Posted by
Hemos
on from the bad-bad-leroy-brown dept.
Klaruz writes "There's an interesting writup here on why the idea of hosting an offshore OpenNap server on Sealand won't work. It looks like the idea of offshore hosting isn't all it's cracked up to be, I wonder if there are any ways around this."
218 comments
Re:The situation is not that bad.
by
PureFiction
·
· Score: 2
eventually they will get tired of playing wack-a-mole
Yes, and that is the scary part. Notice that napster has to be especially wary of both contributory copyright infringement and vicarious copyright infringement.
The latter is the real stickler, because extra effort (aside from the current wack-a-mole strategy) must be expended to shield from this type of liability.
This means that napster would have to proactively monitor their network for infringing material.
The wack-a-mole system will end soon enough, but what replaces it will be much more constricting and may cause napster to abondon sharing and move entirely to their secure content system.
Just shifting the crap around....
by
_14k4
·
· Score: 1
Its not where the data is, its the fact that if I download protected stuff, its still my responsibility. So I just delay the feds a little bit. I dont think Napster would do any good with this, as its just shifting the crap around. You'll run out of places soon enough.
Re:Listen to me very carefully...
by
KahunaBurger
·
· Score: 3
Hastings says that because a 1968 British court decision effectively recognized the basketball court-sized island as a sovereign nation called Sealand, HavenCo can provide more privacy and legal protections then anyone else on the planet.
So hastings is a liar. (or uses a very liberal meaning of "effectivly".) From what I've read, ALL the court said was that they were not under UK juristdiction at that time. While the Sealand tykes may want to pretend that thats the same thing as granting them sovereign nation status, there's no logical reason for anyone else to draw that conclusion. They probably would have said the same thing if he was living in a house boat out there. Lots of people are outside the juristdiction of lots of countries! It doesn't make them nations!
If Sealand does anything to truely piss off the UK, they will go and arrest the guy again, and they will take him to court again to revisit the issue of jurisdiction, and the UK court will take into account any changes in international law and territorial waters in the meantime in deciding if the UK now has jurisdiction over this individual. And if this guy starts ranting about the soverign nation of sealand and diplomatic imunity as the leader of a forgien nation, the barristers will just roll their eyes and quietly talk arround him, just like with the montana militia, just like with the "independant nation of texas" and just like with every other group of posers.
It all well and good to talk up this sort of "independant nation" story for fun and profit, but if they are dumb enough to believe their own propaganda, they are in for a rude awakening some day.
Kahuna Burger
-- ...will work for Chick tracts...
Re:Sealand is to small
by
tagishsimon
·
· Score: 2
Also, Sealand is not recognised by the British Government as independant, and quite rightly too
The reason that Sealand is not recognised as independent is mainly because it lies within British territorial waters. once upon a time, it was outside; but european legislation changes (Sadly, I forget the date) extended the definition of territorial waters to 12 miles offshore. Sealand's proponents seems to have developed a blind spot for that unfortunate fact.
Re:Listen to me very carefully...
by
xpccx
·
· Score: 1
It seems that the point of the article is that Matt is a Canadian who will incorporate in Canada. So, why can't he incorporate somewhere else where his identity will protected? Can he do this in Sealand?
Re:Maybe it shouldn't work?
by
SuperHeavyg
·
· Score: 2
It sounds like you got your PhD from 'the Mask of Zorro' with Anthony Hopkins and Antionio Banderas. You can take my pride, but you will never get my silly Arts degree. Z.
1) Have the payments sent directly from the users to Sealand or to a Swiss bank account via credit card, Paypal, or whatever.
2) There are, what, 50 million Napster users? Go to a fee-based model; $1 for a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP would keep the service running for decades if only 1/50th of current Napster users paid in the first year. You could even set up a trust fund at that point, and pay Sealand out of the interest.
3) DON'T GIVE OUT YOUR FRIGGEN NAME AS THE PERSON WHO IS ORGANIZING THIS. (Duh!)
$1 for a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP would keep the service running for decades if only 1/50th of current Napster users paid in the first year. You could even set up a trust fund at that point, and pay Sealand out of the interest.
DON'T GIVE OUT YOUR FRIGGEN NAME AS THE PERSON WHO IS ORGANIZING THIS. (Duh!)
and who, pray tell, is going to be the one who pays for the domain name? Someone's got to. (Be real, you're not going to run this without DNS.) The fact is, if you're going to do DNS, you have to be reachable, to pay bills & to make changes. If you're reachable, you're traceable. If you're traceable, you're arrestable.
End result: If you're hosting something in havenco that would get you arrested in your home country, you can still be found and arrested. The only way around this is to have havenco handle all your DNS setup as well, which I don't believe they do. (and, to be honest, that puts you in a very weak position if havenco gets sued, taken over, etc, so having them do your DNS isn't necessarily the best idea anyway.)
Re:Listen to me very carefully...
by
SuperHeavyg
·
· Score: 1
Actually you have to have at least one(1) cow to be a nation under the UN regulations. (See sec17.4.78 of the UN designation rule book) Greenland currently spends >260,000 GreenDollars every year to keeps thier cow alive and defrosted.
How about 1mbps bandwith???
by
zerofoo
·
· Score: 1
http://www.havenco.com/products_and_services/index.html
They say you can get up to 1mbps bandwidth if you want it. Although that probably won't be enough.
Anybody know how much bandwidth napster's servers use?
-ted
>Approximately 20-25 years ago, someone attempted to run a pirate radio station on a rebuilt cargo ship...
In the UK (or nearby) there was a period when the seas were crowded with pirate radio stations. One of these, Radio 390, was based on the seafort now known as Sealand.
This period ended in 1967 (dear God, is it that long ago?) with the Marine Offences Act, which made it illegal to supply/advertise on the pirates.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
A corporation won't even get as far as the author suggests. "Piercing the corporate veil" wipes out the corporation for all purposes, leaving the individual liable for everything. If he followed corporate procedures properly, that would not likely be a concern here. The problem, though, is that working on behalf of a corporation does *not* shiled you from liability for your own actions. Instead, the corporation is *also* liable. in the typical case, employees are not worth suing, and only the corporation is targeted. Here, though, it would be the torts committed by the individial that *are* the focus, and he would still be tartgeted without any additional defense.
The situation is not that bad.
by
Amphigory
·
· Score: 5
I saw the following in Napster's MOTD:
Record companies and other rights holders are required to certify that they hold the rights to specific songs that are available on Napster. When we receive notices from them, Napster will take every step within the limits of our system to
exclude their copyrighted material from being shared.
Notice the order of operations:
The file is shared.
The record companies find it.
The record companies have to certify that they own copyright on it.
Napster must then attempt to stop sharing it.
This leaves an awful lot of wiggle room. Must the record company certify each iteration of the file, as identified by napsters checksumming algorithm? (I forget the details, but there is one.) If so, I can foul it up by adding three bytes of static to the end of the file and post it. The CRC is the only way that this can work, because as many have pointed out it is easy to misspell titles etc. Furthermore, live recordings are not necessarily under RIAA copyright and many artists *like* Napster. However, even the CRC can be subverted. How long will it take to come up with a napster client that automagically changes the CRC every time it advertises a file?
The point? All is not yet lost. The record companies do not have infinite resources (even if it does seem that way), and eventually they will get tired of playing wack-a-mole. I really think they are just trying to buy some time until they can come up with a post-Internet business model. By now, they've figured out that any copy protection can be broken, any law can be subverted, and that, as they currently stand, they will be about as useful as a chocolate covered wrist-watch in ten years. The Napster thing is at best a pyrrhic victory, and they know it. In the past, copyright infringement required a manufacturing facility to make a dubbing tape deck, a betamax, or whatever. Now it does not -- it's all in software -- so there's no fixed target they can go after.
If you really care about this (I don't) just make sure there are many, many moles to whack. Use OpenNap. Start an OpenNap server. Write that napster client that munges titles and crc's. Come up with something like Napster over IRC. Make all the clients advertise by logging into an IRC channel, chosen by a random protocol daily, then doing DCC connection to each other.
There are many, many ways around this that the RIAA will never be able to stop. So stop fretting.
--
-- -- Slashdot sucks.
Re:The situation is not that bad.
by
Sarcasmooo!
·
· Score: 1
Isn't it nice that, for once, it's the corporation that has to opt-out?
Have the client broadcast its existance on mbone every few minutes. Other clients could then detect and query the clients at will. Thus far the RIAA has been hesitant about going after the users themselves which is why Napster was such a nice juicy target. It kept them from having to sue the 50 some odd million people using the service.
--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think somewhere like Cuba would be perfect. It's a poor nation because of the continued mistreatment by the U.S....
Cuba is poor mostly because Castro & Co. think that free markets are a bad idea. Whether or not they realize that free markets are more efficient than command economies is arguable. The embargo may have a large effect if you first subtract that whole "communism" bit...
Randall. On a visible but distant shore, a new image of man;
-- Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Re:Something I don't get...
by
ahodgson
·
· Score: 1
Well, the OECD (including the US) has threatened most of the world's tax havens with economic sanctions (including cutting off their food supply) by 2005 if they don't implement less competitive tax regimes and relax their bank secrecy laws.
Apparently having low corporate taxes now qualifies you as being a terrorist state.
Such threatened states include the Cook Islands and St.Kitts-Nevis, along with 30 or so others, all large, scary nations. Not.
In other words, I don't think the US is all that concerned about looking like a bully when it comes to protecting it's economic interests.
Re:Revenue Canada clarification
by
Sinesurfer
·
· Score: 1
if i were a record company exec with millions of dollars at risk then i would consider sending Matt CAD110,000 one day before the end of the financial year.
sending this information to the RevCan would ensure that Matt has to declare income or deal with tax evasion charges.
if you're looking for a non-berne treaty country, try china. there behaviour recently doesn't indicate any regard for copyright.
-- Regards Sinesurfer
A Nerd is someone who lives for technology,
A Geek is someone who lives for technology and loves it
Why were the broadcasters pirates? They were in international waters, beyond the jurisdiction of the FCC.
They were pirates for the same reason that killing someone in international waters is still murder. The definition of the crime has to do with the location of the crime, not the location of the criminal. Location of the criminal is only taken into account when trying to punish the criminal.
Re:Probably won't work
by
NeuroManson
·
· Score: 1
Considering how the FCC has ben subject to US corporate radio/media payola for almost as long as radios have existed? Considering how much crap they force people to go through in order to get licenses? Considering how alternative radio (eg: public, college, or community) stations have been repeatedly squashed by the same FCC, paid to outlaw and derail such stations by the aforementioned corporate radio/media conglomorates?
You'd be amazed at what any federal organization would do if you crossed their palms with sufficient silver...
And you thought that the phone company being the biggest organization of evil in 'The President's Analyst' was just a clever joke...;)
-- Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right.
Shoes for industry!
You didn't read that carefully.
by
CraigMcPherson
·
· Score: 2
HavenCo is the hosting corporation. Sealand is the country where HavenCo's first facility is located. HavenCo is not Sealand. HavenCo's web site states that they plan to set up facilities in other locations around the world, which is probably a good idea in the event of the entirity of Sealand is swallowed by a tidal wave. Read what you just quoted. "does not allow content illegal in a given country to be hosted on servers at HavenCo facilities within that specific country." That means that content illegal at Sealand can't be hosted at the HavenCo location in Sealand. Which part of "HavenCo facilities within that specific country" is unclear? HavenCo has no facilities in Canada, so they'd place no restrictions based on Canadian law.
Re:You didn't read that carefully.
by
CrackElf
·
· Score: 1
Yep, you are right, I realized that after I posted. Sorry.
-CrackElf
-- "Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
The court ruled against Napster (the company) not against OpenNap (people running servers).
This is an important point. There's a significant difference between a Napster server and an OpenNap server - the latter will index any sort of file, not just an MP3. This should give them more chance of passing the "Substantial non-infringing uses" test which Napster failed. This would render them legal.
1st Law Of Networking: Loose ends are bad, termination is good.
--
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Re:Maybe it shouldn't work?
by
Wolfkin
·
· Score: 1
Ask your average Cuban about their government and they will tell you that they support it.
Yeah, it's getting closer to the point where US citizens will have to say stuff like that, too.
Randall. On a visible but distant shore, a new image of man;
-- Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Re:You're not sending the file to the server.
by
RedWizzard
·
· Score: 2
Napster has been accused of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, not direct copyright infringement. Contributory infringement because their service clearly contributes to the users infringement. Vicarious because Napster have the right and ability to supervise the service and a direct financial interest in the infringing activities. More detail can be found in this excellent article from EFF, which was mentioned in a Slashdot story a week or so ago. As far as it applies to Napster the court ruled that the contributory infringement law means that if notified by the copyright owner Napster must take reasonable steps to block further distribution of the material.
Re:Caman Islands Holding Company
by
PaxTech
·
· Score: 1
I actually looked into moving to the Cayman Islands. It's very nice there, plus that whole no-income-taxes thing makes it kind of nice.. Too bad the whole island group only has a 3 Mbps link to the net. 128k ISDN costs over $2k a month. Maybe someday..
--
PaxTech
-- All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
Re:Maybe it shouldn't work?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
The idea of whether it is right or wrong is IRRELEVANT. Technology dictates morality in digital commodities such as music.
Furthermore, the idea of "theft" is a relative one which changes from culture to culture and from time to time. In the late 20th century, a few major labels determined what is sold as music. Soon, in the 21st century, music will be NOT be distributed by the few, but by the masses -- and it will be FREE. Musicians will be making money some other way. The Record Labels will be obsolete.
Taiwan would never do such a thing...They rely too much on the American economy (import/export) and the blanket of American defense to even begin to feel like pissing them off.
Re:Listen to me very carefully...
by
Rader
·
· Score: 2
Horses? Give me a break!
WIRED carried a story on Sealand last year. I can't find my magazine here about it, but pulled a quote off of their site:
Hastings says that because a 1968 British court decision effectively recognized the basketball court-sized island as a sovereign nation called Sealand, HavenCo can provide more privacy and legal protections then anyone else on the planet.
Don't you know that most things in the world are decided on paper? Although the continued existence of Sealand being an independent country is shaky, as the British government figure out what to do...Sealand IS and has been a "Country" since 1966 or '68. They claimed independence back then, and were granted it.
The "horse clause" hasn't been invoked yet. They are still independent.
Rader
Re:Napster ,alternate location.
by
Savage-Rabbit
·
· Score: 1
How much clout do you think the German government has? How much money do you think the German intelligence service has? Unlimited when it comes to Nazis. So why dispite all this is "Radio Wolfschanze", run by a few skinhead ape men still operating? All the Germans have to do according to that logic is pass a few Petrograd Cops a few hundred D-marks under the table and basta.... that Russian ISP's office gets trashed.
Fact is there is plenty of sites in Russia includig ones that would make the DVD mafia go green that havent been touched for months. Even if local officials could be bribed these sites just migrate somewhere else. What would be required is to bribe a minister to go after these sites. In view of the fact that Russian tax-collectors move in armoured vehicles and do their collecting dressed in combat gear I think the Russians have bigger fish to fry than nailing a few copiright violators to enrich bloated western record companies.
-- Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Re:This is how drugs are sold
by
Rader
·
· Score: 2
Good point. RIAA has a lot of resources, but not enough resources to get everyone. That's why they aim at Napster and web sites that hold mp3's. People trading mp3's by snail mail (even when trading 100-500 at a time) are probably safe due just to sheer lack of numbers.
Rader
Re:Listen to me very carefully...
by
91degrees
·
· Score: 1
So lets suppose we get a horse, and stick it on Sealand? Does that make it a country?
If the idea is to the allow the distribution of copyrighted material, it's just addressing the leagal issues and avoiding the question of wheather it's right or wrong.
Re:Maybe it shouldn't work?
by
OpenSourced
·
· Score: 1
The only problem is, there is no billion dollars, there was never one, and it's never going to happen. That was just a public relations stunt, and everybody involved (except perhaps the press) is aware of it.
-- Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Re:Maybe it shouldn't work?
by
ahknight
·
· Score: 1
I've heard this diatribe in too many ways lately. The point is this: you can't get something for nothing. Sure, you get a free OS and free apps and all this other free stuff, so why shouldn't music be free too, right?
Wrong. Just because you can, does not mean you should. Music is copyrighted. Music is owned by someone. Music is something. Free software, open source in particular, is something that the owners have designated to be free and spread the world over. That's their decision and is respectable. That means that it's legal to use free/open source software without paying for it because the owners have said so.
No matter what you want them to do, the record labels have not given up rights to their music and while I agree it's a horribly abusive oligopoly that writes laws to protect itself, they do still have legal rights to their music.
You can sit there on your little chair hammering away at your keyboard like a 21st century philosopher and say that music/DVDs/software/life should be free and people should get the money from other means (read: from anyone but me, because I don't want to pay anything) but the fact is that this is how capitalism works. If you want free everything and want to just hand over your wages, that's called socialism and look to the friendly island nation to the south of Florida for an example of how well that worked.
Re:Maybe it shouldn't work?
by
kalleanka2
·
· Score: 1
"Musicians will be making money some other way. "
What the hell are you talking about? If the musicians don't get paid they don't get paid, end of story.
Re:Maybe it shouldn't work?
by
shyster
·
· Score: 1
Yes, it would be copyright infringement: but on the user's part (in reality, the same way it is now, but the courts refuse to see this). OffshoreNapster (OffNap?) would have no liability in this reagrd, as it's performing a legal act in its country.
As for seeling copies of CD's online and via mailorder:
1) People do this.
2) If it wasn't illegal in your chosen overseas haven, go for it.
3) Only the purchaser would be held liable for (c) infringement. (though US Customs can open your package and deny entry, in which case you'd have an irate customer...though in the spirit of Aimster, maybe you should encrypt the contents of the CD, thereby forcing anyone inspecting the contents to violate DMCA to see what it was. Then again, they could just force the receiver to give up the password. Perhaps you could only send the password (via PGP Encryption, of course) once the receiver has verified delivery...).
Re:Maybe it shouldn't work?
by
el_chicano
·
· Score: 2
The lesson here is perhaps napster needs to create a diversion here, and instead of paying the RIAA a billion dollars, perhaps start taking that
money and bribing officials with it.
In other words, give a "campaign contribution" to said officials...:-> -- You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
-- A man who wants nothing is invincible
Re:Maybe it shouldn't work?
by
Bob+Abooey
·
· Score: 1
Being right or wrong is always, and will always be relative, so that's a bit of a moot issue here. I think we have the technology here to do what needs to be done, it's just a matter of getting the proper people behind it.
This little problem reminds me of one of the great lessons from history that I studied in depth while I was getting my Phd from Yale. Back in the early 1700's the Spanish colonies had great reserves of stolen gold that they wanted to sneak out of the country. The problem was that the leader at that time, Pablo Cruise, was running the country with an iron fist. However he was more interested in his upcoming war with the French and the great general DeGauss. So the renegade spanairds used the conflict with general DeGauss as a diversion. They also bribed any offial who found out what they were doing with the stolen gold. Thus they were able to sneak out most of the gold while Pablo Cruise never knew about it, as he was too concerned with the upcoming war.
The lesson here is perhaps napster needs to create a diversion here, and instead of paying the RIAA a billion dollars, perhaps start taking that money and bribing officials with it.
Some interesting references: "The war of 1707" by Andrew Peugout, isbn# 2107843 and "General DeGauss, the Man" by Simon Lebleuo, isbn# 32986723 - Both of these books go into great detail about the great gold heist and can be purchased at amazon.com
Yours,
--
All the best, --Bob
Re:Maybe it shouldn't work?
by
el_chicano
·
· Score: 2
If you want free everything and want to just hand over your wages, that's called socialism and look to the
friendly island nation to the south of Florida for an example of how well that worked.
Cuba is a communist, not socialist country. If you don't know the difference I suggest Political Science 101...
Ask your average Cuban about their government and they will tell you that they support it. Those who are against Castro were too cowardly to fight for their island and fled to Florida.
Just because you hear a lot of Cuban-Americans in the U.S. bitching about Castro doesn't mean that he does not have the support of the Cuban people... -- You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
-- A man who wants nothing is invincible
Re:Maybe it shouldn't work?
by
Steel+Reserve
·
· Score: 1
And even if the moral question is avoided - the actual trading of files would still be onshore, so wouldn't that continue to constitute copyright infringement?
If not, then I think I'll move overseas and start selling copies of CDs online and by mailorder. =)
I don't much care about Napster, at least not for downloading music. However the question is do we want Napster to exist, if so the best course of action would be to cease buying music from the big 5 record companies until their own bloated weight forced them into extinction, at which point a better music distribution system would evolve in their place. Although I don't think Napster is that better system.
Approximately 20-25 years ago, someone attempted to run a pirate radio station on a rebuilt cargo ship... They were broadcasting just off of Long Island NY, in international waters, whilst claiming to be under another country's citezenry...
The attempt failed, when the country denied any knowledge of their citizenship, and promptly the US Coast Guard zipped in and shut down the radio station...
-- Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right.
Shoes for industry!
Re:Probably won't work
by
Lord_Breetai
·
· Score: 1
But for that specific reason? A radio station? I doubt it.
-- "You are only young once, but you can be immature forever." -www.animemusicvideos.org
In the UK (or nearby) there was a period when the seas were crowded
with pirate radio stations. One of these, Radio 390, was based on the
seafort now known as Sealand.
This period ended in 1967 (dear God, is it that long ago?) with the
Marine Offences Act, which made it illegal to supply/advertise on the
pirates.
Radio 390? Would that happen to be the setting of the old
Secret Agent (aka Dangerman) episode ("Not So Jolly Roger")
that took place at an offshore pirate radio station?
Here's someone who says that it was filmed at "Radio
309"... but I get the feeling he made a digit transposition
error: http://members.aol.com/irahome/17.3.html
One of this later batch 'Not So Jolly Roger' involved the
topical subject of pirate radio, with J.D. going
undercover as a replacement disc jockey on a pirate radio
station. The location footage was shot at the Red Sands
off shore platform, home to Radio 309. Much of the
incidental music was made up of fictitious performers
having their 60's style discs spun on Radio Jolly Roger's
turntables, with two notable exceptions, an instrumental
'The Scorpion' credited to Ted Astley and Patsy Ann
Noble's 'He Who Rides The Tiger' neither of which was
made available officially.
Maritime law is very common sense rules and regulations, Just about anybody with a law degree or a good logical sense could understand it.
the problem mentioned was abour the 6 mile rule and the right of the search.
When a vessel declairs it's flag ( nation of registry ) it also will abide by the governing conventions of that flag. And when a vessel is declaired unflagged or not known by the flag state that they have declaired, it's an open target for ANY government to search and even inpound.
Would you like a leaky oil tanker trading in the USA. Certain flag states have such lax rules that Life and Limb can be at risk for the sailors.
To let trading with lax flag countries continue, USA, Great Britain, Germany... inspect all these vessels as they come into their home waters. If the vessel does not pass inspection, it is held until the repairs are done. This little trick acts like a filter. The toughest laws are from Germany, Canada and the USA. ( Great Britain remade there laws (late 80's) after certain enviromental problems ).
Maritime laws can be traced all the way to the time of GREECE, some laws like General average, are from that time or even older ( it a very basic law that states... if a vessel is saved by throwing overboard someones cargo, everyone else's cargo is subject to put up some money to recoup that persons loss. ) Still used today and a very effective tool in covering/sharing certain risks.
ONEPOINT
ONEPOINT
spambait e-mail
my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better
Why were the broadcasters pirates? They were in international waters, beyond the jurisdiction of the FCC. In this case the claim was that the broadcasters signal was entering US territory - but this is just a case of unjust selective application of the law. Nobody was taking out Radio Moscow for beaming signals into the US territory.
Re:Probably won't work
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
Under what jurisdiction? I thought international waters were just that, and under nobody's jurisdiction. However, I guess they had issues because they were broadcasting it into the USA.
Heaven forbid we get some good non-corporate-bullshit radio happening..
Re:Probably won't work
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
Under whose flag does the ship sail (i.e. in which nation was the ship registered)? Theoretically that nation could take action against them. Oops, it was the US. Case closed. Or alternatively: ship wasn't actually registered anywhere. Well, then nobody can protest if the coast guard does sth heavy-handed. Case closed, again.
Sounds more like the Coast Guard overstepped their boundaries, and with no country behind the "pirates", who's going to complain? Not anything new.
But, Sealand/HavenCo is a different story. If Sealand/HavenCo allowed the US Government (or any other, for that matter) to shut down a server, it would be akin to committing suicide. HavenCo's whole purpose is to shield data and servers from government interference...bow to governemnt pressure once and nobody will trust them again.
Actually the same man (and his wife) who ran that pirate radio station on Sealand are the ones who declared it a country. Fascinating history...though I suspect some parts may be a bit dramatized.
Tricky though. I would have thought that as long as they were in international waters they could consider a charge of piracy (ironic huh?) against the US.
Sounds more like the broadcasters were the ones being the pirates in this case. I'm sure the laws governing piracy are probably over 200 years old so I have no idea, but I would think they would let a country sink a pirate ship in international waters if they were a threat to shipping or in this case, US commerce .:-)
I am not trying to say that the crimes are the same, just that our basis for defining the crimes is the same. The reason that we can call someone a pirate for the illegal transmission of radio signals even though they are out of the jurisdiction of the US is the same reason that we can call someone a murderer even though they are out of the jurisdiction of the US. The claim (as I interpreted it) of the original poster was that there was no crime(or at least they shouldnt be called criminals) because the person was not physically within the jurisdiction of the FCC. However, the radio transmission did go into the jurisdiction of the FCC. A crime was committed (violation of the FCC rules on radio transmissions) even though the person comitting the crime was not within the jurisdiction of the FCC. That crime was determined to be piracy. The person who facilitated the crime is then referred to as a pirate by people who recognize the authority of the FCC. If I am in international waters and shoot someone in the US with my handy-dandy-long-range-rifle, the US defines the crime as murder and calls me a murderer. Anyone who recognizes the authority of the US to define this crime will also call me a murderer. I am not saying that the US has any authority to punish me for the crime while I am still in international waters, but if I go back into the jurisdiction of the US they will punish me because, by their definition, I comitted a crime.
Re:Sealand isn't part of the solution
by
rdl
·
· Score: 5
Correct. We rate-limit individual servers to 256kbps at present, to ensure everyone gets fair access to bandwidth. We upgrade individual servers to 1mbps for an additional fee. We have 50Mbps of low latency bandwidth, and pretty much arbitrary amounts of VSAT 600-1000ms bandwidth, at the present time.
We can get enough bandwidth to do 100mbps for individual servers, but it's like 30-90 day leadtime. We're working on enhancing the overall bandwidth situation, and will upgrade servers automatically when more bandwidth is available.
Our competition is places in the third world where a T1 with 95% reliability will cost you USD 30k/month or more, though, and have like 60ms latency to any real internet center, so even with our current situation, USD 1500 for colo and 256kbps bandwidwidth is pretty competitive.
Re:What does location have to do with it?
by
Zebbers
·
· Score: 1
From the article, "If that person were living in a country that was not a party to The Berne Convention or a member of the WTO/WIPO (and these countries are getting hard to find), countries subject to such treaties still have ways of putting economic pressure on non-treaty countries. Is it possible to hide absolutely? Sure, people manage to do it. But it's very, very hard."
Wait a second; are they saying that the US would put economic sanctions on a country because one citizen of that country is doing something illegal, and because corporations in the US don't like that? If so, why hasn't the US put sanctions on China for all the piracy that supposedly goes on there? Against a big country, you have the threat of retaliation, either economically or militarily, and against smaller countries you look like a bully.
Another thing that seems odd to me: "HavenCo has set up a business of running high-security servers on Sealand, and for $15,000.00 US you get a years' worth of service, attached to the rest of the world with a 256kbps (1/6 the maximum speed of a DSL line) connection." 256kbps isn't enough to run a server on a decently sized IRC network, I fail to see how this has a chance in hell of running a (the?) Napster server.
Re:You're not sending the file to the server.
by
Zebbers
·
· Score: 1
and they dont need to prove that. The RIAA needs to prove that it is happening. And a list of file names means jack shit. Having a cardboard box labeled nuclear weapons doesn't mean there really are nuclear weapons in there;)
-- I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Re:Revenue Canada clarification
by
dstone
·
· Score: 2
if i were a record company exec with millions of dollars at risk then i would consider sending Matt CAD110,000 one day before the end of the financial year.
sending this information to the RevCan would ensure that Matt has to declare income or deal with tax evasion charges.
That's an interesting idea, but if the record company throws cash or a cheque for $110,000 at Matt, he's not obliged to accept it, receive it, or cash it. It's not income if he doesn't accept it. The record company can lie and tell Revenue Canada that "Matt accepted it", but unless he really did and there is a cashed cheque or bank transaction to prove it, then their claim is going to be shot down. No transaction took place.
He probably did this the wrong way...
by
Hobbex
·
· Score: 2
Going to the press right away with his grand plan was probably the wrong idea - obviously charges can still be brought against him as long as he controls the main server, regardless of its physical location.
The promising prospect of running a Napster like service from Sealand is that they have said (IIRC) that they will protect the identity of their customers - so with enough care it should be possible for somebody to run a service like Napster from there without being in the public eye or corporate crosshairs. The problem is of course that of funding the operation, since taking payments anonymously is a hard problem in todays world (one could sell account passwords through underground channels - though that is certainly a much more risky enterprise).
The best model today would probably be if some rich philantropist was willing to fund the service until a good way of making money off it emerges. If anybody is serious about that, feel free to contact me and I will gladly help draft designs for file-sharing networks that minimize the load on the central server (just having a central point makes life easier - most of the work can then be farmed out). My public key is in my user info.
Well, for the sake of argument, though, note that when Sealand did declare it's independence, it was, at that time, outside of British territorial waters.
The United States can't just announce one day that's it's extending its waters and now gets Cuba.
In fact,there is at least one case decided before the British courts that did uphold the independence of Sealand.
For more information look up some of the previous stories about HavenCo and Sealand on/.
last year, my college (good sized technical institute) firewalled napster, due to bandwidth restrictions. So some people set up an opennap server inside the network, only accessible to people inside the network. At any given time you'd get a good 200-300 people on it, all with a good sized library, and all connections were fast. It worked great. The only reason it still isn't running is that the college more than tripled its bandwidth and allowed access again. Personally, i wish it were still there.
That's really cool. All the universities that were having bandwidth problems, (read=all) should have tried something like this!
Reminds me of the businesses that go ahead and download the Star Wars trailers, etc, and tell the employees to take it off the network instead. It's admitting defeat without admitting defeat.
>Reminds me of the businesses that go ahead and
>download the Star Wars trailers, etc, and tell
>the employees to take it off the network instead.
> It's admitting defeat without admitting defeat.
Actually, a good transparent proxy server would allow you to substitute a cached version of the file without having to tell your users about it.
A good transparent proxy should cache most large files. If not, then switch to a not transparent proxy like squid. Even fast internet connections feel faster with squid.
Long-term solution: All clueless legislators die off and are replaced by tech-savvy, clueful legislators.
This, of course, could take a while. Unless some of us decide to get, um, aggressive about pursuing such a solution. Who says that 'tech-savvy' legislators will still allow copyright whores? Just be careful what you wish for. Think its bad now with these 'clueless' legislators, wait till you get some in there that actually have ideas of their own on how to regulate P2P networks.....
I once thought of making fun of this nonsense by re-establishing the Roman Empire. I mean, Romulus Augustulus wasn't properly deposed, don't you know! Alas, somebody with no sense of humor beat me to it.
Let's get real. It doesn't matter how good your legal theories are (and most of them are pretty awful). Pseudo-entities like Sealand exist in a fantasy world. They can operate only because nobody can be bothered to disestablish them. The very nanonsecond they piss off an established authority, in come the cops and marines, and everybody's looking for a new job. As such, they are absolutely the worst place to put a data haven.
Sealand has to have diesel. No diesel, no power. No power, No problems. Sealand is just too easy to close down.
Re:The point is well-taken - other places are bett
by
Jack9
·
· Score: 1
The article implies that the benefits do not outweigh the uncertainty and hefty cost. No offense, but anyone who pays HavenCo 15k a month + their outrageous setup fee and policy, is stupid and does not deserve the money they spend for the standard (and in some cases sub-standard) services HavenCo supposedly provides.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
--
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Re:Piercing the corporate veil...
by
CyberDawg
·
· Score: 1
"Most companies incorporate in Delaware"? You actually believe that over 50% of U.S. corporations are incorporated in Delaware? If you look up the actual numbers, I think you'll be surprised. Most companies that incorporate do so in their home state.
Remember the old homily that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link? You can set up your server on Sealand, become a Sealand citizen, take up permanent residency on Sealand, and the weak link remains the same. It only takes one addition to the ACLs (access control lists) in the router at the other end of your Internet connection to block your server. A couple of minutes' work in England (or whomever HavenCo buys connectivity from), and you're shut off.
You'll still be operating, and still be sovereign, but it won't do you much good if nobody other than Sealand residents can access your system!
Re:You people are all dim
by
iturbide
·
· Score: 1
>Are you saying that a country can gain territory >from another by expanding its borders?
Well, ehm.. One way or another, purchasing or using the tank method, that pretty much sums it up!
I may get flamed but I have to say this. Why is
everyone so worried about losing Napster as a
service. Its not once Napster closes down, it
will destroy all the music in the world. You
can still go to your local record shop and buy
your favorite CD. What's wrong with that except
it won't come free and you will support an artist.
Re:Why go to all these length
by
mgoyer
·
· Score: 1
When you buy a CD the artist only gets about $0.50. Is that really supporting them?
Why? Since when does his opinion on the Pope have anything to do with the quality, and hence (at least, in theory:), the mod level of his posts?
Re:Listen to me very carefully...
by
The+Pea!
·
· Score: 1
There isn't any horses at any of the poles is there?, but there are no barnicles either.
Sealand has barnicles!, and lots of fish in its territory, and other various sea creatures, its not called Land Land is it, its called SeaLand, why have Horses on "SEAland" ??"!?!!"£?"}@
So thats why the guy has FTP in his sig. Thanks; I just assumed he was big on promoting the use of the File Transfer Protocol rather than mindlessly sending people large files through email, which is a serious bandwidth killer.
-- "I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Re:You're not sending the file to the server.
by
mofod1
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, but that argument is thin....
You provide a criminal with available guns that are used in a crime, you are aiding and abbeting that crime.
Don't get me wrong, I dig Napster, but lets be realistic, they are guilty as sin.
Re:Piercing the corporate veil...
by
beff
·
· Score: 2
You are right that piercing the corporate veil is not common. However, it isn't really rare either. In a situation as described in the article, it is a real risk. In the U.S., at least, courts tend to look at a number of factors in determining whether to pierce or not to pierce:
Whether all of the corporate formalities have been observed over time. For a small corporation, it is very hard to keep everything straight. You have to have separate books, regular board meetings, stockholder meetings, official minutes, . ... Any failure to do these things may be used to justify a claim that the corporation isn't being operated as an independent entity.
Whether the corporation has been funded sufficiently. Part of the "bargain" for the limited liability is that the founders have to make it a good faith effort to operate a business. If the corp is woefully underfunded, it is seen as an attempt to deflect liability into a worthless corporate shell. Courts hate that.
Whether the corporate acts as an independent entity. This is very hard to do when there is only a single person involved in running the corporation. What's in the corporate best interest is not always the same as what is in the individual's best interest.
So, it seems to me that there is a large risk in these circumstances that the corporate structure wouldn't insulate the individual from civil liability.
But then again, I'm not sure why this is relevant. Civil liability is the least of this person's worries. Since he is under the jurisdiction of a Canadian court, the court could just ORDER him to shut down the server, which after the RIAA make a preliminary showing, it just might be willing to do. Failure to follow that order would put him in contempt of court. The good thing, from the court's view, of a civil contempt order is that the judge gets to put you in a cell until you comply with the order.
Also, there are criminal provisions in the U.S. copyright act. (I don't know about Canada.) No corporate veil will help you here if you are the person actually performing the act on behalf of the corporation.
Peer to peer in Virginia
by
EricEldred
·
· Score: 2
The Washington Post editorial states that InfoSplit can determine the geographical location of computers accessing the Internet. (So it was indeed claimed during the Yahoo trial, but never confirmed.)
But in the case of AOL users, all of them seem to be located in Virginia.
Does this mean that Virginia law (UCITA, etc.) applies to everybody? And then there are the various anonymizer services (which don't get around some censorship problem that Jeremy raises, such as files that have bits set so they don't pass through routers.)
I agree we ought to oppose censorship, whether it comes from governments, or, more likely, big media corporations such as AOL/Time Warner.
An OpenNapster server at Havenco would be a good trial and I think it deserves our support.
Sealand isn't part of the solution
by
eXtro
·
· Score: 5
First of all, Sealand is only a haven till some country gets pissed off enough to blow it out of the water. Assuming that this doesn't happen then there is a possibility but its remote. Sealand itself, or a citizen of Sealand, would have to offer the Napster service.
This is remote for two reasons: Sealand itself probably wants to avoid doing anything thats outright illegal. Sure, they store data, and maybe that data is suspicious, but they can claim ignorance of it. It's all encrypted ones and zeroes to them. Once they offer a service that violates the law of some country their "see no evil, here no evil and speak no evil" act disappears. It may not be contrary to Sealands laws, but its contrary to other countries laws. This increases the chances of them being blown out of the water.
The second reason is that even if they threw caution to the wind, is Sealand really suitable for this? They've got a 256K connection, how saturated would it be? They'd effectively apply their own slashdot effect against themselves. Their other business interests would not be able to connect (the ones who actually pay the bills).
I think the only real solution is civil disobedience, but be prepared and willing to take your lumps if they come. Do your best to minimize this though. Don't take funds, don't run a site with banner adds and don't engage in any form of barter. Make sure that YOU DO NOT BENEFIT IN ANY WAY FROM SHARING FILES, in fact MAKE SURE THAT IN TOTAL YOU CAN SAY THAT IT COSTS YOU.
Re:Sealand isn't part of the solution
by
jon_adair
·
· Score: 2
Also, "private financial gain" has apparently been held to include receiving (or expecting to receive) other infringing works in exchange, so 506(a)(1) may apply to a casual Napster user.
Re:Sealand isn't part of the solution
by
hattig
·
· Score: 2
They've got a 256K connection, how saturated would it be?
No, each server gets a 256K connection. Sealand has multiple links to Amsterdam and England, I don't know their total bandwidth but it is probably well over 10MBps. It would be possible to also buy more than 256K I am sure.
I am more in favour of the communitity Napster style services that someone mentioned earlier.
Re:Sealand isn't part of the solution
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
True, but check out B for a second. This could mean someone even sharing their 500+ mp3 collection without receiving anything, even more mp3's could get busted. And I'm sure that in a courtroom a Napster-like service would be considered "distrobution" as well, easily putting anyone running one of these things in peril. The only real hope for Opennap server operators is that there's enough of them out there to discourage the recording goons from suing them all.
Re:Sealand isn't part of the solution
by
eXtro
·
· Score: 1
OK, they don't blow it out of the water. Instead they do a couple of things:
They generate evidence of them trafficking drugs.
They generate evidence of them being involved with terrorist groups.
They stick a couple large and well armed ships in the vincinity.
Now Sealand doesn't get any supplies. No food, no fuel for their generators. From what has been said by Sealand personel on slashdot it sounds like they are actually a very well run organization, so they probably have a substantial cache of the necessities. Eventually a war of attrition would likely work though.
I think Sealand needs to operate like swiss bank accounts used to work. No questions asked. They don't do anything explicitly illegal but they don't do any checking into the legality of what they're storing either.
The RIAA and friends have billions of dollars to throw around, they've bought large segments of the government, otherwise DMCA and other anti-consumer actions such as shutting down implementations of algorithms wouldn't happen. How much money do you think it would take to silence the conscience of people who are used to being bought and payed for anyway?
Re:Sealand isn't part of the solution
by
shyster
·
· Score: 1
Do you really think Britain, the US, or any other country would "blow Sealand out of the water"? I think most of the UN nations would be aghast at this, not to mention civil protests, the field day at the President's office, etc.
Re:Sealand isn't part of the solution
by
A+Big+Gnu+Thrush
·
· Score: 1
The only real hope for Opennap server operators is that there's enough of them out there to discourage the recording goons from suing them all.
I think you're underestimating the number of lawyers employed by record companies. My guess is that at any one time, there are more lawyers than there are Opennap server operators.
Plus, it's very easy to fire off cease and desist letters to the various operators. That should take care of some of them. Take the big ones to court after that and make sure NBC (and NBCi and MSNBC) all cover the story. Soon, it's just too much of a pain to operate one of these things. They can't play whack-a-mole forever, but if they cover most of it, they've won.
Don't forget that Napster is taking so long becasue it's never been done before. Once the legal precedent is set, it's just a matter of going through the motions. And they have proved that they are willing to spend whatever dollars it takes to protect their copyright and buy new laws (DMCA) that protect it even more.
Re:Sealand isn't part of the solution
by
Artagel
·
· Score: 3
Getting a lot of nights with Spike doesn't require making money, at least in the U.S.
17 U.S.C. 506 - (a) criminal infringment
Any person who infringes a copyright wilfully either --
(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1000, shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18...
Re:Sealand isn't part of the solution
by
cruelworld
·
· Score: 1
The question is, would Sealand even take on the Napster clone? After all, if the British gov or the RIAA really wanted to be kill the service then they could just cut your cables.
Afterall if the RIAA couldn't prosecute Sealand for breaking laws in the US then I doubt that Sealand could do much to prosecute the RIAA in Sealand.
It's more like saying Larry Wall is ignorant of S/370 assembler.
While Hillary Clinton is a Sentor, she did not write the Civil Rights act of 1964.
-- Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Re:Sealand is to small
by
JohnSmith1138
·
· Score: 1
Not Taiwan. They do way too much trade with us and you can bet if they disregarded our IP laws like that there would be sanctions. Of course there are plenty of fake Rolex's and the like being made there, but if they do make it to American shores, it is black market. By opening a Napster type service it would be a direct business, and the recording industry and our government would get their shorts in a bunch. Better to be some country we don't really trade greatly with anyway. China like you said. Or Russia.
The point is well-taken - other places are better
by
jht
·
· Score: 2
Using Sealand is a useful and viable way to ensure privacy, but is not designed with something like Napster in mind. They have to buy bandwidth from either companies willing to run fiber to their location (guaranteed to be from a EC nation), or satellite links to a satellite in range of what their dishes can see (also pretty much guaranteed to be, at the very least, a WIPO nation). The purpose of Havenco appears to be more oriented towards activities that are legal but require high security.
By virtually all standards, Napster _is_ illegal as it stands (I'm not stating that this is right or wrong by saying that - my own opinion doesn't count here), and therefor not suitable to run at Havenco.
Where OpenNap servers _could_ be run, though, is in some of the countries that already have limited or nonexistent copyright enforcement mechanisms - China and Russia come to mind immediatly as nations where piracy is winked at (and in China, piracy is managed by the government). If someone wanted to make an arrangement in one of those countries, it would be a great deal easier to protect and run a Napster clone. If the country where the company and server are located isn't a WIPO nation, then RIAA enforcement becomes an order of magnitude more difficult. Sealand's legal status is shaky enough to make it a poor choice.
However, faced with a US ultimatum of "shut down Sealand or we're sending our marines in" the UK would shut it down pronto - we could never support aggressive military actions within our own waters, and the diplomatic embarrassment of sinking an old WWII fort is nothing compared to that of sinking a US aircraft carrier.
~Cederic
Re:Open Source/Napster hypocrisy
by
kalleanka2
·
· Score: 1
Let's admit it, there's no other reason why HeavenCo exists, the free speech argument seems pretty fickle, since you would be protected in the US or any half decent country anyway.
Hahahahahaha! *wipes tears from eyes* You don't live in the US, do you?
Yeah... it was outside out the territorial waters, however the platform actually belong to the British Ministry Of Defence, so it was property of the British Government... and they could argue that it still is, since they have never formally relinquished sovereignty.
If I'm not mistaken, they did "relinquish the platform" "to the seas," which is why he was able to lay claim to it to begin with and why it's held up in court.
If they really wanted to go to town, they could prevent HeavenCo from trading anywhere in the western world if they proved they're an accessory to organised crime, copyright infringement etc. Let's admit it, there's no other reason why HeavenCo exists, the free speech argument seems pretty fickle, since you would be protected in the US or any half decent country anyway.
You're kidding, right? I do live in the US and I can tell you, the "protections" offered are practically a sham to begin with. But then it becomes doubly so when you choose to exercise free speech by saying something about the government or big business (look at Scientology for an example). The laws in the US come down squarely on the side of business, not the individual. For all of our bragging and chest-beating about our freedoms, we don't have squat that big business doesn't give us or permit us to have. We're all slaves over here, most of us just don't know it yet.
But that's beside the point. What if you don't live in a "halfway decent" country? What if you live in China, or another country with a reputation of human rights violations for dissenters? What if you live somewhere that doesn't believe in free speech? What if you are an oppressed group of Kurdish rebels who want to use groupware like Lotus Notes and Quickplace to collaborate about planning the downfall of Saddam Hussein? OK, that's a funny picture, but the theory is right anyway. HavenCo seems like a reasonable option to me.
I think the owners of HeavenCo live in the US, the government could also pressure them for running illicit businesses.
And now you've already made the jump in logic from, "nobody needs privacy except criminals" (which is in itself flawed as all hell) to, "HavenCo is an illicit business." Frankly, I don't see how you can even begin to make the case that HavenCo is running an illicit business when they are providing a secure, private, CoLo service. There are companies here in the US that do the same thing. The only difference is that the laws of Sealand protect HavenCo from the abuses of the US Legal system. It's like incorporating your business in the state of Delaware because their laws are much more business friendly, even though your business is located in California.
What really disgusts me the most about your post is your ignorant assertion that encryption and privacy is for criminals. We all have a right to privacy. We all have a right to enforce that privacy via encryption, or a lock on our front door, or window blinds.
I could just as easily claim that because you (presumably) keep your front door locked when you aren't home that you are hiding something "illicit" inside. Maybe you have a meth lab in your basement. I dunno that, but it's obvious that you're hiding something.
What's that you say? You're merely trying to keep intruders out? You don't want someone to walk into your home while you're gone and steal your computer and TV equipment? Oh, well that's OK then. Just like it's OK for companies and individual to use secure methods to protect their company's data from intrusion or thievery.
The point keeps being made that the weak link in this chain is that the centralized server is operated as a business, that some sort of financial transaction is being made resulting in money flowing to the operator of the server.
How about these scenarios:
Scenario 1:
Some wealthy individual interested in upholding the constitutional provisions of fair use puts enough capital in an interest-bearing account (yes, in Switzerland or the Caymans) to pay the bill for Sealand or to pay for hosting in a number of places and/or rotate the service to new countries as it gets knocked down by the various legal systems. Or before it gets knocked down - staying one step ahead.
This would take the money issue out of it entirely. Is there any legal standing by the RIAA to knock this (these) server(s) down since no profit is being made and no money is transferred anywhere other than to the hosting service(s) as gift from a wealthy benefactor?
Scenario 2 (less likely):
Sealand decides to host the service out of the good of their hearts as a gift to the community. Again, no profit is made, no money changes hands at all. And the individual responsible for the hosting doesn't live in a country vulnerable to US law or trade pressures. Ok, this one forces the issue of the sovreignty of Sealand, and an argument could be made that hosting this service could be considered advertising for their other services.
Anyway, I'd like to hear what the legal issues are surrounding this. Any legal folks want to weigh in?
-- War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
Did anyone else read havenco's fair use policy?
by
CrackElf
·
· Score: 2
"Unacceptable publications include, but are not limited to:
1.Material that is ruled unlawful in the jurisdiction of the originating server (Such as child pornography in the case of our flagship Sealand datacenter). HavenCo fully complies with content restrictions on a jurisdiction by jurisdiction basis, and does not allow content illegal in a given country to be hosted on servers at HavenCo facilities within that specific country." http://www.havenco.com/legal/aup.html, HavenCo Ltd.; 1 January 2001 (quoted today, March 12, 2k+1)
This seems to me to say that they will abide by copywright laws/etc. of other countries. Thus makeing the whole thing less than realistic in the first place
-CrackElf
-- "Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
Re:What does location have to do with it?
by
grammar+fascist
·
· Score: 1
Who has broken the law? Taco, the server owner or me?
That would be you and Taco. That much is obvious. The server owner may have broken the law, and that's not so clear-cut.
Imagine that you start some community service. Let's say that 99% of your patrons turn out to be using your service to break the law. What's your moral obligation? Well, if you know about it, your moral obligation is to either stop the service, or fix it up so it's more legal. What's your legal obligation? Well, if you know about it, you may be guilty of a vicarious offense. You have to either stop the service, or fix it up.
Now, if the server owner in your hypothetical example can't help but know that 99% of his patrons use his services for illegal transactions, he may very well be guilty of vicarious infringement, and it would be his moral and legal duty to stop the service or fix it up.
Funny how the law follows morality sometimes, isn't it?
Really, I don't see where this Napster thing is so difficult. There's a reason that we can't own bazookas in the U.S. - you can be 99% sure that somebody who buys one will not be using it legally. Napster is the same way, in my opinion. Now, if they opened up to file formats like JPEG, GIF, DOC, etc., they'd be in a much better position. As it is, they can't help but know that the majority of their traffic is illegal.
The reason Taiwan has such a small pipe is because all Net connections go through a government data center for security reasons - a justifiable degree of paranoia considering that mainland China is anxious to invade, execute the current government leaders, and harvest their organs for transplants.
-- "with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I'm sorry, I can't divulge information about that customers secret, illegal account.
Oh crap! I shouldn't have told him he was a customer!
Oh Crap! I shouldn't have told him it was a secret!
OH CRAP! I certainly shouldn't have told him it was illegal!
--
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
What if Matt were to set up some sort of offshore fund, where money went straight to the service provider, and not to Matt. Matt never sees a check, thus doesn't ever have to incorporate, claim incomes, or anything else releated to the Fund.
I know people do this all the time for collecting money for individuals who may need special surgery and such. The fund doesn't have to be claimed on anyones taxes I beleive, since no one but the hospital manages the fund.
Re:Piercing the corporate veil...
by
kraig
·
· Score: 2
Civil law in Canada depends on whether you're in Quebec or not. Technically, most of Eastern Canada was a French territory, which England conquered or was ceded after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. As far as that goes, I believe the author of the article is correct, as was the poster who pointed out that if enough of a fuss was made, Britain would quite likely make moves to "reintegrate" Sealand. (Incidentally, if my grade 8 Social Studies and Grade 11 Law classes are recalled correctly, generally Canadian civil courts follow US precedence, if there's no prior Canadian or British precedent.)
Re:Piercing the corporate veil...
by
meatspray
·
· Score: 1
OMG, this is infact the first justification I have ever heard in the defense of Delaware.
I agree almost with what you say. Basically, the near future is not so bleak as people would think.
People have been trading illegal bits (pirated software, digitized music and video, whatever) for a long time. They will still do so, just perhaps not with the ease of Napster. The reason Napster got the attention it did was because of its scope. If you use Aimster, or opennap, or IRC channels, or usenet, or whatever, and trade with a small group of friends/strangers -- nobody is going to notice. File trading on IRC is not going to make the cover of Time. And by extension with that old "7 Degrees of Kevin Bacon" you'll eventually be able to track down all the music you want, by friends-of-friends-of-friends, etc.... Just not instantly.
If something like Napster (huge, open) exists, and is somehow (boggling the mind) regulated to only trade legal bits, that's even better. It gives you the ability to find the lesser-known music you might otherwise not get, stuff that people are distributing through these methods intentionally, bootleg live performances that the artist has allowed to be distributed, etc.
Now, the distant future may be more bleak. Through bullying of the legal system, bullying of the standards, etc... the big companies will eventually make it illegal or technically difficult to copy/time-shift our recordings. However, as has been stated multiple times here... if you can _hear it_ you can _record it_ and nothing can really stop that.
-- Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
Re:What does location have to do with it?
by
PerlGeek
·
· Score: 1
"Let's say that 99% of your patrons turn out to be using your service to break the law. What's your moral obligation? Well, if you know about it, your moral obligation is to either stop the service, or fix it up so it's more legal."
No. That's only the case if the law being broken happens to be right. Illegal != immoral. There is significant overlap, but the two are not the same.
If 99% of your patrons are using your service to hurt someone, then you have a moral obligation to do something about it. In this case, what you do depends on whether or not you happen to believe trading mp3s hurts anyone. That's not nearly as clear, either way.
Lastly, there's one more important thing to understand about Sealand: they get their Internet connection from somewhere. Whether they've laid fiber-optic under the channel or they're using a two-way satellite transmission, they have to be connecting to somebody who's selling them the bandwidth. And that somebody is most likely located in a Berne Convention nation and/or a nation where the big five record companies do business. If they thought it necessary, the big five could sue to have the Internet connection to the Fairtunes OpenNap server blocked. They may not be able to get to the server, but they can ensure that nobody gets to it.
The original purpose of the internet (Well ARPANET) was for a distributed communications system. Sealand destroys that aim with just one connection.
What Nap wants is multiple connections which hit most of the major backbones and can be accessed by a plethora (WOW! Check that word out!) of routes. SeaLand is a waste of bloody time. I say CHINA!
They're well hard with ICBMs to boot! Lets see the US get their sticky fingers into China!
--
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?" Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
Leslie Grantham sure looks uglyer on the French version...
We Need Saddam's Help
by
johnnyproton
·
· Score: 1
He could piss off American political interests and become a hero to American youth. Who needs biological weapons when you have file-sharing?
He needs some military power
by
CrazyJim0
·
· Score: 2
Move it to Africa, and use the profits to employee natives into factories to build robotic war machines. Once you have a military power, it'd be a pain to get you out.
Wait screw Napster, just get a bunch of natives to help build robotic war machines of mass destruction.
Personally, I've used Napster not to "steal" albums but instead to see what some of it sounds like before buying the album. Maybe I'm a freak for doing so, but to my mind that's what Napster is about - it's the same as going to your mate's house to listen to music, hearing something new that you like, and going out to buy the album because of it.
Yes, I've also used it to find some stuff that I simply can't get hold of anywhere within the world of retail etc., but that's the reasons I use Napster.
And finally, yes, I would be prepared to pay a subscription to Napster to keep the service going. So would most of the people I talk to.
<infantile>So ner ne ner ner.</infantile>
-- I say we take off and nuke it from orbit.
It's the only way to be sure...
You know, multiple anonymous servers, except for Napster, just rotate among them. Go underground in such a way that there is no legal entity who owns and manages the service.
Except that this is the problem that people have complained about the centralized Napster model. There has to be at minimum a list of napster servers to connect to. Sure, you don't have to maintain this list but then you don't know which one to connect to. Without a large number of people connecting to a server, the selection of things to download sucks, and nobody uses it and you're back to the selection of things that your circle of friends has and we're back to taping 12" LPs onto tape again.
Re:Piercing the corporate veil...
by
FallLine
·
· Score: 2
Yes, he overstated himself. However, more than half the fortune 500 companies are incorporated in Delaware. About a third of the companies listed on the major domestic stock exchanges (NYSE, American, etc) are also incorporated in Delaware. Also, remember that many corporations are essentially mom-and-pop type stores, not major corporations. In other words, it's not totally unreasonable to say that most large companies prefer to be located in Delaware if they can afford to and where it makes sense. The corporates taxes (or rather, lack thereof) and the well established body of business law are a very large consideration.
That said, this whole Sealand argument is silly on its face. It simply wouldn't work. Corporate veil or no, the United States, or any other major nation, is not going to allow any other nation, but especially a little questionable entity such as Sealand, to flaunt blatant violation of its laws over the internet. It wouldn't even require a storming of the platform. Rather the same outcome could be had by any number of methods. I.e., by simply getting their uplinks to cut off their connection.
Re:What does location have to do with it?
by
deblau
·
· Score: 1
Who has broken the law? Taco, the server owner or me? The RIAA has gone after the server owner, but that's largely pragmatics (not to mention PR).
My take (and IANAL, yadda yadda): depends on how much security was placed on the system. If Taco knowingly made the file available for download, he broke the law, and if the server owner could plausibly be shown to have known that the MP3 was there, he did too. Furthermore, it's easy to tell who uploaded what, and when, because of system auditing. You broke the law because in a file copy, there are two parties involved. The only way you might get off is if you received the file at no instigation of your own (mass mailing, etc). On the other hand, if you cracked system security to do get the music, and the system operator didn't want you to, then you definitely broke the law and they/may/ have (because of negligence, under the banner of vicarious infringement).
P2P solutions remove all the auditing about who uploaded what, and when, and even to where. All you can say is that someone, somewhere has broken the law by uploading this copyrighted content that's plainly available, but you don't know who, when, or where. The law has clearly been broken; the difference is that it's no longer auditable. In order to prosecute, you need a suspect.
The real dangerous issue is that with P2P networks,/everyone/ is a potential suspect. If you run a P2P server, you may be guilty of vicarious infringement, since it's obvious that illegally copied works will be passing through your system, even if you don't know exactly what they are. In fact, under some systems you have no way of excluding them. That's their defense, that you have no control, and that's also gonna be the charge in the lawsuits.
-- This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
The CBC has it archived in RealAudio form (sorry, I haven't tried it, I'm between classes) on this page. Just scroll down to the Feb 18th show. There's also a bunch of listener mail and an archived discussion board.
Host it in Canada
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
(IANAL)
Just thought I'd add a point to this discussion. While it's all very sexy to have a napster server on the outlaw military installation of sealand there is a much better alternative.
Host it in Canada.
That right, under canadian copyright law's fair use section Napster like uses of copyrighted materials are legal. While as I said, IANAL, I was listening to a radio show on the CBC called Cross Country Checkup on Feb 18 and the subject was Should Napster be shut down?. If you follow the link you'll see that Michael Geist, Assistant Prof. of Law at U of Ottawa was one of the guests. According to him our copyright laws have no provision in them saying that napster like uses of copyrighted materials are illegal, as long as nobody profits from such transactions.
So while running a napster server out of some outlaw state is pretty cool, Canada makes a much better alternative. It has good bandwidth, good living conditions and you can't be shut down. If this sounds too good to be true, than contact Mr. Geist through his webpage.
"Sex on TV is bad. You might fall off." - Monty Python
The only problem might be that its sole internet connection to the outside world is a 2MBit pipe.
Wow!! And there have been so many lucky multi-national corporations there that have 128kbps+ links back to US offices. That's some pretty nifty pipe!!
If you don't get my drift, I doubt there's anything to stop the NeoNapster group from getting more bandwidth into the country (as far as I can see)... I doubt that they are the correct location, as I'm sure they do have _some_ copyright laws.
Re:Open Source/Napster hypocrisy
by
MxTxL
·
· Score: 2
I guess my question then is: how do the free/open source supporters who support music piracy reconcile this apparent ethical inconsistency.
Here's how:
Free/open source supporters believe that information wants to be free. Better, has to be free. Most GPLs only ask that you keep the credit for the work in the source files, but you don't really have to. Nobody strips the artist and title tags off thier MP3's. In a lot of people's opinions, this is the same thing. The artist gets the credit for their work. Just like a GPL. There is no inconsistency, there is, in fact great consistency.
The 0's and 1's that are computer code, graphics, movies, and yes, music aren't owned by anyone. Sequences of 0's and 1's aren't owned by anyone, even if they add up to Dr Dre's latest hit. The same is true of open source software(if you excuse the transition from binary to ascii). I don't see how you would think that is hipocracy, that is perfectly congrouous.
Re:Napster ,alternate location.
by
bubbalou
·
· Score: 1
The problem with any lawless place like these is corruption. If officials can be bribed, then the guy with the most money to hand over to the officials wins. Now, how much money do you think the record companies have?
-- One viagra in the morning before work; I just know I'm gonna be screwed
Re:What does location have to do with it?
by
bmckeever
·
· Score: 1
This would especially be the case if your answer to Q1 was "the server"--because then the system would even be legal. Bonus!
Uh... remind me why my answer to Q1 is even relevant? It only matters what the courts decide. And have you ever heard of conspiracy>
-- Your favorite.sig sucks
Works for LA station w transmitter in Mexico.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
Power transmission limits? Band assignment? Doesn't matter to XETRA. THey beam a million watts right at LA from Tijuana. FCC is powerless in Mexico.
Why not an anonymous coordinator?
by
mdecerbo
·
· Score: 1
I just don't understand why there's so much
concern over Canada (or the USA, or whoever) tracking down
whoever arranges donations and coordinates
the server.
I mean, couldn't a Web page
be put up anonymously (someplace like Russia) and an anonymous
e-gold
or similar account be established to accept donations to pay its bills?
Caman Islands Holding Company
by
tenzig_112
·
· Score: 3
We at the Caman Island Holding Company extend our best wishes to you and hope you will host your highly-illegal web content on our no-questions-asked principality.
Need a place to stash your cash in a place Uncle Sam cannot find? The CIHC would be glad to help you as well as extend a generous interest rate.
Re:Caman Islands Holding Company
by
Technician
·
· Score: 2
I lived there. Expats can get a work permit for up to 6 years, then they have to leave. They have to have a Cayman employer in order to get a permit. Don't just plan on moving there to live. It won't happen. The import duty is kinda steep also. Electric power is by diesel generator so it's not cheap. Not only do they tax the price of imported items, they also tax the shipping and handeling. (there is no duty on localy manufactured stuff though so local produce is cheap.) The oxtail stew, jerk chicken, and sea turtle steak is delicious. (they farm grow sea turtles) Porn and gambeling in all forms is illegal. You can be busted for a playboy magazine. The drug laws are strict. The phone monopoly had a 25 cent per minute internet service that dropped to 15 cents when I left 4 years ago. All local calls are per minute. Long distance is over $1.50 per minute to the USA. It's a nice place if you get out and enjoy the sunshine. The have the highest per capita density of FAX machines due to the phone rates. Nobody just chats on the phone. Likewise people don't hang out in chat rooms online. It's too expensive. I didn't do internet until I got back in 1998. This is no place for a server farm due to the phone monopoly, import duty, salt air, and power costs.
"Long-term solution: All clueless legislators die off and are replaced by tech-savvy, clueful legislators"
Since your replacement legislators would be completely ignorant of the law, they would actually be the clueless people.
Napster is cool, but trying to argue that it is legal is a losing argument.
-- Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
What does location have to do with it?
by
BillyGoatThree
·
· Score: 5
Let's say Taco has an MP3 of "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica, called nem.mp3. He ripped the MP3 from a CD he owns and uploads it to some server inside the US. I (also in the US) download it.
Question 1: Who has broken the law? Taco, the server owner or me? The RIAA has gone after the server owner, but that's largely pragmatics (not to mention PR).
Now let's imagine a mythical, ideal offshore server location. Call it Luna (see my other post). Let's say Taco has an MP3 of "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica, called nem.mp3. He ripped the MP3 from a CD he owns and uploads it to Luna. I (also in the US) download it.
Now the RIAA is unable (hypothetically) to get the server owner, right? Taco does a "magic upload" and I do a "magic download". But if your answer to Q1 was either "Taco" or "Me" (or both) then answer this question:
Question 2: How is the mythical, Luna server with the "magic" ul/dl any different than a strictly peer-to-peer, decentralized system that has NO server where Taco just sends the file right to me?
My contention is that it's not. Instead of figuring out where to PUT the server, we should be figuring out how to ELIMINATE the server. This would especially be the case if your answer to Q1 was "the server"--because then the system would even be legal. Bonus! --
--
324006
Re:What does location have to do with it?
by
streetlawyer
·
· Score: 1
Question 1: Who has broken the law? Taco, the server owner or me? The RIAA has gone after the server owner, but that's largely pragmatics (not to mention PR).
All three of you, acting in concert. Which, I think, rather puts a hole in your otherwise clever scheme.
Re:What does location have to do with it?
by
shyster
·
· Score: 3
Well, it really deosn't matter. You see, when the RIAA agreed to Section 1008 of the Home Recording Act (in exchange, I might add, for large sums of money), they agreed that "no action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of
copyright" based on activities defined in the Act. Well, unfortunately, I believe that to allege/prove contributory or vicarious infringement, you must first allege/prove the infringement.
Assume for a moment that Napster's users' actions fall under Section 1008 protection. Well, now we can't say that Napster's users are infringing, because then we'd be alleging infringement (in essence, they are-since Section 1008 never says that it is now legal to do these things, it simply says that nobody can allege that these things are illegal). Since we now have no infringers, we can no longer have a contributory infringer, can we?
For those that still didn't get it, how's this for an explanation. Can you be charged with accessory to murder (not conspiracy to commit murder, as I'm sure someone will bring up) if nobody's dead? How about if we're not sure if anybody's dead? How about if somebody is dead, but they were killed in self-defense (therfore-no murder...)? I would say the answer to all those are 'no'.
Now, the only thorn is to prove that Napster's users do indeed fall under the scope of Section 1008. Well, the US Gov't, being the business whore that it is, feels they do not. Read their brief here. Unfortunately, they didn't pay their lawyers enough to write this brief, and I explain why here.
If you don't want to look, here's the basics. Npaster's software falls under the definition of "device", as does a PC's audio recording functions, as does a CD-R. Napster's users are making "digital musical recordings", you just have to think in terms of hard drive clusters, not the entire hard drive. Napster's users are engaged in noncommercial copying, not public distribution "by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or
lending". Napster is used to make "digital audio recordings" (copies of the music in the brief's own words). Napster's users can't be said to be infringing.
1) Find a country which does not like the united states, is too big and powerful to simply blow away, is not easily bullied.
2)Place server there.
Here are some suggestions for you.
Isreal is not easily bullied ans a sacred cow no politician would dare even critisize them let alone attempt to nuke them. They might be pressured politicaly but they are stubborn as hell.
China would love to tweak the US and for all practical purposes are immune to anything kind of pressure that US or the corps can throw at them.
Most of south america has nothing to lose really.
India and Pakistan have to be dealt with lightly so they can easily host something like this.
Of course there is always russia they need money in a bad way.
Even some former republics like khazakstan have lots of oil and nukes (left over from russia) that we want to go away.
Maybe some arab countries like saudi arabia or egypt would be good candidates.
Maybe turkey or greece but they could be pressured politically. Both are pretty stradegic though.
Anyway you get the picture. Anybody can kill a dozen people and call it a day and corporations wouln't even flinch. Declaring war on China on the other hand would scare shit out of anybody.
--
War is necrophilia.
Re:The answer is obvious.
by
Malcontent
·
· Score: 2
Once again they would have to be pressured or bullied to comply. Just because they signed on to some treaty that does not mean anything. The US signed on to the ABM treaty and are developing a missle defence system anyway. Treaties are only enforcable if you are willing to declare war and kill people. So who is going to declare war on india, pakistan, israel, china or russia?
--
War is necrophilia.
Re:Open Source/Napster hypocrisy
by
netik
·
· Score: 1
I have a better idea. Like the original intentions of patent and copyright law, which were developed to spawn innovation and creativity, why not open source a ton of music tools?
If we put 10% of the effort into the development of tools to write music (decent sequencers, synths, and software that rivals commercial packages) we'd be somewhere. But why doesn't this happen? Because writing good software and good music is difficult!
The people who know what they want out of the software and the people who write it are often in two seperate camps, and we never get commercial-quality code out of open source projects (at least in the GUI/client space). Only recently has the open source movement (if you can call a loosely affiliated pile of people a movement) has realized that they need production quality code to survive.
I don't only mean high-quality utilities and servers (don't worry, we have tons of that.) What I think the community has to focus on now is clients and high-quality software for users. Not enough work has been made in that space, and it's about time we start looking at what we can do beyond Linux and Emacs.;)
Re:Open Source/Napster hypocrisy
by
Sierra+Charlie
·
· Score: 1
You're missing the point entirely.
If you don't like proprietary software, you should let the market know by using Free Software.
If you don't like proprietary music, you should go download and patronize the hordes of artists making their music available online for free.
GNU has nothing to do with figuring out ways to 'share' proprietary software without being caught. By using Windows and and listening to proprietary music, you're the one restricting your own freedom.
Re:You people are all dim
by
91degrees
·
· Score: 1
But it wasn't in BRITISH TERRITORIAL WATERS when it declared independence. Are you saying that a country can gain territory from another by expanding its borders?
Re:You're not sending the file to the server.
by
Rader
·
· Score: 2
Then you get to file trespassing charges.
You don't think 2 million people broke into Napster's servers, under their noses?
Napster Admin: Our OC48 is full!? How can that be?
You ever see one of those weekend flee market places on the side of the highway? I'm sure the organizers weren't going to each vendor and saying: "Make sure you don't sell guns & drugs" *wink* *wink*. If the place DID turn out to be a hotbed of drugs & arms sales, the organizers would definately get in trouble.
Remember, the police never broke into Napster HQ and said "FREEZE! The RIAA says you're under arrest". Napster has been told that illegal copyright infringment has been happening via their service for quite some time, many many many times, and even I don't think Napster tried to prove otherwise. At the least, there is no way they can claim ignorance of what has been going on.
Rader
If it's under nobody's jurisdiction...
by
Gorimek
·
· Score: 2
..., isn't the US, or anyone else, free to do whatever they want out there, without the need for any jurisdiction?
But there aare horses on sealand
by
91degrees
·
· Score: 1
Dozens of the things. The "prince" rides them around the platform almost every day.
OTOH, there are no horses in Antarctica.
Re:don't waste your time
by
Ranger+Rick
·
· Score: 1
Sure you can. It's called a civil war. Or, if the little guy wins, a revolutionary war. =)
1st Law Of Networking: Loose ends are bad, termination is good.
--
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Open Source/Napster hypocrisy
by
Sierra+Charlie
·
· Score: 2
I genuinally don't understand the empathy shown to 'music sharers' from people who claim to be supporters of Free Software.
Music sharing is analogous to software piracy. It seems clear to me that musical artists, much like program authors, have the right to license their works however they see fit. You shouldn't say, "I don't like their license, so I'm going to steal their product. The correct action is to not listen to their music.
Richard Stallman didn't start a crusade to pirate proprietary operating systems; he simply said that he wouldn't use them. There are a lot of artists out there who are providing their music for free...patronize them.
I guess my question then is: how do the free/open source supporters who support music piracy reconcile this apparent ethical inconsistency.
I'm afraid you misquote history. According to Sealand's homepage, the day before the UK extended it's territorial waters, Sealand extended there's as well. Not to mention the fact, that, according to international law/treaties/customs, you cannot claim another country just by extending your waters. I believe the only accepted way to claim another country is to invade it.
It Could work (With the right moves)
by
TakumiBenPommie
·
· Score: 1
First off, Sealand might do this Pro Bono, just to get some publicity.
Second, for a few hundred dollars, Matt can incorporate in one of the islands.
If he set up a bank account there he couldn't be touched in Canada.
I also doubt that the islands have such stricht copyright laws as US/Canada.
Also, Sealand is not recognised by the British Government as independant, and quite rightly too. It is a small island, which is presently on sufferance - if it ever starts doing anything to irritate the international community, like host Napster, it will be squashed. An artificial structure created by the Royal Navy for wartime purposes will be under the dominion of the British Government as soon as it starts to annoy.
I think a far better bet for Napster would be Taiwan or some other such similar country. Taiwan is well known for the total lack of copyright control within its borders, and is much more powerful than Sealand. Although still a pygmy in international terms, it is unlikely to be challenged or compromised over an issue such as Napster.
The only problem might be that its sole internet connection to the outside world is a 2MBit pipe. Hopefully the government of Taiwan will correct this soon - strange to think my office has a bigger Internet pipe that the entire nation of Taiwan.
I think that Napster type companies could well have a future in the far east. Perhaps China itself would be a good bet - good infrastructure these days, and a government unlikely to be influenced by the DMCA or US government. I wish they would consider these radical alternatives. --
The Sealand website states that the day before Britain expanded its territorial waters to 12 miles, Sealand did the same. If you accept the thesis that Sealand is a sovereign nation, then they have a right to those waters (otherwise they would have no right of access.) Also, note that the expansion of territorial waters does not make an existing sovereign nation the "property" of the expander. There's a lot more on the site about British court decisions placing Sealand outside of UK jurisdiction.
Sealand would doubtless also point out that quite a large part of the UK is inside their territorial waters. (They extended their waters to 12 miles the same day the UK did;-)
Territorial waters give you no right or claim to any land that happens to be in them.
-- ~~~~~
BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Re:Sealand is to small
by
woolytsheep14
·
· Score: 1
You mean bunch of Cubans with guns would be harder to deal with than entire Iraq army ?
The Cubans would have the tactical advantage. Taking the citied would be easy, although at the cost of many civilain lives. However, Castro's Army would head for the hills, then we would be dealing with a well armed Guerilla force who knows the territory much better than we do. If Castro is smart, and he is, he has been planning for this possibility for 40 years, which means he has many caches of food, guns, ammo and other supplies hidden throughout the country, just waiting for the U.S. to invade. Which of course, short of carpet bombing the entire country, means it would be a long bloody war. All Castro has to do is get a body count of 10 or 15 thousand and the American people will start to wonder if Cuba is worth that many American lives and the U.S. Government starts to loose the Public Relations War. Also, there is a good chance another coutry will come to his aid, possibly China, then things get really ugly. The short of it is, yes Cuba would be much more difficult to take then Iraq, which is why no President since Kennedy has even tried.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
--
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
It's just a damned rig in the North Sea not an "island". The British Navy built it, the British Navy can destroy it. I say just bomb the hell out of the thing for target practice and send King Whatshisname on his way back to luserdom.
Re:Sealand is to small
by
Thomas+Miconi
·
· Score: 2
The United States can't just announce one day that's it's extending its waters and now gets Cuba.
Well that's more or less what they did in the Cuban War. More exactly, they busted Spain out of it, and occupied the island for a few years (virtually making it a protectorate of the USA).
To use cryptology terms, international law is definitely weak against brute force attacks. The US can still extend their waters and claim ownership of Cuba - they'll just have to manage the international outroar (easy part) and destroy Fidel's army (much less easy part - Pigs Bay, Episode II anyone ?)
The problem is that as of now, there is no Cuban army on Sealand to protect it from English invasion and... Hey, wait, that's an idea ! I'm sure Uncle Fidel would happily accept to send Cuban troops to protect Sealand - just to annoy the Imperialists. Besides, it would be much easier to find Ruben Gonzalez's old tracks on Napster:o)
mail fidel.castro@gov.cu -s "Hi, could you send me one or two airborne divisions before mid-June, please ?"
Well, sure, the UK could indeed send the marines in. Hell, we could invade Spain too if we wanted. (I'd prefer France, but they have Nukes too.)
But the UK has obligations ot respect international law etc. etc. and after some bad PR experiences we are loathe to do anything "extra-curricular" even when there are higher stakes than some American company being pissed off.
And another point - I would say that Taiwan certainly irritates China. If they're still OK why shouldn't sealand?
-- ~~~~~
BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
> Not Taiwan. They do way too much trade with us and you can bet if they disregarded our IP laws like that there would be sanctions.
Not only that, but Taiwan also depends on the US's protection for its survival as an "independant" nation. The US would only need to hint to China that they no longer care about Taiwan's independance, and that'd be the end of the story.
Yeah... it was outside out the territorial waters, however the platform actually belong to the British Ministry Of Defence, so it was property of the British Government... and they could argue that it still is, since they have never formally relinquished sovereignty.
Just because somebody came along and said "I declare this independent" is not enough, try doing that in the middle of WestMinster, you wont be acknowledged by many people.
Of course, this is all arbitrary anyway, they could just pressure the ISP to stop providing the land microwave/satellite/radio/fibre link.
If they really wanted to go to town, they could prevent HeavenCo from trading anywhere in the western world if they proved they're an accessory to organised crime, copyright infringement etc. Let's admit it, there's no other reason why HeavenCo exists, the free speech argument seems pretty fickle, since you would be protected in the US or any half decent country anyway.
I think the owners of HeavenCo live in the US, the government could also pressure them for running illicit businesses.
At the moment, nobody appears to be bothered to Sealand, however I'm sure many governments are looking into how do deal with this 'problem' behind the scenes, at a recent G8 summit last year there was an item on the agenda on how to tackle international 'data heavens'.
I'm sure the NSA guys at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire (England) are very interested in HeavenCo's com links, what's the point of having a data heaven if all the information is being also feed straight into an intelligence agency? Fair enough they're using an encrypted link, however I wouldn't like to pit a puny 256K link against the powers that be, whatever strength of crypto being used.
The agencies would actually be pleased about this because they know the data going over the line has a good chance of being illicit, however say the same data was travelling over a standard US-UK backbone, it would basically be undetectable on the public net because of the sheer amount of traffic.
Infact just by using the HeavenCo service you're slapping a massive "look at me" label on your back... and as the crypto article pointed out yesterday, criminals just want to blend into the crowd, having your data pass through to an offshore server really makes you stand out from the either.
I wonder how HeavenCo processes its money? If money is basically being laundered into your account from some dodgy business outfit, that also raises some eyebrows.
Well, good luck to them, but I really don't fancy their chances, stuff like this has been around for years, however none of them have managed to escape the grasp of government control. And with SeaLand just being a stones throw off the English coast, I really don't like their chances.
Re:You're not sending the file to the server.
by
Rader
·
· Score: 2
It's illegal to hold a meeting place for illegal activities to take place. I'm sorry I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's called racketeering?
Examples I read about this back when Napster was first under fire (day one?:) was the argument: I'm an owner of a rundown, out of the way warehouse. Each friday night I open it up so that drug dealers and arms dealers can trade/buy/sell.
Although I won't get busted for selling drugs myself, I do get busted for racketeering.
the REAL solution for Napster is to go Gnutella. You know, multiple anonymous servers, except for Napster, just rotate among them.
Just like with Gnutella clients, the company from which you download your client only sells the client, not the service
The problem of contributory infringement is still there, the same violation of copyright law that is probably going to hang Napster. Even though you only sell, or give away, a client you can still be held liable for any infringement your users commit becuase the 'substantial non-infringing uses' defense has been weakened so much recently.
The distribution of the client would no doubt materially contribute to whatever infringement the users were doing. It would be pretty difficult to hide behind any non-infringing use argument. It would be an enjoyable case to argue though.
Except that this is the problem that people have complained about the centralized Napster model. There has to be at minimum a list of napster servers to connect to.
That's why you don't host the Napster servers on Sealand, you host the dynamic list of napster server ip addresses on Sealand. When one gets shut down, you start up a new one. Put sealand at the top of the pyramid, tree out from there. Keep everything except sealand consumer based and not-for-profit and there's no way in hell to shut it down without shutting down sealand. P2P always needs *some* centralization to work, but very little is actually necessary.
Just to clarify, these suggestions are for a legally run napster serving only constituionally protected free speech, not metallica mp3s.
-- ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
casinos run offshore by US citizens
by
peter303
·
· Score: 2
They have a similar problem, since they are
illegal in most states.
The US governemnt has gone after the principals.
They either stop business or emigrate under indictment.
Napster ,alternate location.
by
Savage-Rabbit
·
· Score: 1
How about Russa or one of its (ex)republics? They do not seem to be subject to any international law and if they are they could care less. The German government has been trying to shut down Russian (Petrograd) based Neo Nazi sites like "Radio Wolfschanze" for ages without success. So if Neonazi scumbags can get away with it why not a Napster style site.
With the central website safe the record companies would either have to find a way to get at the tens of thousands of endusers. Or try to get the Russian officials to do something about the situation and the Russians can be very frustrating to deal with.
Of course downloading copyrighted music is still stealing someones work, be it in Sealand, Russia or anywhere else. No matter how much you try to paint it pink!
Just a thougt!
Da Rabbit!
-- Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
people hadn't abused Napster like they have. This whole situation might not have existed.
I work in my schools computer lab doing the menial tasks like helping students with the formatting of their papers and telling people just what power the key has. My most asked help, though, is aiding students in converting Mp3 files to CDA so they can burn the music they just downloaded and play it on their CD players and stereos. I do my best to tell them that they should probably save themselves a lot of time and trouble and just buy the damn album. The usual response is, "But this is what Napster's for!" Hmmm... Is it really?
Am I one of the seemingly very few that uses Napster in a responsible way? Do people think the RIAA would have had a problem with Napster if users were getting a few songs from an artist or band that they heard of to see if they were really something worth buying (radio really doesn't cut it.)? I use Napster regularly, without any sign of conscience. Why? Because I get songs that I either own already or songs by artists that I'm planning on buying. I must say that more times than not, I'm happy with what I heard and a do make the purchase, while on the other hand, I've been thwarted by the music that I heard (Wait, that's it, the RIAA is worried they're going to lose money because of all the tired meaningless pop they're putting out! Sorry.).
I have to say that when (If is out of the question by now isn't it?) the free fun stops, all in all, it would have been brought upon by the very users that are screaming that their "freedom" is being taken away, so what good will an off-shore Napster server really do? People will still abuse it. People will still act like vultures and try to worm not their way around a system (College kids:o) but around a pocketbook.
-- "From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
I think the assumption here is that the RIAA stands to gain when the public is exposed to more/different artists. I don't believe that this is the case. The RIAA and the several companies that own all the radio stations out there have a pretty tight control over what music the average person is going to hear. Is it any coincidince that the top 40 stations roll over their playlist every 2 weeks? The RIAA doesn't necessarily want everyone to realize that they like songs and artists that were popular a few years back and now are mostly available in used CD stores. I think Napster threatens the record labels more in this area than in revenue, as the financial numbers have been showing for a while.
-- Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Well then they'd just go after individual users..
They have the resources to send out scores of Cease and Desist letters...
Enough to torpedo any sort of business based server..:(
Without even reading the post....
by
scum-e-bag
·
· Score: 1
Well, duh......
Just think about offshore gambling, and offshore drug trading, and offshore oil, and off shore tax havens, and offshore... damn... if i wanted to avoid drug laws then I would setup (buy) my own island and produce drugs. Same goes for napster. The only fear that you would have is the wrath of the US navy because the US navy is owned by the filthy rich, who also own all the IP technologies and rights to songs/music.
Get a grip on reality and come down from your glass tower to the real world with all of us theives and prostitutes.
By the time the "tech-savvy" generation enters government in numbers, they will look just as silly and obsolete to the twenty-somethings of the day as the current people in government look to us now.
-- Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Here's something to try
by
Red+Neckerson
·
· Score: 1
Maybe everyone should go out and actually buy the copyright protected music from online stores or retail, wholesale outlets. Nobody gets in trouble, you aren't stealing it, and you'll have something round or square to keep around the house. Is this too much to ask?
-- "No, You're Right. Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right, But Three Will."
Re:You people are all dim
by
cyberdonny
·
· Score: 2
> If you took a metal bunker and put a flag on it and declared it "land land", would that make it independent ?
Sure, as long as that land is still unclaimed. Only problem: nowadays every single square inch of charted land is claimed by some nation or other. Your only hope is to find a yet unknown island somewhere remote in the Pacific, or whereever.
Re:You're not sending the file to the server.
by
Rader
·
· Score: 2
I thought the RIAA did prove it.
All they have to do is do a search on a metallica song, download them, play them, and voila! They have proof.
Maybe I misunderstood you, but Napster isn't just a cardboard box that says "illegal files".
>Long-term solution: All clueless legislators die off and are replaced by tech-savvy, clueful legislators.
Funny!
>Unless some of us decide to get, um, aggressive about pursuing such a solution.
Not funny.
-- Test 1 2 3 4
Re:Gnutella Sucks! Napster Rules!
by
merlin_jim
·
· Score: 1
Not to get too far off topic, there are two big problems with Gnutella... one of the reasons I want to see Napster to go to a Gnutella-like model.
It's bandwidth intensive - It costs a ton of bandwidth for a search, and actual downloading is usually hobbled to 20Kbps, with the default client settings
User connectivity - it just doesn't have the number of users Napster has. Even if it did, with a TTL of 5 and only so many outgoing connections, you still can't reach a huge number of users. At home, I bump up the outgoing connections to 50, but then I choke all my bandwidth with the connections.
Of course, there are two big problems with Napster too...
File types - Why must I trade only mp3's? I'd like to be able to trade videos, text documents, alternative audio formats, even software (if I had a reasonable virus scanner)
Legal issues - duh.
So, what I really want to see is a combination of the two initiatives. Napster like connectivity with Gnutella's file sharing and lack of legal issues (so far)
-- I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Mum, The country that cuba used to connected to the Internet would be pressured into
disconnecting Cuba or maybe that Country would be disconnected from the internet. You know
there's Funny story I once heard don't know if it's true but it goes some what like this:
Someone was trying to break into the four computers running the Internet at that time. So, they track the
guy down to some Spanish university. They call the university and tell them to find out who it is.
They say that they are not going to looking for him. So, america just disconnects the whole of Europe.
calls Spain and tells them these. 30 min. later they call back and say they caught the guy.
I don't know about Canadian law (I suspect it depends on whether the provice was originally a British or French territory way back in the day), but in the United States courts are extremely hesitant to pierce the corporate veil, and avoid doing it as much as possible. Because most companies incorporate in Delaware, where there is a rich body of business law, Delaware is generally the one here in the US that manages these decisions. If you look back through the ages, the number of times the veil was actually pierced compared to the number of times corporations were taken to court is minute. So, while I'd agree with the general thought process of the article, I think it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
-- "O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
She chortled in her joy.
Re:Piercing the corporate veil...
by
shyster
·
· Score: 1
Well, I don't Sealand would work either, but not for the reasons you submit. Though it would be pretty trivial to block Sealand's IP addresses from the global Internet, I don't believe Sealand's internet pipe is prepared or able to withstand opening a Napster server on (yes, yes, I understand that the files do not get transferred to the Npaster server, etc, etc...) and millions logging on. I think everyone really knows this and so noone takes this threat seriously.
If you set up a company correctly, it's true that you should get quite a bit of legal protection. However, incorporating is far from being a catch-all defense against personal liability. The courts haven't been hesitant in going after people who clearly are using a corporation as a shield for their illegal activities, and I can't really see how you can set up a corporation for the express purpose of violating copyright law and not expect the courts to come after you personally. You are still liable for your personal actions, whether you're the employee of a corporation or not.
The washington post article is available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A555 29-2001Mar11.html
Revenue Canada clarification
by
dstone
·
· Score: 3
Another step that might be taken would be to move the money collection mechanism offshore -- say, to a Swiss bank account. This wouldn't work, as one must still declare one's offshore holdings to RevCan (Matt's equivalent of the USA's IRS). Declaring this income would be evidence of doing business. Simply not declaring it would be problematic as well, as one would then be subject to tax evasion charges.
IAAC (I am a Canadian.) Yes, offshore holdings must be declared in Canada. But only if those holdings exceed CAN$100,000. Here is a recent clarification from Revenue Canada, and the original policy is here. Canadians must still declare all foreign income, just not all foreign holdings (such as a USD$65,000 off-shore bank account). So Matt can transfer the contents of that account over to HavenCo when it hits the USD$15,000 level each year to cover his bill. Such a bank account would not need to be declared to Revenue Canada. This may help him stay under the radar and keep evidence against him to a minimum. But the question remains... can he get money into that account via some clever foreign transfer that doesn't constitue income and therefore does not need to be declared? IANATL (I am not a tax lawyer).
Napster is perfectly legal. It's basically just a search engine.
Napster can also be used in law-obeying manner, ie. for swapping non-copyrighted MP3 files.
Re:Listen to me very carefully...
by
rking
·
· Score: 1
and they will take him to court again to revisit the issue of jurisdiction, and the UK court will take into account any changes in international law and territorial waters in the meantime in deciding if the UK now has jurisdiction over this individual.
More than that, if the UK Government was categorically claiming jurisdiction over Sealand then the UK courts would recognise it. I've no idea how things work in other countries, but in the UK the crown has the power to set borders, negotitate treaties, recognise (or not) foreign governments, and so on. The courts will accept whatever the government says in this regard. The courts do not regard themselves as having any power to recognise Sealand (or anywhere else) as a sovereign power and I don't believe that they they claimed to do so.
Metallica MP3's and free speech
by
crontab
·
· Score: 1
Just to clarify, these suggestions are for a legally run napster serving only constituionally protected free speech, not metallica mp3s.
It is not easy to separate the two without monitoring the "free speech". If you must honor copyrights, then they must be an enforcement mechanism => free speech will be monitored => potential for abuse.
Being philosophically aligned with GNU myself, I think metallica (and others of the ilk) make too much of these copyright violations. They are perhaps concerned with the scenario where they will sell no CDs, and are trying to preempt that.
--
The real world is a special case.
Re:Metallica MP3's and free speech
by
aozilla
·
· Score: 2
What's wrong with monitoring the "free speech"? If it's posted on a public server, it's by definition public, anyone can monitor it.
Metallica is free to do whatever it pleases. You are free to not listen to their music if you don't want to follow their rules. If you think you have a better system, follow RMS's lead. Implement your better system, and use it.
-- ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
The Anarchist net faces reality
by
Jeremy+Erwin
·
· Score: 2
Sebastian Malaby has an a href="http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5 5529-2001Mar11.html">interesting Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post, in which he argues that the original anarchic fantasies of a Internet transcending national bounderies, is unrealistic because at some point, there is always a human involved, who ultimately is subject to national law.
I believe that Malaby may be misintepreting John Perry Barlow's Declaration of CyberSpace Independence
This declaration rests on the assumption that the Internet was (or could be) designed so that national bounderies would be irrelevant.
Malaby argues that certain steps can be mandated by various courts of law and legislatures that would reimpose traditional sovereignty on the electronic domain. He suggests that sales taxes, for instance, would not present much of a burden for electronic merchants, and recent steps taken by US auction sites to satisfy French concerns regarding Nazi related merchandise, are indicative of how easily the Internet can be renationalized.
Barlow's decalaration appeared in February of 1996
. In late August, 1996, Jaohan Helsingus closed down his anonymous remailing service because a court order (since reversed) compelled him to reveal the names of some of his clients.
Incidentally, the case was brought by Scientologists, alleging copyright infringement.
The extension of national sovreignity into cybersapce is technically possible. However, it is also technically possible to design a telecommunications system that uses a combination of encyrption and anonymity to limit national intrusions to a minimum.
At the same time, we must also actively resist and/or circumvent proposals to embed censorship into network hardware and software. (I have seen at least on mention of the possibility of mp3 rejecting routers (The Absolute Sound, Issue 128))
Re:where did you learn Canadian history?
by
kraig
·
· Score: 1
"which England conquered" I believe falls into the New France defeat. Nevertheless, I believe France had a North American presence up until Napoleon's defeat, although I could be wrong - I'm at work and don't have time to look up relevant references (which I notice you failed to include).
However, the relevant part of my original post still stands: originally being a French territory != follows French civil law as opposed to British. All of Canada, save for Quebec, does so; I don't recall Waterloo being located inside the borders of the Province of Quebec (since I work in Waterloo, I think I'd remember something about that).
Sealand needs to add a couple more of those sexy concrete cylinders to house the people conducting illegal business with their servers, freeing them from being prosecuted in their home country.
If they couldn't get permanent residents soon, they could advertise as a tourist destination. "Come to Sealand...it's just as good as Seaworld." Or they could rename themselves "EuroSeaworld!"
Ya know, what we really need...
by
BillyGoatThree
·
· Score: 2
...is Man or Wyoh to put a good word in with Mike. Then we can have "offshore" hosting in Luna Free State. Only problem is the time-delay. On the plus side, I'd love to see a big rock dropped on the RIAA... --
I think somewhere like Cuba would be perfect. It's a poor nation because of the continued mistreatment by the U.S. (why do we still have an embargo against them when the cold war ended years ago?) Because they are generally poor, they need money. They do not have financial ties to the U.S., so they can also ignore the laws and would probably do this just to spite the government. They just need to have a way to connect to the internet other than via the U.S. That is the real tricky part. However, I am sure that it could be overcome. Once the Cuban government run business opened up, companies would probably flock to it in order to do business out of the country. I know that it would be a little difficult for U.S. based businesses to do so, but I am sure they could find a way (perhaps opening a subsidary in the Netherlands, then having them do business with Cuba.) There's a lot of potential here, it would help Cuba recover from the poverty the U.S. has pushed onto them, and we would all benefit because we don't have to put up with stupid laws to brown nose corporations like the world seems to be full of these days.
How'z about launching a Napster server into orbit that communicates to a (mobile?) ground station? I think they have the money for that, at least for now.
One solution for him would be to offer some sort of payment form via some banner or advertising to record companies which I haven't seen on any article.
Please visit eFront.com to get your site hosted and use a banner ad payment system. Thatreallyworks!
Gnutella Sucks! Napster Rules!
by
fracus
·
· Score: 1
I hate to sound so juvenile, but when it comes to file sharing gnutella is not the awnser. It is horrible for sharing mp3z, although the porn is plentiful.
There may not be an immediate solution to this problem. However, OpenNap could be run by individuals who believe in Civil Disobediance, the one problem I see is keeping them all connected so that the user base would be in the thousands rather than tens or hundreds.
Instead of posting lists to Napster how about just dating our current offerings and forwarding to 10 best buddies via email. They can add their stuff, date it, and forward again.
"That corny film clip's been around the world 20 times, send me your list of tunes instead, here's mine."
That's what you get on Sealand for $15,000. After reading this and several other articles about it, it just looks like Sealand isn't for Napster. The bandwidth is WAY too low, and Sealand isn't setup for people with the kinds of legal problems Napster is having. It really looks like it caters to the other kind of legal problems... problems where you want your transactions themselves to remain entirely private and anonymous. And protected by a small army^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H heavily armed body guard.
The real solution for Napster, if they want to continue with doing busines... which despite the great idealism and the wonderful technological revolution they've helped to start, may not be the best idea in the world at this point... anyways... the REAL solution for Napster is to go Gnutella. You know, multiple anonymous servers, except for Napster, just rotate among them. Go underground in such a way that there is no legal entity who owns and manages the service. Just like with Gnutella clients, the company from which you download your client only sells the client, not the service. Napster needs to go the same way. My only problem is that I just don't see any way to do that...
-- I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
How hard would it be for an industrious youth (or some other hard-working individual) to produce a web application that would unassisted solict funds through a PayPal account into a Swiss bank to pay HavenCo etc. and then run it from a SeaLand server? At some point any business venture that had been established could be pre-programmed to be purchased and dissolved by the application. End result is a self propigating business without personal representation in any country that might be able to prosecute for IP infringement, and without a legal fiction anywhere to hang a lawsuit on.
It seems worthwhile to make a disclaimer here that, like anyone with a stake in IP laws, I have no interest in advocating their removal or circumvention. Not to say that I don't think that they are broken and need fixing - but that's a different thread.
I also wonder how clever such a device would have to be to survive. Consider that the legal device could be erected: the seed money gets to the right accounts to start the thing, and the responsibility there implied is repaid. Perhaps someone loans the money to someone they've never seen and who the agent then claims to be at repayment. Unlikely, but possible. Frankly, the legal hack isn't to much my cocern, only the result.
But now there is implied an interesting AI problem, and one that's not neccesarily insurmountable. The agent has a year to raise 15,000USD or it will be destroyed. And in order to this, it needs to flexible enough to invent or solicit suggestions for (and understand) new business models (or to refine its current one.) It'd also have to be rock solid rather than buckling when RIAA hires hackers to attack it. Maybe it could hire a network security officer to maintain its code. Man, there's a line - "So what do you do." "I maintain my boss' codebase and try to do damage control when corporate hackers attack it."
they get their Internet connection from somewhere.
Whether they've laid fiber-optic under the channel or they're using a two-way satellite transmission, they have to be connecting to somebody who's selling them the bandwidth. And that somebody is most likely located in a Berne Convention nation and/or a nation where the big five record companies do business. If they thought it necessary, the big five could sue to have the Internet connection to the Fairtunes OpenNap server blocked. They may not be able to get to the server, but they can ensure that nobody gets to it.
The author has most of the right points, but one thing he seems to have forgotten is that not all countries will abide by the rules especially those who have interests in simply going against others' thought process and what exactly constitutes free speech especially when dealing with American companies.
One solution for him would be to offer some sort of payment form via some banner or advertising to record companies which I haven't seen on any article. So far I've seen billion dollar promises which does little for the artist, and many record co's weren't keen on it anyway. Another method would be for him to stop specifically using Nap* to trade only MP3 based files. He could open the program up to all file sharing specs and turn a blind eye to what gets traded, this way he isn't targeted, etc.
Either way he doesn't have the money nor resources to go up against these guys and their lawyers will batter him. His intentions may seem noble to those who use the service, and free speech buffs, but he has to remember money talks, and money he doesn't have. coming soon
Well, the way I see it, if you take a metal bunker, put a flag in it, refuse to pay taxes, and fight off the police, the army, and whatever else the government you're declaring independence from throws at you when they come to get you, that bunker is fucking yours.
First of all, you're making assertions about me. It is possible for somebody entertain thought contrary to their own for the purpose of analysis (just ask a lawyer).
My post was to simply explain what "might" happen, that doesn't necessarily mean I agree with the sort of power governments can use to pressure people, but it does help to have a realistic view point. You might not like 50% of the things that your government does, you either choose to point them out... or you ignore them and hope it will all go away.
I don't particularly care who the platform belongs to, however I was simply making a case from the perspective of the British Government's, the government could still maintain the platform is part of the United Kingdom, they have certainly hinted in this direction a couple of times, so that's a fair hypothesize to point out.
I still maintain, if HeavenCo were involved with running servers for questionable businesses or persons, they could be seen as an accessory to crime, the same way the US doesn't like Libya because it took so long to hand over Lockerbie suspects, or the way the US doesn't like Afghanistan for harbouring Osla Bin Ladin, you could state that the majority of the Afghan people haven't done anything wrong.
The laws in the US come down squarely on the side of business, not the individual. For all of our bragging and chest-beating about our freedoms, we don't have squat that big business doesn't give us or permit us to have. We're all slaves over here, most of us just don't know it yet.
Fix the laws at home then, it's a sad state of affairs when you have to go running from the US to protect your freedom of speech, you would believe that in itself would make a lot of people think. I know that sounds easier said than done, however fixing the problem would be far easier than finding offshore solutions. Ask what's wrong with your own government if you cannot conduct a perfectly legal business without encountering privacy problems, then fix those problems, this is what democracy is all about (when it works properly).
But that's beside the point. What if you don't live in a "halfway decent" country? What if you live in China, or another country with a reputation of human rights violations for dissenters?
You appeal to a country that has a respect for human right rights and freedoms, the Chinese dissidents could simply look to the US for a server, they already do.
What if you are an oppressed group of Kurdish rebels who want to use groupware like Lotus Notes and Quickplace to collaborate about planning the downfall of Saddam Hussein.
The US already offers support for Iraqi dissident groups.
I still maintain, if HeavenCo was found harbouring records for illicit businesses then HeavenCo themselves could be held liable for being an accessory to those illicit operations, and yes the proprietors could get dragged into this situation, regardless of your offshore status. As the article states, your corporate immunity doesn't account for much in serious situations like that.
What really disgusts me the most about your post is your ignorant assertion that encryption and privacy is for criminals..
Not the case, I merely stated relevant agencies would be interested in the type of data travelling over those links, and despite attempts to encrypt the data they would find a way to read it, the same way they could decrypt my PGP enciphered emails if the really wanted.
It is logical to assert that certain agencies would be particularly interested in the operations of these services.
Short-term solution: Run your own "friends-and-acquaintances-only" OpenNAP Not every OpenNAP server is on Napigator. Although I don't know know anybody who's done this, I wouldn't be surprised if people are starting to set up servers and only announcing them by word-of-mouth to friends and acquaintances. This way, the RIAA will never hear about it. So you get a user base of only 20 instead of 2000, and you get a lot less songs, but you could still a decent amount of file-sharing. Not ideal, but okay for now.
Long-term solution: All clueless legislators die off and are replaced by tech-savvy, clueful legislators. This, of course, could take a while. Unless some of us decide to get, um, aggressive about pursuing such a solution.
Slashdot Mirror
eventually they will get tired of playing wack-a-mole
Yes, and that is the scary part. Notice that napster has to be especially wary of both contributory copyright infringement and vicarious copyright infringement.
The latter is the real stickler, because extra effort (aside from the current wack-a-mole strategy) must be expended to shield from this type of liability.
This means that napster would have to proactively monitor their network for infringing material.
The wack-a-mole system will end soon enough, but what replaces it will be much more constricting and may cause napster to abondon sharing and move entirely to their secure content system.
Its not where the data is, its the fact that if I download protected stuff, its still my responsibility. So I just delay the feds a little bit. I dont think Napster would do any good with this, as its just shifting the crap around. You'll run out of places soon enough.
So hastings is a liar. (or uses a very liberal meaning of "effectivly".) From what I've read, ALL the court said was that they were not under UK juristdiction at that time. While the Sealand tykes may want to pretend that thats the same thing as granting them sovereign nation status, there's no logical reason for anyone else to draw that conclusion. They probably would have said the same thing if he was living in a house boat out there. Lots of people are outside the juristdiction of lots of countries! It doesn't make them nations!
If Sealand does anything to truely piss off the UK, they will go and arrest the guy again, and they will take him to court again to revisit the issue of jurisdiction, and the UK court will take into account any changes in international law and territorial waters in the meantime in deciding if the UK now has jurisdiction over this individual. And if this guy starts ranting about the soverign nation of sealand and diplomatic imunity as the leader of a forgien nation, the barristers will just roll their eyes and quietly talk arround him, just like with the montana militia, just like with the "independant nation of texas" and just like with every other group of posers.
It all well and good to talk up this sort of "independant nation" story for fun and profit, but if they are dumb enough to believe their own propaganda, they are in for a rude awakening some day.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
The reason that Sealand is not recognised as independent is mainly because it lies within British territorial waters. once upon a time, it was outside; but european legislation changes (Sadly, I forget the date) extended the definition of territorial waters to 12 miles offshore. Sealand's proponents seems to have developed a blind spot for that unfortunate fact.
What about sea horses :)
It seems that the point of the article is that Matt is a Canadian who will incorporate in Canada. So, why can't he incorporate somewhere else where his identity will protected? Can he do this in Sealand?
It sounds like you got your PhD from 'the Mask of Zorro' with Anthony Hopkins and Antionio Banderas. You can take my pride, but you will never get my silly Arts degree. Z.
Huh ?
You mean bunch of Cubans with guns would be harder to deal with than entire Iraq army ?
Pope is everything and consequently everything starts and ends with him. ...
Something like that
1) Have the payments sent directly from the users to Sealand or to a Swiss bank account via credit card, Paypal, or whatever.
2) There are, what, 50 million Napster users? Go to a fee-based model; $1 for a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP would keep the service running for decades if only 1/50th of current Napster users paid in the first year. You could even set up a trust fund at that point, and pay Sealand out of the interest.
3) DON'T GIVE OUT YOUR FRIGGEN NAME AS THE PERSON WHO IS ORGANIZING THIS. (Duh!)
Actually you have to have at least one(1) cow to be a nation under the UN regulations. (See sec17.4.78 of the UN designation rule book) Greenland currently spends >260,000 GreenDollars every year to keeps thier cow alive and defrosted.
http://www.havenco.com/products_and_services/index .html
They say you can get up to 1mbps bandwidth if you want it. Although that probably won't be enough.
Anybody know how much bandwidth napster's servers use?
-ted
In the UK (or nearby) there was a period when the seas were crowded with pirate radio stations. One of these, Radio 390, was based on the seafort now known as Sealand.
This period ended in 1967 (dear God, is it that long ago?) with the Marine Offences Act, which made it illegal to supply/advertise on the pirates.
DC http://www.strum.co.uk
A corporation won't even get as far as the author suggests. "Piercing the corporate veil" wipes out the corporation for all purposes, leaving the individual liable for everything. If he followed corporate procedures properly, that would not likely be a concern here. The problem, though, is that working on behalf of a corporation does *not* shiled you from liability for your own actions. Instead, the corporation is *also* liable. in the typical case, employees are not worth suing, and only the corporation is targeted. Here, though, it would be the torts committed by the individial that *are* the focus, and he would still be tartgeted without any additional defense.
- The file is shared.
- The record companies find it.
- The record companies have to certify that they own copyright on it.
- Napster must then attempt to stop sharing it.
This leaves an awful lot of wiggle room. Must the record company certify each iteration of the file, as identified by napsters checksumming algorithm? (I forget the details, but there is one.) If so, I can foul it up by adding three bytes of static to the end of the file and post it. The CRC is the only way that this can work, because as many have pointed out it is easy to misspell titles etc. Furthermore, live recordings are not necessarily under RIAA copyright and many artists *like* Napster. However, even the CRC can be subverted. How long will it take to come up with a napster client that automagically changes the CRC every time it advertises a file?The point? All is not yet lost. The record companies do not have infinite resources (even if it does seem that way), and eventually they will get tired of playing wack-a-mole. I really think they are just trying to buy some time until they can come up with a post-Internet business model. By now, they've figured out that any copy protection can be broken, any law can be subverted, and that, as they currently stand, they will be about as useful as a chocolate covered wrist-watch in ten years. The Napster thing is at best a pyrrhic victory, and they know it. In the past, copyright infringement required a manufacturing facility to make a dubbing tape deck, a betamax, or whatever. Now it does not -- it's all in software -- so there's no fixed target they can go after.
If you really care about this (I don't) just make sure there are many, many moles to whack. Use OpenNap. Start an OpenNap server. Write that napster client that munges titles and crc's. Come up with something like Napster over IRC. Make all the clients advertise by logging into an IRC channel, chosen by a random protocol daily, then doing DCC connection to each other.
There are many, many ways around this that the RIAA will never be able to stop. So stop fretting.
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
Have the client broadcast its existance on mbone every few minutes. Other clients could then detect and query the clients at will. Thus far the RIAA has been hesitant about going after the users themselves which is why Napster was such a nice juicy target. It kept them from having to sue the 50 some odd million people using the service.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think somewhere like Cuba would be perfect. It's a poor nation because of the continued mistreatment by the U.S. ...
Cuba is poor mostly because Castro & Co. think that free markets are a bad idea. Whether or not they realize that free markets are more efficient than command economies is arguable. The embargo may have a large effect if you first subtract that whole "communism" bit...
Randall.On a visible but distant shore, a new image of man;
Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Well, the OECD (including the US) has threatened most of the world's tax havens with economic sanctions (including cutting off their food supply) by 2005 if they don't implement less competitive tax regimes and relax their bank secrecy laws.
Apparently having low corporate taxes now qualifies you as being a terrorist state.
Such threatened states include the Cook Islands and St.Kitts-Nevis, along with 30 or so others, all large, scary nations. Not.
In other words, I don't think the US is all that concerned about looking like a bully when it comes to protecting it's economic interests.
sending this information to the RevCan would ensure that Matt has to declare income or deal with tax evasion charges.
if you're looking for a non-berne treaty country, try china. there behaviour recently doesn't indicate any regard for copyright.
Regards Sinesurfer A Nerd is someone who lives for technology, A Geek is someone who lives for technology and loves it
They were pirates for the same reason that killing someone in international waters is still murder. The definition of the crime has to do with the location of the crime, not the location of the criminal. Location of the criminal is only taken into account when trying to punish the criminal.
Considering how the FCC has ben subject to US corporate radio/media payola for almost as long as radios have existed? Considering how much crap they force people to go through in order to get licenses? Considering how alternative radio (eg: public, college, or community) stations have been repeatedly squashed by the same FCC, paid to outlaw and derail such stations by the aforementioned corporate radio/media conglomorates?
You'd be amazed at what any federal organization would do if you crossed their palms with sufficient silver...
And you thought that the phone company being the biggest organization of evil in 'The President's Analyst' was just a clever joke...;)
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
HavenCo is the hosting corporation. Sealand is the country where HavenCo's first facility is located. HavenCo is not Sealand. HavenCo's web site states that they plan to set up facilities in other locations around the world, which is probably a good idea in the event of the entirity of Sealand is swallowed by a tidal wave. Read what you just quoted. "does not allow content illegal in a given country to be hosted on servers at HavenCo facilities within that specific country." That means that content illegal at Sealand can't be hosted at the HavenCo location in Sealand. Which part of "HavenCo facilities within that specific country" is unclear? HavenCo has no facilities in Canada, so they'd place no restrictions based on Canadian law.
The court ruled against Napster (the company) not against OpenNap (people running servers).
Also I don't know any way - except for reconfiguring your router/firewall - to get Napsters official client to point to OpenNap servers.
- In Memoriam: Jeroen de Bruin (1972-2004), bye bro
Ask your average Cuban about their government and they will tell you that they support it.
Yeah, it's getting closer to the point where US citizens will have to say stuff like that, too.
Randall.On a visible but distant shore, a new image of man;
Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Napster has been accused of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, not direct copyright infringement. Contributory infringement because their service clearly contributes to the users infringement. Vicarious because Napster have the right and ability to supervise the service and a direct financial interest in the infringing activities. More detail can be found in this excellent article from EFF, which was mentioned in a Slashdot story a week or so ago. As far as it applies to Napster the court ruled that the contributory infringement law means that if notified by the copyright owner Napster must take reasonable steps to block further distribution of the material.
I actually looked into moving to the Cayman Islands. It's very nice there, plus that whole no-income-taxes thing makes it kind of nice.. Too bad the whole island group only has a 3 Mbps link to the net. 128k ISDN costs over $2k a month. Maybe someday..
--
PaxTech
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
The idea of whether it is right or wrong is IRRELEVANT. Technology dictates morality in digital commodities such as music. Furthermore, the idea of "theft" is a relative one which changes from culture to culture and from time to time. In the late 20th century, a few major labels determined what is sold as music. Soon, in the 21st century, music will be NOT be distributed by the few, but by the masses -- and it will be FREE. Musicians will be making money some other way. The Record Labels will be obsolete.
Taiwan would never do such a thing...They rely too much on the American economy (import/export) and the blanket of American defense to even begin to feel like pissing them off.
WIRED carried a story on Sealand last year. I can't find my magazine here about it, but pulled a quote off of their site:
Hastings says that because a 1968 British court decision effectively recognized the basketball court-sized island as a sovereign nation called Sealand, HavenCo can provide more privacy and legal protections then anyone else on the planet.
Don't you know that most things in the world are decided on paper? Although the continued existence of Sealand being an independent country is shaky, as the British government figure out what to do...Sealand IS and has been a "Country" since 1966 or '68. They claimed independence back then, and were granted it.
The "horse clause" hasn't been invoked yet. They are still independent.
Rader
How much clout do you think the German government has? How much money do you think the German intelligence service has? Unlimited when it comes to Nazis. So why dispite all this is "Radio Wolfschanze", run by a few skinhead ape men still operating? All the Germans have to do according to that logic is pass a few Petrograd Cops a few hundred D-marks under the table and basta.... that Russian ISP's office gets trashed.
Fact is there is plenty of sites in Russia includig ones that would make the DVD mafia go green that havent been touched for months. Even if local officials could be bribed these sites just migrate somewhere else. What would be required is to bribe a minister to go after these sites. In view of the fact that Russian tax-collectors move in armoured vehicles and do their collecting dressed in combat gear I think the Russians have bigger fish to fry than nailing a few copiright violators to enrich bloated western record companies.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
... and it's very good and very effective.
You sell only to people you know (or friends of friends, a la "this guy's cool, I can vouch for him") and buy only from same.
Yes, people get busted, but only at huge law enforcement expense. Prolly not worth it for a few hundred or a thousand "pirated" CDs.
I wholeheartedly recommend fhwang's proposed model as the proper mechanism for civil disobedience in this case.
Part of the Second American Revolution!
So lets suppose we get a horse, and stick it on Sealand? Does that make it a country?
"But, the problem is problematic..."
Boy, how I hate those problematic problems. They're the worst.
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
If the idea is to the allow the distribution of copyrighted material, it's just addressing the leagal issues and avoiding the question of wheather it's right or wrong.
I don't much care about Napster, at least not for downloading music. However the question is do we want Napster to exist, if so the best course of action would be to cease buying music from the big 5 record companies until their own bloated weight forced them into extinction, at which point a better music distribution system would evolve in their place. Although I don't think Napster is that better system.
EdwardV
Approximately 20-25 years ago, someone attempted to run a pirate radio station on a rebuilt cargo ship... They were broadcasting just off of Long Island NY, in international waters, whilst claiming to be under another country's citezenry...
The attempt failed, when the country denied any knowledge of their citizenship, and promptly the US Coast Guard zipped in and shut down the radio station...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Correct. We rate-limit individual servers to 256kbps at present, to ensure everyone gets fair access to bandwidth. We upgrade individual servers to 1mbps for an additional fee. We have 50Mbps of low latency bandwidth, and pretty much arbitrary amounts of VSAT 600-1000ms bandwidth, at the present time.
We can get enough bandwidth to do 100mbps for individual servers, but it's like 30-90 day leadtime. We're working on enhancing the overall bandwidth situation, and will upgrade servers automatically when more bandwidth is available.
Our competition is places in the third world where a T1 with 95% reliability will cost you USD 30k/month or more, though, and have like 60ms latency to any real internet center, so even with our current situation, USD 1500 for colo and 256kbps bandwidwidth is pretty competitive.
mod this up
From the article, "If that person were living in a country that was not a party to The Berne Convention or a member of the WTO/WIPO (and these countries are getting hard to find), countries subject to such treaties still have ways of putting economic pressure on non-treaty countries. Is it possible to hide absolutely? Sure, people manage to do it. But it's very, very hard."
Wait a second; are they saying that the US would put economic sanctions on a country because one citizen of that country is doing something illegal, and because corporations in the US don't like that? If so, why hasn't the US put sanctions on China for all the piracy that supposedly goes on there? Against a big country, you have the threat of retaliation, either economically or militarily, and against smaller countries you look like a bully.
Another thing that seems odd to me: "HavenCo has set up a business of running high-security servers on Sealand, and for $15,000.00 US you get a years' worth of service, attached to the rest of the world with a 256kbps (1/6 the maximum speed of a DSL line) connection." 256kbps isn't enough to run a server on a decently sized IRC network, I fail to see how this has a chance in hell of running a (the?) Napster server.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
and they dont need to prove that. The RIAA needs to prove that it is happening. And a list of file names means jack shit. Having a cardboard box labeled nuclear weapons doesn't mean there really are nuclear weapons in there ;)
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
if i were a record company exec with millions of dollars at risk then i would consider sending Matt CAD110,000 one day before the end of the financial year. sending this information to the RevCan would ensure that Matt has to declare income or deal with tax evasion charges.
That's an interesting idea, but if the record company throws cash or a cheque for $110,000 at Matt, he's not obliged to accept it, receive it, or cash it. It's not income if he doesn't accept it. The record company can lie and tell Revenue Canada that "Matt accepted it", but unless he really did and there is a cashed cheque or bank transaction to prove it, then their claim is going to be shot down. No transaction took place.
Going to the press right away with his grand plan was probably the wrong idea - obviously charges can still be brought against him as long as he controls the main server, regardless of its physical location.
The promising prospect of running a Napster like service from Sealand is that they have said (IIRC) that they will protect the identity of their customers - so with enough care it should be possible for somebody to run a service like Napster from there without being in the public eye or corporate crosshairs. The problem is of course that of funding the operation, since taking payments anonymously is a hard problem in todays world (one could sell account passwords through underground channels - though that is certainly a much more risky enterprise).
The best model today would probably be if some rich philantropist was willing to fund the service until a good way of making money off it emerges. If anybody is serious about that, feel free to contact me and I will gladly help draft designs for file-sharing networks that minimize the load on the central server (just having a central point makes life easier - most of the work can then be farmed out). My public key is in my user info.
// Oskar Sandberg (The Freenet Project)
Well, for the sake of argument, though, note that when Sealand did declare it's independence, it was, at that time, outside of British territorial waters.
/.
The United States can't just announce one day that's it's extending its waters and now gets Cuba.
In fact,there is at least one case decided before the British courts that did uphold the independence of Sealand.
For more information look up some of the previous stories about HavenCo and Sealand on
--
Ian Peters
last year, my college (good sized technical institute) firewalled napster, due to bandwidth restrictions. So some people set up an opennap server inside the network, only accessible to people inside the network. At any given time you'd get a good 200-300 people on it, all with a good sized library, and all connections were fast. It worked great. The only reason it still isn't running is that the college more than tripled its bandwidth and allowed access again. Personally, i wish it were still there.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Until this guy ceases putting an acronym for "F*** the Pope" at the end of his posts, please stop giving him Karma. It's kind of ironic if you do...
Long-term solution: All clueless legislators die off and are replaced by tech-savvy, clueful legislators. This, of course, could take a while. Unless some of us decide to get, um, aggressive about pursuing such a solution.
Who says that 'tech-savvy' legislators will still allow copyright whores? Just be careful what you wish for. Think its bad now with these 'clueless' legislators, wait till you get some in there that actually have ideas of their own on how to regulate P2P networks.....
I once thought of making fun of this nonsense by re-establishing the Roman Empire. I mean, Romulus Augustulus wasn't properly deposed, don't you know! Alas, somebody with no sense of humor beat me to it.
Let's get real. It doesn't matter how good your legal theories are (and most of them are pretty awful). Pseudo-entities like Sealand exist in a fantasy world. They can operate only because nobody can be bothered to disestablish them. The very nanonsecond they piss off an established authority, in come the cops and marines, and everybody's looking for a new job. As such, they are absolutely the worst place to put a data haven.
__________________
The article implies that the benefits do not outweigh the uncertainty and hefty cost. No offense, but anyone who pays HavenCo 15k a month + their outrageous setup fee and policy, is stupid and does not deserve the money they spend for the standard (and in some cases sub-standard) services HavenCo supposedly provides.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
"Most companies incorporate in Delaware"? You actually believe that over 50% of U.S. corporations are incorporated in Delaware? If you look up the actual numbers, I think you'll be surprised. Most companies that incorporate do so in their home state.
Remember the old homily that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link? You can set up your server on Sealand, become a Sealand citizen, take up permanent residency on Sealand, and the weak link remains the same. It only takes one addition to the ACLs (access control lists) in the router at the other end of your Internet connection to block your server. A couple of minutes' work in England (or whomever HavenCo buys connectivity from), and you're shut off.
You'll still be operating, and still be sovereign, but it won't do you much good if nobody other than Sealand residents can access your system!
>Are you saying that a country can gain territory >from another by expanding its borders?
Well, ehm.. One way or another, purchasing or using the tank method, that pretty much sums it up!
I may get flamed but I have to say this. Why is everyone so worried about losing Napster as a service. Its not once Napster closes down, it will destroy all the music in the world. You can still go to your local record shop and buy your favorite CD. What's wrong with that except it won't come free and you will support an artist.
Why? Since when does his opinion on the Pope have anything to do with the quality, and hence (at least, in theory :), the mod level of his posts?
There isn't any horses at any of the poles is there?, but there are no barnicles either. Sealand has barnicles!, and lots of fish in its territory, and other various sea creatures, its not called Land Land is it, its called SeaLand, why have Horses on "SEAland" ??"!?!!"£?"}@
So thats why the guy has FTP in his sig. Thanks; I just assumed he was big on promoting the use of the File Transfer Protocol rather than mindlessly sending people large files through email, which is a serious bandwidth killer.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Yeah, but that argument is thin....
You provide a criminal with available guns that are used in a crime, you are aiding and abbeting that crime.
Don't get me wrong, I dig Napster, but lets be realistic, they are guilty as sin.
So, it seems to me that there is a large risk in these circumstances that the corporate structure wouldn't insulate the individual from civil liability.
But then again, I'm not sure why this is relevant. Civil liability is the least of this person's worries. Since he is under the jurisdiction of a Canadian court, the court could just ORDER him to shut down the server, which after the RIAA make a preliminary showing, it just might be willing to do. Failure to follow that order would put him in contempt of court. The good thing, from the court's view, of a civil contempt order is that the judge gets to put you in a cell until you comply with the order.
Also, there are criminal provisions in the U.S. copyright act. (I don't know about Canada.) No corporate veil will help you here if you are the person actually performing the act on behalf of the corporation.
The Washington Post editorial states that InfoSplit can determine the geographical location of computers accessing the Internet. (So it was indeed claimed during the Yahoo trial, but never confirmed.)
But in the case of AOL users, all of them seem to be located in Virginia. Does this mean that Virginia law (UCITA, etc.) applies to everybody? And then there are the various anonymizer services (which don't get around some censorship problem that Jeremy raises, such as files that have bits set so they don't pass through routers.)
I agree we ought to oppose censorship, whether it comes from governments, or, more likely, big media corporations such as AOL/Time Warner. An OpenNapster server at Havenco would be a good trial and I think it deserves our support.
This is remote for two reasons: Sealand itself probably wants to avoid doing anything thats outright illegal. Sure, they store data, and maybe that data is suspicious, but they can claim ignorance of it. It's all encrypted ones and zeroes to them. Once they offer a service that violates the law of some country their "see no evil, here no evil and speak no evil" act disappears. It may not be contrary to Sealands laws, but its contrary to other countries laws. This increases the chances of them being blown out of the water.
The second reason is that even if they threw caution to the wind, is Sealand really suitable for this? They've got a 256K connection, how saturated would it be? They'd effectively apply their own slashdot effect against themselves. Their other business interests would not be able to connect (the ones who actually pay the bills).
I think the only real solution is civil disobedience, but be prepared and willing to take your lumps if they come. Do your best to minimize this though. Don't take funds, don't run a site with banner adds and don't engage in any form of barter. Make sure that YOU DO NOT BENEFIT IN ANY WAY FROM SHARING FILES, in fact MAKE SURE THAT IN TOTAL YOU CAN SAY THAT IT COSTS YOU.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Thats like saying that chop shops are legal, since they may be trading in auto parts that they actually own.
Get a clue about the law.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
It's more like saying Larry Wall is ignorant of S/370 assembler.
While Hillary Clinton is a Sentor, she did not write the Civil Rights act of 1964.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Not Taiwan. They do way too much trade with us and you can bet if they disregarded our IP laws like that there would be sanctions. Of course there are plenty of fake Rolex's and the like being made there, but if they do make it to American shores, it is black market. By opening a Napster type service it would be a direct business, and the recording industry and our government would get their shorts in a bunch. Better to be some country we don't really trade greatly with anyway. China like you said. Or Russia.
Using Sealand is a useful and viable way to ensure privacy, but is not designed with something like Napster in mind. They have to buy bandwidth from either companies willing to run fiber to their location (guaranteed to be from a EC nation), or satellite links to a satellite in range of what their dishes can see (also pretty much guaranteed to be, at the very least, a WIPO nation). The purpose of Havenco appears to be more oriented towards activities that are legal but require high security.
By virtually all standards, Napster _is_ illegal as it stands (I'm not stating that this is right or wrong by saying that - my own opinion doesn't count here), and therefor not suitable to run at Havenco.
Where OpenNap servers _could_ be run, though, is in some of the countries that already have limited or nonexistent copyright enforcement mechanisms - China and Russia come to mind immediatly as nations where piracy is winked at (and in China, piracy is managed by the government). If someone wanted to make an arrangement in one of those countries, it would be a great deal easier to protect and run a Napster clone. If the country where the company and server are located isn't a WIPO nation, then RIAA enforcement becomes an order of magnitude more difficult. Sealand's legal status is shaky enough to make it a poor choice.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
However, faced with a US ultimatum of "shut down Sealand or we're sending our marines in" the UK would shut it down pronto - we could never support aggressive military actions within our own waters, and the diplomatic embarrassment of sinking an old WWII fort is nothing compared to that of sinking a US aircraft carrier.
~Cederic
Amen!
Let's admit it, there's no other reason why HeavenCo exists, the free speech argument seems pretty fickle, since you would be protected in the US or any half decent country anyway.
Hahahahahaha! *wipes tears from eyes* You don't live in the US, do you?
Yeah... it was outside out the territorial waters, however the platform actually belong to the British Ministry Of Defence, so it was property of the British Government... and they could argue that it still is, since they have never formally relinquished sovereignty.
If I'm not mistaken, they did "relinquish the platform" "to the seas," which is why he was able to lay claim to it to begin with and why it's held up in court.
If they really wanted to go to town, they could prevent HeavenCo from trading anywhere in the western world if they proved they're an accessory to organised crime, copyright infringement etc. Let's admit it, there's no other reason why HeavenCo exists, the free speech argument seems pretty fickle, since you would be protected in the US or any half decent country anyway.
You're kidding, right? I do live in the US and I can tell you, the "protections" offered are practically a sham to begin with. But then it becomes doubly so when you choose to exercise free speech by saying something about the government or big business (look at Scientology for an example). The laws in the US come down squarely on the side of business, not the individual. For all of our bragging and chest-beating about our freedoms, we don't have squat that big business doesn't give us or permit us to have. We're all slaves over here, most of us just don't know it yet.
But that's beside the point. What if you don't live in a "halfway decent" country? What if you live in China, or another country with a reputation of human rights violations for dissenters? What if you live somewhere that doesn't believe in free speech? What if you are an oppressed group of Kurdish rebels who want to use groupware like Lotus Notes and Quickplace to collaborate about planning the downfall of Saddam Hussein? OK, that's a funny picture, but the theory is right anyway. HavenCo seems like a reasonable option to me.
I think the owners of HeavenCo live in the US, the government could also pressure them for running illicit businesses.
And now you've already made the jump in logic from, "nobody needs privacy except criminals" (which is in itself flawed as all hell) to, "HavenCo is an illicit business." Frankly, I don't see how you can even begin to make the case that HavenCo is running an illicit business when they are providing a secure, private, CoLo service. There are companies here in the US that do the same thing. The only difference is that the laws of Sealand protect HavenCo from the abuses of the US Legal system. It's like incorporating your business in the state of Delaware because their laws are much more business friendly, even though your business is located in California.
What really disgusts me the most about your post is your ignorant assertion that encryption and privacy is for criminals. We all have a right to privacy. We all have a right to enforce that privacy via encryption, or a lock on our front door, or window blinds.
I could just as easily claim that because you (presumably) keep your front door locked when you aren't home that you are hiding something "illicit" inside. Maybe you have a meth lab in your basement. I dunno that, but it's obvious that you're hiding something.
What's that you say? You're merely trying to keep intruders out? You don't want someone to walk into your home while you're gone and steal your computer and TV equipment? Oh, well that's OK then. Just like it's OK for companies and individual to use secure methods to protect their company's data from intrusion or thievery.
The point keeps being made that the weak link in this chain is that the centralized server is operated as a business, that some sort of financial transaction is being made resulting in money flowing to the operator of the server.
How about these scenarios:
Scenario 1:
Some wealthy individual interested in upholding the constitutional provisions of fair use puts enough capital in an interest-bearing account (yes, in Switzerland or the Caymans) to pay the bill for Sealand or to pay for hosting in a number of places and/or rotate the service to new countries as it gets knocked down by the various legal systems. Or before it gets knocked down - staying one step ahead.
This would take the money issue out of it entirely. Is there any legal standing by the RIAA to knock this (these) server(s) down since no profit is being made and no money is transferred anywhere other than to the hosting service(s) as gift from a wealthy benefactor?
Scenario 2 (less likely):
Sealand decides to host the service out of the good of their hearts as a gift to the community. Again, no profit is made, no money changes hands at all. And the individual responsible for the hosting doesn't live in a country vulnerable to US law or trade pressures. Ok, this one forces the issue of the sovreignty of Sealand, and an argument could be made that hosting this service could be considered advertising for their other services.
Anyway, I'd like to hear what the legal issues are surrounding this. Any legal folks want to weigh in?
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
"Unacceptable publications include, but are not limited to:
/etc. of other countries. Thus makeing the whole thing less than realistic in the first place
1.Material that is ruled unlawful in the jurisdiction of the originating server (Such as child pornography in the case of our flagship Sealand datacenter). HavenCo fully complies with content restrictions on a jurisdiction by jurisdiction basis, and does not allow content illegal in a given country to be hosted on servers at HavenCo facilities within that specific country." http://www.havenco.com/legal/aup.html, HavenCo Ltd.; 1 January 2001 (quoted today, March 12, 2k+1)
This seems to me to say that they will abide by copywright laws
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
Who has broken the law? Taco, the server owner or me?
That would be you and Taco. That much is obvious. The server owner may have broken the law, and that's not so clear-cut.
Imagine that you start some community service. Let's say that 99% of your patrons turn out to be using your service to break the law. What's your moral obligation? Well, if you know about it, your moral obligation is to either stop the service, or fix it up so it's more legal. What's your legal obligation? Well, if you know about it, you may be guilty of a vicarious offense. You have to either stop the service, or fix it up.
Now, if the server owner in your hypothetical example can't help but know that 99% of his patrons use his services for illegal transactions, he may very well be guilty of vicarious infringement, and it would be his moral and legal duty to stop the service or fix it up.
Funny how the law follows morality sometimes, isn't it?
Really, I don't see where this Napster thing is so difficult. There's a reason that we can't own bazookas in the U.S. - you can be 99% sure that somebody who buys one will not be using it legally. Napster is the same way, in my opinion. Now, if they opened up to file formats like JPEG, GIF, DOC, etc., they'd be in a much better position. As it is, they can't help but know that the majority of their traffic is illegal.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
The reason Taiwan has such a small pipe is because all Net connections go through a government data center for security reasons - a justifiable degree of paranoia considering that mainland China is anxious to invade, execute the current government leaders, and harvest their organs for transplants.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I'm sorry, I can't divulge information about that customers secret, illegal account.
Oh crap! I shouldn't have told him he was a customer!
Oh Crap! I shouldn't have told him it was a secret!
OH CRAP! I certainly shouldn't have told him it was illegal!
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
What if Matt were to set up some sort of offshore fund, where money went straight to the service provider, and not to Matt. Matt never sees a check, thus doesn't ever have to incorporate, claim incomes, or anything else releated to the Fund. I know people do this all the time for collecting money for individuals who may need special surgery and such. The fund doesn't have to be claimed on anyones taxes I beleive, since no one but the hospital manages the fund.
Civil law in Canada depends on whether you're in Quebec or not. Technically, most of Eastern Canada was a French territory, which England conquered or was ceded after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. As far as that goes, I believe the author of the article is correct, as was the poster who pointed out that if enough of a fuss was made, Britain would quite likely make moves to "reintegrate" Sealand. (Incidentally, if my grade 8 Social Studies and Grade 11 Law classes are recalled correctly, generally Canadian civil courts follow US precedence, if there's no prior Canadian or British precedent.)
OMG, this is infact the first justification I have ever heard in the defense of Delaware.
take that Wayne and Garth!
BRAVO!
I agree almost with what you say. Basically, the near future is not so bleak as people would think.
... the big companies will eventually make it illegal or technically difficult to copy/time-shift our recordings. However, as has been stated multiple times here ... if you can _hear it_ you can _record it_ and nothing can really stop that.
People have been trading illegal bits (pirated software, digitized music and video, whatever) for a long time. They will still do so, just perhaps not with the ease of Napster. The reason Napster got the attention it did was because of its scope. If you use Aimster, or opennap, or IRC channels, or usenet, or whatever, and trade with a small group of friends/strangers -- nobody is going to notice. File trading on IRC is not going to make the cover of Time. And by extension with that old "7 Degrees of Kevin Bacon" you'll eventually be able to track down all the music you want, by friends-of-friends-of-friends, etc.... Just not instantly.
If something like Napster (huge, open) exists, and is somehow (boggling the mind) regulated to only trade legal bits, that's even better. It gives you the ability to find the lesser-known music you might otherwise not get, stuff that people are distributing through these methods intentionally, bootleg live performances that the artist has allowed to be distributed, etc.
Now, the distant future may be more bleak. Through bullying of the legal system, bullying of the standards, etc
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
"Let's say that 99% of your patrons turn out to be using your service to break the law. What's your moral obligation? Well, if you know about it, your moral obligation is to either stop the service, or fix it up so it's more legal."
No. That's only the case if the law being broken happens to be right. Illegal != immoral. There is significant overlap, but the two are not the same.
If 99% of your patrons are using your service to hurt someone, then you have a moral obligation to do something about it. In this case, what you do depends on whether or not you happen to believe trading mp3s hurts anyone. That's not nearly as clear, either way.
Why? What possible purpose could violence serve? If you disagree with the citizens of Sealand, please tell us why.
Lastly, there's one more important thing to understand about Sealand: they get their Internet connection from somewhere. Whether they've laid fiber-optic under the channel or they're using a two-way satellite transmission, they have to be connecting to somebody who's selling them the bandwidth. And that somebody is most likely located in a Berne Convention nation and/or a nation where the big five record companies do business. If they thought it necessary, the big five could sue to have the Internet connection to the Fairtunes OpenNap server blocked. They may not be able to get to the server, but they can ensure that nobody gets to it.
The original purpose of the internet (Well ARPANET) was for a distributed communications system. Sealand destroys that aim with just one connection.
What Nap wants is multiple connections which hit most of the major backbones and can be accessed by a plethora (WOW! Check that word out!) of routes. SeaLand is a waste of bloody time. I say CHINA!
They're well hard with ICBMs to boot! Lets see the US get their sticky fingers into China!
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
Leslie Grantham sure looks uglyer on the French version...
He could piss off American political interests and become a hero to American youth. Who needs biological weapons when you have file-sharing?
Move it to Africa, and use the profits to employee natives into factories to build robotic war machines. Once you have a military power, it'd be a pain to get you out. Wait screw Napster, just get a bunch of natives to help build robotic war machines of mass destruction.
God spoke to me
Personally, I've used Napster not to "steal" albums but instead to see what some of it sounds like before buying the album. Maybe I'm a freak for doing so, but to my mind that's what Napster is about - it's the same as going to your mate's house to listen to music, hearing something new that you like, and going out to buy the album because of it.
Yes, I've also used it to find some stuff that I simply can't get hold of anywhere within the world of retail etc., but that's the reasons I use Napster.
And finally, yes, I would be prepared to pay a subscription to Napster to keep the service going. So would most of the people I talk to.
<infantile>So ner ne ner ner.</infantile>
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
You know, multiple anonymous servers, except for Napster, just rotate among them. Go underground in such a way that there is no legal entity who owns and manages the service.
Except that this is the problem that people have complained about the centralized Napster model. There has to be at minimum a list of napster servers to connect to. Sure, you don't have to maintain this list but then you don't know which one to connect to. Without a large number of people connecting to a server, the selection of things to download sucks, and nobody uses it and you're back to the selection of things that your circle of friends has and we're back to taping 12" LPs onto tape again.
Yes, he overstated himself. However, more than half the fortune 500 companies are incorporated in Delaware. About a third of the companies listed on the major domestic stock exchanges (NYSE, American, etc) are also incorporated in Delaware. Also, remember that many corporations are essentially mom-and-pop type stores, not major corporations. In other words, it's not totally unreasonable to say that most large companies prefer to be located in Delaware if they can afford to and where it makes sense. The corporates taxes (or rather, lack thereof) and the well established body of business law are a very large consideration.
That said, this whole Sealand argument is silly on its face. It simply wouldn't work. Corporate veil or no, the United States, or any other major nation, is not going to allow any other nation, but especially a little questionable entity such as Sealand, to flaunt blatant violation of its laws over the internet. It wouldn't even require a storming of the platform. Rather the same outcome could be had by any number of methods. I.e., by simply getting their uplinks to cut off their connection.
My take (and IANAL, yadda yadda): depends on how much security was placed on the system. If Taco knowingly made the file available for download, he broke the law, and if the server owner could plausibly be shown to have known that the MP3 was there, he did too. Furthermore, it's easy to tell who uploaded what, and when, because of system auditing. You broke the law because in a file copy, there are two parties involved. The only way you might get off is if you received the file at no instigation of your own (mass mailing, etc). On the other hand, if you cracked system security to do get the music, and the system operator didn't want you to, then you definitely broke the law and they /may/ have (because of negligence, under the banner of vicarious infringement).
P2P solutions remove all the auditing about who uploaded what, and when, and even to where. All you can say is that someone, somewhere has broken the law by uploading this copyrighted content that's plainly available, but you don't know who, when, or where. The law has clearly been broken; the difference is that it's no longer auditable. In order to prosecute, you need a suspect.
The real dangerous issue is that with P2P networks, /everyone/ is a potential suspect. If you run a P2P server, you may be guilty of vicarious infringement, since it's obvious that illegally copied works will be passing through your system, even if you don't know exactly what they are. In fact, under some systems you have no way of excluding them. That's their defense, that you have no control, and that's also gonna be the charge in the lawsuits.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
The CBC has it archived in RealAudio form (sorry, I haven't tried it, I'm between classes) on this page. Just scroll down to the Feb 18th show. There's also a bunch of listener mail and an archived discussion board.
(IANAL)
Just thought I'd add a point to this discussion. While it's all very sexy to have a napster server on the outlaw military installation of sealand there is a much better alternative.
Host it in Canada.
That right, under canadian copyright law's fair use section Napster like uses of copyrighted materials are legal. While as I said, IANAL, I was listening to a radio show on the CBC called Cross Country Checkup on Feb 18 and the subject was Should Napster be shut down?. If you follow the link you'll see that Michael Geist, Assistant Prof. of Law at U of Ottawa was one of the guests. According to him our copyright laws have no provision in them saying that napster like uses of copyrighted materials are illegal, as long as nobody profits from such transactions.
So while running a napster server out of some outlaw state is pretty cool, Canada makes a much better alternative. It has good bandwidth, good living conditions and you can't be shut down. If this sounds too good to be true, than contact Mr. Geist through his webpage.
"Sex on TV is bad. You might fall off." - Monty Python
The only problem might be that its sole internet connection to the outside world is a 2MBit pipe.
Wow!! And there have been so many lucky multi-national corporations there that have 128kbps+ links back to US offices. That's some pretty nifty pipe!!
If you don't get my drift, I doubt there's anything to stop the NeoNapster group from getting more bandwidth into the country (as far as I can see)... I doubt that they are the correct location, as I'm sure they do have _some_ copyright laws.
Here's how:
Free/open source supporters believe that information wants to be free. Better, has to be free. Most GPLs only ask that you keep the credit for the work in the source files, but you don't really have to. Nobody strips the artist and title tags off thier MP3's. In a lot of people's opinions, this is the same thing. The artist gets the credit for their work. Just like a GPL. There is no inconsistency, there is, in fact great consistency.The 0's and 1's that are computer code, graphics, movies, and yes, music aren't owned by anyone. Sequences of 0's and 1's aren't owned by anyone, even if they add up to Dr Dre's latest hit. The same is true of open source software(if you excuse the transition from binary to ascii). I don't see how you would think that is hipocracy, that is perfectly congrouous.
The problem with any lawless place like these is corruption. If officials can be bribed, then the guy with the most money to hand over to the officials wins. Now, how much money do you think the record companies have?
One viagra in the morning before work; I just know I'm gonna be screwed
Uh... remind me why my answer to Q1 is even relevant? It only matters what the courts decide. And have you ever heard of conspiracy>
Your favorite
Power transmission limits? Band assignment? Doesn't matter to XETRA. THey beam a million watts right at LA from Tijuana. FCC is powerless in Mexico.
I mean, couldn't a Web page be put up anonymously (someplace like Russia) and an anonymous e-gold or similar account be established to accept donations to pay its bills?
Need a place to stash your cash in a place Uncle Sam cannot find? The CIHC would be glad to help you as well as extend a generous interest rate.
Sure, you may have to renounce your citizenship and live on some far-away island with no family or friends. But hey, it worked for Marc Rich. Off-shore auction site sells human organs, children
"Long-term solution: All clueless legislators die off and are replaced by tech-savvy, clueful legislators"
Since your replacement legislators would be completely ignorant of the law, they would actually be the clueless people.
Napster is cool, but trying to argue that it is legal is a losing argument.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Let's say Taco has an MP3 of "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica, called nem.mp3. He ripped the MP3 from a CD he owns and uploads it to some server inside the US. I (also in the US) download it.
Question 1: Who has broken the law? Taco, the server owner or me? The RIAA has gone after the server owner, but that's largely pragmatics (not to mention PR).
Now let's imagine a mythical, ideal offshore server location. Call it Luna (see my other post). Let's say Taco has an MP3 of "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica, called nem.mp3. He ripped the MP3 from a CD he owns and uploads it to Luna. I (also in the US) download it.
Now the RIAA is unable (hypothetically) to get the server owner, right? Taco does a "magic upload" and I do a "magic download". But if your answer to Q1 was either "Taco" or "Me" (or both) then answer this question:
Question 2: How is the mythical, Luna server with the "magic" ul/dl any different than a strictly peer-to-peer, decentralized system that has NO server where Taco just sends the file right to me?
My contention is that it's not. Instead of figuring out where to PUT the server, we should be figuring out how to ELIMINATE the server. This would especially be the case if your answer to Q1 was "the server"--because then the system would even be legal. Bonus!
--
324006
1) Find a country which does not like the united states, is too big and powerful to simply blow away, is not easily bullied.
2)Place server there.
Here are some suggestions for you.
Isreal is not easily bullied ans a sacred cow no politician would dare even critisize them let alone attempt to nuke them. They might be pressured politicaly but they are stubborn as hell.
China would love to tweak the US and for all practical purposes are immune to anything kind of pressure that US or the corps can throw at them.
Most of south america has nothing to lose really.
India and Pakistan have to be dealt with lightly so they can easily host something like this.
Of course there is always russia they need money in a bad way.
Even some former republics like khazakstan have lots of oil and nukes (left over from russia) that we want to go away.
Maybe some arab countries like saudi arabia or egypt would be good candidates.
Maybe turkey or greece but they could be pressured politically. Both are pretty stradegic though.
Anyway you get the picture. Anybody can kill a dozen people and call it a day and corporations wouln't even flinch. Declaring war on China on the other hand would scare shit out of anybody.
War is necrophilia.
If we put 10% of the effort into the development of tools to write music (decent sequencers, synths, and software that rivals commercial packages) we'd be somewhere. But why doesn't this happen? Because writing good software and good music is difficult!
The people who know what they want out of the software and the people who write it are often in two seperate camps, and we never get commercial-quality code out of open source projects (at least in the GUI/client space). Only recently has the open source movement (if you can call a loosely affiliated pile of people a movement) has realized that they need production quality code to survive.
I don't only mean high-quality utilities and servers (don't worry, we have tons of that.) What I think the community has to focus on now is clients and high-quality software for users. Not enough work has been made in that space, and it's about time we start looking at what we can do beyond Linux and Emacs. ;)
You're missing the point entirely.
If you don't like proprietary software, you should let the market know by using Free Software.
If you don't like proprietary music, you should go download and patronize the hordes of artists making their music available online for free.
GNU has nothing to do with figuring out ways to 'share' proprietary software without being caught. By using Windows and and listening to proprietary music, you're the one restricting your own freedom.
But it wasn't in BRITISH TERRITORIAL WATERS when it declared independence. Are you saying that a country can gain territory from another by expanding its borders?
You don't think 2 million people broke into Napster's servers, under their noses?
Napster Admin: Our OC48 is full!? How can that be?
You ever see one of those weekend flee market places on the side of the highway? I'm sure the organizers weren't going to each vendor and saying: "Make sure you don't sell guns & drugs" *wink* *wink*. If the place DID turn out to be a hotbed of drugs & arms sales, the organizers would definately get in trouble.
Remember, the police never broke into Napster HQ and said "FREEZE! The RIAA says you're under arrest". Napster has been told that illegal copyright infringment has been happening via their service for quite some time, many many many times, and even I don't think Napster tried to prove otherwise. At the least, there is no way they can claim ignorance of what has been going on.
Rader
..., isn't the US, or anyone else, free to do whatever they want out there, without the need for any jurisdiction?
Dozens of the things. The "prince" rides them around the platform almost every day.
OTOH, there are no horses in Antarctica.
1st Law Of Networking: Loose ends are bad, termination is good.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
I genuinally don't understand the empathy shown to 'music sharers' from people who claim to be supporters of Free Software.
Music sharing is analogous to software piracy. It seems clear to me that musical artists, much like program authors, have the right to license their works however they see fit. You shouldn't say, "I don't like their license, so I'm going to steal their product. The correct action is to not listen to their music.
Richard Stallman didn't start a crusade to pirate proprietary operating systems; he simply said that he wouldn't use them. There are a lot of artists out there who are providing their music for free...patronize them.
I guess my question then is: how do the free/open source supporters who support music piracy reconcile this apparent ethical inconsistency.
I'm afraid you misquote history. According to Sealand's homepage, the day before the UK extended it's territorial waters, Sealand extended there's as well. Not to mention the fact, that, according to international law/treaties/customs, you cannot claim another country just by extending your waters. I believe the only accepted way to claim another country is to invade it.
Hmmm...sounds a lot like Vietnam.
First off, Sealand might do this Pro Bono, just to get some publicity.
Second, for a few hundred dollars, Matt can incorporate in one of the islands.
If he set up a bank account there he couldn't be touched in Canada.
I also doubt that the islands have such stricht copyright laws as US/Canada.
Huh ?
You mean bunch of Cubans with guns would be harder to deal with than entire Iraq army ?
Conquering and holding Cuba would be far harder than liberating Kuwait was, if that's what you mean.
Thanks for pointing out the obvious.
There's also a question as to whether 256kb/s is enough bandwidth, or if the server will be overwhelmed.
I think a far better bet for Napster would be Taiwan or some other such similar country. Taiwan is well known for the total lack of copyright control within its borders, and is much more powerful than Sealand. Although still a pygmy in international terms, it is unlikely to be challenged or compromised over an issue such as Napster.
The only problem might be that its sole internet connection to the outside world is a 2MBit pipe. Hopefully the government of Taiwan will correct this soon - strange to think my office has a bigger Internet pipe that the entire nation of Taiwan.
I think that Napster type companies could well have a future in the far east. Perhaps China itself would be a good bet - good infrastructure these days, and a government unlikely to be influenced by the DMCA or US government. I wish they would consider these radical alternatives.
--
Yeah... it was outside out the territorial waters, however the platform actually belong to the British Ministry Of Defence, so it was property of the British Government... and they could argue that it still is, since they have never formally relinquished sovereignty.
Just because somebody came along and said "I declare this independent" is not enough, try doing that in the middle of WestMinster, you wont be acknowledged by many people.
Of course, this is all arbitrary anyway, they could just pressure the ISP to stop providing the land microwave/satellite/radio/fibre link.
If they really wanted to go to town, they could prevent HeavenCo from trading anywhere in the western world if they proved they're an accessory to organised crime, copyright infringement etc. Let's admit it, there's no other reason why HeavenCo exists, the free speech argument seems pretty fickle, since you would be protected in the US or any half decent country anyway.
I think the owners of HeavenCo live in the US, the government could also pressure them for running illicit businesses.
At the moment, nobody appears to be bothered to Sealand, however I'm sure many governments are looking into how do deal with this 'problem' behind the scenes, at a recent G8 summit last year there was an item on the agenda on how to tackle international 'data heavens'.
I'm sure the NSA guys at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire (England) are very interested in HeavenCo's com links, what's the point of having a data heaven if all the information is being also feed straight into an intelligence agency? Fair enough they're using an encrypted link, however I wouldn't like to pit a puny 256K link against the powers that be, whatever strength of crypto being used.
The agencies would actually be pleased about this because they know the data going over the line has a good chance of being illicit, however say the same data was travelling over a standard US-UK backbone, it would basically be undetectable on the public net because of the sheer amount of traffic.
Infact just by using the HeavenCo service you're slapping a massive "look at me" label on your back... and as the crypto article pointed out yesterday, criminals just want to blend into the crowd, having your data pass through to an offshore server really makes you stand out from the either.
I wonder how HeavenCo processes its money? If money is basically being laundered into your account from some dodgy business outfit, that also raises some eyebrows.
Well, good luck to them, but I really don't fancy their chances, stuff like this has been around for years, however none of them have managed to escape the grasp of government control. And with SeaLand just being a stones throw off the English coast, I really don't like their chances.
Examples I read about this back when Napster was first under fire (day one? :) was the argument: I'm an owner of a rundown, out of the way warehouse. Each friday night I open it up so that drug dealers and arms dealers can trade/buy/sell.
Although I won't get busted for selling drugs myself, I do get busted for racketeering.
Rader
Just like with Gnutella clients, the company from which you download your client only sells the client, not the service
The problem of contributory infringement is still there, the same violation of copyright law that is probably going to hang Napster. Even though you only sell, or give away, a client you can still be held liable for any infringement your users commit becuase the 'substantial non-infringing uses' defense has been weakened so much recently.
The distribution of the client would no doubt materially contribute to whatever infringement the users were doing. It would be pretty difficult to hide behind any non-infringing use argument. It would be an enjoyable case to argue though.
Except that this is the problem that people have complained about the centralized Napster model. There has to be at minimum a list of napster servers to connect to.
That's why you don't host the Napster servers on Sealand, you host the dynamic list of napster server ip addresses on Sealand. When one gets shut down, you start up a new one. Put sealand at the top of the pyramid, tree out from there. Keep everything except sealand consumer based and not-for-profit and there's no way in hell to shut it down without shutting down sealand. P2P always needs *some* centralization to work, but very little is actually necessary.
Just to clarify, these suggestions are for a legally run napster serving only constituionally protected free speech, not metallica mp3s.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
They have a similar problem, since they are
illegal in most states.
The US governemnt has gone after the principals.
They either stop business or emigrate under indictment.
How about Russa or one of its (ex)republics? They do not seem to be subject to any international law and if they are they could care less. The German government has been trying to shut down Russian (Petrograd) based Neo Nazi sites like "Radio Wolfschanze" for ages without success. So if Neonazi scumbags can get away with it why not a Napster style site.
With the central website safe the record companies would either have to find a way to get at the tens of thousands of endusers. Or try to get the Russian officials to do something about the situation and the Russians can be very frustrating to deal with.
Of course downloading copyrighted music is still stealing someones work, be it in Sealand, Russia or anywhere else. No matter how much you try to paint it pink!
Just a thougt!
Da Rabbit!
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I work in my schools computer lab doing the menial tasks like helping students with the formatting of their papers and telling people just what power the key has. My most asked help, though, is aiding students in converting Mp3 files to CDA so they can burn the music they just downloaded and play it on their CD players and stereos. I do my best to tell them that they should probably save themselves a lot of time and trouble and just buy the damn album. The usual response is, "But this is what Napster's for!" Hmmm... Is it really?
Am I one of the seemingly very few that uses Napster in a responsible way? Do people think the RIAA would have had a problem with Napster if users were getting a few songs from an artist or band that they heard of to see if they were really something worth buying (radio really doesn't cut it.)? I use Napster regularly, without any sign of conscience. Why? Because I get songs that I either own already or songs by artists that I'm planning on buying. I must say that more times than not, I'm happy with what I heard and a do make the purchase, while on the other hand, I've been thwarted by the music that I heard (Wait, that's it, the RIAA is worried they're going to lose money because of all the tired meaningless pop they're putting out! Sorry.).
I have to say that when (If is out of the question by now isn't it?) the free fun stops, all in all, it would have been brought upon by the very users that are screaming that their "freedom" is being taken away, so what good will an off-shore Napster server really do? People will still abuse it. People will still act like vultures and try to worm not their way around a system (College kids :o) but around a pocketbook.
"From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
Is change the RIAA's Focus..
:(
If they couldn't go after sealand, or Matt Goyer
Well then they'd just go after individual users..
They have the resources to send out scores of Cease and Desist letters...
Enough to torpedo any sort of business based server..
Well, duh......
Just think about offshore gambling, and offshore drug trading, and offshore oil, and off shore tax havens, and offshore... damn... if i wanted to avoid drug laws then I would setup (buy) my own island and produce drugs. Same goes for napster. The only fear that you would have is the wrath of the US navy because the US navy is owned by the filthy rich, who also own all the IP technologies and rights to songs/music.
Get a grip on reality and come down from your glass tower to the real world with all of us theives and prostitutes.
Does it go on forever?
By the time the "tech-savvy" generation enters government in numbers, they will look just as silly and obsolete to the twenty-somethings of the day as the current people in government look to us now.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Maybe everyone should go out and actually buy the copyright protected music from online stores or retail, wholesale outlets. Nobody gets in trouble, you aren't stealing it, and you'll have something round or square to keep around the house. Is this too much to ask?
"No, You're Right. Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right, But Three Will."
Sure, as long as that land is still unclaimed. Only problem: nowadays every single square inch of charted land is claimed by some nation or other. Your only hope is to find a yet unknown island somewhere remote in the Pacific, or whereever.
All they have to do is do a search on a metallica song, download them, play them, and voila! They have proof.
Maybe I misunderstood you, but Napster isn't just a cardboard box that says "illegal files".
Rader
Funny!
>Unless some of us decide to get, um, aggressive about pursuing such a solution.
Not funny.
Test 1 2 3 4
- It's bandwidth intensive - It costs a ton of bandwidth for a search, and actual downloading is usually hobbled to 20Kbps, with the default client settings
- User connectivity - it just doesn't have the number of users Napster has. Even if it did, with a TTL of 5 and only so many outgoing connections, you still can't reach a huge number of users. At home, I bump up the outgoing connections to 50, but then I choke all my bandwidth with the connections.
Of course, there are two big problems with Napster too...- File types - Why must I trade only mp3's? I'd like to be able to trade videos, text documents, alternative audio formats, even software (if I had a reasonable virus scanner)
- Legal issues - duh.
So, what I really want to see is a combination of the two initiatives. Napster like connectivity with Gnutella's file sharing and lack of legal issues (so far)I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Mum, The country that cuba used to connected to the Internet would be pressured into disconnecting Cuba or maybe that Country would be disconnected from the internet. You know there's Funny story I once heard don't know if it's true but it goes some what like this:
Someone was trying to break into the four computers running the Internet at that time. So, they track the guy down to some Spanish university. They call the university and tell them to find out who it is. They say that they are not going to looking for him. So, america just disconnects the whole of Europe. calls Spain and tells them these. 30 min. later they call back and say they caught the guy.
I don't know about Canadian law (I suspect it depends on whether the provice was originally a British or French territory way back in the day), but in the United States courts are extremely hesitant to pierce the corporate veil, and avoid doing it as much as possible. Because most companies incorporate in Delaware, where there is a rich body of business law, Delaware is generally the one here in the US that manages these decisions. If you look back through the ages, the number of times the veil was actually pierced compared to the number of times corporations were taken to court is minute. So, while I'd agree with the general thought process of the article, I think it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" She chortled in her joy.
The washington post article is available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A555 29-2001Mar11.html
Another step that might be taken would be to move the money collection mechanism offshore -- say, to a Swiss bank account. This wouldn't work, as one must still declare one's offshore holdings to RevCan (Matt's equivalent of the USA's IRS). Declaring this income would be evidence of doing business. Simply not declaring it would be problematic as well, as one would then be subject to tax evasion charges.
IAAC (I am a Canadian.) Yes, offshore holdings must be declared in Canada. But only if those holdings exceed CAN$100,000. Here is a recent clarification from Revenue Canada, and the original policy is here. Canadians must still declare all foreign income, just not all foreign holdings (such as a USD$65,000 off-shore bank account). So Matt can transfer the contents of that account over to HavenCo when it hits the USD$15,000 level each year to cover his bill. Such a bank account would not need to be declared to Revenue Canada. This may help him stay under the radar and keep evidence against him to a minimum. But the question remains... can he get money into that account via some clever foreign transfer that doesn't constitue income and therefore does not need to be declared? IANATL (I am not a tax lawyer).
If someone were to anonymously run a gnap server on Sealand, then who could the Big Five go after??
Republic of Ganjastan Homepage
Napster is perfectly legal. It's basically just a search engine. Napster can also be used in law-obeying manner, ie. for swapping non-copyrighted MP3 files.
and they will take him to court again to revisit the issue of jurisdiction, and the UK court will take into account any changes in international law and territorial waters in the meantime in deciding if the UK now has jurisdiction over this individual.
More than that, if the UK Government was categorically claiming jurisdiction over Sealand then the UK courts would recognise it. I've no idea how things work in other countries, but in the UK the crown has the power to set borders, negotitate treaties, recognise (or not) foreign governments, and so on. The courts will accept whatever the government says in this regard. The courts do not regard themselves as having any power to recognise Sealand (or anywhere else) as a sovereign power and I don't believe that they they claimed to do so.
It is not easy to separate the two without monitoring the "free speech". If you must honor copyrights, then they must be an enforcement mechanism => free speech will be monitored => potential for abuse.
Being philosophically aligned with GNU myself, I think metallica (and others of the ilk) make too much of these copyright violations. They are perhaps concerned with the scenario where they will sell no CDs, and are trying to preempt that.
The real world is a special case.
I believe that Malaby may be misintepreting John Perry Barlow's Declaration of CyberSpace Independence This declaration rests on the assumption that the Internet was (or could be) designed so that national bounderies would be irrelevant.
Malaby argues that certain steps can be mandated by various courts of law and legislatures that would reimpose traditional sovereignty on the electronic domain. He suggests that sales taxes, for instance, would not present much of a burden for electronic merchants, and recent steps taken by US auction sites to satisfy French concerns regarding Nazi related merchandise, are indicative of how easily the Internet can be renationalized.
Barlow's decalaration appeared in February of 1996 . In late August, 1996, Jaohan Helsingus closed down his anonymous remailing service because a court order (since reversed) compelled him to reveal the names of some of his clients. Incidentally, the case was brought by Scientologists, alleging copyright infringement.
The extension of national sovreignity into cybersapce is technically possible. However, it is also technically possible to design a telecommunications system that uses a combination of encyrption and anonymity to limit national intrusions to a minimum.
At the same time, we must also actively resist and/or circumvent proposals to embed censorship into network hardware and software. (I have seen at least on mention of the possibility of mp3 rejecting routers (The Absolute Sound, Issue 128))
"which England conquered" I believe falls into the New France defeat. Nevertheless, I believe France had a North American presence up until Napoleon's defeat, although I could be wrong - I'm at work and don't have time to look up relevant references (which I notice you failed to include).
However, the relevant part of my original post still stands: originally being a French territory != follows French civil law as opposed to British. All of Canada, save for Quebec, does so; I don't recall Waterloo being located inside the borders of the Province of Quebec (since I work in Waterloo, I think I'd remember something about that).
Sealand needs to add a couple more of those sexy concrete cylinders to house the people conducting illegal business with their servers, freeing them from being prosecuted in their home country.
If they couldn't get permanent residents soon, they could advertise as a tourist destination. "Come to Sealand...it's just as good as Seaworld." Or they could rename themselves "EuroSeaworld!"
...is Man or Wyoh to put a good word in with Mike. Then we can have "offshore" hosting in Luna Free State. Only problem is the time-delay. On the plus side, I'd love to see a big rock dropped on the RIAA...
--
324006
I think somewhere like Cuba would be perfect. It's a poor nation because of the continued mistreatment by the U.S. (why do we still have an embargo against them when the cold war ended years ago?) Because they are generally poor, they need money. They do not have financial ties to the U.S., so they can also ignore the laws and would probably do this just to spite the government. They just need to have a way to connect to the internet other than via the U.S. That is the real tricky part. However, I am sure that it could be overcome. Once the Cuban government run business opened up, companies would probably flock to it in order to do business out of the country. I know that it would be a little difficult for U.S. based businesses to do so, but I am sure they could find a way (perhaps opening a subsidary in the Netherlands, then having them do business with Cuba.) There's a lot of potential here, it would help Cuba recover from the poverty the U.S. has pushed onto them, and we would all benefit because we don't have to put up with stupid laws to brown nose corporations like the world seems to be full of these days.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
How'z about launching a Napster server into orbit that communicates to a (mobile?) ground station? I think they have the money for that, at least for now.
"You can't play with my yo-yo"
Please visit eFront.com to get your site hosted and use a banner ad payment system. That really works!
I hate to sound so juvenile, but when it comes to file sharing gnutella is not the awnser. It is horrible for sharing mp3z, although the porn is plentiful.
There may not be an immediate solution to this problem. However, OpenNap could be run by individuals who believe in Civil Disobediance, the one problem I see is keeping them all connected so that the user base would be in the thousands rather than tens or hundreds.
I am the root bridge.
Instead of posting lists to Napster how about just dating our current offerings and forwarding to 10 best buddies via email. They can add their stuff, date it, and forward again.
"That corny film clip's been around the world 20 times, send me your list of tunes instead, here's mine."
Reasons why not?
format test
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
The real solution for Napster, if they want to continue with doing busines... which despite the great idealism and the wonderful technological revolution they've helped to start, may not be the best idea in the world at this point... anyways... the REAL solution for Napster is to go Gnutella. You know, multiple anonymous servers, except for Napster, just rotate among them. Go underground in such a way that there is no legal entity who owns and manages the service. Just like with Gnutella clients, the company from which you download your client only sells the client, not the service. Napster needs to go the same way. My only problem is that I just don't see any way to do that...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
It seems worthwhile to make a disclaimer here that, like anyone with a stake in IP laws, I have no interest in advocating their removal or circumvention. Not to say that I don't think that they are broken and need fixing - but that's a different thread.
I also wonder how clever such a device would have to be to survive. Consider that the legal device could be erected: the seed money gets to the right accounts to start the thing, and the responsibility there implied is repaid. Perhaps someone loans the money to someone they've never seen and who the agent then claims to be at repayment. Unlikely, but possible. Frankly, the legal hack isn't to much my cocern, only the result.
But now there is implied an interesting AI problem, and one that's not neccesarily insurmountable. The agent has a year to raise 15,000USD or it will be destroyed. And in order to this, it needs to flexible enough to invent or solicit suggestions for (and understand) new business models (or to refine its current one.) It'd also have to be rock solid rather than buckling when RIAA hires hackers to attack it. Maybe it could hire a network security officer to maintain its code. Man, there's a line - "So what do you do." "I maintain my boss' codebase and try to do damage control when corporate hackers attack it."
Ushers will eat latecomers.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
they get their Internet connection from somewhere. Whether they've laid fiber-optic under the channel or they're using a two-way satellite transmission, they have to be connecting to somebody who's selling them the bandwidth. And that somebody is most likely located in a Berne Convention nation and/or a nation where the big five record companies do business. If they thought it necessary, the big five could sue to have the Internet connection to the Fairtunes OpenNap server blocked. They may not be able to get to the server, but they can ensure that nobody gets to it. The author has most of the right points, but one thing he seems to have forgotten is that not all countries will abide by the rules especially those who have interests in simply going against others' thought process and what exactly constitutes free speech especially when dealing with American companies.
One solution for him would be to offer some sort of payment form via some banner or advertising to record companies which I haven't seen on any article. So far I've seen billion dollar promises which does little for the artist, and many record co's weren't keen on it anyway. Another method would be for him to stop specifically using Nap* to trade only MP3 based files. He could open the program up to all file sharing specs and turn a blind eye to what gets traded, this way he isn't targeted, etc.
Either way he doesn't have the money nor resources to go up against these guys and their lawyers will batter him. His intentions may seem noble to those who use the service, and free speech buffs, but he has to remember money talks, and money he doesn't have.
coming soon
360 degrees of Karma
Well, the way I see it, if you take a metal bunker, put a flag in it, refuse to pay taxes, and fight off the police, the army, and whatever else the government you're declaring independence from throws at you when they come to get you, that bunker is fucking yours.
First of all, you're making assertions about me. It is possible for somebody entertain thought contrary to their own for the purpose of analysis (just ask a lawyer).
My post was to simply explain what "might" happen, that doesn't necessarily mean I agree with the sort of power governments can use to pressure people, but it does help to have a realistic view point. You might not like 50% of the things that your government does, you either choose to point them out... or you ignore them and hope it will all go away.
I don't particularly care who the platform belongs to, however I was simply making a case from the perspective of the British Government's, the government could still maintain the platform is part of the United Kingdom, they have certainly hinted in this direction a couple of times, so that's a fair hypothesize to point out.
I still maintain, if HeavenCo were involved with running servers for questionable businesses or persons, they could be seen as an accessory to crime, the same way the US doesn't like Libya because it took so long to hand over Lockerbie suspects, or the way the US doesn't like Afghanistan for harbouring Osla Bin Ladin, you could state that the majority of the Afghan people haven't done anything wrong.
The laws in the US come down squarely on the side of business, not the individual. For all of our bragging and chest-beating about our freedoms, we don't have squat that big business doesn't give us or permit us to have. We're all slaves over here, most of us just don't know it yet.
Fix the laws at home then, it's a sad state of affairs when you have to go running from the US to protect your freedom of speech, you would believe that in itself would make a lot of people think. I know that sounds easier said than done, however fixing the problem would be far easier than finding offshore solutions. Ask what's wrong with your own government if you cannot conduct a perfectly legal business without encountering privacy problems, then fix those problems, this is what democracy is all about (when it works properly).
But that's beside the point. What if you don't live in a "halfway decent" country? What if you live in China, or another country with a reputation of human rights violations for dissenters?
You appeal to a country that has a respect for human right rights and freedoms, the Chinese dissidents could simply look to the US for a server, they already do.
What if you are an oppressed group of Kurdish rebels who want to use groupware like Lotus Notes and Quickplace to collaborate about planning the downfall of Saddam Hussein.
The US already offers support for Iraqi dissident groups.
I still maintain, if HeavenCo was found harbouring records for illicit businesses then HeavenCo themselves could be held liable for being an accessory to those illicit operations, and yes the proprietors could get dragged into this situation, regardless of your offshore status. As the article states, your corporate immunity doesn't account for much in serious situations like that.
What really disgusts me the most about your post is your ignorant assertion that encryption and privacy is for criminals..
Not the case, I merely stated relevant agencies would be interested in the type of data travelling over those links, and despite attempts to encrypt the data they would find a way to read it, the same way they could decrypt my PGP enciphered emails if the really wanted.
It is logical to assert that certain agencies would be particularly interested in the operations of these services.
Not every OpenNAP server is on Napigator. Although I don't know know anybody who's done this, I wouldn't be surprised if people are starting to set up servers and only announcing them by word-of-mouth to friends and acquaintances. This way, the RIAA will never hear about it. So you get a user base of only 20 instead of 2000, and you get a lot less songs, but you could still a decent amount of file-sharing. Not ideal, but okay for now.
Long-term solution: All clueless legislators die off and are replaced by tech-savvy, clueful legislators.
This, of course, could take a while. Unless some of us decide to get, um, aggressive about pursuing such a solution.
Do domain names matter?