright lies) to inspire the people to riot, then he can and should be held responsible in civil court for his damages. Same thing with "fire" in a crowded theatre... unless there really is a fire, in which case Good Sam clauses apply.
It's about each person taking responsibility for his or her own self, and not being led around by the likes of the last scuzzball orator they just heard, no matter how outrageous it might have been, or how much sense it might make.
--
"It seemed the logical thing to do at the time." -- Sarek
This getting a bit off-topic, but I would like to comment on jamie's remarks about the German government and the way it deals with Holocaust denial and other forms of Nazi sympathy.
Actually, I tend to agree with jamie's point that censorship is not the way to deal with something like this. However, as an American who has lived in Germany for over ten years now, I've also come to understand Germans who are exasperated at Americans and others for the contradictory messages that they send about dealing with latter-day Nazis and other right-wing extremists in Germany.
For every rallying cry for freedom of speech such as jamie's, even in the face of the worst kind of speech, there is someone else in the world darkly warning that the Germans are a congenitally dangerous people who are constantly in danger of turning into Nazis again, and so they damn well better do anything, no matter how ruthless, to make sure it never happens again.
This message was communicated very strongly by the Allies after the war, and they institutionalized it in the German constitution and in their efforts at "de-Nazification". It's constitutional in Germany to ban political parties, strip citizens of their civil rights in certain very extreme cases, and possibly even censor Holocaust denial (I think the courts are still unsure about that), specifically because the Allies wanted Germans to do all those things to drive the Nazi mindset out of the culture. To this day, there are many people around the world who fully expect the Germans to keep on doing all of these things.
Americans often get frustrated at the feeling that Europeans will criticize us no matter what we do -- it seems like it's damned if you do, damned if you don't all the time. Many Germans' reaction to criticism such as jamie's is very similar. To be sure, one can't expect everybody in the world to have the same opinion about what to do, but I often wonder if someone like jamie realizes how controversial his suggested solution is around the world.
The Germans are very sensitive about their image in the rest of the world and are trying to the right thing. But they're just as uncertain as everyone else about what the right thing is.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
I am attending college here in the USA at the same time as my sister, who happens to be a German language major. We've discussed this, and talked with her professors, and it's a fact of life in Germany that certain freedoms are restricted. I'm sure some of you in the gaming community have noticed that sometimes gamemakers mention they have to make special versions for German customers. Unreal Tournament had to release a German version in which your opponents are clearly androids so that there is no blood. A similar thing happened with Myth, and Bungie eventually added a 'No Blood' option when they released Myth 2, causing all opponents you kill to disappear in a cloud of stars, a-la Mario Bros. One of the more interesting things is that Nazi propaganda is expressly outlawed in Germany. Unlike how the article reads, they aren't trying to cover up the Holocaust... however, swastikas and pro-Nazi symbolism are flat-out illegal. While it is still considered free speech to have and share such views, it is illegal to openly display them. German WW2 products cannot have the swastikas, feature (obvious) SS officers, etc. Just last week, a group of Neo-Nazis marched through Berlin to promote themselves. The government allowed it, though it did arrest a few individuals before the march began because of their display of said materials. Before they reached their rally point though, the ~200-300 Neo-Nazis were met by nearly 2000 protesters coming the other way. Needless to say, there were some rocks (and even bicycles) thrown, and many more people were arrested. The entire point behind these restrictions is to prevent such a thing as the Holocaust from happening again. Admittedly, it strikes me as overkill, but the German people tend to be very formal and reserved in public situations or with people outside their immediate friends and family, and used to doing things in a certain manner. Restricting such things isn't always popular, but the majority simply take it in stride because it seems necessary. What does any of this have to do with the article? The German public is already used to having certain restrictions placed on their freedom, even if the results are dubious at best. However, the use of the Internet has expanded rapidly in the last few years there, and certain factions will be lining up on both sides of the issue there, just as they are here on the issue of sex on the 'net. It would be a long, hard struggle to kill such legislation if it came to be in Germany, and I'm not sure there would be enough people worried about MP3s to stop it.
______________________
First, to get the coordinates straight, I am a German in US college.
:)
So, while you're completely correct about observing that it is illegal to publicly display 3rd Reich symbols in Germany, I think you are mistaking that as a sort of general passive attitude in dealing with restrictions of democratic freedom(s) and rights.
You have to understand that freedom has a million different interpretations and that those interpretations as laid down in laws naturally arise from the historical background of when those laws were written. In Germany (IMHO) we still have quite some problems dealing with WWII history, even though it's been 50 yrs now since it all happened. So, at the time (of writing the constitution) it was ca. 5yrs since 6million people were killed in KZ's. I think it is quite natural (even if you now might think of it as an overreaction now) that you get strict laws against openly campaiging for that or even openly stating that most of it is untrue. After all, Germany caused an unimaginable pain to a whole people. To make it short, those laws have a background and I think in Germany not many people oppose it and that that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Does it limit your freedom of speech? Sure. But it also grants the German people (government and citizens) to effectively combat any major effort to disrupt the process of healing.
Another example: in Germany you don't have the universal right to bear arms. Surely this impairs said freedom but it also grants you the freedom of not having to worry a whole lot about life-threats when sending your kid to school.
Also, as we all have been watching here, it is very difficult nowadays to ensure the freedom of speech (and the right to bear arms and others), which have (yet again) so profound historical and therefore emotional roots in the US.
My point being is that in a democracy there are freedoms which need to be restricted, so more important freedoms are granted, such as the restriction of killing people and so on.
Example in US: here you don't have the freedom to drink alcohol until you're 21 although you can already be sentenced to death at age 16. Different cultures, different laws. Is one better than the other? Wrong (too simple) question. If you think about it, almost any item in the Bill of Rights has so far been reduced, some sensibly some not.
With all that being said, I don't have the slightest doubt in my mind, that this kind of vastly pro-corporate restriction on your internet content will be as fiercely combated in Germany as in the US. In Germany we IMHO have a very strong sense of civil rights and their upkeeping. And actually for that reason I don't think laws like this will even pass our parliament, but that's speculation.
BTW, the German constitution also has a passage ensuring the legality of (if necessary violently) overthrowing a government which tramples on your basic human rights.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not pissed or offended or anything, I just think you have to evaluate things in context. I e.g. think, it is downright crazy to allow everybody to have a gun, but then if you look where it comes from, it makes more sense.
To make this a little more on-topic:
This stuff is politically and technoligically not really feasible, as also pointed in other posts. But if stupidity takes over, I'll be there to campaign against it!
Amen,
Roland
I will start with two statements that most everyone should agree with.
1) There is nothing wrong, legally or morally, with music encoded into MP3s, or the distribution of music encoded in the MP3 format.
2) Artists (and their agents, the record labels) have the legal and moral right to demand payment in exchange for their product, like any other legal business.
Everyone is all up in arms over the MP3 format because it seems that the two points above are in conflict, as MP3 files are quickly and readily shared, often illegally. But there is a simple solution that requires no new laws to be formed.
The goverments of the world need to combine forces to create a clearinghouse organization that would have the power to force an ISP to remove digtal media content (software, music, video, etc) that is illegally copied. Call them the ICE (International Copyright Enforcers).
If an artist came across their materials that were illegally available on the web, they could report it to ICE and shut the site down. This means that if an artist (say Mariah Carey) really wants to protect against her music being copied, she or her record label could hunt down MP3 music (via web searches and napster, etc) and report violating sites to ICE. But if another artist (say Skippy Martens) didn't care about his music, there would be no reporting to ICE, and thus no problem.
This puts the ball in the artist's court: if they want to stop illegal copying -- go find it and tell us about it. But don't blame the media format (MP3) or the distribution channel (Napster) because those are legally neutral.
Now, this would work because if I can find illegal MP3s, so could the artists. And the labels (not to mention software companies) would be more than happy to have a small staff of people devoted to hunting illegal files. And if you want to rip MP3s, make several copies -- that's fine as long as no one can find it (and why would the artists care about it if no one can find it?).
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
It's funny... slashdot's turned into this great little place where everybody says the same thing over and over again. It's always about "Us Vs Them", or more often "U.S. Vs Them". The People Against the Govenment(s). Linux Against Microsoft. The Geeks Against The Corps. To be honest, I'm getting a little tired of it.
Yes, it's about rights. People should have a right to look at whatever they want - be it porn, how to make a bomb, or how to create a more effecicient O/S.
The thing is, it's not just about your rights. Policians have to think about the rights of childeren, the rights of artists, or more to the point, they think about the rights that people with money believe they have.
I have downloaded MP3's. I think nearly everybody has. I have about 400 CD's worth of MP3's. The thing is, I bought about 300 CD's and MP3'd them. I figure that I paid to listen to them, and if I wish to listen to them in another format, that's my choice. The other 100 CD's are mostly old 80's hits you can't get anymore...
On the other hand, I'm not denying the fact that the artists have rights. If any of the artists in question want royalties, they can come around and I'll pay them the same 5 cents the record company would.
It's a similar story with CSS. I think the worst thing about CSS are the region codes.
The term "free as in speech, not as in beer" has kind of been warped around here. If you were to ask RMS, he'd tell you that programmers should be paid as much as possible. They (we) work very hard, and deserve to be rewarded. On the other hand, any program you pay for, you should be able to modify, change, give away, spraypaint pink or do whatever you feel is appropriate with, because one you pay for something it should be yours.
None of this license crap.
The other thing is the hidden internet. People have been talking about encryption, filtering, hidden or removed networks for longer than I've been here - so I ask everyone: Have ANY of you ever set anything like that up? Any IPv6 experts here? Anybody know how to set up a root server? Any CA's here? Many IMAP guru's? Everybody know how to configure SSL under Apache or AOLServer? Christ, do any of you even know how to untar Apache?
I've done most of those. It took an afternoon to get IPv6 running properly on all the Linux boxen and the NT servers - although I had a lot of fun tunneling through the switch (thanks 3Com), I have 3 DNS servers running fine and dandy here (with rob.is.a.turnip. pointing to
I'll tell you what, if any of you are REALLY serious, I'll run as the root server, the CA, and offer SSL hosting for anybody that can prove they're a real geek. I'll run a tutorial showing everybody how to configure dial up networking so you can see what's going on. I'll explain how to configure IPv6 to anybody that wants to route packets around Germany / America / Mongolia. Better yet, I'll do the root server, CA, and help bit for free.
Who's interested?
</RANT>
Yeah, that's a huge task in itself. But what about Gnutella? Forget blocking it. It's not going to be possible. Anyone can set up a server and by it's very nature, it's meant to be uncensorable (AKA unblockable).
kwsNI
It said it was filtered at ISP level, so it shouldn't affect it. If it would be filtered at UUNet, that would be a big problem since Frankfurt is a Multiple Hub City.
There are no "good" reasons for this. If anyone commits real crimes - murder, robbery, arson, whatever - then bust 'em. Otherwise, you are creating a class of political crime.
Some German folks should probably weigh in on this one, but at the risk of annoying everyone on both sides of this touchy issue I'll weigh in with my unsolicited opinions, as an Auslander (foreigner) who lived there for a number of years.
While I too disagree with Germany's approach to their Nazi, and more recently, neo-Nazi problem, one must consider the practicalities of their situation. After world war II there were still a large number of people who, privately, still supported much of what the Nazis had stood for. The allies and early German administrations felt the danger represented by this anomolous political sitiuation was simply too severe, and too immediate, to allow themselves the luxery of tolerating it in the name of free speach or expression, so yes, in effect, they did create a "political class" of criminals. It is illegal in Germany to be a Nazi, period. You can go to jail for espousing Nazism, displaying Nazi symbols, making Nazi salutes, etc. This is their solution to an intolerable problem. It is not necessarilly a good solution, and it does have a heavy price, but it is the solution they have chosen.
Whether they were right or wrong in this assessment is an interesting discussion of its own. Nevertheless, their reasons for this policy were very obvious, very good, and very, very compelling. One of the aforementioned "heavy prices" Germany is paying today IMHO is an expression of pent up, suppressed speach in the form of neo-Nazism. Another is the much more insidious (and possibly more dangerous) tendency for institutions in Germany to engage in large scale, draconian censorship which other democratic nations would be reluctant to consider (the USA being a possible exception) for reasons which, while much less compelling than the Nazi issue, appear to them to be nevertheless "good."
This isn't a justification, merely a commentary on the state of things as I see them. Again, while I disagree with their choice to use censorship to address the Nazi issue (far better to allow your opponent to make an ass of themself and then ridicule them publicly than to suppress their right to express themself), I think one must be a little understanding as to why the felt compelled to do so. This empathy should not, however, be extended to include the modern day abuses of this power which some institutions in Germany appear to now take for granted as their "right."
If Germany is indeed a mature, "grown up" democracy (to borrow a phrase from the press), then they really should reevaluate the role censorship is playing in their society.
On the other hand, so should we here in the USA, as you imply and as numerous stories here on slashdot and elsewhere have made abundantly clear, time and time again.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
That's why the more likely (and scary) approach would be to block entire servers. A router could easily block packets from/to a specific IP address, it would simply drop them, no added overhead. The client web browser would just think that the server doesn't exist, because it isn't returning any of its packets.
Of course, what would make more sense is to impliment this as firewalls, not routers. You would have to replace all ISP's gateways with transparent filtering firewalls/proxies, which could selectively block URLs at any level, with much less of a performance hit. However, this still has the problems of bad filtering.
All in all, this is a bad idea, no matter how it is implimented.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Won't this also block packets destined for another country which happen to get routed through Germany? Germany will only get routed around if the retries happen to get routed along a different path, else the block gets exported to wherever the recipient happens to be.
Half-baked idea...
First, if you have any illegal .mp3's - that is, any mp3s of copyrighted songs by artists you don't already own the CDs for - delete them from your system, especially if the same computer is your webserver. Just trust me on this...
Second, go find a site put up by an independent artist that offers some full songs or clips for download. Grab them, then politely ask the band if you can mirror them on your own site.
Third, if you get the OK, offer them for download. Hell, devote a small section of your site to independent bands. Offer links to their sites and the mp3s. Encourage visitors to at least follow the links, maybe buy a CD or two.
Fourth...when organizations like RIAA, CRIA, the German organization, and the like bitch and whine about "stolen music" and "artists' rights", bring up your own site, with music by indies which is perfectly legal to download, supporting indies' rights to promote themselves. And if blocking systems like the "Rights Protection System" are implemented anywhere, you and the bands can legitimately say their exposure is being blocked by big labels. Large companies do not like having a public image of squashing the little guy for their own profit, even if it's true.
This won't eliminate the issue of copyright violations of music by label artists, but you'll have retaken the moral high ground by having a working example of what we've been pointing to as a useful aspect of MP3 the whole time, along with backing up your own music collection.
Remember - do not offer any music for download that you don't have permission to mirror! I don't know how many bands would have issues with having the music they offer for download mirrored. Some, certainly. Still, it's worth a shot, as it would prove that the mp3 form of distribution can legally work to build exposure for an artist, or at least get some of their music out and about. It's also a good chance to tweak the attack lawyers and execs who try to make .mp3 look like crack cocaine.
DISCLAIMER: I haven't done the above...yet. I've become a bit more aware of digital distribution, copyright, fair use, and control issues. I may do the above soon, if this doesn't end up alongside the other 5000 ideas I come up with and forget about every day. It's certainly an attractive cause, though...especially after the visit by CRIA goons to my school...
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Now, beyond that. There are a lot of legitimate MP3's out on the market. Is it right to block those just because there is also pirating going on. I mean, that's like the police trying to shut down your local mall to prevent more shoplifting.
You say: "You don't have a "right" to view mp3s, especially ripped off mp3s". That's only half right. The law doesn't give you the right to view (listen) to ripped off MP3s. I have every right in the world to listen to the interview with some celebrity that CNN just put on there site for download that I want to hear. I have every right to go to MP3.com and download the latest songs from these new artists. I have every right to go to an established artists page and download the MP3 that they are giving away in the months before they release their CD. And you can not take that right away (or make sure that I only do the things within my rights) with software.
kwsNI
The issue is, are we attacking someone's "property"? Are digital recordings property? There is, I personally believe, a massive paradigm shift (ugh) happening, wherein the very definition of "property" is changing in people's minds. Perhaps, a generation down the line (or two) people will look back and be amazed that anyone seriously embraced the concept of "intellectual property".
As has been pointed out, by Stallman et al, "intellectual property" differs from real property in that my use of an idea (or a digital recording, or a piece of software) does not necessarily preclude your simultaneous use of the idea, song, etc. An idea, once released, is not a scarce resource -- and so it does not fit the "property" model.
Should people be able to make money off of their creative pursuits? I certainly believe so. Should the model for making money be some kludged, ad-hoc, and unwieldy attempt to cut-and-past laws for physical property into virtual space? Not at all. I don't know how an artist can make money on the Net -- but the current method is not a long-term viable one, no matter how many people turn blue screaming "Property violation! Property violation!"
I contend that "intellectual property" has always had this tension implicit in it. Now the Internet has made it impossible to gloss over them.
As a historical parallel, consider the modern corporation. Prior to the rise of the corporation, anyone running a business was held personally and completely responsible for it. Say you ran a shipping company whose ship went down. Action could be brought against not just the holdings of the company, but against your personal wealth -- and the wealth of any investors in the company.
This scared off investors -- the only sin recognized in early 21st century America -- and so, our history books tell us, this was a Bad Thing. In response, things like the limited liability partnership and the modern corporation were put into place, so the vast engine of commericialism could be unleashed.
Don't you think back then that people who had succeeded with the old model, in the old circumstances, cried "foul!" and screamed that people were taking away their rights to recoup lost investments. Of course they did. SO what? The social understanding of liability was changed becasuse it was recognized that the old model was limiting and out-moded.
Sort of like the situation we find ourselves in today, regarding "intellectual property".
Open Standards. Open Source. Open Minds. The Revolution will be Intercast!
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
You've mistranslated the German.
It should read "we should not lose track of those powers who threaten creative people", not "those creators of threatening powers"
I really think you're being knee-jerk about the Holocaust. I don't see the connection at all. It's just some pompous corporate posturing by some guys who would rather protect the market share they inherited than risk innovation.
I bragged about my Karma at a job interview but I didn't get the job.
If I've got this right, this shows an abysmal lack of understanding of how routing actually works. See, IP packets have an "envelope" and a payload (the content). The envelope contains the source and destination addresses and ports ("From: 123.45.678.90:12345, To: 234.87.53.309:80"). It also contains some information destined to be used at the other end, such as whether the packet was fragmented along the way and which fragment # this one contains so that the original information can be reconstructed at the receiving end.
The "payload" of the packet is the content; what's inside the envelope. This is where all the data is put, including the HTTP "GET" requests. When you fetch a web page, your browser sends something like the following inside an IP packet:
HTTP/1.1 GET http://slashdot.org/
(There's more to it; read RFC 2616 to learn all about the HTTP/1.1 protocol). The point is that this is *inside* the packet. How are you going to tell which packets contain HTTP GET requests, huh? Look inside every packet? Sorry, buddy, not gonna do it. That would slow down ping times by at least a factor of ten: instead of 100-200ms, you'd have ping times of one or two seconds. For every communication.
Or maybe you just look inside packets with a destination port of 80? Yeah, that'd work, right? Nope -- web servers can run on any port. You'd immediately see lots of web servers hanging off port 8080, 8088, or even weird port numbers, serving up MP3's with unfiltered impunity.
There are a lot more reasons (which I won't go into) as to why this thing won't work as suggested. Thought exercise: where are the blocking lists going to live? And how will they be updated? Turn in a 500-1000 word essay to my desk by Monday for extra credit. :-)
Not to say that SOME kind of required-filtering law may be passed in Germany, but this isn't going to be it. If this gets passed, it will either (a) be utterly useless, or (b) slow down ALL Internet usage in Germany so much that the law would get repealed in record time as the German legislation realizes that it just cut its entire country off from the Internet.
I'm sure there are some factual errors in the above, as I whipped it out with virtually no research whatsoever. But the technical details of how routing works are pretty much as described. For the full story about IP and how it works, read RFC 791. For more about HTTP version 1.1, see the link several paragraphs above.
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
The old-guard recording industry, for all its rhetoric to the contrary, is far more concerned with crushing the emerging competition they are feeling from sites such as mp3.com, than they are with preventing unauthorized copying of music.
The RIAA, and its foreign equivelents, are confronted with the unpleasant situation in which artists are refusing to sign contracts giving the recording companies 99.9% of the profits from CD sales and instead are selling (or giving away) their music on-line in exchange for 50% (!!!) of the CD sales proceeds, or simply greater exposure of their work.
Worse still, artists are actually defecting from the recording industry, discovering that they can make better money selling 1000 CDs and taking home $5/CD, than they do by selling 90,000 CDs and only keeping $0.05 per CD.
This, the old-guard recording companies simply can't abide. Their strategy is, of course, under the guise of fighting unauthorized copying, to use the clout of a dysfunctional legal system and the long arm of government law enforcement to destroy the emerging paradigm shift in its infancy and protect their defacto monopoly.
Germany has for a long time been actively censoring right wing and neo-nazi hate groups, with obvious and very, very good reason. The unfortuante side effect of this is that they are in some respects much further down the slippery slope of censorship than many other countries, so much os that such draconian measures as these are not only thinkable, but remarkably reasonable sounding to the powers-that-be. Other examples include the indictment of compuserve execs for their customers use of the internet to access foreign porn sites, the xs4all political web censorship fiasco, and so on.
Of course, warez kiddies will still be swapping their musing using ssh tunneled ftp, new protocols, or even old protocols encapsulated or stealthed to get around the packet blocking. The only thing that will be killed will be legitimate, competing businesses such as mp3.com, not children swapping warez and illegally copied music.
This, as far as the old-guard recording industry is concerned, is a perfectly acceptable solution.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Please cite examples of "cracking" copy-protected software to release it under the "GPL"
Although your post has the ring of flaimbait, I will assume you are just woefully misinformed about both the mp3 community (where both legal and, unfortunately, a great deal of illegal copying does occur) and open source software, and are lashing out at offenses you perceive which in fact are either not as pervasive as you think, or completely non-existent (to my knowledge no program has been "cracked" and subsequently distribued under the GPL as open source software).
As a counter example, I will use myself. My situation is by no means unique to slashdot or the net as a whole, indeed, if you search prior archives for mp3 related discussions, you will hear many others voicing the exact same scenerio.
All of my mp3's are legal. Yes, that's right, every last one of them.
90% of them are ripped from my own CD collection.
Another 5% are authorized downlaods from mp3.com and elsewhere, by artists who are trying to get exposure. On occasion I buy the CD, either to support the artist or to have available in places I can't listen to mp3's (e.g. my airplane, or a friend's car), although I am by no means obligated to do so.
Even those that I have downloaded which are "unauthorized copies", as defined by the RIAA, are not illegal! How can I make this bold claim? Because I already own the vinyl record, or the cassette tape, or some other medium (8 track in one particulary archaic case, CDs in others). I have already paid for the right to store the music in whatever medium I wish, including mp3 format on my hard drive. This has been decided in court decision after court decision. Whether I hook up my friend's turn table and arduously rip the record to cd or mp3 format (I have done this for some rare Hungarian pop music form the mid 1980s), or download the exact same song from someone who has already done the work using napstre, makes no difference. Indeed, I can even pay a third party, commercial enterprise, to convert the data from one medium and format to another, perfectly legally. This right, as well, has been sustained in numerious court rulings, the recording industries protestations notwithstanding. I own a right to the music, as evidenced by the physical record in my possession, and am entitled to be able to listen to it with the tools at my disposal and to store it in whatever form I wish, be it mp3 or binary code tatooed on my left bicep. This, too, has been decided more than once in a court of law.
In other words:
I. Do. Have. Every. Right. To. My. Property. Which. I. Have. Paid. Good. Hard. Cash. For.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If, as you point out, it will protect me from MP3's of Mariah Carey, it can't be all bad ...