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."
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.
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.
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: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.
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
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...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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
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...
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.
"But, the problem is problematic..."
Boy, how I hate those problematic problems. They're the worst.
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
--
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).
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?