Slashdot Mirror
The Future of Copy Control
TechLawyer writes "For those of us interested in the use of the DMCA, and the tactics utilized by copyright enforcement specialists under the DMCA, Law.com ran an interesting article today on Dave Powell and Copyright Control Services. Read about how he plans to knock out Napster & how he shuts down warez d00dz from .com to .ru." There are some fascinating and ugly quotes in here about how this guy goes after targets - a combination of harassment and threats against their service providers, admitted illegal actions, etc. Meanwhile, this LA Times story describes even more insidious technologies apparently designed for use in transparent proxies - censorware for copyrighted materials.
There is NO proof that they were dealing in software...I am gonna draft a couple of letters about you myself :) Traced your connect back and gonna tell your provider you are guilty of pantent and trademark violations, they will take you down so fast you won't know what happened then talk out your ass some more :) these tactics are illegal and someone should sue for libel, but it should be soemone in the UK as the have better laws :) Make asswipe provide definitive proof or pay up and shut-up :0
Freedom.
Dave Powell used to hang out in a # warez channel i frequented back in the day before i could afford expensive audio software...
It was kind of comical actually. The ops knew when he joined (and duly warned others in the channel) The funny thing was that instead of kick/banning him they let him hang out in the channel! They at least could keep track of him that way...
his intimidation tactics work pretty well, and software companies pay him handsomely for his services.
Select 'Print' in your browser menu to print this document.
I invite this guy to come to ukraine. You know a hit here costs about $100 US? How about we start a pool?
Dunno what the going rate is in China or the states though...
This was a joke btw....
I got a letter from him once for using a set of pictures that were obviously spammed by company that was having copyright issues with my site. I told him: Send me registered mail from a real lawyer, not some unverifiable email message from a baillif. Fuck off ay, hoser. He replied: Oh, youre canadian. Never mind, then.
Pretty nice guy, if you ask me.
Yes - basically what they are saying is pay $3000 or we are going to take you though the courts which will financially cripple you for life. This is why the legal system is flawed - it can cost so much damn money to prove you are innocent as it`s easier just to pay the smaller fee.
How about rewriting the GPL so that you can use it for free - on the condition you never become involved in raping someone over IP.
If a litigating company uses GPL code - they have to pay FSF a fee per CPU for using the software - scaling up depending on how much money they are asking for from the litigation. That way those of us who believe in free cake and contribute to it can have it. And those who believe everyone should pay for software can pay for all software. In addition FSF can have some income to help support victims of this kind of heavy handed tactics.It is basically extortion. I grew up in Belfast - it`s not much different from pay us protection money or we will shoot your knees out - just a little more messy on the wallet and a little less messy on the knees ;-)
The thing that scares me most is that the article implies that he is appealing to ISPs because the pirates are eating up their precious bandwidth and disconnecting them is just a good business decision. That's insane. Audio pirate or not, didn't that person pay for that bandwidth? It reminds me of that Simpsons where Homer went to an 'all you can eat' shrimp place and got denied because he ate too much shrimp. All the Russian servers he shut down doesn't mean squat when I can buy a couple of CDs with all that audio software at the Gorbushka in Moscow for $4 per CD. Lastly, is it just me that thinks this guy has an ego bigger than the Sky Dome? He's got grand plans to be one of the biggest consulting companies in the world, can shut down ANY site in a couple of hours and is convinced he is doing God's work on Earth. That bubble is gonna burst.
His company is, in fact, at some risk of going out of business. The parent corporation, Sunhawk.com, is poorly managed, bleeding dollars, and laying people off left and right. As far as I can see, they don't have a business model to speak of and CCS seems to generate the only real revenue they see. I doubt that it's enough to float the parent corp, especially considering the idiocy of the management team.
.2 cent sheet of paper to switch signage between the existing restrooms. I am no longer there, so I'm not sure how it turned out--but this whole discussion was after fifty employees had already been laid off. More have been let go since.
True story: several months ago, Sunhawk had a staff of about fifty, approximately eight women and the rest men. The men's restroom had two toilets and a urinal--the women's had eight toilets; one apiece. Obviously, there was often a line outside the men's restroom. Much grumbling occurred, and the logical suggestion was made: let's switch restrooms. The CFO, a woman, nixes this, and starts getting quotes on how many thousand dollars it will cost to re-model the shower room as an additional men's restroom. This instead of a
They also continue to shell out for expensive tech toys, new servers and the like, although their website only has traffic maxes of about 40 concurrent users. Also, the place is a security nightmare--I imagine that anyone CCS has offended who has half a brain would want to attack the Sunhawk network instead and use the VPN link to hit CCS. CCS, obviously, has their end of the pipe locked down pretty well, but it matters little since getting in from Sunhawk would be a walk in the park.
Posting anonymously for the obvious reasons (Taco, please don't give up my IP on a court order!)...
Stealing, after all, is wrong and even though the Internet gives people a sense of anonymity, most people don't like to think of themselves as thieves.
Step one. Shame the "pirate". Try to make him feel bad. Note that they shame anonymity too. More on this later. see [*] below.
"A subpoena will look something like this," Powell says, lifting an inch-thick sheaf of papers off his desk. "A pirate gets this in the mail and it's like, 'holy s--t.'"
Step two. Scare the "pirate". Bonus points for use of bleeped profanity.
managing director of Copyright Control Services (CCS)
Step three. Throw around big titles and acronyms to make the "pirate" hunter look like a massive organization replete with black helicopter, guns, huge offices next to the pentagon, etc. Full of important people... well full of something.
Powell and his crack team of cybersleuths
Step four. "Shock" words. Oooo. You left out "commando" and forgot the Mr. T speak.
And Powell employs a formidable arsenal of remedies.
and
"no one on the Internet is as strong as CCS."
Step five. Brag about the size of your dick. Translation of former: I 4m s00 l337 4nd my r00t ki7 4nd sniff3rz r s0 w3ll st0ck3d d00d! And of the latter: "My testicles are just sooo much bigger than yours!"
He can have a suspect's Internet connection turned off
and
When the evidence seems irrefutable, Powell says: "Let's go get him."
Step six. Make yourself into an unquestioned military dictator who need not go through due precess to 0wnz y0ur a55. "I can whack your ass on my authority any time I damn well fell like." Yah right.
Powell represents a small list of software companies
and
"Gentlemen," he wrote, "please be aware that this is no longer a game. Software piracy is a crime. Infringement of our client's rights will not be tolerated.
Step seven. Hide who you work for. A lack of names prevents bad publicity, stock value drops, and sales reductions that the "pirate" hunter KNOWS will result from pissed off consumers. The lack of names also gives the illusion of having more industry support than you really do, cuz you leave the reader to guess. [*] Wait, didn't they say anonymity was bad just a little earlier?
"You can bet that 60 of these people were involved in piracy," he says. "If the police raid a whorehouse and you're standing in the hallways...."
Step eight. Use guilt by association. Joseph McCarthy one said, "We'll go easier on you if you'll just provide us with the names of your fellow communists."
One frustrated poster queried the group as to why his requests for software were going unanswered. "You should be aware that many regular posters are lying low right now," came the reply. "CCS is out. They got me more than a year ago. Otherwise I'd help you out."
Step nine. Make up lots of fake "piracy" busts. Have conversations with yourself on USENET behind different secr3t h4ndl3z to make it look like you're having an impact. Act real scared of yourself when you're impersonating other people.
You are imperiling the future of music production. This is a felony in the U.S.
Step 10. Always advocate that US law is, of course, world law. Other nations are all backward and savage and need to be enlightened and tamed, eh? Surely everyone agrees that land/ideas/etc. can be owned, right? We are from the One True Culture! We pat ourselves on the back for trading necklace beads for Manhattan Island from those dumb barbarian indians. Aren't we clever!
Step 11, prevalent throught is to elevate illegal copying into this thing, "PIRACY" . Demonize the crime to make it seem more evil. It's not. That's why I use the quotes. Piracy is where thugs board ships at sea, kill (or rape and then kill) the crew and passengers and loot the vessel for whatever they can get.
This is on a par with copying a PSX CD? A rapist or 2nd degree murderer can be caught, tried, sentenced, serve his time and be out in 3 years and not one dollar in fines, while the unauthorised copier can get 10 years and $1,000,000 in fines? U, excuse me?
So, is this organisation really doing anything? Why should they? Their goal is to warp the mind of the "pirate" into giving up his activity. This is psychological mind games. If you stop, they win. Fight the power. Fight the propaganda. If they had their way, You'd owe them money every time you power up your PC or click on an app. The threat of "piracy" keeps software vendors from raising prices beyond that "sweet spot" between too high of a price boosting piracy and too low of a price that doesn't turn as much a profit as they can otherwise get. It's all about THEIR money and how to extract YOUR MONEY from you to the maximum extent that they can. For you are the consumer. FUCK YOU.
Remember, "It's not theft if nothing's missing."
I didn't know imperiling the production (future production no less) of _anything_ was a felony.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
It may be that the whole Napster phenomenon is our "Boston Tea Party".
Unfortunately, the some of the partygoers were too stupid to bug out, and have been caught.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
A bit strong? Then let's look at the terms.
This guy makes the Sheriff of Nottingham look like a saint. Further, his actions could constitute a violation of the UK's Data Protection Act and also a violation of anti-hacking laws.
(Which, since UK law now defines crackers as terrorists, goes back to point #1.)
Under UK law, this guy could be looking at life, with no chance of release, =IF= the UK police chose to act. He'd make a nice cell-mate for Ian Brady.
We'll see how interested the UK Govt. is in acting in the interests of it's citizens, with how it reacts to his conduct.
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)
I see the formation of Gibson-esque private, encrypted virtual networks reeeeal soon now ...
--
--
"I find your lack of faith disturbing." -- Darth Vader
- If law enforcement wants technical knowledge that would help them do their job, they have to buy it from the same group of people that built the infrastructure that allows us to copy information.
So what your saying, if I understand correctly, is that hackers/coders/geeks should close ranks like a jealous preisthood and cut off access to the knowledge that would allow the law enforcement community to understand or control technology.I hate to break it to you, but there's already something in place that will make witholding this kind of information impossible. It's called The Open Source Movement . Maybe you should look into it.
- Sure, the information is available, but they can't get their hands on anyone that knows what to do with it.
Right... because everyone in law enforcement all the way up to the FBI is a dumb, donut-eatin' mutherfucker who can't read "Linux for Dummies."The real flaw in this plan is that they're not that stupid.
That said, I can't stand it when the media portrays corporate bullies (lawyers and the like) as heroes of some sort. I quote from the article:
"But since he started CCS three years ago, Powell has distinguished himself as a bare-knuckled enforcer when it comes to defending the rights of his clients."
It's easy to protect the corporation. They're able to pay your extortionist fees. Help the individual? No way. I am not talking about helping pirates. But why not start a company to help people who are subject to unnecessary corporate intimidation and abuse of the court system? Individuals are the underdogs.
I rarely, if ever, hear of lawyers who protect individuals against corporations portayed in this light. I realize that Powell is not a lawyer, but he might as well be.
This article is filled with all the pro-corporation propaganda. We need to protect the "right" to inflate "losses" due to piracy, etc.
You do have a good point, though. It would only take a few times for this to happen before we could use the previous outcomes as precedence and make defending these kinds of suits easier.
Which agreement is that? The one where I give up my 6th Amendment Rights?
Guilty until you pay off THE MAN! Where can I sign this FUCKING agreement?
--
"In the land of the brave and the free, we defend our freedom with the GNU GPL."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
They keep forgetting that mp3, xmms, icecast -- its all out of the bag. Even if they kill shoutcast, winamp, mp3.com, and live365.com, its too late. I can still set up my own little private internet-radio station all i want. I already have the tools and they can't (legally) take them away (yet).
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
So somebody writes a P2P software package that's "anonymous". Yes, it means whoever wrote the damn thing will be an RIAA target (like the norwegian who wrote DeCSS is being targetted by the MPAA), but again -- the cat will be outta the bag...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Because (provided you're GPLing it) U.S. law still conflicts with the GPL. You can't give the sources away in a "generic" fashion once you have a copy within the u.s., because you couldn't allow your copy, or your modifications, to leave the country.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Basically, catching "napster pirates" is going to end up a lot like catching speeders. Every so often, to meet quotas, they'll pick on one or two here and there, and those will probably be given fines or penalties far out of proportion to their "crime"...and otherwise, they stick to going for the napster-pirate equiv of "aggressive drivers".
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
All this made sense until you started calling copying "stealing".
Because no matter what you think of it, unauthorized copying is not stealing.
If you want to seem neutral on these issues, try to avoid the copyright industry's terminology.
Instead of thinking of IP as property think of it as labor. When you take someone's IP without their permission you are instituting a form of slavery.
How do I come up with that idea. Creating IP takes time. When I expend my time on creating something I sacrifice the ability to do other things. If I wish to charge others for the use of the product of my time I am well within my rights. No one would argue that if a group of people held a gun to my head and threatened to kill me if I did not write them a word processor (or a hit song or the great American novel) that they had not enslaved me in some sense or stolen something. Yet, if I write any of those above things with the intent of charging for them anyone who aquires them without paying me has done something similar.
So if you have a hard time thinking of IP as property in the traditional sense, think of it as labor. Better yet, see it as a third thing we recognize as being as valuable as the other two, but also different is some ways, thus requiring different laws[1]. I am free to give away both my material goods and labor or to charge them. Things created by intellectual labor should have the same status. However, because IP is not a physical object we have to address other issues (overhearing IP, the easy of copying, accounting for its degrading over time, etc).
[1] This is my personable belief. However, the limitations of reproduction and transmission allowed laws to view it more as physical property to serve until now. Shakespear had no copyright, but because you could not record the plays you would have to steal a physical script to take them from him before they lost much of their value for example.
Herb
Herb
Again, feel free to sentence me to death if my questions annoy you. I'll come back in 5 minutes anyway. -Sythi
>Dave Powell is just using that system.
The system being flawed is not a justification for the abuse of that flaw by individuals/entities (such as, in this case, David Powell/CCS). Just because the system allows something doesn't mean it's right.
If a website has poor security, does this make it okay to rip off credit card numbers from the site?
His abuse of the legal system to force huge legal bills on people who haven't been convicted of a single thing to me seems to be a simple case of the richer party bullying the poorer one. It's to the point where acual guilt or innocence isn't really the issue, it's "how much money can we get out of this guy?".
And that's sad.
if you had thought about this for more than a split second you would have realized your analogy is flawed because when you take away someone's constitutional rights, they no longer have them. When you copy something, you are doing exactly that... making a copy. The original owner continues to have his copy.
---
And your welfare comment was just retarted. No one is talking about welfare here.
---
That's odd, I just declined a cookie from www.law.com, and got the page anyways.
There's room on the web for a lot of things, anal-retentive webmasters with no clue is not one of them.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Why should someone receiving such a demand have to prove themselves innocent? Is "demanding money with menaces" not still a crime?
I can see it now, fast fwd 20 years hence, a current college student is running for President and is asked, "Have you ever pirated music?" - answer: "Well, I, uh, I did download a track once, heck everybody did it back then! But I didn't listen to it!"
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
--
During the long chats we had with some of the squad members responsible for that stunt while we were waiting for the drive-images to be done, we learned that they got the computer crime squad assignment because they were considered to be 133t k0p5 , since they were fresh from a stint in the antiterrorist squad...
(Btw, they were the same dudes who pinned-down Mafiaboy, which, ironically, lived on the same street as my boss...)
Shades like that typist we heard earlier here who was promoted to head of the IT department because she was the one who typed the fastest...
--
Isn't that what happened to Linda Tripp, essentially?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
While in "real life" the constraints of physical space prevent this from being especially lucrative, I think the existence of Shareware proves that it can be done to better effect in the electronic realm. What's to prevent shareware books and shareware music? (And note I'm not talking about time limited nagware either).
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Are you the kind of person who tortures small girls?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Evidence of this type is rarely accepted into a court trial, because it becomes the prosecutions responsibility to not only present the evidence, but to prove that it wasn't faked. Evidence collected during a warranted search is generally accepted to be "valid" for the purposes of trial (though it too can be challenged), but evidence that is "handed in" by someone else must be immediately treated as suspect. The odds are that any decent defense attorney could have the evidence supressed in a pre-trial hearing so that the judge or jury would never be permitted to see it during trial.
There is an easy way around this though: Let's say that I'm a cop and that you gave me a printout of illegally obtained info you'd pulled off a website. For all intents and purposes, that information is useless to me. But that doesn't mean that I can't use it. I could easily obtain a warrant and go get that information myself so that I WOULD have a valid copy. There are numerous legal yardsticks that have to be applied to this, and it tends to be a legal mess when it happens ("fruits of the poisoned tree" arguments), but 90% of the time evidence can be shoved through this way.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
No, you're looking at it wrong. This is, for all intents and purposes, just an out of court settlement. It would be like you smashing my car up with a baseball bat, and me catching the whole thing on video. I could walk over to you the next day and hand you a bill with the stipulation "pay it now and I'll forget this happened, or fight it and I'll sue you and press charges". There's nothing wrong with that at all. You broke the law, and I'm giving you a way out that satisfies me and doesn't involve jailtime for you. You still have the option of your day in court if you want it, but you know that the evidence is irrefutable.
:-)
Besides, you're also overlooking the fact that you can sue someone for maliciously suing you. You're arguing that this could catch innocent people, so I'll use myself as an example: I am not a music pirate. I can honestly sit here and say that I have never stolen one piece of music in my life. So what would I do if this company came at me with the allegation that I was running a music swapping service? I'd fight them, and it would be on THEIR shoulders to prove that I actually did it. And after I won? I'd turn around and slap THEM with a HUGE punitive lawsuit for harrasment, character defamation, and all the other things my lawyer could think of. Innocents, if they have half a brain in their heads, could end up PROFITING from false allegations. And who could disagree with that?
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
A few rebuttals:
:-)
:-)
Would you be willing or able to invest potentially tens of thousands of dollars in your legal defense should CCS somehow get the idea that you are violating copyrights?
First off, it's a common misconception that defending yourself has to be expensive. Those sky-high lawyers fees you hear about are usually related to murder and other serious felony cases where lab work, expert witnesses, and other big $$ items are needed. But in these types of cases, that isn't needed (unless you want to hire a $500 an hour lawyer). Realistically, you can hire a GOOD defense attorney for anywhere from $1000 to $2500 (and crappy ones for less than that). Countersuits and harassment suits are often taken pro bono.
Even if you are (in your mind) unquestionably innocent, think about the expected cost of your lawsuit. First, don't count on recouping your legal fees just because you're found innocent -- they only need to show that they weren't being reckless (IANAL, BTW)
Actually, it wouldn't even be that hard to win. What they would have to prove is that they had convincing evidence to indicate that you were the perpetrator of the theft. If they lost the court case based on their evidence, winning a countersuit is fairly simple.
Oh, and IANAL either (I'm a programmer), but my mother is a criminal defense attorney with nearly 30 years experience, who has been through scenarios very similar to this one several times since she started taking on computer fraud and theft cases (BTW, she has had several clients settle when guilt was obvious, but she's never had one found guilty). I just happened to grow up listening to legal discussions and reading law journals
But to continue...
So figure legal fees + (probability of being wrongly found guilty) * (penalties if you're found guilty)...(ed)...I'm guessing that at around a 5% chance of being found wrongly guilty, you're going to win by just paying out.
I guess that could be argued, since there's always a small chance of being found wrongly guilty (genuine statistics put it closer to 1-2% BTW). But even at 5%, look at the odds...that's a 95% chance of the truth prevailing. That's a 95% chance of you filing a countersuit and walking away with a few hundred thousand in your pocket. That's a 95% chance that you can give 'The Man' the high hard one. Perhaps I'm being a little cold, but I look at it this way; anybody who would bail and pay out on a 5% chance of failure deserves what he gets. To preserve your rights, you must be willing to stand up and fight for them. And with any fight, there's ALWAYS a small chance of failure. Besides, there's always appeals
Further, their behavior can easily prevent people from freely exercising rights that they may have to use copyrighted materials. Consider the questionable process of downloading an MP3 of a song you own on CD in order to space-shift that song for play on your Rio. Maybe you want to help your less technically-minded friends do this by providing them with MP3s for songs you know they own on CD. Is this fair use?
Straw man argument. If you are sending your friends MP3's of CD's they already own by email, nobody is going to bother you. If, by chance, someone from the RIAA does come knocking, their argument dies the second you show them the jewel case from the CD's in question. They can try to slap you with any penalty they want, but no court in the land would convict you for something like that, and almost ANY court would award YOU money to punish them for being so stupid.
the small guy can't help but be screwed in some situations. But being innocent is *not* necessarily enough in order not to have to worry about these guys.
Sure, I got a speeding ticket when I was younger, when I was absolutely sure that I wasn't speeding. I'm sure that cops decision to pull me over had more to do with the fact that I was a purple haired teenager driving a beatup Camaro through the "nice" section of town than it had to do with my cars velocity. I ended up paying a $100 fine for something I didn't do, but I DON'T use that occasion to argue for the disbandment of our local police force. There will always be a small number of people who get unfairly burned, but that's a side effect of any society. If someone could figure out an efficient system that would eliminate this while still making sure that the guilty are punished, I would embrace it wholeheartedly. But as noone has invented such a system yet...
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Under the DMCA, you should be able to submit a written affidavit that you are not infringing, and your ISP is supposed to put you back online immediately. The onus is then on the accuser to take you to court.
How well this works in practice, I don't know. Apparently it worked for some Napster users, though.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I thought that was over-the-top too, especially the juxtaposition of the phrases:
So all you folks playin' on street corners - QUIT IT! You're imperiling the future of Bertelsman, don't you know...
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I know! How about not trafficking in pirated software?
Cheers,
Why would I think that? Radio stations pay to broadcast the music they play.
Cheers,
You tell 'im, TUFF guy!
If on the tiny chance that he did see your post, do you honestly think that he's not laughing his ass off at you right now? He'd probably tell you to go sell one of your CDs (since you surely don't have a job) and go buy yourself a dictionary.
Cheers,
Move out of your parents' basement. Take a bath. Get a job. Pay for the stuff you want. I'm sure this will take you a bit longer than most with your new burger-flipper salary, but you'll feel better about yourself when you're no longer a bottom-feeder of society.
Cheers,
This is basically the Right Thing to do: go after the pirates. It sure as hell beats going after the makers of tools (which almost always have legitimate use) or passing unnecessary draconian laws.
The problem is the legal intimidation aspect. If it takes years and $100,000 to defend oneself against a legal attack, then even innocent people are going to fold. What pressure is there to insure that this guy only attacks the guilty? None.
What is needed is for legal defense to get a lot cheaper and faster, so that only guilty defendants (and mistaken plaintiffs) end up being harmed by the legal system. Do that, and people like Dave Powell will be good guys, instead what they currently are: a dangerous menace to everyone.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
but that's the joy of it..you don't *have* to post your CDs do make this honeypot work.
Though, even if this were the case, I dunno..if I leave a CD on my desk and a co-worker burns a copy of it (without me telling him to) am I still guilty of copyright infringement? How is this different from posting CDs?
Please tell me how the local ISP, the backbone providers, or Dave at CCS is supposed to tell that I'm sending a pirated copy of Office to my friend instead of a netscape core dump, if I'm using his and my public key?
All pirates need to do is go to more of a drug dealer-type exchange, instead of a post-it-to-the-world exchange. CCS then has the more difficult challenge of posing as a pirate, instead of just trolling the latest Usenet feed.
But then again, I wouldn't expect you to think of that. It requires something called a clue.
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
It may be a bit gauche to reply to one's own post, but in the time I wrote my post, someone else posted my general idea, but even better: Hit them where it will hurt.
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
So you restricted Fnord Software from using v4.0 of Frobnitz software, because of them being Evil Greedy Slime and such. But lo and behold, they mend their evil ways. What do you do? Release v4.0.1 (all you need change is the copyright notice and the license notice), with the restriction against them removed. Voila, problem solved.
Heck, the release history of your program could serve as a list of who was Evil at the time.
Your point about compromising principles is a valid one, but we don't all have to be Gandhi to get our principles across. Sometimes you have to play the Greedy Slime game in order to fight them. What you can't let it do is dull your purpose. Preventing companies or individuals from using your code purely on a capricious or arbitrary basis only serves as ego gratification; but trying to keep the gun that you yourself made out of your enemy's hands because he'll try to kill you with it isn't necessarily a bad thing. Even the highest-minded open source advocates must admit that they get a sour feeling in their stomach if they stop to think how much use emacs and gcc is to, say, the programmers at Microsoft.
That's just my view on it, anyways.
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
All the cooperation from backbone providers et al won't do them a damn bit of good if they can't tell what's being passed thru them.
The moral to the story? Use strong encryption on *everything*. Hell, Napster could fsck over lots of its enemies simply by integrating strong encryption into its client.
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Probably lots of you are wondering how to fight a company like this. Granted, there are countless legal, quasi-legal, and illegal methods, but here's one that's totally above board and reasonable.
If you write open-source software, consider adding something like the following to your license of choice: "The following companies are forbidden from using this software in any manner: __________. Violation of this clause means said company agrees to give $1 million or 10 percent of their yearly gross combined domestic and international sales, whichever is greater, to the Free Software Foundation, per violation." I'm not a lawyer, so I'm sure someone could make that legally firm by rewriting it appropriately.
Why let companies like this use our own tools against us?
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
A work around? Sure.
t entServer?pagename=law/View&c=Article&cid=ZZZ5EVNA GJC&live=true&cst=1&pc=0&pa=0&s=News&ExpIgnore=tru e&showsummary=0"
:-)
% lynx "http://www.law.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTCon
Enjoy
It renders messed up in my Nutscrape, also, by the way. But lynx shows it up a treat
Look, we all bitch an moan about how the RIAA shouldn't be trying to shut down Napster. Why? Because they are doing nothing wrong. They are like a publisher of bomb making books.
The fact is, a crime is being committed. The RIAA should not be going after Napster, but you can bet your ass they should be going after the violaters. Like jammer in the story.
They are the ones causing all the problems. If you don't agree with a law (or a business practice in the case of the leeches at RIAA passing almost no money on to the artists) you don't have a right to break it (Thoreau aside for the moment as even in the case of civil disobedience you don't have a right to expect not to be jailed).
The reason this is our great hope is that the public won't stand for it. The RIAA attacked Napster because they knew that going after the fans was a loser. If this guy does it then one of two things is going to happen. Either Congress will pass laws at the request of the nation to fuck the RIAA, or the RIAA is going to realize that the nationwide boycott of their goods is costing more than sueing jammer can earn them and they'll come up with a better idea.
--
Geek.
So many of these anti-copy zelots think that every
copied work represents a loss of the purchase price to the producer. This simply isn't so. If it were impossible to copy, for instance, M$ Word, most people would just use notepad or something less expensive, like WordPerfect.
The only time this isn't true is when you have a
monopoly and you are virutally forced into using
a product for compatability reasons.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Browser Error Sorry.You must have cookies enabled to enjoy this site.
Odd. I'm using Netscape proxied through Junkbuster, with all cookies but a select few sites blocked, and the law.com page loaded just fine for me. I just checked the netscape cookies file to double-check, and there's nothing from that domain.
> Besides, there's always appeals :-)
There are also baseball bats. I have a feeling that if they weren't careful who they threatened they'd end up with a lot more than $10k in legal bills.
And I can't really say I'd care. I mean, if you use death-by-lawyer as a threat and are willing to back it up with more money than your target, you shouldn't be suprised when they circumvent the system in responding to the charges.
People have expressed suprise that this guy hasn't opened a mailbomb. I'll second that. He's basically threatening to ruin people, financially and with criminal charges. They're supposed to lay there and take it, or pay for a lawyer who only MIGHT get them off, and then has a smaller chance of winning anything as compensation... I don't think many people would take that path.
Oh well, scum gets what scum deserves.
It's not a new idea, but I've been thinking a lot about that these days.
Ignorance isn't an excuse in the eyes of the law, we all hear that. So nobody can plead that they didn't know murder was a crime.
But honestly, nobody can know about the DMCA, UCITA, and all the other new (and crooked, but that's another topic) laws coming out. Even lawyers specializing in the area aren't sure exactly what is and isn't allowed.
So how exactly is someone supposed to keep from breaking the law? Being psychic?
The complete total text of all laws should be in a form easily readable by a high-school graduate in less than a day.
And before anyone answers that a high-school graduate probably only has a grade-six reading level, that should change the form of the laws. If they're too complex for the citizens to understand, make them simpler. If something can only be expressed in ten-syllable latin words, it's probably not relevant to the people.
I really think that ignorance should be an excuse, if the laws aren't announced to the people and not taught in schools.
There are problems with it, but all in all, I think it's a good idea.
It'd also get rid of lawyers, if everyone understood the law. You might hire a representative who is a good public speaker, but you wouldn't be dependant on them to tell you what the law is.
That's the problem now.
Which is why I think we need to make the laws accessible to the common people and make that part of the curriculum in school.
Then nobody would have the excuse that they didn't know, (because the whole text of the laws would be available everywhere and would be taught extensively) so the excuse wouldn't work.
Nowadays, you don't know who knows the law and not because our system makes no effort to inform people of the law. Even when the law is available it's often in a form that few people can understand and even fewer people can grasp all the implications of.
Now, it's basically impossible except for someone who specializes in an area of law, to know the law. Ignorance isn't an excuse, it's the standard condition.
Imagine if speed limits weren't posted but were enforced with variable penalties. And if companies were allowed to set speed limits and enforce the law in some areas.
Even if you did check the limits at the library before a trip, how would you know if it had changed? (Like the DMCA just being recently passed, and changing the whole legal landscape.)
This statements just hits a hipocrisy something shocking. Unauthorised access to a computer, using the telephone system for illegal activities... If the police wanted to, then they could bring up some serious charges. What is defence going to be? It's just like someone giving you the master keys to a bank, and then robbing the bank. I hope someone goes after him with a big stick...
ISWYM, but there seems to be a problem with that argument.
If I produce good IP, it's likely to spread and become popular. If I produce bad IP, it's not that likely that anyone will use it. Note I'm specifying IP rather than anything more specific - as a musician as well as a coder, it applies equally to both.
Now, good IP clearly enriches the knowledgepool of my community - while bad IP doesn't. We can therefore clearly benefit from an incentive to produce better IP.
Some would argue that recognition from and adoration by your community which you would recieve would be sufficient - and for some tasks and some people, it will be. I know I get a kick whenever people react well to my music, or if I see my code in the wild. But that won't always cover it. What about large projects where identifying individuals is impossible? What about the important but unglamorous tasks which people need done but don't tend to appreciate?
To promote good IP, we need more than recognition as a reward. In our current society model, cash seems to be the best way right now. So, we pay people per copy to give them an incentive to produce work which is likely to be more widely copied.
Just IMHO of course, but hopefully you follow the argument.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
>>It's bad crime-fighting too, since in the U.S. evidence obtained illegally is automatically discarded.
I was under the impression that evidence obtained illegally was only discarded if the source was a law enforcement agency. If evidence obtained illegally is presented to a law enforcement agency then they may use it (since THEY didn't act illegally to obtain the evidence). Now, wether charges can/should be brought against someone like that for breaking and entering is a totally different matter.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
>> Amazing to hear that a lawyer will actually admit to doing something like that.
Oh, and while we are on the topic, can a move be made for an ethical hearing to have him dis-barred? >:)
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
"...In December 2000, CCS ran across one of the most brazen pirate sites Powell had seen on the Internet in months....[Powell] received a tip from an informant who knew the site's administrative password, allowing Powell to download the e-mail addresses of all the registered users."
Isn't this crime under the legislation of most developed nations? If you access a person's computer without that person's authorization (even if you have all the passwords), you are guilty of hacking and can go to jail (unless you are law enforcement and have a warrant to search).. Amazing to hear that a lawyer will actually admit to doing something like that.
It's bad crime-fighting too, since in the U.S. evidence obtained illegally is automatically discarded.
I usually don't care about the whole piracy debate (it's easy not to worry about it that much when you use Linux), but it really irks me when I read about someone using illegal techniques to catch people doing illegal stuff.
- No Sig Today
Yes, intellectual pursuits that result in ideas and patterns do require labor.
When you take someone's IP without their permission you are instituting a form of slavery.
This is ludicrous. Nobody is forced to create patterns or ideas. Hence the comparison with slavery (forced work) doesn't hold. If somebody hires you to write some code to help solve one of their problems, they will pay you for your labor. If the code happens to fall into other hands and ends up helping others solve their problems too, that doesn't change the fact that you got paid to solve the first person's problem. Fact is, we don't need IP laws for intellectual workers to get paid. They will get paid any time somebody has a hard problem and needs a smart person to solve it. There is a never ending supply of these problems that people will pay to have solved, irregardless of how the code in your solution is later used.
I think that the implied "one to many" relationship is not valid. Only explicit contracts should be respected. The "implicit" social contract whereby people are supposed to sacrifice their freedoms for a (increasingly less) limited period of time so that new ideas can be brought to light - that contract is flawed. Society gets the short end of that stick. Plenty of great ideas and works were created and shared long before there was a social contract for IP. The intelletual process is not going to stop simply because the relatively recent invention of "intellectual property" is repealed.
If one person came up with some ideas or patterns to solve a particular problem for which they were paid the going rate, it doesn't seem right to prevent other people from using those ideas or patterns as part of a solution to other problems. If every solution to a problem can become "intellectual property", then innovation is stifled by cumbersome patent searches, petty litigation, and taxing licensing fees - basically what we have now. All of this machinery may be a way for some people to extract more money out of others, but it is mainly just friction. Better to forget the headache of "intellectual property" and create ideas and patterns as "works for hire" or as a form of self expression or hobby. Smart people will still make plenty of money from those who need their services. And those smart people will be even more effective since they will be free to draw upon any ideas or patterns that have come before and not have to waste time researching patent databases, etc.
It's all about adjusting your business models. Business models which hinge upon IP (artificial enforced scarcity & curbing freedom of people to do as they want with ideas and patterns) - those business models are not necessary in a modern society and they fly in the face of intellectual freedom. They are distastefull in their arrogance and disregard for liberty, and simply not necessary.
We can do just fine without IP and eliminate all of this so and so suing such and such BS that is just a waste of our time and money. It's time for a more enlightened existence where intellectual freedoms and liberty take priority over corporate interests. But I realize I'm going to have to live in this "real world" instead.
Pharmaceuticals is the one area where I think a limited form of IP might still be useful, since the R&D and FDA approval process is so long. If we are to have IP, then I think it would only make sense to protect the IP for a period of time in proportion to the time it takes to develop and test a product of that genre. So software and lots of computer tech stuff would expire very quickly, where drugs would have a little more time to recoup the huge development costs.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
rip your cd's into midi format? is that like viwing a word document as a jpeg, or using your screen to type. it aint possible. midi is used to trigger events, mp3 is an encoded audio format. not even the same
The entire IP issue has gotten entirely out of hand. This is no longer even close to any form of justice, this is mob tactics. And this has no innocent until proven guilty anywhere in it.
Mr Powell has apparently hired someone who can read newsgroup headers. Which can be forged. Which are _usually_ forged in these cases. Then he goes after the 'apparent' target and threatens them into paying him (wether or not they even know how to use a news reader...). This isnt even funny.
The argument for Freenet and similar technologies becomes so much stronger. These lawyers must not have any sort of information to go on _at_ all. Sources and destination adresses, storage nodes and everything must be moved entirely outside anyones ability to obtain, because it has become blindingly obvious that the justice system cannot be trusted anymore, and that blackmail has become standard legal practice.
Its not even about protecting freedom of speech, its about protecting the innocent bystanders from an IP industry run amok.
Jessica Litman, a professor of copyright law at Wayne State University in Chicago,
Wayne State University is in Detroit, unless there is a) another one, and b) they also specialize in IP law.
Your sig quote is from Kennedy. At least get the reference you're stealing from the right source. Anonymous had no part in creating that quote.
Beware the wood elf!!!
alright, suppose im a 12 year warez kiddie, and i download a copy of lightwave, 3dsmax, and cubase. its worth a few thousand dollars on the open market, easily. i then play with them for a while. now, tell me how much said 12 year old warez kiddie has cost (himself) the corporations who sell those pieces of software. lost sales? come on guys...
I use Spamcop for this very reason. I want to shut down the people who spam me by getting their providers to harass them.
Now, someone is mis-using the providers to do the same to people who may have done nothing wrong.
What we really need is a formal (but government-independant) way of coordinating the complaints, arbirating them and deciding if a) the user should be removed b) the case merits being moved out of that forum and into the courts and c) which parties are actually involved. Something like Spamcop with more feedback (Spamcop's feedback process for ISPs is great, and there really is a lot of good you do for yourself by signing up if you send out ANY bulk email, even true opt-in). You track the complaints and allow ISPs to feed back the results of their research, closing a complaint if it's been resolved.
This would slow down our Mr Powell, but it would also give the pirates a force to fear, which, quite honestly is needed. It's *not* legal or even a particularly nice thing to steal someone's copyrighted work. At the same time, services like Napster should not have to pay the price for their users' indiscressions.
Sweet racket, isn't it? RICO anyone? Either pay 'protection money', or they fuck you over, whether or not your guilty, and the best part is no trial necessary.
Problem is would anyone one go after them. It appears that in practice law enforcement is more interested in criminal organisations setting up business, than organisations who decide to flout the law.
"He can have almost any Web page removed from the Internet in hours."
:-)
I had something similar to this happen once. A fellow college student didn't like something I had posted on a Tripod web page involving our student government elections. He told them that he had copyright ownership of the material under the DMCA, even though he clearly did not. My page was taken down immediately, and I was told that I would need a lawyer to get it back. Alas, the guy behind the whole thing was forced to resign as student goverment president just last week for misuse of funds.... happiest day of my life.
--
Just thinking of another solution. What if there was a concerted, online effort to track which subnets thes pseudo-legal attackers are using? There are obvious ways around this, such as using free ISPs (or any dialup ISP for that matter), open proxies, anonymisers, and what not.. but then again, I would tend to say that these should be blocked out as a general security risk as it is.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
"Wasn't it true that in 2001, you made a joke about goats.ex?"
Rader
In that perspective, he made many statements claiming his own company's future financial demise. However, I'm sure he figures he's sipping from an ocean, with a seemingly unlimited supply. He could move from audio utilities to professional graphics, plus the many references to the big-5's 40 BILLLION dollar industry.
The tactics he's using to strongarm pirates in submission (Pay $5000 or I take you to court, and then and only then we find out if you're guilty) reminds me of the beginning of all the mob movies I've seen. Remember Good Fellas, where the school was mailing home absentee letters? Beat up the mail man! Problem solved. Sounds familiar. I think he could turn into the BIG BROTHER we've all thought the government would become. Pay us $200 or we tell your employer you downloaded alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.bestiality from home. Or, we parsed your email to your mom about how the boss sucked.
Rader
This guy has a paralegal draft a subpoena, and he sends it on to the ISP? Where's the judge in this? You can't just send out subpoenas willy-nilly. IANAL, and I'll be asking one tonight - but this is wrong!
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
This could be combined with an earlier poster's idea. Basically, one would set up a honeypot of UNSHARED mp3s on a server....these MP3s of course would be made from the server owner's collection.
Then the server owner in cahoots with a false client retains this guy's "services". The false client gives Powell the administrative keys to the honeypot which is being aggressively logged. Once Powell sends the nastygram, the server logs, and proof of ownership of all materials on it as well as anything the false client can provide is then handed to the nastiest meanest lawyer the server owner can find. The money to pursue this can come out of Powell's ass.
How about they track your IP everytime you log in?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I thought it was found that an ISP was NOT able to be held responsible for the content they are hosting. #1) Is that true and if so - can someone give me a link? #2) If it is true - isn't it in the ISPs best interest to tell these people to bugger-off and keep their clients?
Just wondering...
Slightly off-topic, BUT...
I live one county north of Davidson County, NC...aka Hegeland. Sherriff Hege is the fucking man. Crime is WAY down because he doesn't take any shit. Look at his success before you make uneducated comments. I haven't heard anything about Hege dragging *INNOCENT* people out of their homes and beating them...and I live close by. Drug dealers? Well, that's something else...and they could use it.
OK, this is illegal, right? Computer fraud? unsolicited email? I know that if I did something similiar, I'd have the FBI busting into my house. Oh, let me guess... The DMCA allows this.
I wonder if this sort of intimidation holds any weight at a hosting company like Havenco. Any thoughts?
Browser Error Sorry.You must have cookies enabled to enjoy this site. Please adjust this setting in your browser preferences. If you are using Internet Explorer, go to Tools, Internet Options, Security, Custom Level and select 'Enable Cookies'. If you are using Netscape, go to Edit, Preferences, Advanced and select 'Accept all Cookies' from your the options. Law.com uses cookies to provide better and more personalized service to you. For more detailed information regarding the use of cookies, see our Privacy Policy.
How long is it before a disenting site's content is viewed as an act of heresy against good thought patterns (well conditioned thought patterns that associate well and agree with the Ruling Authorities Views) and is shut down in a similar way?
This guy reminds me of Officer Hege(or whatever his name is), that hot-roddin' tough-as-nails LART-welding sheriff that even has his little cable show in the county jails of the little hick town he guards, except he's a lawyer and his hick town is the Internet.
And there has been some accusations of officer Hege dragging innocent people out of their homes and beating them senseless.
He brags as if he were Jeff K of somethingawful.com, but all the words are spelled correctly.
I'm using OmniWeb on Mac OS X. It accepts all cookies, and deletes them all every time I quit the browser.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Someone might kill him. It wouldn't surprise me, he's playing with fire. Someday, he'll piss off the wrong person, and he'll be gone.
If this guy moved next door to me, I'd move. He's made himself a target and I wouldn't want to be around when he gets a mailbomb (the real, physical, kind).
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
One word: Trojan
That is one of the reasons I choose to FP in their honor instead. Now their legacy is digitally enshrined, intact. Behold, the meme propagateth, and the meme raths outgrabe.
/. friends who browse at high thresholds may receive the benefit of its wisdom as well.)
"Props to all dead homiez" is a message from which we all can draw a measured dosage of comfort and hope, a rarity in These Troubled Times where THE MAN considers PTADH's trVth to be a lesson best unheard by the masses, a call to arms best picked up by Their answering service--hence the (-1; Offtopic) bestowed upon it by unknown yet diabolical forces at Their command...
Yea, tho it lacks the immediacy and cachet of the Latest Internet Catchphrase (that honor, as you know, "are belong" to something else), its enduring legacy shall be the direct simplicity and abstracted sincerity it manages to encompass in the mere space of five small words; surely all among us can utilize the short time it takes to read through this historic phrase for a brief reflection upon our own dead homiez, and be bettered for the experience. (And it wouldn't hurt to mod it up every once in awhile, in order that our valued
props to all dead homiez
There will always be props for dead homiez. AND: one day there will again be no shortage of lemon-soaked paper napkins. Until that glorious day, PTADH shall have to suffice, and righteously so.
Props to that 3 car too, we're gonna miss ol' Dale.
props to all dead homiez
Now the second issue - wouldn't this give "them" (whoever "they" are) a new tool for censorship? If this new system is to be effective, it will have to be largely automated. So now who is actually accountable if "they" start salting the copyright "database" with fingerprints of contents they want to censor?
Hmmm...
A dingo ate my sig...
That is why I find him repulsive.
The real problem is a legal system that lets anyone with deep pockets force anyone they like to pay $100k, whether they're guilty of any crime or not.
Dave Powell is just using that system.
I also want to say that it's a bit premature to deem someone repulsive because of one article. He comes across as such an asshole because the writer wanted it that way.
Here's a quote from the article. You seem to claim that Litman is entirely wrong here?
Even if Jammer could find a lawyer to represent him, he would probably be advised to pay the fine and move on.
Jessica Litman, a professor of copyright law at Wayne State University in Chicago, says that in these cases a
lawyer's best advice would be to pay the fine. "If you're a lawyer and someone comes to your client from Walt
Disney, you are not going to tell your client to go ahead with the trial," she says. "You could be right, but it would
take seven years and $100,000 to find out."
as noted by the article, this appeared in the standard linked here:, 22315,00.html.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151
What I find most funny about this article is the following quote:
And the CCS servers are frequent targets of attack; on Christmas Eve Powell opened Outlook Express to find he'd been mail-bombed with 15,000 messages
Uhm. Outlook Express? What, are you kidding me?
[/rant]
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
Those proxy's are pretty trivial to workaround.
Here's what you do:
Encrypt whatever you're sending with a random key. Do this for each seperate person whom you transmit a file to. (As Twofish can encrypt at 10mb/sec, it's unlikely that you have a continous connection faster than you can encrypt.)
At the very end of the file, transmit the decryption key.
The idea is that it makes it impossible for anyone to determine what the file is until the very end. That way, any widespread snooping will require storing a file until they get to the end. You won't be able to just look at the beginning of a transfer to decide whether or not to ignore it.
For a P2P network, the overhead for servers or clients is pretty minor, and it makes it a lot harder to write snooping software, anyone trying to snoop (say) an aggregate of a thousand users transmitting 1-mb files is going to have to store a gigabyte, then decrypt and compare.
A blocker could workaround this by saving only the first little bit of the file, then waiting until it gets to the end and not sending the decryption key on until it decrypts the prefix to see if it's on the censorship list.
As a workaround, You can do the above process more than once, take a file, encrypt it, append the decryption key onto the end, encrypt THAT, append the decryption key on to the end, repeat this 10 times and save the final result on the HD. Every once in a while, you redo the above with different encryption keys. Then do one final encryption layer as you're sending it to a user.
No, it isn't perfect, but it will make it a LOT more of a bitch for this type of snooping and blocking software. No fixed patterns, and it will force snooping software to both store each file sent, and decrypt the whole file if they want to see what's inside.
They want to implement a censorship system, and use it to prevent unauthorized duplication. Well, I have every right to make it a bitch right back at 'em.
There's no trial, no evidence, no due process. An innocent person is forced to pay a fine.
This is wrong. In a free country like here, innocent people are not forced to pay fines for something they have not proved to have done. (Do not claim that they are guilty. Only a trial can assign guilt and no trial has occured.)
That is why this is despicable. This is only the beginning, I bet. Just the first use of the ability to 'takedown' any infringing site. Look at Scientology over the last 10 years, and what they've managed to do in the pre-DMCA era.
I guess the ability to post negative reviews of games, movies, books, software, or music is dead.
Someone doesn't like a critique done on them. Just use the DMCA to take them down. Forget fair use, most people cannot afford to take it to a trial.
How many people has this guy convicted of infringement? Hell, how many people has he even formally accused of copyright infringement?
On the other hand, how many people has he bullied?
We have a saying: ``Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.'' This guy obviously has his own standards of guilt and innocence.
That is why I find him repulsive.
It's almost amusing,
Now, you can censor someone elses digital words cheaply and easily. Just use the DMCA and claim that it's a copyright infringement.
What next? Using penis size to judge winnings in court cases? (They, whose lawyer has the lawyer with the smallest penis wins?)
To me, the author of the article seemed to be trying to be incredibly complimentary. Showing how someone with semi-unorthodox techniques was managing to beat the system.
On the other hand, the author could know the psychology of people like me to come up with something that would seem incredibly complimentary to many people in law, and horribly repulsive to me.
With the DMCA, guys like him can exist, do exist, and will continue to destroy people without trial or recourse.
For the public domain gains all patents in 18 years, and the public domain gains all copyrights in (about) 120 years. The government enslaves people for their artistic works, then gives them away after a century (was 30 years).
And you, I might add that you are a thief, within your childhood, you STOLE the Santa Clause that rightfuly belonged to the descendants of Thomas Nast. You owe his estate all the happiness that you gained from Santa. And, when you have kids, you should make sure to not indebt them to Thomas Nast's descendents by keeping Santa Clause out of their life. Penalize their allowance to pay for it if you must, but you owe it to Nast's descendants. (BTW, Thomas Nast was a cartoonist for Harper's weekly. Created Santa Clause, Uncle Sam, and many other parts of american heritage. Died in 1908.)
Reducto ad Absurbium.
Next time, try to think about it more critically. Try to imagine a world without Santa. (And don't forget. Rudolph was created in the early 60's, and won't leave copyright till about 2050.)
I like this..
They've managed to figure out how to fine and steal money from people without trial, without even convicting people of anything.
They just send a takedown order and offer people a choice: Either pay $8000, or risk going into debt for the rest of your life just attempting to prove your innocence.
Sweet racket, isn't it? RICO anyone? Either pay 'protection money', or they fuck you over, whether or not your guilty, and the best part is no trial necessary. They don't even need evidence!!
Yeah, good thinking. Except to send a packet to a peer you need to know their IP address. Peer to peer means you know the IPs of your peers. Client-server based means there's a central server to sue out of existence.
Freenet seems like it might be close - mostly because you can't tell who POSTED something (and everyone running freenet is helping to distribute it)
fold4,wrap5
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
i wonder how good he would be at tracking a hit and run. where's this guy live anyway?
Add language to open source licenses specifically prohibiting the use of any software, hardware or legal tactics to hinder redistribution. Specifically state that that particular clause applies not just to people who use the software, but to anyone who stores or transmits it. The value of open source is in the free distribution that allows collaborative communities to form. Any action that hinders that harms every user of open source. Use those licenses vigorously on any code or writing you produce. Make the web a minefield of intellectual property for them.
Copyright (c) 2001 by dsplat.
This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
The only way we're going to be able to change this climate is by effecting real legislative change. Both Senators Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy have signalled to us that they may make a stance if there is support.
The only way to do that is to fight the RIAA and their ilk on the same turf: lobbying congress. Whether it's through an arm of the EFF or a Slashdot-started group, the time is now.
Email me at owillis@yahoo.com if you want us to start something...
--
OliverWillis.Com
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
Victory means driving piracy as far underground as possible.
Nothing to worry about folks, this is exactly what they should not be doing, if they really want to get a handle on things. If CCS succeeds in driving it all "as far underground as possible", they'll be out of a job. They've set the standard by which you can copy stuff with impunity: don't be obvious, for some lame definition of obvious. Powell sounds a lot like a script kiddie who just discovered where to get a root kit, now he thinks he owns the 'net.
Let him think that.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Is this even legal...I mean they are not law enforcement agents...can they really carry on an investigation? I mean according to that they can snoop on you...pretty much extort information out of ISP's and thats legal? If it is i am gonna go shoot myself cause this is f***ed up.
-------------- DarkSyd21 -------------- "For Christ's Sake!! Put Some Pants On!!!"
I make a living writing software, and I like the idea of authors, artists, etc. being able to make money from their creations. Someone out there give me a solid ethical justification for intellectual property restrictions, please.
The original intent of the law is to allow you monopolistic but time-limited rights over your expression. I think it is not truly appropriate to call copyright IP, since it is not protected against reverse engineering (unlike patents). Expression is a better word. If you wrote a play or a song, you have limited time rights to allow or disallow public performances.
Suppose there were no copyright protection. You wrote a huge software package and delivered it to a client. He had just paid a trivial amount for a pirated copy of that work, and now tells you to go away. Now, depending on how important you are to his business, he may or may not act this way. But, without copyright there is no legal recourse against it. After all, the pirates didn't remove anything from you.
But they did affect your monopolistically controlled market. And that can hurt you commercially. I would argue strenuously that today's market is absurd, and that is why something like Free Software can exist. But very few people argue against copyright. In fact, copyrights are the basis of the strength of the GPL. If do work for clients under the GPL/BSD/Artistic license, you will make it much cheaper and easier for someone else to provide a similar service, and the quality of software can rise dramatically.
Won't using proxies to filter copyrighted material just force "pirates" to encrypt the material? And can't inteligent "pirates" figure out a way to anonymously post to newsgroups, so that Dave Powell _can't_ have their name and address within 24 hours? Seem to me that all the actions they are taking against IP infringement will open work on stupid people...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I don't think that applies if your a lawyer.
At least thats the way it seems.
Of course, ive been saying for years that legal system that has grown to the level of complexioty where a person can makle a living as a lawyer, is fundamentally broken.
KISS
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> I think his point is that you have to
> demonstrate a loss to be stealing. Though I
> don't think that this is neccessarily true
> legally, it does give interesting food for
> thought.
Of course you do!
If you accuse me of stealing TV, and point at my TV, which is the exact same model that you bought, then I can pretty easily counter and prove that I didn't steal it, if you still have your TV.
Stealing isn't about posession, its about loss.
I would ask anyone who thinks that copyright violations is "stealing" to please point me to the section of "copyright law" that uses the word "steal" or "rob" or any of its equivalents. No. Its "Unauthorized copying". "Stealing" is the term used in pamphlets and press releases by lawyers and publishers to push forward the idea of "Intellectual Property" (which is THEIR way of balling up trademarks, patents, copyright and some stuff they just invented ou tof thin air all into one term)
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I will one-up you.
I run Netscape 4.75 with javascript off AND use a junkbuster proxy to kill banner ads (even slashdots) and kill cookies.
And it worked fine for me
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Driving over the speed limit is not inherently wrong. I don't think a person deserves to be pulled out by armed soldiers and thrown in a cage for that.
However, Driving recklessly fast (ie too fast for the given road conditions and traffic. Its impossible to put a number on it, sometimes 45 is too fast, sometimes 120 isn't - it all depends on road conditions, and traffic), is endangering the lives of others. So It would be, in my mind, rather justified to have armed soldiers put a stop to the activity before someone else is hurt.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> (Communism, for example, where competition is
> bad, and the government tells you what you
> should be doing with your time and how much
> you should be getting paid for it through
> a central planning authority).
As a person who find the ideas of libertarian socialism (a form of anarchism, or the only real anarchism - depending on who you talk to) I would disagree strongly with this.
While this is often a feature of imposed statist communism, it is certainly not a part of the basic tennets of communism any more than having a stock market is fundamental to capitalism (its a logical extension in some circumstances (possibly most) but not a requirement per se).
> In general (with a couple of exceptions),
> if there is no economic incentive to do
> something, it either doesn't get done, or
> it doesn't get done well.
I will admit I only know a few musicians, and certainly not all musicians are great ones. Economic incentive, while nice, isn't what drives a person to create.
You ask me to offer a way to overcome the problems that "IP" solves (it doesn't solve any, because it doesn't exist, it is legally 3 seprate things that have nothing to do with eachother but PR people like to lump together). I don't claim to be able to.
I am saying that the solution (ie government imposed restriction - via copyright and patent) is fundamentally immoral, and wrong. The ends do NOT justify the means.
If that makes some things that are "good" harder to do, then so be it. If certain production and research happens slower, then so be it.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
There is a simple fact: Humans create things even when there is no profit motive at all. The act of creation, the act of searching and discovery is IN AND OF ITSELF rewarding.
True, there are people who are motivated by profit. However, as far as I can tell (both from my own motivations and the motivations of people that I have talked to) many (if not most) are only motivated by profit when profit is needed. Its only because of the need to pay bills and maintain quality of life that people seek money.
How many times have you seen a person going stir crazy after retiurement? They ahve the urge to work, and often get involved in little projects and building things, for love of working!
The moral problem with copyright (specifically, as I said, IP is a nonsense term that doesn't even have a legal definition) is NOT artisans getting paid for their work. Hell no...I think its great and I would gladly pay an artist or a writter for the enjoyment that I derive from their work.
The moral problem is with government enforced restrictions on copying. Yes, authors should get paid. That does NOT mean that they have ANY right to stop a person from sharing with others.
Whether it is good economically or not is besides the point. A transaction between me and my friend does not concern anyone else. If I hand him a copy of the New Kids on the Block's Greatest Hits (which, sadly, is a real album) it is NOONES buisness but mine and my friends.
I am fundamentally oposed to ANY law that says I can't share information with my friends. Its unenforcable at best, and, in my eyes, morally corrupt.
I will not support the use of armed soldiers to support "restrictions on copying". Its just not right.
Its funny that you keep brionging up pharmasuticals. This is one instance where profit motive definitly works against the people. Sure AZT is great for people with AIDS. Its a good thing. However, profit motive is really a motive to NOT find a cure. Its much much more profitable to develop drugs that keep a person alive and sick, yet alleviate their symptoms. That way you can peddle your drug to them again and again for years.
Much more profitable than actually cureing a disease.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Ok... here is my problem with the concept of IP.
Lets take the example where Alice authors Book (Book being th ename of the work - whether it is a song, peice of software, or real book is irrelevant here).
Carl buys a copy of Book from Alice. Carl enjoys book, and sees his friend David. He makes a copy of Book for David, because he thinks his friend David will also enjoy Book.
David is indeed getting "value" from Book. What is that value? Maybe it helps him get his work done, maybe it provides entertainment.
The law says that Alices copyright has been violated. (actually depending on the medium that could debatably be fair use, but thats a topic fo r the lawyers). However, I don't see how this transaction involves Alice at all...nothing of hers was involved.
Under the Doctrine of IP, she should be the only one allowed to make copies, and thus profit off a monopoly. She is the only one who can produce this product (which is really just copies of something she already made).
How could she produce works and be compensated without this monopoly? I don't really see that as my problem to solve. There are many proposals for this already in the world.
She could do it for commission! Thats certainly viable for software authors (and sometimes musicians - in fact its exactly how many like Bach made their money), and painters, sculptors etc (possibly less so for book authors).
There are even some experiemnts going on by novel authors in ways of distributing content so that they don't need copyright enforcement to make money (they have been mentioned on slashdot).
As to a few other things you said... When I say "Armed soldiers" I mean it THATS WHAT POLICE ARE! We often forget that in our daily lives. Sending police after someone is not something that should EVER be taken lightly, and its something that I think people need to be reminded of.
As for fair use... I don't know if I can find the article (it was referenced from slashdot a while back) it was one of the napster cases where it was stated that once a person has copy of a song, fair use applies and they may listen to it all they want - even if they obtained the song via illegal distribution. The only reason I remember this is that it struck me as bizzare that lawyers on both sides of the case (one side being RIAA lawyers) agreed.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
As most of the rest of your reply amounts to thinly veiled personal attacks via misrepresenting my views and a few small straw men, I don't feel any need to reply to them.
> the moral problem is, why should some people
> pay because they're honest and not have the
> benefit of a system that forces everyone else
> to make the choice between paying and having
> the product, or not paying and therefore not
> getting to have their own copy of the music.
Exactly.
"System that forces". Therein lies my problem.
Should the system forcibly stop murderers? Absolutly! Should it stop rapists? No doubt! Should it stop con artists and other committers of fraud? sure. Muggers and theives? definitly!
As for forcibly stoping "Unauthorized Copiers". No Im sorry, I can't support that. Its a crime with no victem. Noone is hurt. The only way you can even imagine "damage" is to talk about some imaginary "value" or "money that a person didn't get".
I am sorry, but I just do NOT think that it is EVER legitimate to use the threat of force by the government (which is what a law is - a threat of force) to solve general social or economic problems (like artists desire to be compensated). The threat of force should ONLY be used to stop the use of illegitimate force.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Its not yours. Authorship is not ownership.
You want to claim the right to constrain other peoples behaviour because you authored something.
You want to claim that something that you created, and sold to someone else is still yours? Nonsense I say.
This is silly. We are not going to agree. You obviously have no problem with the use of "threats of force" to turn information into "Property", no matter how unlike property it really is.
So in short, you continue calling me a theif (or actually supporter of theifs, I havn't actuaslly engaged in "sharing" of the sort I advocate in quite a while), and I will continue saying that copyright law is unneeded and immoral and serves only to keep large corperations in power and take away our rights as individuals.
Oh, and I will occasionally throw in a call to do away with the entire statist capitalist system and replace it with some form of anarcho-socialism. You can feel free to call me a "pinko commie leftist" anytime you like.
And I will continue releasing all of the software and other things that I write either under the GPL or some other free license...because I don't believe that I have the right to restrict anyone else from shareing and using my works. (and one of these days I will get around to actually putting some more "works" up on my web page... so much to do...why the hell am I arguing with you?)
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> Only under the terms of what you're calling a
> monopoly (and what I would simply refer to as
> IP ownership)
I call it a monopoly because the people who originally instituted it called it a monopoly. That is what copyright is!
Need I remind you that IP doesn't exist? Not in any legal sense. It really doesn't. What we are talking about is copyright.
Copyright, by its very definition, is a "limited monopoly" given to the creator of a work. It is given NOT because the author owns the work, or has some "god given right" to it, but to encourage people to produce art and other socially useful things. It is social contract by the people, with the authors saying "We will cede our rights to copy your works to you for a limited time".
Technology has rapidly reached the point where this is no longer feasable, or needed. Without copyright, true, it would be hard, if not impossible, to work as an "author" (unless you worked for a newspaper). You would need a day job. It would mean that only the best would really see ALOT of money form what they produce.
I don't think thats so bad. I don't want the Arts to be thought of as an "Industry". Sure art is socially productive and good, but, not so socially productive that we should encourage and reward it as much or more than a "normal job".
> I agree completely. But in practice, the first
> step is that someone's lawyer sends out a cease
> and desist letter.
Which is just a restatment of the law. The force behind the cease and desist letter is still the Armed Men with gun who will come by if it is ignored. THEY are the seat upon which all legal power rests.
In the end, we are just going to disagree. I think the current system was a fine thing when it was implimented, but some people are just taking it too far. They see the limited monopoly that they were granted and want more of it. They want the public to give up more and more rights - or for longer and longer periods. Its time to end it.
Humans need art (I am of course including music in art). We will find ways to make it work. More art isn't always better. In fact, I think we are at the point where we have hit that point. We don't need the government to encourage art anymore.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> By getting all defensive, you conveniently
> avoid needing to respond to the points made.
Your right. Its just frustrating when all of the points are so full of loaded phrasology. The problem with this discussion is that its almost impossible to avoid loaded phrases. There arn't any unloaded ones. (its also part of the problem with carrying on multiple arguments at once - with different people)
As to law and force....
What gives the law power?
The answer is simple. Police. Armed men with guns. ANY law is a threat by the governmnet. It is a statment that "Here is a rule. If you break it, the police are authorized to stop you".
The seat upon which the power of government rests is the physical force that it can exert through its army of police. Every law contains that implicit threat. Every "Cease and desist" letter contains the implicit threat that "Ignore this and the police will be knocking at your door"
The question is, when is the threat of force legitimate? There are plenty of cases where it is. Murder, rape, one could easily put together a list of "cut and dry" examples.
Copyright is not one of them.
In fact, Copyright law is not about "protection of rights". It never has been. It is a limited monopoly granted to an author specifically to encourage works. Not because they deserve it, but because we hope it will encourage them to make more. Feel free to read the US Constitution and copyright laws if you have any doubt about its intentions. (I can't speak for other countries, I havn't read their constitutions or copyright laws)
Authorship is not ownership, not even under current copyright law, not even after the extensions to the law that some major multinationals purchased.
> I have no idea if you are the kind of person
> who would go distribute Windows on street
> corners -
I would never be so cruel as to distribute windows to people in any form whatsoever. (I just couldn't resist that one)
Of course, of all things I ESPECIALLY think that software should not be copyrightable. The purpose of copyright is to encourage the practitioners of an arts. However, programming has practical use and thus will always be needed. The art doesn't need copyright to flourish. Programmers can always get commissioned jobs.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> In other words: Programmers will no longer
> be able to independently make a living selling
> software they've written. They will always
> have to be hired guns who are dependent on some
> employer.
There is no "Right to make a living however you damned well please". Just because you can, under the current system, make a living in some way does not mean you have some right to continue doing it indefinitly.
There would still be the ability to write software and sell support contracts.
> Of course. Otherwise, in the absence of a
> totally moral society (which is pretty obvious),
> you would have people driving 120 mph on the
> freeway, running red lights, chopping down
> trees in the city park, etc. As long as there
> are selfish and unethical people,
> unfortunately we will have police.
Excuse me... did I not say that there are certainly acceptable and justified uses of such "Threats of force"? You seem to totally ignore that. Yes, as I said, there are plenty of good and just reasons to have these threats of force. Listing them is irrelavent.
The bottom line of all this boils down to "Why do we have copyright?".
Is it, as I believe (and as is stated within the relevant laws of the land), that it is a "limited Monopoly" granted to encourage works. That authors have no intrinsic rights to their creations (except the right to claim the title of author) and that the whole of copyright law is based simply on our societies want to encourage the production of works.
Or is it, as you seem to believe (I am really not trying to build a straw man, so please correct me if I am wrong - as you will see, I am not going to tear into this statment of your viewpoint), that authors have intrinsic rights to their work, and deserve compensation for these rights, and that the law protects those rights.
These two view points are wildly different in their basic assumptions. There is no way (or at least no way that I can see) to reconcile these two viewpoints. In mine, copyright is wholly optional. In yours, it is a defense of a persons basic rights.
I honestly believe that when I write a program and someone else gets a copy of it, that they have a god given right (ok, I am an atheist, so not "god given" - I can't think of a better phrase at 16:41 on a friday) to modify the program, and to share it with their friends. It is my solem belief that this is their right, and I have no right to stop them, and furthermore that this applies to ANY "Intellectual Work" that I do (be it poetry or music)
> But it's not just art! Anything that involves
> creating IP gets trashed!
Throughout this entire conversation I have been talking specifically about copyright and have even said so over and over. The example which you give involves patents, which are a completely different beast. This is why I say over and over "IP doesn't exist". It doesn't. They are seprate concepts, deserving of seprate discussions. I never once (in this argument) said anything about patents being abolished (they need work yes, but I never brought them up as they are tangential to the original issue)
> Please don't try to back out of having to
> address the gaping holes in your proposal by
> saying "we're not going to agree."
Our differences in opinion, as I have stated above, apear to stem from fundamental world view differences.
-Steve
(Who admits he can be a bit of a hothead early on in arguments and is trying not to be)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> As to the "IP doesn't exist" argument, I think
> what he means is that IP is not a legally
> defined term
Exactly. IP is a term that is used as a simplification and propaganda tactic. It is an attempt to bring 3 completely different concepts under one conceptual umbrella. The problem with this umbrella is, of course, that it doesn't hold water.
Its also an attempt to push forward into peoples minds the idea that information can be owned and controlled and that it is a fundamental right to own and control (just like physical property).
> There's no currently proposed alternative to
> IP rights that can't be shot down in flames in
> 30 seconds by anyone who knows elementary
> economics
Thats a pretty broad ranging statment, I would like to see something to back it up.
of course, I supose that means that the economic argument is the only wrothwhile one then? I have said several times that if my ideas were implimented there would be changes - an entire industry would be turned on its head. It would mean that "Musicians would need day jobs" (actually - theres only a very few that don't need day jobs as it is now).
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> I make a living writing software, and I like
> the idea of authors, artists, etc. being able
> to make money from their creations. Someone
> out there give me a solid ethical justification
> for intellectual property restrictions, please.
"It makes money"
As far as I can tell, thats the major ethical argument in favor of IP.
I agree, I like the idea of Artists and Software programmers making their money (or our money, programming is afterall part of my job). However, I think thats possible without IP restrictions (maybe not as much money in some cases, but that doesn't justify the restrictions).
The Only thing that I see as "protected" by these restrictions is the "Publishing Industry". They are useful in what they do but...they are not either authors or end consumers. If the market changes and they are no longer profitable, then they should buck up and get new jobs.
The law, as written - and as advocated by the copyright profiteers, is that if you copy and distribute a copyrighted work without permission, then the government has the right to send armed soldiers (called "police") to your house and to drag you away kicking and screaming to a cage where you are treated like an animal. Is that what normally happens? No. However, if you don't bow to their demands, its an option available to them.
At first they start with threats, then court, then fines, then it would escalate to these more drastic measures. However NO LAW is justified EVER unless these actions by the state that are used to enforce the laws are justified as a response to what has been done.
Simple test. The law says you can't do X. Do you feel that a person who does X deserves to be dragged out of their home by armed soldiers and thrown in a cage?
ANY law that does not fit that test, is an unjust and unethical law.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> The theft of music, regardless of whether the
> artist still has their copy of the song, is
> theft - pure and simple.
It all boils down to this doesn't it?
YOu obviously believe that information can be owned, and that the restrictions of copyright are "right".
So yes, with those fundamental concepts, yes it is pure and simple.
However, I disagree with them. I do not see copyright law as justified or right. I, in fact, think that stopping the free sharing of information (whether or not you are the "author" of that information) is morally wrong and unjustified by ANYTHING (the only exception being a persons personal, private information - like a log in a diary or your Bank account numbers).
From that viewpoint, which is mine, it is not "theft - pure and simple".
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I am not advocating taking away anyones "right to to decide whether I want to be compensated for my work."
I am advocating getting rid of government imposed restrictions on copying. Now, if that makes it harder for you to be compensated for you work, you are free to find a new way to attain compensation - one that does NOT require an army of armed soldiers (called police) to change the behaviour of your fellow citizens.
As I said previously (was it in this thread?) a law is a statment by the government that "If you do X, our soldiers are authorized to stop you". I do not believe that copping is wrong.
As I have said, "Unauthorized Copying" is not stealing by MY definition of stealing. Information is not property, and I don't care how much jumping up and down and complaining about "wanting compensation" you do, it does not have the same features as real property, its not property.
As for compensation, I have already said that I think it is wholly right that artisans be compensated for their creations. I am willing to compensate them to encourage good work.
What I am not willing to do is to support copyright law. People share information and thats good. Information is not property, and copying information is not stealing. Not even the law, which I have stated I disagree with, calls it stealing.
In fact, its quite clear, from looking at the law, that an illegally obtained copy is just that, illegally obtained. Not illegal to posess or use. Fair Use still applies! How would you correlate this with this concept of "Information as Property"? Of course, the entire concept of "fair use" seems to contradict the doctrine of "IP" now doesn't it?
Would you advocate that personal ice making machines and freezers should have been outlawed because of what they did to the ice harvesting industry? (just think, a person can go out to a lake now, and cut ice from the frozen lake, and noone will compensate them for their work...a whole industry was wiped out!)
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
He's the internet equivalent of a bounty hunter.
Shoot first, trial later (if at all).
As with all bounty hunters, he's going to hurt someone who's innocent, and as the article said, the current laws favor the corporations.
I don't like the anonymity the internet provides, because too many crooks get away with their crimes. If your machine has ever been cracked, I'm sure you'd agree.
I realize the problem: privacy and anonymity go together: you loose one, you loose both.
I'm currently listening to Pink Floyd's "Dogs" -- where the masters are killed and no law exists and the sheep find themselves constantly terrified by the dogs.
Sounds like the wild west: law enforcement was few and far between. Crooks had their heyday, spurning vigilantism and bounty hunters.
"You better stay home, and do what you're told... stay out of the road if you want to grow old".
Let's hope this is not the future of the internet.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
Yes, but a subpoena is issued by a judge, right? We're talking about an email from a private individual here.
I agree. Unauthorized copying has no more to do with stealing than with any other offense. Why not call it rape if you're trying to excite moral indignation? Are you afraid that calling it by its true name, copying, will deflate the drama? (Not you, Cardinal)
I hope that gets modded up. I'm always tempted to post that when this crappy 'IP' thread rears its head, but it's like shouting into the wind. In the version I heard, the poor man had rented a room over the cookshop and used to eat his bowl of porridge while inhaling the rich cooking odors coming through the cracks in the floor.
In the end, the judge says, "for the smell of fish, the sound of coin."
"Hotline is a legitimate client-server application that pirates migrated to and took over"
It's nice to hear someone promenant on the industry side of the copyright wars who has figured out this distinction. The people who are responsable (and should be held accountable) are the people who share/download copyrighted materials. We shouldn't blame people who come up with interesting ideas that have legitimate uses just because people find ways to use the product/idea to do something illegal.
As someone who creates music in mp3 format (without the talent/connections/luck necessary to get a recording contract), I think Napster would be a wonderful way for me to share my music with the world...'cept it is flooded with illegal content making it impossible to find independant content like mine (not to mention the fact that it'll probably end up getting the service shut down).
I'm not making any moral statement on sharing copyrighted content...I don't condemn or approve of the actions of anyone doing it. But the world would be a lot cooler place, IMHO, if everybody understood the distinction that this guy does.
</$0.02>
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Oh the inhumanity! But consider this: Maybe IP, and property in general, could use rethinking. By property I mean the property-the-meme; the program. The 'who's owns this stuff' program. We all seem to be running it. Why? Because TV told us to? Because everyone's doing it? Inertia? Maybe it's debugging time. Or Rewrite? Property might be a bust. Sure it works for dogs pissing on trees but I suspect that it's time we humans invented something new.
I'd like to have 10 minutes with the man in a boxing ring, and see if he still feels like a bully. Because at best, thats what he is.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
What I am getting really tired of hearing though is that every pirated song, program, gold dubloon etc is equivalent to a lost sale. If half the world's population downloaded a copy of cubase last year that does NOT mean that the writer has been ripped for some hundreds of billions of dollars!
- PrinciplyUncertain
That's my point - there is no equivalent "legitimate" service to download my favorite music. Not that I know of anyway.
sig fault
Why not use a legitimate site and support the music you love so much.
Hmm, like which site? Anybody have a link? Anybody?
sig fault
I believe a lot of pirates are basically 'collecting' software and a lot of it is never used after an initial period.
It's similar to when the Government talks about 'lost revenue' due to smuggling - no account is taken of the possibility that some of the smuggled goods would not have been bought legally because of the prohibitive legal cost. (I know that two cases mentioned above are different, but I wanted to make both)
----
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
Does anyone else picture this Powell guy as Satan wearing a tin halo?
just set up your download folder to automatically dump to another folder so that you aren't ever sharing a single file. Then they can't touch you!
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
I appreciate your intention, but if I were to find someone to write a post with your purposes in mind, I would have chosen someone with fairly reasonable grammar/spelling. Unfortunately, for these reasons, you will probably not get modded intto the light of day whereby Mr. Powell would take the time to look at it.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
To control against storing the first part of the file and using the decryption key on it (where "part" is large enough to avoid decryption blocksize & block shuffling problems), the file should either be double-encrypted or otherwise scrambled, with a reordering key located at a standard spot once the stream is decrypted. Having the reordering information scattered throughout the file before the encryption is done might also work.
-- fencepost
fencepost
just a little off
While loser pays tends to prevent repeated frivilous lawsuits, it doesn't prevent someone from caving into legal threats, especially when the chance of losing seems even remotely possible. Remember that a corporation will probably be able to pay $250,000 in legal fees without so much as blinking -- do you think you'd be willing to challenge that if you thought there was even a slim chance you might lose?
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Keep in mind that despite the weight of evidence against him, Jammer has been convicted of no crime and unless he decides to spend thousands of dollars, he won't have the opportunity to present his case in a legal forum. Guilty till proven innocent!! Anyone else see what's wrong with this picture?
You're using her as bait, Master!
Thats supposed to be "Fuck off eh, hoser!"
You're using her as bait, Master!
But the difference is that you are getting paid for writing it, and the price for this is enough to cover all the costs of writing it. Software "piracy" is a slightly less extreme example of hiring someone to come up with the code and simply refusing to pay for it when the bill comes. They're getting the use of the software without paying for it. With regular software "piracy" instead of a one to one relationship, it's a one to many, with some of those many not paying the required fee. If someone spends money creating something to sell, and another person wants to use it, then that other person has to pay for it if they "copy" it. It is theft, except it's monetary theft. Someone copies the software, they owe the money. Withholding payment is theft.
Now, in some cases, I'm all for theft, but let's at least call it what it is.
I think that this distinction of whether or not you deprive the victim of the use of their good is rubbish. You're depriving the victim of the cash value of the good you now possess, which you ought to have tranferred to them when you obtained the service/data, then you *stole*. Copying is just trying to make it seem less bad.
If you were to purchase some research data from AC Nielsen or Gallup and then refuse to pay, is that stealing of copying? After all, they still have their copy of the data...
The Napster case is interesting because if it goes too far, the future of communications networks will be affected by the destruction of the file-sharing and peer-to-peer applications that are developing now. The theft of music, regardless of whether the artist still has their copy of the song, is theft - pure and simple. You took something created by someone else without agreeing and paying a price for it - prices in a free market are NOT set unilaterally. If you thought it was too expensive, then write your own music and compete with them by selling it cheaper.
Salocin.com
"He has single-handedly rendered entire news groups suitable only for spam and porn"
I knew there was someone was behind this!
Thanks for pointint out the server aspect; my example certainly didn't address it. (And I did read the article, btw. :^)
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Then, when they send a subpeona, actually take them to task, countersue on whatever grounds you can (invasion of privacy, frivilous lawsuit, emotional distress, whatever) and go to the courts knowing that you didn't download anything that *wasn't* (as far as you knew) not allowed by "fair use". Besides, you were just using the network to download things that you didn't already have rights to.
Then, once they're busted a few good times, and hopefully had the pants sued off of them and some bad media exposure, see what happens.
Then again, I need another Mountain Dew...
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
...its now.
When someone actually boasts about exploiting the prohibitive cost of mounting a legal defence then its time to look at reforming the system. The law exists to protect the innocent as well as punish the guilty. This guy however has a "Kill 'em all. Let God sort 'em out." kind of attitude.
He claims to act when the "evidence" is decisive. But whose standard of evidence are we talking about here? He is not a judge, or even a lawyer but a person who admittedly gets off on coming down on his targets. To allow such a person to brazenly threaten people (comply or we will send you broke fighting it) amounts to sanctioned blackmail.
The article seems to be one big ad for CCS. The reality is that alt.binaries.sounds.utilities is still loaded with warez and Jammer still posts there. The headway that CCS has made on the issue of software piracy is meager at best.
maru
Ok, So this idiot lawyer hacked into someone elses system and stole there user list. That is criminal. Any unauthorized access to someone elses computer for any reason is prosecutable. If I find a law firm has scanned any of my machines I will be reporting them to both the fbi and filing a cival suit in small claims courts. Ive taken to using this method with my insurance company and it really works. It only costs a little bit of money to file a civil suit. You dont need a lawyer but unless they want to send there president they do. And they have to send them. I dont care if I win. Im just sueing to cost them the price of there lawyer and there lawyers traffic. My insurance company now pays my claims quickly and without a word. All it took was 3 suits which they settled out of court and I dont have a hiccup anymore even though they denied every claim. If this or any other jerkoff scans my network I will file harrassment lawsuits. Thats me harassing him by costing him legal fees, and I will send contact his ISP as well. See. While piracy is illegal hacking is just as illegal and much easier to have the have the fbi prosecute. So if you see this twit or any other legal twit scanning your network call the Feds and Call his ISP. He wants a war, we can give him more of a war then he is ready to deal with. Not that I advocate piracy. Im just sick of these greedy lawyers forcing there impartial laws down peoples throats and trying to inspire fear. On the flip side, First lawyer who comes after me is gonna end up with a set of broken knee caps. I own a baseball bat and Im fed up enough to use it.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
>>Intellectual-property owners don't have a
>>fundamental natural-law right to restrict the
>>copying of their intellectual property.
>
>and
>
>>There is no right to steal others' IP.
>
>Which is it?
Actually, there isn't a contradiction here, though it certainly is confusing. The orriginal poster is referring to a concept in the philosophy of law in which it is believed that there is a set of freedoms so fundamental that all people should enjoy them. Not everything one has a right to under this so-called "natural law" is necessarily reflected in human legal systems, and there isn't any guarantee that natural law addresses all subjects. The orriginal post is simply asserting that "rights" in this sense do not apply.
Another use often made of the word "rights" is to speak of freedoms fundamentally guaranteed by the constitution of a country, generally, at least in my experience, the US of A. ('course, that's where I live, and we *do* have a tendency to forget that the rest of the world exists.) In the US, there clearly *isn't* any right to intilectual property. The constitution simply permits congress to make such IP laws as it deems fit. Conversely, since the congress is allowed to make IP laws, there isn't any legal right, here, to use other peoples' IP.
There is also an important distinction to be made between ethical and economic justification of intilectual property. It seems clear to me that there is no economic justification - the marginal cost of a copy of a piece of software is entirely in the overhead of maintaining a high-bendwidth network. Once the bandwidth is there, it costs the same whether it is active or idly sending null-padded frames because you don't have anything to transfer.
The ethical argument is less clear to me. Certainly, people who contribute new ideas, tools, and art deserve to be compensated for their efforts, if for no other reason that we'd all rather have them spend their time benefiting society that way than just trying to keep bread on the table. On the other hand, derivative works are the essence of progress. If it weren't for derivative works bulding upon eachother over the centuries, we'd still be a race of hunter-getherers, and probably not even much good at that. It seems to me immoral to refuse others permission to create coppies of my contributions to society and to create their own derivative works. For that reason, I license any code I write under the GPL unless otherwise compelled by someone who is paying me to write the code. Even then, I try. Personally, I think I should be paid for the effort of creating the software, not for the number of coppies of it that get made.
Despite the orriginal poster's claim that freedom of expression is entirely separate, I must disagree. Any technological solution to copy protection, were it to exist, would also have the effect of restricting the same data copying and transmission technologies that are essential for free speech to be effective.
I don't pirate software. I don't have any music on my computer that I believe to be illegal. I do have mp3s of a large segment of my own CD collection, which I find useful despite the fact that sitting here at my computer I am not ten feet from a 160-watt stereo with a 3-cd changer, and I only use them in ways that I believe to be legal under fair use. I would nonetheless be quite upset if I were unable to make those coppies to my hard drive, which enable me, among other things, to put together my own playlists with more freedom than the 3-disc carosel allows and to listen to my music collection in a friend's room across campus without having to cary the crates full of disks over first.
This guy sounds like he's cruising for a lawsuit or prosecution for extortion. Can you say RICO?
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Ah, the wonderful /. humor I thrive on... classic, truly wonderful.
Too bad he isn't expending his efforts on spammers. Would ANYONE here be complaining if he were going after spammers like this?
That doesn't mean i agree with the guy, his methods are certainly questionable, just that there is definaltely a double standard here (listening for the sound of jaws dropping in shock).
I do agree though - he should be treated like a lawyer - see sig.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
Before purchase is what I really meant...but the word shrinkwrap gets used so much in that discussion that i used it without thinking.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Any law that enforces a legal right that is not a natural right is an unethical law.
Any law that actively abridges a natural right is an unethical law.
To me, "how we'd rather have them spend their time" is not a compelling argument. Either those authors have a right to control the particular bit sequences they introduce to the world, or they don't. What result we want is irrelevant.I'm trying, in my own mind, to get to the heart of the rights, if any, involved here. It seems to me that the act of distributing bits may be an action that negates any right to restrict those bits. If a person builds a widget, places it in the middle of a busy street, and walks away, I would argue that he doesn't have much to complain about if someone else comes along, picks it up, and uses it as he sees fit. In the world of bits, this seems even more compelling, because a person can build a widget of information (program, song, movie, etc.) lay it down out in the street, and still keep it for himself.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
I am leaning toward the position that "intellectual property" cannot be ethically justified, because the mere copying of bits has no direct effect on the original author of those bits. I am leaning toward the position that if I have a stream of bits I don't want copied around, then I need to keep them secret.
In the software world, that could be accomplished by running an ASP rather than selling software copies. Or, software authors could use individual nondisclosure agreements with users (properly agreed to before opening the shrinkwrap, of course). But note that this last could only hold the discloser responsible for the software being revealed...receivers of the copy who did not agree to the NDA would be under no obligation not to use or copy the software.
Notice that this would also undercut the GNU license, since if one doesn't have the right to restrict how bits he has authored are copied, then he can't enforce the GNU restrictions.
I make a living writing software, and I like the idea of authors, artists, etc. being able to make money from their creations. Someone out there give me a solid ethical justification for intellectual property restrictions, please.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
In other words, he hacked/cracked the site. No court order, no permission for the site owner. We know exactly how illegal that is, don't we?
I guess I can go crack some sites that I think are illegal and get away with it, too. Like microsoft.com, which advances an illegal monopoly/
My mom is not a Karma whore!
What seems even more of a concern was that this could be installed regionally at point the net aggregates connections. However, if I was running a piece of the backbone, I wouldn't walk away from this, I'd be running like hell. I can't believe the potential liablity if this screws up and 'stops' the wrong transmissions. They may not care much about privacy, but they do give a damn about their money. And it could be more than civil. Are there criminal statutes regarding interfering with someone's computer, interfering with the transmissions, etc? One cannot break a law saying they're prohibiting the breaking of laws. The old vigilante method of justice was outlawed many year ago.
Folks, do something productive instead: learn programming and drive Steinberg and Powell's other clients out of existence by writing better open source software; don't blindly post their stuff
Which brings us to software patents, which make it illegal to distribute said open source software once you've written it.
I say this is a discussion worth having whichever side of the argument you support. You dont want to wake up in 20 years and find rights like fair use taken away.
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Heh, sorry about the formatting, s'my second slashdot post ever. :/
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
As I said previously, if I can find no evidence of copyright violation, I do nothing at all. If they created the file themselves, there's NO copyright violation, ergo, no penalty.
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
I work as an Abuse Specialist at a large broadband provider. We HAVE to quickly give up the information, if served with a subpoena, or we'll be in violation of a boatload of franchise agreements as well as who knows what else.
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
I work as an Abuse Specialist at a large broadband provider, so I have a unique insight into this whole process. First of all, if I'm given a subpoena, it has a deadline for turnaround on it. I have to match the IP on the subpoena to any and all information I can drudge up on the sub it belongs to within that timeframe, or we could face serious legal penalties. Franchise agreements would be violated, etc, etc. Once it gets to the subpoena level, there's not much more I can do besides hand over the info. Now, if I just receive a complaint of infringement, or something along those lines, I've got a lot of options in front of me. But once Powell has built a relationship with the ISP, they become amazingly compliant with CCS demands. Saunders says CCS is rarely questioned when it notifies an ISP about an infringing user. "We found ISPs remove things even though they could argue it," he says. "They are reclaiming large amounts of bandwidth. We are providing a service to them, essentially." This, at least in my case, is almost 100% B.S. I'm not just going to cut some subscriber loose because some jackass with a title claims something is amiss. "Reclaiming bandwidth" isn't THAT big of a deal. The value of "reclaimed bandwidth" compared to the value of a customer paying 40+ bucks a month indefinitely is pretty measly. When I receive a complaint about infringement, I investigate the matter, looking for anonymous FTP access, trying common passwords, etc. If I can identify copyright violations, I send the sub a warning letter and give them a phone call, notifying them that the offending material needs to be taken down IMMEDIATELY and permanently, or termination of the account will take place. (You don't want to know how many kids I've gotten grounded ;). If I can't find any evidence of infringement, I wait, and try again. If I NEVER see any evidence of infrigement, then, well, looks like the problem is solved.
Point being, if you're innocent, this will never get to the subpoena stage, and you can (at least if I'm handling the case) fight against the accusations.
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
Well, Al your points are correct :) :)
In fact, don't you think they are so obvious ?
Don't you think they are so much ?
I reacted the same at the start of the article, but... I don't know.. it's too much of "I'm better than you, and my big brother is stronger than yours etc.."
Besides, they claim they want to discourage all the "pirates wanabes" with their psychological approach, but they do so by mainly attacking specific real pirates ??
Sounds to me that what they really want to do is to make pirates angry instead of scared, they even challange them !
They don't have to scare everybody.. This is as useless as impossible. Once a pirated version of something is out, you really can't stop it. The best way is still to try to prevent the first pirate to unprotect and give away his work.
So I think they are after the big fish...
They just do everything they can to make them mad, I wouldn't b surprised if they's start to build a honney-pot...maybe letting kow who are their clients, selling their own fake software hings like that, that will be the most wanted cracks in the crackers comunity just for the taste of vengeance
But of course they could be as dumb as you demonstrated they are and I'm just being over-paranoid
In either case, there is nothing to be afraid of
*sigh* again, you have taken something.. The IP owners ability to SELL their IP.. By making it available for free you remove the ability to earn a living.. Not everyone is contnet to live on welfare at the tit of the government.. Many of us would like to feed our kids and keep them in a warm home..
Death and poverty like me so much, they've brought friends!
if someone posts an obviously copyrighted commercial software package to USENET, I think he deserved to lose access to the ISP
...we can call them a "Jury". Both sides can come to the "Jury" and present their side, then depending on what the "Jury" says, appropriate action can be taken... call me crazy
How do you propose we decide what is obvious and what is not? Here's a thought, let's create an impartial system of citizens to judge whether or not someone is "obviously guilty"
This man, David Powell, is going to hell. In fact, he shall be excommunicated at once. He is a hypocrite, and he is thoroughly evil. He uses tactics that would make Satan blush. This sinner engages in occult activities such as "haching", which is the total control of a system by removing it's faith in Him. However, if thou hadst performed occult ceremonies using the computor program "Diablo", thou shalt burn in the flaming furnaces in hell. This man preaches in a way that resembles a dirty occult Pokeman player preaching Christianity. This demon from hell is surely to take God from our people.
I think I'm going to hell for this....*teehee*
Definitions:
XML: Leading the way to make the web a ebiz thing
"To measure the effect of piracy on its business, Steinberg, based in Hamburg, Germany, once offered an amnesty whereby any holder of a pirated version of Cubase, which retails for $350 to $800, could trade it in for a legal version. The number of pirated versions turned in equaled 25 percent of the company's sales that year."
This is sure a funny way of measuring piracy. Seems more like giving away free copies. Don't steal our product... but if you do that isn't a problem, we'll give you a free license
I'm not very familiar with US law, but I heard there was a law that the Scientologists (almost?) ran afoul of intended to be used against people who regularly use lawsuits for bullying.
Since his method of attack is essentially "Pay me $5000 now, else guilty or not, I'll drag you through years of court battles which will cost you $100k", can something be made of how this seems to be simple extortion, or is this form of extortion simply the way the US legal system is normally used?
So the idea of looking for files based upon signatures (data footprint, name, etc) got me to thinking. These are basically some of the same methods that many anti-virus packages use to look for malware.
Would it be possible/feasable to create a polymorphic content protocol? i.e. put a wrapper around a file. It would be far harder to scan such a object moving over a chokepoint, as the scanner would have to get past the wrapper.
Additionally isn't how could anyone do that much traffic analysis? Scanning that many headers would take monsterous computing power, and it would cause a severe performance hit wouldn't it?
thoughts?
Audible Magic Corp's software actually looks for various audio anomalies in each song. This was addressed in the SDMI crack by injecting unhearable noise that will break the anomalies that the scanner software looks for.
Here is the slashdot article:. sh tml
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/01/24/1322248_F
Here is the SDMI crack web site:
http://www.julienstern.org/sdmi/index.php3
-Pat
I love the irony of the Den/IFPI fiasco:
So Powell makes his living getting material off the net, but refuses to do exactly that for a former client!
I'll tell you why we are still talking about this. Because once we shut-up they will seize and win the day. Keep practicing your Right to Free Speech, apparently it's the only thing the masses have going for them.
Anyway, as I have said before (see what I mean?), there is Zero Moral Implications in using Napster, in copying someone's book, and in making a movie of someone's novel the day after it is finished. It's just an economic model that was created 'in the day', a time when printing presses were still of the Gutenburg type.
It is my considered opinion (and many of you as well, as we practice our arguments, I notice they get more coherent and concise, good work all) that the advent of the Internet has brought about definite stresses in the way we do business. We are only just discovering that!
I would personally study the phenomena for a while and try to anticipate the implications of a number of possible policies before deciding on a single one. But the RIAA doesn't want that for obvious reasons. Money.
However, the dipwad lawyer cannot afford the luxury of not being a pit-bull for the landed, moneyed interests, so he has to be a jerk. He chose that profession and deserves all the enmity we can throw at him. He gets paid well.
Me, being more interested in the free association of people and the protected interests of individuals, care less about one man's personal fortune than the crapifying of what could still be a boon to humankind in general and me in particular.
But TV could have been a boon, too. But it's not for many of the same reasons; the greedy among us have sought to turn it solely into a revenue-generating box. For some reason that function excludes the possibility of all other functions. And don't talk to me about Public TV, it's gone the way of corporate interests.
In like fashion, we will see all the useful functions of this, our Internet become marginalized as people get harrassed off the internet until there are only providers and consumers left.
There may be a time when I am afraid to log on. Because of lawyer weenies like this joy-killer.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
I like it. A little much with the sheeps and wolves, but great thoughts, man.
So you would opt for a Bastille Day. I personally would go the Boston Tea Party route. And there are plenty of Gandhi's out there.
Is this why we can't get organized? Because we don't know whether to storm the gates, meet on the dock, or lie in the street together?
Tell me, now. What keeps us from organizing and informing the world? It's funny, I had no inkling of the WTO riot in Seattle until the day it happened, but I'll tell you, I would Never have known about the WTO if not for the riot.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Just right click on links and choose open link in new window. This is especially useful for sites like /. where there is discussion about a topic, and it is useful to go back and forth. It's especially useful if a site falls prey to the slashdot effect, you can reload every few minutes while reading what those who have been fortunate enough to access the site before it became bogged.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
As I was often told as a child, something is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. Huge numbers like this $15 billion figure are often used to demonstrate how big the problem of piracy is, but what proof is there that people would pay for everything if they couldn't download anything for free? How many people would pay $600 for Photoshop or $15-20 for each CD they download in mp3 format? How much of that $15 billion has already been paid by people who either wanted to sample music or expensive software or already owned a legitimate license? How much of that $15 billion represents data that was deleted shortly after being downloaded or was never used? As anyone who is familiar with eBay knows, things don't always sell for as much as they are supposed to be worth. Claiming $15 billion in damages is easy - proving it is impossible.
As a (hey, what's the cheapest hardware we can throw at this? type of) Webserver admin, I know the deeper the encryption the more often served, the higher the load on the server - way beyond the load in clear. What could be useful now is to know and implement the minimal level of encryption to use to get past the dogs - not trying to do everything at the max. Like, 8-bit or so might go through just fine, and not require hardware upgrades for busy sites. Why wear a full suit of armor when ninja pjs will do?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
He reminds me of the infamous Witchfinder General (Matthew Hopkins) who was at large in England in the 17th century.
Same sort of system, you were guilty as charged either way, he was above the law, and made quite a bit of money from it.
I'm not saying pirates are innocent - what I'm primarily saying is that Hopkins was notoriously cruel and vindictive, delighting in his work and the suffering he caused - sound familiar? I'm sure if it's legal to have these pirates burned at the stake, Dave Powell will find a way.
What a disgusting person.
--
--
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
Okay, how do we define that an individual posted a given software package to USENET? An NNTP-Posting-Host header? There're at least three points of failure with such a scheme:
These possibilities produce enough of a question that this is an issue that should be looked into by proper legal proceedings and not by a single person acting as investigator, judge, and jury. Unfortunately, the situation is such that, even for some who is completely innocent, it is in their best interests monetarily to cut a deal. That makes Powell's practices little better than legalized extortion.
Hey Dave!
/. pundits crying out - and your imagining they are fearfull.
I know youre reading this - who wouldnt when they are getting such attention from the 'enemy'... you are probably reading this just loving to see all the
Let me make something clear: Few people in this forum believe anything you excreet. Not only that - but your ideals and arguments are baseless. Few of us 'accept' your basic premises: The Validy of IP, The Rule of Corporate Law or that Lawyers are Arbiters of Western Society.. so the mindlessness displayed in this article is mostly comical.
The Internet is a global medium. US Government and Law is severly broken - it serves little else except to equip the plutocrats with disposable justice. And most countries are severly more cluefull than the whores in Washington.
The article discussed here only makes you look like an idiot; Pounding your chest in a schoolyard... nothing more. These kind of ideas may play well in your circle of friends - but some of us know very well what type of straw man you are. The cracks in this particularly loathsome capatalism you are defending are growing - trying to walk past and ignore them only make them glare more.
Also, just to let you know: I have about 200MB of MP3 and Ogg Vorbis* Files on the Hard Drive of this very computer. Some were made from CDs in my cupboard and some were not. My email is (tdube at sympatico dot ca). Call Sympatico and get my user info. Send me letters. Send me email. Im not some mindless teen saving himself $10 on pop-garbage music. You'll get no bend over here. Asshole**.
*Look it up.
**And if your wrongly sitting smug - thinking you yourself wryly "look, the thug resorted to name calling. What a child.": Fuck you.
These people that they claim had such a heavy impact on the company's business by posessing an illegal copy of Cubase is a little absurd. To make this statement true, you have to assume the following statement as well, 'Those people that had illegal copies of Cubase that turned them in would have purchased legal copies if an illegal copy was not available.' Without this statment, the notion that there was a total of 25% of this company's yearly sales lost is incorrect. The other alternative would be that, in light of no illegal copy, these people (or some portion thereof) would simply not possess any sort of copy of Cubase, and Steinberg would still not have that ammount of sales for that year.
Don't mistake this as a statement that "Illegal software is correct." It's not. However, with the cost-per-unit of software vendors being very low (Just how much does it take to make a copy of manuals and CD once produced? $10? $20?). Software vendors spend lots of money making the product (sometimes), and will sell it at it's suggested price ($89 for Windows, $600+ for Adobe products) until they release the next version. How much of this is recouping their cost for creating the software, and how much of it is an attempt to keep their revenue streams high once they clear the red line on profits? Sometimes, I think companies charge way too much for software, creating a case where hobbyists and people who use the software for fun alone don't want to spend an arm and a leg for a piece of software they use in their off time and aren't very good with.
As always, though, it will be the case of Pirated software is a lost revenue source, when I think they're trying to use reflex reactions in politicians to try and recoup percieved losses. Making a $1000 piece of high quality audio software is great, but if noone but companies can afford that, it won't be very popular with the common consumer.
I don't think it can be stated any clearer: The legal system doesn't work. If the case can't be tried in court by any realistic means, there is no way to obtain justice. Too bad.
Just like the script kiddiez, right....
Well, I haven't got any pirated programs, free software makes them irrelevant. That you don't like the prize or the license it's no excuse, just don't use the stuff and move on.
But this guy has got an attitude that I really don't like.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Crashes and bugs greatly reduced since 0.7.
Get Mozilla
Actually, I haven't bought a single CD since the Napster suit started. I don't have mp3s, but I'll do without rather than give $$$ to shitheads.
use Sig::Witty;
Well, I'm shocked by the stupidity of this... If I had seen that advertisement, I would have located and downloaded a pirated copy JUST to turn it in and get the legit program for free!!
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
Wrong Wrong Wrong.
Any media outlet, whether it be radio stations or MTV, pay a performance fee to the artist EVERY time an artist's work is played. That is what organizations like BMI exist for; they monitor the media outlets and collect fees for the artists, so they don't have to do it themselves. Ever worked in radio? Didn't think so.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
They're lawyers, what do you expect?
In Canada, this would be illegal. They would have to go to court first before they would be able to give out any of my personal information, otherwise I could sue THEM.
PIPEDA is a great law.
FunkyDemon
Although I halfheartedly support copyright and all that crap, I hate it when people go at it like this guy. In a sense it's like pirating the legal system, he's using a loophole or fallacy of the law to justify his blackmail-like tactics. "Give me money or I'll expose you and bleed your chequing account to death." Just one letter from this guy would probably ignite me to the point of hiring a bunch of big guys to go whack his brains out. It's basically what he's doing, although he's using financial strongarms instead of thugs. Same pressure, same rape of civil rights.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Didn't ya hear, taping is killing music!
TSG
Yes, but you would be taking them away, meaning we would no longer have them. When you copy something, you leave the original where it is and make a copy, which you take. So the owner still has their "property". That is the difference between stealing and copying. If you want to copy my rights, more power to you!
>"He can have almost any Web page removed from the Internet in
>hours. He can have a suspect's Internet connection
>turned off -- pedestrian dial-up or fancy broadband
>-- within days. "
So can I, and I'm nobody. It's called abuse@ or noc@ and it works very well, whether it's copyright infringment or spam. The fact that this guy brags about his "superpower" of being able to shut sites down rapidly is nothing more than an ego trip. All it takes is one email, and any reputable ISP or webhost will take action if the material violates their AUP.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
>Yes, but a subpoena is issued by a judge, right? We're talking
>about an email from a private individual here.
Any lawyer can issue a subpoena for any reason, but they're not necessarily binding. CCS' lawyers could subpoena your movie rental records, or your toilet paper purchase history if they wanted to, with no legal justification whatsoever; but subpoenas are not court orders. A subpoena is just a formal way of saying "I'm considering legal action and if I do take that action I'm going to want a copy of X, Y, and Z."
Most people comply with subpoenas up front because they're intimidated... But you can't be charged with obstruction of justice etc. unless the order actually came from a court. I don't know the regulations about ISPs being served, but I won't doubt the original poster that they have to comply even if it's not a legally binding situation.
IANAL.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
This sounds overly buzz-wordy like they're trying to sell something. Take this for example:
"And Powell employs a formidable arsenal of remedies. He can have almost any Web page removed from the Internet in hours. He can have a suspect's Internet connection turned off -- pedestrian dial-up or fancy broadband -- within days. He has single-handedly rendered entire news groups suitable only for spam and porn. By pressuring large ISPs, he has made entire areas of the Internet a danger zone to pirates hoping to trade in his client's software. "
They could have just said "He's an asshole"
The essential problem is that people want to have their cake and eat it too. On the one hand good software is incredibly expensive, and even crappy software costs a lot. A pirate can easily justify stealing by stating that they would never pay the going price for the software in question.
On the other hand if software was free then a lot of programmers would have to spend their time doing something else to keep eating and living under some sort of roof. This would reduce the supply of good software, and no one wants that.
I sincerely doubt that the IP industry will ever find a way to eliminate all piracy, so the only solution is to find a way to eliminate IP and keep programmers paid.
This is an interesting post to me with regards to another story discussed on /., namely the future
of usenet's archives, owned by google and possibly coming under control of the Library of Congress.
I imagine the author would have posted this on a usenent newsgroup and the LOC would be the future owner of the usenet archives and of usenet's servers.
How important and necessary do you judge the content of this post for archiving purposes and what do you think is more important to protect with regards to the poster's rights and the public's rights (privacy, equal access, freedom of speech, IP)
a. the posting's content in itself
b. the anonymity of the poster
c. the importance of the poster's right for x-no-archives request
d. the importance of the poster's right for nuking his post out of the archives.
All these questions I have, under the assumption that the post would have been made to a public forum owned by the public (i.e. LOC) versus posting the same content in the same manner on usenet, whose archives would be owned by a commercial company. It would be easily imaginable that the archives could be sold, for example, to the company in question (Shunhawk.com) in this article.
There is no upfront proof that a commercial group will abuse its power more than the government or vice versa and no proof that hacker gods as a whole are any more saints than any other group of human beings, be it in form of a government agency or a commercial entity. What counts is which group is legally the most regulated body to serve the people's will, reflected in a democratically elected, representative government.
So, the only question really to solve is, who and how should abuse from ANY group be prevented. The only answer to me is a democratically elected government agency, who has to obey the people's vote. There is unfortunately nothing better. And if your legal system or constitution stinks and is basically not serving the common people's human and civil rights properly, then it's a political question to be solved by the people and not by a group of geeks, business men or misguided government agents.
This always ends up as a triangle war between governmental, commercial and technology entities. I just wonder why you think ethical and moral issues can't be abused by each of the three equally badly or in other words, why anyone of these groups is better suited to protect the people from its own technological, obviously almost uncontrollable innovations.
..Ya hear that? "He has single-handedly rendered entire news groups suitable only for spam and porn".. In other words: Sharing Bad. Selling Good.
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
Vices - what I lack in originality, I make up for in volume.
They are too lazy or too narcissistic to pay for others' work...
One question: if the pirates are so lazy and narcissistic, why do they offer things to the public at all? If we were talking about conventional piracy where money changes hands, then the motivation is obvious. But why would someone post to a newsgroup without any hope of repayment?
One reason people give back is that they realize that if no one provided the goods, piracy wouldn't exist--they want to contribute. They want to help out people like themselves--people who can't or won't pay 15 dollars for a CD, or 500 for audio software. It is essentially an altruistic impulse, not a narcissistic one.
Now, you can criticize this altruistic impulse and call it idealistic or simple-minded -- but you can't call it ingenuine.
Intellectual-property owners don't have a fundamental natural-law right to restrict the copying of their intellectual property.
There is no right to steal others' IP.
These two statements are in direct opposition to each other. If, as you pointed out, there is no natural right to prevent copying of IP, then by definition we can copy it if we like ("steal" if you prefer).
Why are we still talking about this?
Well, for one thing, some people care deeply about this issue, in particular artists and pirates (despite your characterizations of pirates as lazy etc.)
March into Dave Powell's office, look him in the eye, and machete him to death. This will work well for other idiots as well, in any sector of any society, public or private.
In general, modern problems have medieval solutions...
Even if there aren't open source alternatives to the programs of these companies that live up to the same standards, at least in some cases there are free-as-in-beer programs that are even better.
In the field of musical notation, for example, a company called NoteHeads has created a program called Igor Engraver that in several recent reviews has received very high scores, and that is endorsed by a number of prominent musicians. A couple of months ago these guys thought "ah, what the heck" (ok, they did have some sensible reasons) and released it as freeware.
If you need to do musical notation, I can tell you it's definately worth a try. Currently only for Macs, unfortunately, but a Windows version is supposed to come during the next couple of weeks.
It isn't theft of they have paid for the service. If you have a clause in your Terms of Service or Acceptable Usage contract that says a customer may only have a certain amount of bandwidth, fine, take him down. If he caught doing the Warez shuffle, yea, take him down. A paying customer can't be nailed for theft of service if the ISP doesn't enforce its bandwidth limitations. Did you ever take in to account that the customer might have created the file himself and it was just popular?
When you have the balls to put your name in instead of being a Coward then you can tell me to shut the fuck up. Untill then. Fuck off!
By not actually going to court, they've sidestepped this issue which I think could be fatal for them of they actually took it to that level.
I personally tried to hunt down people "breaking into" our network at my office when we first started using DSL and firewalls and I've found no university or ISP would respond to my request to identify users. At first I was really surprised, but then I thought about it and I realized that it's such a headache to prove anything. So, we just encrypted everything we didn't want to wander away and stopped worrying about it.
Now this lawyer feller is in the same situation, but he sends subpeonas and gets a response from the ISPs. But I don't see how his log files, or whatever it is he's got, are really solid evidence in court. Sure, the ISP rolls over, but that's hardly the same as evidence in court? He's got a bunch of data that he's personally compiled and he's saying that's evidence. Why couldn't a defendant simply deny the whole thing or, even better, suggest it was all nothing more than a mistake by CSS? The burden of proof lies with the accuser, not the innocent. If a defendant is accused and they claim the accusation is a mistake. It's not the defendants responsibility to prove that the accuser has made an error, it's the other way around. What would constitute proof on CSS's part? A sheet of printed IP addresses that came out of the HP printer in CSS's office? What does that prove?
It would be different if they got warrants and siezed the users computer and found corroborating logs on the user's machine. That would be evidence useful in court. But that doesn't seem to be the likely modus operandi --that's lawyer talk ya know-- if they're serving subpeonas without actually collecting any evidence from the user first.
If they don't have a valid court strategy, then they are in the business of blackmail regardless of whether they are licensed to practice law or not. They may be milking suckers with this blackmail tactic --notice how well it went over in Russia-- but I'd like to hear about their actual court victories in the US or elsewhere before we have to sit through all this pissin' contest stuff.
Let's look at the fact that while CSS says it has never actually even been to court in the US or any other country, they conveniently turn to the issue of global legal issues to introduce their shady Russia deal.
Isn't it a bit premature to introduce such questionable overseas practices as evidence of their strong legal position when they've never even demponstrated that they can convince a jury that their evidence is substantial and compelling in a single case? It would seem more to indicate my earlier conclusion that CSS is running a highly questionable venture and flaunting this fact in the press. I would hardly be surprised if CSS eventually finds itself liable for great damages in the form of counter-suits. Convincing a jury that they had malicious intent and should pay punitive damages would be fairly easy using their own press releases.
Question:
If you've created your hotmail account from a
public location, what then?
Or if you dialup on a free ISP with fake information, and then create your hotmail account?
Can they track you through all that?
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Perhaps this ISP won't keep enough info on him so he won't come back again (double negative: He will come back as a costomer). AOL bans people for ping flooding, bombing, etc. but I know AOL re-admits these people fairly quickly. My sister's friend got banned from AOL because their brother tried at some lame attempt to hack the Pentagon or something. But you know what? After banning them, AOL let them right back in. Here's an example from the story: Qwest deactivated the account, but is leaving the door open to reinstatement
I'm not saying that this ISP will let him back in, but they might. If they were paid to not let him/her back in, then they probably wouldn't, but otherwise you can't know if he'll be re-accepted as a costomer.
BTW, did anyone see the part about Outlook and mail bomb? If the dude who bombed him or anyone else pissed at him who knows his e-mail address does, they easily could give him a trojan/virus (since Outlook is notorious for this).
One more thing, wouldn't this "We found ISPs remove things even though they could argue it," he says. "They are reclaiming large amounts of bandwidth. We are providing a service to them, essentially" This really disgusts me. He is admitting that none of it is really illegal, but so what? He's fucking 31337.
Speaking of whores: "You can bet that 60 of these people were involved in piracy," he says. "If the police raid a whorehouse and you're standing in the hallways...." If they raid a legitimate and popular store with many legitimate costomers but occaisonally does a little illegal stuff, and you're in the hallway...
Do you think that every kid out there who downloads a copy of Photoshop would go out an buy it if they were unable to find an illegal download? Of course not. And besides, how do they determine that the industry has lost $[...] in revenue anyways? They're not keeping track of every warez download on the planet! I deeply suspect that their financial numbers and statistics are being pulled out from under Elvis Presley's armpits.
Powell relies on the fact that most law enforcement in the world doesn't really know very much about criminal activity related to the internet. A few years back I was actually questioned by the local police department about some internet related threats, and the officer in charge of the investigation admitted that she knew practically nothing about computers. I wasn't involved in what happenned, and ended up explaining how to trace the obvious clues in related e-mail headers which clearly lead back to a local ISP. (Not my ISP ;-)
You see, my point is that guys like Powell are relying on a) Numbers and statictics from very dubious or nonexistent sources, and b) The ignorance of the world's law enforcement, and their willingness to swallow whatever he spouts.
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
Yes, hotmail logs IPS, do free isps log their ips? I don't know. But it sure seems like they would...
"He can have almost any Web page removed from the Internet in hours. He can have a suspect's Internet connection turned off -- pedestrian dial-up or fancy broadband -- within days. "
I've seen this happen. Within 2 days, A warrent to hotmail, then strait to @home, to the door of a friend-o-mine's. Pretty scary stuff. And hotmail and @home QUICKLY gave up the information...
That is a fuckin' creepy name.. very Orwellian. I bet they have special little red uniforms they wear when they make their phone calls and write their subpoenas. All we need is for them to become a branch of government and every little nightmare scenario we've imagined for copyright will come true.
If they use 'virus scanners' to seach for illegal mp3s, someone needs too write a code that adds random numbers to peicies of the mp3. People already use similar software to hide things in images on websites without changing the pics... why not use it to screw w/ any "fingerprints" that they scan for?
Aren't you glad to know that law.com has your privacy and consumer choice at heart? As long as you allow them to track you and use the latest version of Internet Explorer, you are fine.
It should be pretty obvious to the person posting it whether they have the copyright, and if they post anyway, well, as I was saying... that's the ethical side.
From a technical point of view, someone who wants to post potentially incriminating material and uses NNTP from their cable modem deserves what they get.
As for the transparent proxies detecting content, unless there is legislation restricting users to a handfull of well-known formats, in the presence of even simple cryptography or compression, that's a pointless exercise. OTOH, I see no problem with companies trying to detect copyrighted works by participating in P2P networks; of course, since P2P is moving towards tit-for-tat schemes, these participants better be prepared to put up some interesting content themselves in order to particpate :-)
A team of investigators combs the Internet for infringing sites, identifies the culprit, then e-mails the evidence to Powell and waits for him to give the word.
/dev/null or bounce it back... Enough spam! :))
Just filter the email addresses or domain names he use to contact people and send it to
É que os desafinados também têm um coração
I am able to see it with Opera 5 for linux and windows. Try downloading opera 5 with Java and give that a try.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
He has had people kicked off their ISPs for posting illegal software. He is located in the UK. I wonder, where does he get his jurisdiction from? This is ridiculous. I swear, if I had the money, I would challenge this ass-wipe in court.
I hate people like this. Take your moralistic standings and go preach to your reflection with a burning torch up your ass.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Bear with me, I have a point.
I think the fundamental shift that's going on here is that forms of media (sound, text, video) are moving from the class of things that can be 'owned' to the class of things that cannot be 'owned'. In other words, companies are no longer able to restrict people from using those items because they have become, in essence, non-physical. A long time ago, before recorded media, there was no concept of owning media because there was no media. Back then, people would enjoy an artists live performance. Since access to that _can_ be restricted, they would make money from it.
I think this is where we should go again, a system where the media is not ownable, but where the enjoyment of a performance is paid for. For example, the recordings of a concert would be free, but the right to be at the concert would be paid for. Another example: the software would be free to copy, but the service and support of the programmer would be paid for.
Notice that there is no longer a place for a middleman. However, there is room for people to provide services, such as promotion and ratings.
I like this argument, and I think that from now on, I will be against controls of IP and for free distribution of content. However, I will gladly pay a software provider for timely updates and tech support, or a musician to hear his performance, or theater to to view a movie screening. (The days of the plebeian actor earning million dollar fees will soon be over--back to normal again.)
Shailesh
So, I would be against copyright controls that would result in such a system. Maybe the content industry should look at the software industry? Perhaps one could purchase a 'license' to a certain content, and then be permitted to use or own that content in any media format they wished? Another solution would be to put the copyright controlling mechanism into a government entity. But, the government is slow to change and generally mistrusted, so this may not work. Another solution would be to have competing copyright controlling mechanisms, but such a system tends toward a natural monopoly, so that might not work either.
Thanks for helping me to clarify the issues a little better in my head.
Shailesh
You can all go blame Napster for accelerated implementation of Copyright enforcement. Essentially a company founded on theft, which existed only to make certain shareholders rich, has destroyed the arguments of free speech and such to such an extent we all will pay for their folly.
Sorry, the over the top brashness of Napster and its ilk did this. We never had the right to steal music or copyrighted goods, and the brazen way that Napster did it almost seems as if it were scripted by Hollywood itself.
Hell, without Napster and its wholesale promotion of theft we might have dodged this issue for some time. I wonder who got paid to make Napster in the first place?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
You are one smart SOB! A truly well-informed and totally aware person. Many of the sheeple in America/The West will think you are paranoid. They have no idea of how corporatism is sinking its teeth into the public. WHo the hell are you?
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
I wonder if anyone has ever attempted to do a "targetted hack" on this guy... We already know from the article (assuming of course that the article is correct) that he uses Outlook at home, which tells me (and you) plenty. I mean, if he can find you, you can find him, desu ne?
Quasi-Disclaimer: The above was postulated for thought-experiment purposes only. I am not responsible for anyone who actually does hack Powell, and if it do happen, it won't be me, because I don't have the skills. And I don't want to get into any arguments with anyone over a term I use for the purposes of lexical brevity -- you know which one, ok?
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
I'll assume that was an answer, and not a comment on the post.
:(
So how do you spell "Geek" in Katakana? 'Giiku' just doesn't have the right ring to it... Ee, Giiku Gyaru jya nai des'yo!
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
There's an article on Liberzine.com that essentially makes the same point that you do, but in a slightly different way, using Survivor as an analogy.
Most of them are supported by students. Servers don't have a good circuits/channels in global internet.
I use only open software (linux/gimp/mozilla) It is not fact, that patents laws and right on music/video content is a right way to pay authors today. It stop technical progress.
About Missle Defense Shield, do you hear about terrorism? A small bomb (one cube santimeter iz size) can destroy a big town. Or you dont beelive that is it posible?
enjoy
The Roman Republic failed, in part, because they could not successfully answer the question, "Who Shall Guard the Guards?" The Founders of this Republic answered that question with both the First and Second Amendments. Like Stalin, our politicians couldn't care less what common folk say about them, but the concept of the informed citizenry as guarantors of their own liberties sets their teeth on edge and disturbs their statist sleep.
Governments, some great men once avowed, derive their legitimacy from "the consent of the governed." In the country that these men founded, it should not be required to remind anyone that the people do not obtain their natural liberties by "the consent of the Government." Yet in this century, our once great constitutional republic has been so profaned in the pursuit of power and social engineering by corrupt leaders as to be unrecognizable to the Founders. And in large measure we have ourselves to blame because at each crucial step along the way the usurpers of our liberties have obtained the consent of a majority of the governed to do what they have done, often in the name of "democracy"-- a political system rejected by the Founders. A good friend of mine gave the best description of pure democracy I have ever heard. "Democracy," he concluded, "is three wolves and a sheep sitting down to vote on what to have for dinner." The rights of the sheep in this system are obviously in peril.
Now it is true that our present wolf-like, would-be rulers do not as yet seek to eat that sheep and its peaceable wooly cousins. They are, however, most desirous that the sheep be shorn of rights, and if possible and when necessary, be reminded of his rightful place in society as "good citizen sheep" whose safety from the big bad wolves outside the barn doors is only guaranteed by the omni-presence in the barn of the "good wolves" of the government. Indeed, they do not present themselves as wolves at all, but rather these lupines parade around in sheep's clothing, bleating insistently in falsetto about the welfare of the flock and the necessity to surrender liberty and property "for the children" or for "the lambs." In order to ensure future generations of compliant sheep, they are careful to educate the lambs in the way of "political correctness," tutoring them in the totalitarian faiths that "it takes a barnyard to raise a lamb" and "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Every now and then, some tough old independent-minded ram refuses to be shorn and tries to remind the flock that they once decided affairs themselves according to the rule of law of their ancestors, and without the help of their "betters." When that happens, the fangs become apparent and the conspicuously unwilling are shunned, cowed, driven off or occasionally killed. But flashing teeth or not, the majority of the flock has learned over time not to resist the Lupine-Mandarin class which herds it. Their Founders, who were fiercely independent rams, would have long ago chased off such usurpers. Any present members of the flock who think like that are denounced as antediluvian or mentally deranged.
The tyrant must be met at the door, at yours or mine, whenever he shows his bloody appetite. It matters not what flag he flies, what uniform he wears, nor what excuses he brings for pillaging your property, your liberty, or your life. "By their works ye shall know them." The time is late. Those who once had trouble reading their watches for the darkness will have none for the glare of the fires, we will have the advantage of that terrible illumination. The tyrant is outnumbered and we destroy all that he represents.
Dave Powell is not an officer of the law, but he
prides himself on having a keen sense of where
a man will bend and where he might break. The
casual software pirate will usually respond to a
sternly worded e-mail that appeals to some
sort of universal sense of justice. Stealing,
after all, is wrong and even though the Internet
gives people a sense of anonymity, most
people don't like to think of themselves as
thieves. For the more savvy software pirate,
Powell must appeal to an instinct more powerful
than morality: self-preservation.
"A subpoena will look something like this,"
Powell says, lifting an inch-thick sheaf of
papers off his desk. "A pirate gets this in the
mail and it's like, 'holy s--t.'"
Okay, people. These are obviously people with a great deal of power, law enforcement oprganizations who are only educated about tech to the degree that their governors or congressmen are informed by lobbyists for various causes.
The law enforcement community is using heavy handed techniques against ISP operators and Napster, etc. users- two groups of people who share a common interest in protecting their current "freedom" to make copies of information. These people have the technical knowledge. If law enforcement wants technical knowledge that would help them do their job, they have to buy it from the same group of people that built the infrastructure that allows us to copy information.
Law enforcement is able to get this information because people sell it for money.Why don't people stop selling their services as "ex hackers" to law enforcement?
Of course, then the info-sharing community would have to p0lice itself. But signing contracts with individual contract providers is infinitely better than allowing law enforcement to supervise a process they do not understand.
I do not use Napster, I do not pirate software, I use the Internet as a research tool for various writing that I do. I copy words and occasionally code, and it would suck if law enforcement put a damper on the technologies I use to do this. Musicians need the technology to sample other music for their tracks. To protect the vital usses of file sharing and copying, it is essential that people come to a compromise about stuff like copying Britney Spears music.
Come to an understanding with content providers! Don't let RIAA lobbyists tell governors and congressment to tell their law enforcers to enforce it THEIR way. Find an agreeable solution, and protect the essential freedoms of the internet.
Goat sex free since 2001
First off, I'd like to ask the posters here who are impugning Powell to remember that Jammer is a warez dood. He is located on the taxonomical tree of life somewhere between the liver fluke and the Herpes virus. He is a parasite. If it were up to me, warez doodz like him would have their fingernails pulled out while they were soaking naked in a pool of battery acid. An $8000 fine is too good for him. If you don't like the fact that someone is trying to make a living off of selling software, the ethical thing to do is make equivalent free software, not distribute pirated copies of the software.
But is it right that moneyed-interests, especially large companies, can silence people just by threatening them with legal action? Legal services are so expensive now that individuals can't afford to take on adversaries with deep pockets. If a company or organization wants to silence a critic, it seems like all they have to do is threaten to sue them. Only the truly committed critics would continue.
I know that lawyers would argue that if the cause is just, someone would be able to find either an advocacy group like the EFF to pay legel fees, or an interested lawyer to do pro bono work. But isn't a court supposed to determine whether the cause is just?
What if Dave Powell got it wrong? Or what if he used his power to settle a personal dispute against someone that he didn't like? Where is the due process? How much time and money would an innocent have to spend to defend himself against Dave Powell?
Not quite. While there is an admittedly fuzzy edge around what constitutes a "threat," and IANAL, I believe he is on the legal side of the line in this case.
If he had e-mailed Dave and said "I'm going to kill you," that would be a threat.
If he had posted here, "I'm going to kill that scumbucket," that would be a threat.
If he had posted here, "I think someone should kill that scumbucket," whether it is considered a threat would probably depend on which circuit court he is under (in the USA at least). Context would become an important consideration; was there a likelihood that a reasonable person would take the statement as a serious threat? Personally I feel this would fail, but some judges would hold it up.
What he did post was, to paraphrase, "somebody who gets one of his subpoenas is likely to kill that scumbucket." While his method of delivering this idea was colorful it was not a direct threat, certainly no reasonable person would think that he was seriously playing with the idea of going to Dave's house and ramming the subpoena up his butt personally. (In fact, his lack of a subpoena from Dave would show pretty conclusively that this is no "threat." And it just sounds like a lark.)
It is not a "threat" to warn someone that they are participating in an activity that might be dangerous. "If you go in that neighborhood don't expect to leave with your hubcaps" is not a threat to steal your hubcaps, but a suggestion of how to keep them.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
What might happen then, and has happened to lots and lots of people, is the cop takes your money because he suspects it is "drug money." You then have something like 5 days to file an appeal, for a hearing in which you will have to prove (to an almost impossible standard) that the money is not drug money. I know of one dude, a card counter, who lost $24K like this in North Carolina. Ever try to explain that you have $24K in cash because you're a professional gambler? Well, it was the truth, but it wasn't good enough.
How do they get around the Constitution? Well, they don't arrest or charge YOU, they charge THE MONEY, and the case reads "State of Louisiana vs. $250 cash." Since property does not have civil rights (at least unless it's an "artificial person" called a corporation) then it can be guilty till proven innocent. Which it is.
The Constitution is a dead letter. And none of the players in the current political scene is exactly moving to do CPR on it.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Im sure you think that broadcasting music over radio is 'pirated software' too don't you?
M$ stock dropped in 1/2 since last year. If you are a MCSE, you will be broke.
Radio stations make their money off of the ads they do. They only pay for their license to broadcast. Then they buy the new cds as they come available. They don't really pay anyone to broadcast.
M$ stock dropped in 1/2 since last year. If you are a MCSE, you will be broke.
Really, the log goes like:
dave$ su
*******
# cd /
I'm sorry Dave, you can't do that.
# rm -rf *
Dave, you're scaring me
Dave, would you like to hear a song?
Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do....
There have been many posts about what the CCS does is extortion...give us 3000 for each work taken. But its merely like an out of court settlement, like with car accident litigants, etc As for him being a terrorist under the UK's law, it might be entirely possible that his position may be exempt from the law...under some provsion allowing those with permission to go seek comptuers who are blantaly breaking the law. He's a prick, not very intelligent either, revealing his tatics, which any fool with a computer and fancy security programs can do..it doesn't take a script kiddie to do that shit. The article, my God, what a bunch of bullshit, as someone already dissected it for our enjoyment. Unfortunately, we'll be seeing more of these Internet Cops out there. But, you can't stop file-sharing on the net, there's no way, Freenet, IRC, and email are the backbone to file-sharing after you remove the Napster-like services and web sites. I'm not going to go into the legality of the files and such, but I find it distrubing someone is out there thinking he can just go along and bust people....a online dective and police officer.... Btw, want to find a way to take this guy down in court? Group together and fund yourself for a lawyer. I'm sure he's going to try to bust 100 people, its 1,000 apiece for one trial which would bust his "power" Slashdot: The real Computer Haven MSDN: Microsoft's wannabe Slashdot
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
putting up fake songs on Napster that say:
"You are imperiling the future of music production. This is a felony in the U.S. Why not use a legitimate site and support the music you love so much. Thanks for listening. Here's the rest of the track. Have a nice day."
That is just too funny. I think the guy has lost his marbles. If I think about it I'm probably against music copyright infringement, but this is just too much, "Imperiling the future of music production"?!?!? come on. Now I can understand piracy threatening specialty audio software, but the recording industry? oh please.
And by the way, who let the recording industry become a 40 billion dollar industry?? That's really the root of the problem. $16-18 for 10 tracks of music?? sold to you on media that costs
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
Looks like another application for DeCCS.
--
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
This isn't about freedom and it isn't about personal autonomy. It's about money for both sides, plain and simple. And for this reason, I consider the whole debate to be intellectually dishonest.
Intellectual-property owners don't have a fundamental natural-law right to restrict the copying of their intellectual property. That right exists merely because of government fiat, protecting moneyed interests. As such, IP-owners will go to any length to ensure maximized profit realization, regardless of which individuals get the shaft.
Similarly, the individuals who are fighting the IP owners are acting out of their own selfish economic motives. They are too lazy or too narcissistic to pay for others' work, and therefore they try to cloak their economic motives in the florid language of freedom and liberty. It's a disgrace to proper civil liberties to lump socially sanctioned stealing in with freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship, the right to bear arms, and all the other fundamental rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights. There is no right to steal others' IP.
With that said, where do we go from here? Both sides will continue duking it out in court or in the realm of public criticism, and no amount of wishing will make them shut up. Both sides will continue to waive their banners of zealotry, and both will try to recruit innocent bystanders to their side, either through coercive acts of Congress or through media blitzes.
I'm not suggesting we should regulate what sort of discourse we should allow on the airwaves so as to exclude these tired rehashings of pro/anti-IP and pro/anti-stealing, but it would go a long ways towards getting this debate off the front pages where it doesn't belong.
At the end of the day, it still comes down to the difference between the haves and the havenots. I don't see much room for discussion, anymore.
Why are we still talking about this?
Read the rest of this comment...
Not to mention I couldn't find one comment about this lawyer/wanna be cop. (even on the .d version of the same group...)
Whats scary is that he assumes guilt, uses scare tactics, uses illegal methods to gather his data (there's a pretty fine line on wether the phone company/@home should be able to give away your personal data to a lawyer in the first place - I mean without a court order/warrent) and seems to think he has some right to go troucing around countries that don't have IP laws like he's john wayne.
In a way, this is quite an important service for the community because the bounty hunter is picking up the slack for what the police don't have the time to do: catch more criminals. But it can go overboard, and I think Dave and the CCS has gone overboard with his email tactic mentioned in the above article.
So they said "If you pirate our software we'll give you a free copy" and then were amazed at the amount of piracy? I'm suprised it was only 25% -- every legitimate owner of their app probably gave it away to all their friends in the business: "Hey, Phil, can I copy your Cubase so I can get a free licensed version?" "Sure, and here's a copy for Frank, too."
Reminds me of the time Dilbert's company decided to improve quality by paying the programmers $10 for every bug they fixed. Wally wrote himself a new car that afternoon.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
He is employing the same tactics practiced by any good army -- attack the supply lines first. In this case, the supply lines are the methods of content delivery: ISPs, telcos, and so on.
On a different note; can web designers stop making pages that display ultra-ultra-ultra tiny type on anything but a Windows machine!?! Sheesh!
--
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
yeah, it was a pretty 'good' troll
That link bug could cause a great disaster on slashdot...
-- Cure for Cancer instead of SETI! (only w32 yet - mail and beg)
But more withholding skills. This actually could work, though it's highly infeasable. Imagine, if you will, that EVERY programmer and EVERY sysadmin got together and decided to boycott law enforcement agincies. Basically, the agreement would just be that noone would work for them. I know it's far fetched (like I said, this is highly infeasable) but take this for argument's sake. Now, this would pose serious problems for them. Sure, the information is available, but they can't get their hands on anyone that knows what to do with it.
First part, not funny. Last part, Gold!
__
__
Yum!
That's the truth that no one is will to admit to here. These people are just common thieves and probably anarchists. If they were in charge of the bottom line of a software company and the security of their family depended on it, they would be singing a different tune.
__
__
Yum!
A cook, who sold the most delicious stew in the land, had staked out a spot in a marketplace to ply his wares. One day, a beggar came and sat nearby, deeply inhaling the scent of the stew. "Stop that!", said the cook, "you haven't paid to smell my stew!" The beggar refused, and they took their argument before the local wise man. After each plead their case, he said to the chef: "You have provided a definite service, and shall be rewarded. The service was allowing him to smell the stew; you will be rewarded by hearing his coins jingle."
ALL YOUR MISTRANSLATION ARE BELONG TO US.
while i agree that material should be copyrighted if it is used, this is really only needed for things where people can take the credit from others. the only reason that napster is really a target in this war is because the record industries feel threatened by the fact that people have taken new technology and used it to distribute copies of music before they could figure out how. noone ever mentions the other side, that the record companies are actually making more money now then they did before, all people care about is them making money. napster is only doing what people have done for years, taking an original product and copying it, like the first fans of rock bands who would copy tapes and sell them to people. and napster isn't even making money off of this, or at least that was the original idea. copyrights are great, but if people don't try to claim the material, are they really needed?
Hahaha... What the hell is this supposed to be? This must be one of the most stupid rants I have ever seen here on slashdot. How on earth can this be rated 5?
What this really is all about people from getting ripped of. Most people don't steal cars, stereos etc but on the net when no one sees them everything that can be stolen are, for example music, movies and software.
Your paranoia can't be healthy, see a doctor!
If I've read this correctly, this guys has broken into a web site without the authors permission and stolen confidential information regarding its users.
Now regardless of whether the site is engaged in illegal actions or not, what right does he have (as he admits himself that he is not a law enforcement agency) to perform this sort of electronic crime? Surely he is breaking the law himself, and should be duely punished?
On the other hand.. if anyone can set themselves up as "warez trading" police without any sort of government or legal endorsement, cruise the net looking for offending web sites, then hack into them and steal information from them where will we be in a year?
What if the offending site contained credit card numbers or other private information not related to the illegal activities? What protection do these people who are engaged in legal activities have from vigilanties from this guy?
Scary stuff if you ask me..
Is it just me or does this guy WANT to be killed?
"I invite this guy to come to ukraine. You know a hit here costs about $100 US? How about we start a pool?
Dunno what the going rate is in China or the states though...
This was a joke btw...."
"this just in a man by the name Dave Powell was found dead in his home today, police do not know the couse of death but they think it could have some thing to do with the subpoena up his ass. The FBI is using it's top secrest database of 1337 skript kiddies to look for leads......"
It's funny because it actually might happen (not by me as I live far away and uh...don't kill people).
By him trying to "make a name for himself", he's basically saying "please shoot me". How do you piss off so many people without being a target?
I think physically cutting this guy's phone lines/cable lines/power lines might shut him up online...lol. But heck, 100 U.S. is 150 Canadian. I got 50 but I bet if we all worked together to "pool" it......
or maybe someone should set up a banner service, we all click, make some cash for someone, and that guy from ukraine can hire someone...LOL.
I can't WAIT for my virtual food to come out. Oh MAN am I hungry! *sniff*
The copyrights/patents on a 1938 car have long since expired. Try making an exact replica of a 2001 Viper and wait for the lawyers to call. You are stealing -- you're stealing the design. Any idea how much time and money it costs to design a car? By stealing a design (IP), you're taking the fruits of someone else's intellectual labor without having to pay for its development.
It's not theft if nothing's missing.
What's missing is the revenues you've deprived them of. If you wouldn't have bought it anyway, then why is it such a big deal that you're denied it by IP laws?
Here's another way of looking at it. You spend a long time studying for an exam. You take the exam and do really well on it. The person next to you, however, didn't study at all and just watched you during the exam and copied your answers, thereby also getting top marks. They didn't deprive you of anything -- you still have your correct answers and good grades. But they took advantage of and devalued your hard work without compensating you. Is that fair?
Here's yet another example. You spend lots of money on CDs, DVDs, etc. Your next door neighbor knows you're on vacation for a week. They pick the lock on your front door, borrow all your CDs and DVDs, copy everything, then put all the originals back so you can't even tell they've been there. But they now have a CD/DVD collection for only the cost of a couple spindles' worth of blank discs, while you spent a good chunk of your paycheck amassing your collection. Do you think this is ok?
Can you add xeroxed magazine articles at the library?
Copying an article is generally agreed to fall under "fair use." Copying an entire issue usually costs more than buying the magazine.
Or read magazines at the supermarket checkout stand and then not buy them?
If you read most or all of the magazine without paying for it, shame on you. You're freeloading.
Or borrowed a CD/movie from a friend? Library books being read by people without full payment for that book going to the publisher for each person that checks out the book?
In all these cases, you don't get all the benefits of ownership, i.e. you only get to use it for a limited period of time before you have to return it to the owner, or the copy is not as good as the original. If you checked out a book, then scanned the whole thing at 2400 dpi and posted pdfs on the net, then yes, a lot of people do have a problem with that.