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RIAA to DoS Pirates?
_Chainsaw sent an article running at ZD that talks about the RIAAs latest plan to stop pirates: " We'll smother song swappers " is the quote, but it basically amounts to a Denial of Service. Way to go guys! Brilliant strategy!
... does that mean I can respond with a Smurf attack? I mean, they started it...
...hilarity will surly ensue.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Wouldn't that qualify as a terrorist act now?
"Even when I say nothing it's a beautiful use of negative space."
- Indelible, "Fire In Which You Burn"
"Even when I say nothing it's a beautiful use of negative space." - Indelible, "Fire In Which You Burn"
That the RIAA see their own interests as being more important than the civil liberties of their *customers*. Should this vigilante BS be responded to in kind?
I think we need to keep a very close eye on the RIAA right now. We (/. users) have the same capabilities as the US govt because of our large distributed nature. I advocate the foundation of a group to watch the RIAA. Email me if you think it's a good idea.
Oh, and check out the RIAA-watching stuff already on http://www.cryptome.org.
Mattcelt out
"And we would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those lousy k1dd13z!"
This will work about as well as if the 'pirates' decided to circumvent copy protection by singing the desired songs themselves.
Amazing magic tricks
I'm glad to see internet battles being fought on internet terms. Technological problems need technological solutions (ie, MAPS RBL but NOT spam legislation). Now, it's up to you to decide whether file sharing / piracy is a "problem", but if they do try this, then it's likely that we will see improved technology to deal with it (freenet?).
Bring it on, I say!
Doesn't sound like a typical DoS attack. From the article it looks more like the RIAA would have machines set up to look for copyrighted material and make repeated download requests, then download very very slowly to keep servers with connection limits filled up. How hard would it be to require a minimum transfer rate -- that is, for the servers that do not already offer such a setting -- and then code in a setting to allow banning of IPs that engage in suspect behaviour consistently.
The scarier RIAA attempt IMO is their attempt to make themselves exempt from liability if they damage a system while looking for copyright. The wording alone allowing for immunity to any prosecution provided that the break-in was by a copyright holder (in the article) appears so utterly vague as to be used as a carte blanche for anyone to break into a system (Honestly, your honor, I was trying to make sure that they weren't pirating a Star Trek TNG Fanfic that I wrote nine years ago!). What's scarier is the quotes suggesting that not only have they considered it legal in the past, but they have already been engaging in such activity.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
before users figure out the IP's of the RIAA's smothering servers and firewall connections from those machines to /dev/null?
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
And Usenet will immediately be filled with posts of RIAA IP addresses to filter..
Yeah that's a Good Idea(tm). Bring the pirate music industry closer together, then raise prices for the rest of us.
Well duh. It's not a move to combat piracy, it's an excuse to claim 'more pirated works exist than we thought..', and ensure prices stay high, or go up.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
First they want to be a hacker with no recourse.
Now they want to be a "script kiddie".
What's next, they'll want to be an MSCE?
If this doesn't prove a mentality of being above the laws of "regular people," I have no idea what does.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
Just when did anyone vote for the RIAA?
I wasn't aware that they had dictatorial powers over the Internet. This seems highly illegal, and should be stopped immediately.
I guess it's time to step up and hurt them where it counts. Boycott the music industry.
This is either a) bogus or b) an example of the fascist thinking going on at the RIAA. Somebody really needs to explain the principles of fair use to those people, or maybe we should just stop buying music altogether.
All Ad hominem replies happily ignored as the sender shall be deemed to lack the faculties to comprehend the equation.
OR, they can simply DoS the swappers. Unfortunately for them, they are relying on TCP, so they need to disclose their source addresses for the attack to work. And if they do that, we traders can make a database listing all of their IP addresses (kind of like MAPS/ORBS) and block their asses. We will find ways to thwart this approach and we will continue trading.
So, in a nutshell, I am very pleased with their latest strategy. I haven't been so gleeful since they announced copy-protected CDs (which also have done little to discourage swapping).
-CT
If I as an individual decided to write a client for a distributed system such as Gnutella that took an innordinate amount of bandwidth from users it connected to it'd be considered a bad or malicious client, but not illegal.
All the RIAA is asking for here is to play on the same level as us. I have difficulty counting the number of times I've read posts following an RIAA announcement saying "We'll just crack/hack this/that until their systems can't handle it," and yet the assembled masses get all self righteous as soon as the RIAA suggests they be allowed to do the same.
I liken this struggle to the one surrounding the hacked satellite cards. The legality of hacking those cards has been accepted, so the company fights on a technological level. I find this completely acceptable, and perhaps the best/right reaction to a sitation such as this.
I think we should encourage the RIAA to try to slow down file trading systems, and save the real fight for when they try to pollute our laws with amendments that will affect us far more comprehensively than the availability of the latest Spears track.
So who do you think can do a better job of DoS? The RIAA or a bunch of 31337 5kr1p7 k1dd135? Not that I condone DoS attacks (*ahem*slashdoteffect*ahem*), but it seems like a terribly stupid battle front for the RIAA to choose.
If you want the best marksmen in the world dead, why would you challenge him to a pistol duel of all things?
-Ted
It would be more devious to make a site look like it's swapping music, then let the RIAA do your DoSsing for you.
the RIAA talks on and on about 'fighting piracy', etc, etc. they think the way to fight privacy is to break CD standards with 'security' measures, and issue DOS against users suspected in trafficking their 'property'.
my suggestion is that these two strategies have never worked, and will never work, so maybe, just MAYBE they should try something new, something that has a chance to work.
let me explain.
they should look at the reasons piracy exists and see what they can do about them. (1) CDs are too expensive, (2) CDs are usually one or two good songs mixed with a lot of crap, and (3) downloading a song is SOOO much easier than fighting traffic to and from some shopping mall or waiting 3-5 days for shipping.
(1) CDs are too expensive. LOWER THE PRICE OF CDs. Why does it cost 15 bucks for a burnt piece of plastic, which is debatably more valuable than a 50 cent blank piece of plastic? Bring the price down to 9.99 and a large chunk of piracy goes away.
(2) CDs are usually one or two good songs mixed with a lot of crap. I don't really know what to do about this one. How about stop manufacturing boy bands and nurture the real artists out there?
(3) downloading a song is SOOO much easier than fighting traffic to and from some shopping mall or waiting 3-5 days for shipping. Either build great new perfect highways between everyone's house and the mall, or build a store next to everyone's house, or perhaps (please) provide individual songs for download at a VERY reasonable price in a format i can use (a) on my computer, (b) in my RIO, (c) burned to a CD for my car.
Fix it, or watch your empires crumble. You can't fight piracy with technology.
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
First off, its not a normal denial of service, they're not swamping you with connection attempts and consuming all your bandwidth. What they're doing is downloading your file, repeatedly, very slowly. This is actually fine, and not at all questionable ethically in my mind. Its not going to work however. How long until the various file sharing software products implement blacklists? All you'd need is for somebody to set up a database of IP addresses to block. If they do the denial of service attack from corporate WAN then it'll be easy. If they lease IP addresses from the internet service providers it'll be a bit more tedious but still easily defeatable. Regexps are your friend.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
How do you figure?
If the RIAA tries to DOS me, they'll be DOS-ing my ISP (a baby bell.)
If the RIAA tries to DOS some college student, they'll be DOS-ing that college.
Likewise, the RIAA is connected to the internet via some ISP, and I don't know of a single ISP that doesn't have a rule/contract clause/etc. against launching DOS attacks (or other forms of network abuse.)
Even if directed at a single IP#, the attack is still interfering with the normal operation of that network to which that IP# belongs.
Apparentally no one told the RIAA that two wrongs do not make a right.
Going by a democratic system, that's two sayings for the Nays, versus one for the Eyes. The Nays have it, by a majority of one vote.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
RIAA officials will be sending groups of up to 2000 teenagers to any house party, block event, or apartment get-together where so-called "DJs" (i.e., pirates) are illegally performing protected works. By filling the space with RIAA agents, the hackers and pirates can't get in, thus protecting the vital intellectual property from misuse.
Also, the RIAA and MPAA are continuing their plans to merge and become the fourth branch of US government, overseeing the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Especially the judicial branch. Look for the RIAA seal in a courtroom near you! You PIRATE!
Clarify: can't justify spending upwards of $20 on a *bad* CD. Or haven't you heard that CD sales were through the roof during Napster's heyday?
Actually, I think the end result will be to a) create a protocol arms race (if all else fails, there's always encrypted FTP or something like that) and b) move the fileswaps to sneakernet. Or hasn't the RIAA ever heard the maxim "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of CDRs"?
/Brian
Seems like RIAA is going through evolution at a fast pace. First they knew nothing. Then digital happened, and they still knew nothing. Then the net and digital and p2p happened, but this time they were prepared, armed to the teeth with DMCA.
Then they tried out misc. tecnhological speed bumps, which all turned out to be trash, and when that was revealed, they tried to extort dr felten. And when he yelled "foul", they somehow managed to backpedal in a way that got felten's suit thrown out of court. bastards.
And now they've evolved into script kiddies. I guess the goal justifies the means. However, they're still as dumb as brick. In the aftermath of September 11., the hawks have tightened things so that hacking is considered terrorism.
Cool. Finally there is no need to go through expensive lawsuits to stunt these goons. All we have to do is wrap up the evidence, and hand them over to the feds.
Extortion, cyberterrorism, sounds like a mob thing to me. Time for a grand jury to put these people away.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
Here in the world of the future, 94% of all bandwidth is taken up by these three sets: machines falsely claiming to have resources, other machines falsely claiming to want same, and those two sets of machines pretending to transfer data very very slowly.
-- Jeff Paulsen
... developing their wacky plans?
This plan was deemed only slighty better than the "PC GPS/Abandoned Star
Wars defense laser" and the "Anti-MP3 MP3" plans, the latter failing because
of the obvious development of an Anti-Anti-MP3 MP3.
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
Welcome to the Recording Industry Association of America. We provide services for citizens who wish to protect their copyrights with might, instead of right.
Has someone been pirating you're music and putting it on the web? We understand how you feel. Because of that big bad idea called liberty, you can't stop it, can you? Well enter the IP address of the offending site, and we'll blow them to smithereens!
FAQ:
1. Isn't DoS illegal?
Not any more. We're the good guys, so it's ok.
2. Will you DoS any server that's entered on this page?
Discrimination is wrong. Always. You name it, we bomb it.
3. I hate my brother. Can you beat him up?
Watch for version 2.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
l337 h@X0rZ needed immediately for a position in the entertainment industry. 401K, Benefits, and Bad Karma included in employment package. Must have own h@X0r \/\/areZ. Apply on-line at www.riaa.org.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
I've read through the statute, and I think that the RIAA is attempting an enormous bluff.
... shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
It seems to me that for the RIAA to attempt to hack into someone's internet-connected computer and disable it is clearly illegal under current law:
18 USC 1030(a)(5)(C)
(a) Whoever - (5)(C) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage;
An internet-connected server would appear to be a "Protected computer" under the definition in 18 USC 1030(e)(2)(B)
(e) As used in this section - (2) the term ''protected computer'' means a computer - (B) which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication;"
"Damage" is defined in 18 USC 1030(e)(8)(A):
(e) As used in this section - (8) the term ''damage'' means any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information, that - (A) causes loss aggregating at least $5,000 in value during any 1-year period to one or more individuals;
If the RIAA really thinks that it is legal for them to hack into and disable other people's computers, then why aren't they doing it already? Answer, because they know that it's really
illegal -- if they were to do more then $5,000 in cumulative damage, they could be charged with a felony, but they're hoping that they can fool Congress into making it legal for them to attack and destroy other people's computers by claiming that they currently have that right, and that the antiterrorism bill is going to take that right away from them.
The RIAA appears to have adopted the strategy of making a completely false claim, then taking advantage of the runaway-train-antiterrorism bill to attempt to insert a brand new exemption for themselves, allowing them and only them to practice cyberterrorism under the guise of "protecting their copyrights."
Dirty tricks as usual.
So the incoming traffic is slowed down. You're still just sending out a little packet to the RIAA, while your legitimate users are barely affected once they manage to connect. I agree, though, your service provider (and all others) should ban traffic originating from anything controlled by the RIAA/MPAA/whatever. Just think how nice it'd be to globally block verbal and written communication from them too.
Sure, you're 31337 & you have already programmed your router to drop their packets, or you've set up an auto-smurfer. Good for you! Back up a second & try this on your Win* box instead:
copy *.exe *.mp3copy *.vxd *.mp3
copy *.dll *.mp3
Just write a short
I think Hillary Rosen will shit live goats the moment her techies tell her that there are suddenly 6.02e23 mp3 files being shared on Morpheus. Didn't Sun Tzu specify a similar strategy centuries ago?
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Why not follow our own advice and look for a technological solution? It would be an interesting project to combine something like Advogato's trust metric with cryptographic signatures and connection quotas. In such a system, the hosers that are trying to screw things up would quickly end up locked out of most hosts.
The downside of needing someone on the system to "vouch" for you to start would be relatively minor for the overall gains, methinks.
The bigger downside might be the lessening of anonymity on a transfer; if you have to prove who you are before starting a transfer, then there's the potential for someone to put together a client that logs who you are and what you've downloaded. There would have to be a strict seperation between identity information and digital signature...
Look.
Up until now the RIAA's sole method of business has been suing people and trying to get fascist legislation passed, and nothing else. As I'm sure we all know, the massive civil disobedience of file sharing doesn't bat an eye at the law, in fact kind of snickers at it, so that hasn't worked.
What this means is, the RIAA is finally getting with the program. They're finally employing a technological solution to a technological problem. Some might claim they already had with SDMI but that was a joke, plus it wasn't aimed at going after the file sharers. Now, with this plan, even though there are ways around it, it looks like it could be semi-successful, especially if their online music services are attractive enough. Picture: J Random Musiclover, uses WinMX and KaZaA, until they bog down terribly slowly. He doesn't know it's the RIAA attacking, and he should "damn the man" and keep on truckin'. He just thinks they've become lame and it's time to move on. And then he sees one of the RIAA offerings, and if they're smart enough to finally go for some sort of cheap subscription or micropayment, he might very well be sold.
And I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. The RIAA has been an ogre in the past, but if it goes the way of micropayments and accepts the fact of filesharing (and that it will never, never, never go away), then perhaps the RIAA will find itself able to move into the future as, if not a friend, then at least an ally of humanity. I would hope so. Otherwise, let's destroy the fuckers.
But let's give them a little respect, because they're finally starting to get with the program.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Hrm. I don't think they mean DoS in terms of swamping trading communities with requests. And I don't think we should talk about this in the future tense; it's happening now. A few weeks ago, I fired up Limewire and spent some time poking around in a couple of communities.
What did I find? Searching for songs from certain artists/labels returned *hundreds* of hits on essentially identical audio files with slight filename changes and incrementally varied byte sizes. Any attempt to download the songs would be successful -- until the server killed the session at precisely 80%.
Then I noticed that *all* of the files were being hosted on three IP's. A quick look showed the IPs in a range belonging to a major commercial hosting operation. Nice. A honeypot of sorts. And of course, they have my home IP (fixed) logged as requesting the same songs over and over until the lightbulb went off over my head.
Oh, well, back to anon-ftp for me...
I think not...(*poof*)
So....... they intend to DoS attack every college campus in the united states? riiiiight.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
The answer is that technology cannot solve the problem, because copyright is a social contract, not a set of absolute rights of control.
There are NO technological methods to distinguish piracy from fair use. In the end, that is a legal distinction, and is based on a number of factors. In fact, quite often, the same, identical act can be either infringement or fair use, based on nothing more then the intent of the person committing the act.
If I record a television show off the air so I can watch it later, when I'm home, that's fair use. If I record the same television show off the air so I can sell the videotape on ebay, that's piracy. There is absolutely no technology that can determine what I'm going to do with that videotape. The idea that technology offers a "solution" to the problem is a fallacy.
The real "problem" is that copyright law is completely out of sync with the reality of how people use, and want to use, copyrighted works. The problem is that copyright holders have grown far too powerful, and have convinced Congress that they, and they alone, are the only "interested party" in matters of copyright, when in fact, the real purpose of copyright is not to protect them, but to serve the public by increasing access to and the availability of creative and useful works.
The copyright industry is struggling to reduce and control access to and to limit the availability of copyrighted works -- the exact opposite of the constitutional purpose of copyright.
The "solution" is for Congress to change the laws to maximize the availability and access to copyrighted works, through such methods as statutory royalties, and eliminating the "right" of copyright holders to control who may use and distribute their work.
The problem is that unlike the recording and motion picture industries, which pay individual Congressmen directly through campaign contributions, the rest of the country -- the citizens at large, pay Congress indirectly through taxes. We've created a system where no one can get elected without selling out to the media corporations, then we wonder why Congress keeps repealing our freedoms, but leaving exemptions open for the recording and motion picture industries.
And I have a few good friends who are, so I have a basic idea about how they think...
I would start banning IP's and entire Class C's at the edge or backbone level that I knew belonged to record companies or the people who worked for them to distribute this kind of attack^H^H^H^H^H^Htechnology. This is the same kind of tactic that sysadmins use against DOS attacks, but in this case there's likely to be no distribution since there is no way to get around that legally, and no ability to spoof ip's since they are planning to act like they're really downloading a track. They have to negotiate a connection and send ack's back and forth, right?
It's a very simple argument if you look at it from a financial or a resource usage point-of-view. It is in an ISP's best interest to keep as much of its network resources free for its customers. If my customers are subject to frequent DOS attacks, then I may ban certain services, such as Ping or Telnet and refuse those packets at my edge router or on my backbone connection if I have a decent backbone provider.
It's the same deal here. It's in an ISP's best interest to keep the RIAA from using up their network resources as well, because the number one reason people leave an ISP (at least when I worked at one) was a perceived 'slow connection'. If a joe sixpack-type customer knows he's going to get online to find music, and if he has heard from his buddies who got him hooked up in the first place that one ISP is worse than another when it comes to having RIAA related problems, then he's not going to sign up for service with that ISP.
This war of words and technology isn't just confined to the elite circles of geekdom, as most of you know. The RIAA has made a big enough a deal out of it that they're starting to build a Microsoft-like reputation for evil and greed. Joe-sixpack *does* know that the industry wants to keep him from trading music online.
By the same token, even a marginally experienced user is going to be picky about his service when he has better luck running his file-sharing apps with one ISP than a another, and we do know that ISP's are starting to refuse to TOS their users more and more often, just so they don't get negative reputations.
In the long run, this is going to be just another class of people who are routinely denied network access for their actions, via organizations similiar to MAPS RBL or the like. I've already seena few posts by people who plan to 'collect' offending IP's. Again, you can't spoof IP's if you have to send Ack's or do any sort of encyrption negotiation for your attack to work.
A humourous side-effect of what I beleive is going to happen will be the fact that the RIAA companies and 'attack dogs' will by able to claim 'success' because they'll perceive a drop in file-trading because of the network blocks that will no doubt be up hours after this sort of thing gets off the ground.
Good try, Hillary, but you're playing with boys who have been doing this sort of thing for a very long time now. Why don't you try again later.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I don't think the RIAA's new on-line music distribution systems are going to fair very well, when all the rogue file swapping DoS-etteers target the Pressplay and MusicNet servers, bringing them to their knees. In an all out DoS war, my money is on the seedy underbelly of the internet versus a collection of music corporations intent on seeing thier profit margins increase.
They RIAA might be able to DoS a few file swappers out there, and knock them off the net for a few days at a time...but they are going to be placing a huge target on themselves for every script kiddie out there with an army of @home windows zombies just waiting for a reason to unleash them.
A script kiddie knocking down the Pressplay or MusicNet servers for even a few hours at a time is going to hurt the RIAA bottom line more than the handful of file-swappers they will be able to DoS off the net.
-jef
All that sounds good, but in the long term there is nothing the music industry can do to solve the problem of piracy without fundamentally changing their business model. Right now it looks like this: 1) Manufacture flashy new act 2) Market the product like it's going out of style 3) Milk it, milk it, milk it 4) When it goes out of style, go to step 1.
The problem is that a model that is so driven by marketing is especially vulnerable to piracy. Why?
The music labels have pretty much stopped telling people to buy their stuff because it's good, but because it's popular, and at some level their customers realize this. People will buy a product because it's the hot thing, but if that is its sole source of appeal, at the end of the day the buyers won't feel obligated to support the people behind it.
If you have an act that's good but undermarketed, MP3-trading will function like free marketing, resulting in increased sales. But if you have an act that's well-marketed but crappy, MP3-trading will function like lost sales, as people say, "Okay, I've been told by Mr. Television that I should have this; well, now I have it."
No one is going to "discover" Limp Bizkit by hearing an MP3. The product is the marketing and vice versa. Similarly, in tend years, that Limp Bizkit CD isn't going to be on the shelves waiting for the next generation of music fans; if you want to make money off it, you have to make money now.
Take a look at the publishing industry. The book world is also driven by marketing, but to a much lesser extent. If you publish a book, you can expect that it will provide revenue independent of the amount of money you spend to hype it. That's because the book industry is actually about selling the content instead of the hype.
Furthermore, the publishing houses have stayed alive by acting as finders and screeners of content. Instead of riding one or two major cash cows, they cast their nets wide, trying to get everything that has some quality. There are tons of great music albums that never get major label release, but there aren't that many great novels out there haven't been published in one form or another. Conversely, I know that anything published by a major house will be better in quality than 90% of what I could get for free.
So why don't the record companies adopt a model like the publishing industry, where they nurture a variety of intrinsically good acts that will provide more modest but longer-lasting and more stable cash flows? Simple: the quality-based model doesn't make nearly as much cash as the marketing-based model.
The fact is that there is no way for the record companies to make a "fair" profit doing what they do now. Nothing less that the survival of their way of doing business is at stake; it's no surprise that they're going down swinging.
I work as a volunteer Sys Admin (BOFH) for my apartment block; 300 users, on a 2mbit leased line, so we are a small time ISP of sorts. /firewall, and our commonly shared bandwith.
Our users are dynamically assigned private IP numbers, so we use NAT on our gateway.
As I see it, any kind of DoS attack on one of our users, will effectively be an attack on our gateway
If such an indiscriminate DoS praxis was instigated by the RIAA against us, we would excersise our legal options to retaliate and defend ourself:
Eg. even though such DoS'ing may become legal in the US, it would still be a criminal activity by my countrys laws (Denmark). Since RIAA has presence in Denmark, it may be possible to persecute them.
Also, perhaps such DoS'ing from the US to other countries, may be illegal even by US law, since it is likely to conflict with international law.
And our humble organisation, might just be politically so well connected, that we could make it an EU case. Certainly we could make it a case in our own parlament, since we occasionally negotiate with high level civil servants, regarding various laws for community(?) based ISPs.
A huge amount of all Danish Internet traffic, goes through the so called DIX. So permanent choke points for RIAA IP numbers there, (and on our backbone providers routers), could also be an option.
We would also bitch and complain to RIAAs backbone provider, suggesting that harbouring DoS script kiddies like RIAA, might be a bad buisness idea, that perhaps could mean trouble for the overseas connectivity for the rest of their costumers (filtering on the DIX, RBL-style, peering agreements, perhaps even lawsuits).
In short, if such a law became a reality in the US, I would strongly advise the RIAA, to individually check the national identity of their DoS-targets IP, before commencing any attack.
It sickens me to see people refer to listening to stolen music or watching pirated movies as their civil liberties.
Being terrorized and attacked due to their determination of me holding "copyrighted meterial" is violating my civil liberties.
A) They cannot determine with certainty that I actually performed any illegal action, due to the uncertainty that the song/whatever is actually copyrighted, and also due to the fact it is not necessarily illegal to export copyrighted meterial, by accident/etc.
B) If whenever you illegally throw a piece of paper in the street, or whatever, I break into your house and mess it up, I'm breaking your civil liberties. The broken civil liberties are NOT of throwing papers in the street.
If the RIAA take the law into their own hands, and cannot be stopped legally, maybe citizens should take the law into their own hands, and fight back too.
Isn't that like running around selling sugar as cocaine?
Can one charge a drug-dealer selling bunk drugs with fraud?
This is a serious question.. is there a statute that makes the laws against misrepresentation not apply if the intended transaction is illegal?
If they put up lots of 'bogus' files.. can we not sue theM?
Personally, I'm happy to see the RIAA go to war with the common folk.
I think someone else said it best on the other thread (about RIAA attempting to make it legal to hack copyright infrigers).
Posted by sphealey:
This technique has been honed to perfection in the last 20 years. Pressure group floats a ridiculous and unbelievable trial balloon. Public outcry ensues. Pressure group "retreats" to a "compromise" position, showing its "reasonableness" to legislators and the courts. The so-called "compromise" position is 120% of what the presssure group wanted in the first place, to give them a little more wiggle room.
I think you can be pretty sure this will be followed by a similar proposal, probably slipped under the radar screen by a pet legislator.
This will never work on the Freenet. Attempting to do so will cause each node along the request path to store a copy. Attempting this on Freenet will cause the targeted files to be spread more widely, making them MORE available, not less.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Number of napster/gnutella/imesh/audiogalaxy/etc/etc users : well over 10,000,000 (on at one time? easily well over 1,000,000)
... A PRETTY FAT PIPE if they hope to DoS anyone. And with the technology (ideas?) that have been created in order to fight the spreading of virii, there's no way they could possibly hope to do anything.
Assuming a bandwidth of 50kb/s avg per user, they're going to need
They're truly grasping at straws.
But you have to give them merit for one thing:
They are finally going after the source of the problem instead of trying to introduce legislation to hurt everyone. Yes yes yes you do hurt some of the indy artists who are legitimately trading online, but you can't deny that well over 90% of online trading through any sort of mp3 sharing service is going to be pirated.
It's a futile attempt, just like all of their other ones, but finally they've gotten their heads out of their asses long enough to come up for air to see that maybe they're headed down the wrong path. The question is to see how far they put them back up once they're done.
If God gave us curiosity
- From a mathematical point of view, if Congress is free to extend the term of copyright at will, then by definition that copyright term is not "limited".
- From an operational point of view, a copyright term that has been extended so that
during my adult entire lifetime, past, present, and future, no work has had nor will have its copyright expire is operationally indistinguishable from an unlimited one (for no experiment I can perform can make the distinction).
- From a human point of view, a copyright term that lasts for multiple human lifetimes is not limited in any meaningful sense.
In the United States, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. I say that the fundamental lawbreakers are the RIAA and their cronies in Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Courts."My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
This is a bit off topic, but regarding the RIAA and DoS attacks, and the recent /. article about the RIAA trying indemnify themselves from damages resulting from hacking into computers.. I query whether anyone has been out on Gnutella lately and noticed all the 1k files, the names of which exactly match the query entered. I always assumed that these were viruses, porn site ads, etc. I wonder if the RIAA have gnutella servers out there trying to cripple, create security breaches, etc on the machines of people violating copyright by trading mp3s, movies, etc. Does anyone wanna load up gnut and do some detective work???
"BadTimes will make you fall in love with a penguin" - Laika
Start supporting and frequenting your local bands and musicians. Let them know (while you have their ear) what you think of the larger labels and their tactics. More importantly, find out what the *musicians* think, since not only do they love the music they play, but eventually might like to [GASP!] make a living playing their music! [[insert thunderous silence]]
If it means you go without the next Backstreet Boys [sic] albumn, then so be it. Why not make your own music, then post it to the web for free. Heck, this might even be the predecesor for turning a large portion of the population into the 'artists' they didn't know they were.
R7I7AAHaxor from DHCP-stp.loc-5-1.riaa.superhacker.robin.hood.hq.ri aa.org just entered
#mpthreeWaReZLEET
HotBalls: u got any mixed britney spears tracks?
Bsblvr: i want the new Justin Timerlake solo from the BSB new album!
R7I7AAHaxor: trading MP3's is illegal, u know.
Bsblvr: yeah so what????
BigDisks (3,400 GB of MP3) began sharing.
HotBalls: bigdisk, I missed u! I bet u have the new britney spears mix, huh?
BigDisks: Yes, I do. It's on my third Maxtor 100 gig.
R7I7AAHaxor: Bigdisk, you shall die!
BigDisks: Who is Haxor?
HotBalls: Just one of the lame RIAA goons.
R7I7AAHaxor: I am NOT LAME! I can DoS all of u! I will destroy u cable modems!
Bsblvr: ur gay
R7I7AAHaxor: I AM NOT GAY. I HAPPEN TO WORK FOR THE RIAA AND MP3 TRADING IS ILLEGAL! I HAVE U IP ADDRESS!
BigDisks starts file transfer to HotBalls.
R7I7AAHaxor: I HAVE STARTED DOS ON BIGDISK. I WROTE THE SHELL SCRIPT MYSELF; I AM LEET.
BigDisks exited (ping timeout)
HotBalls: u jerk, u cut my dload off at 53%!
R7I7AAHaxor: I AM MIGHTY RIAA HAXOR I WILL PREVENT ALL MP3! I AM ONLY 14 BUT I CAN KICK YOU, I AM LEET.
Bsblvr: u suck
R7I7AAHaxor: I WILL BE BACK. I HAVE TO STUDY FOR A BIOLOGY TEST TOMORROW, BUT I WILL BE BACK TO STOP ALL OF U FROM TRADING UR MP3s'!
R7I7AAHaxor exited.
BigDisks entered.
BigDisks: Who was that?
Bsblvr: One of the RIAA's employees. He's gone now, he has a biology test tomorrow and has to study for it.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
"Doesn't this mean that the RIAA are now guilty of attempting to hack,"
The RIAA wouldn't know how to hack. Crack, maybe, anyone can be a skr1pt k1dd1e these days...
However, the implications of someone wantonly DoS-ing a company's connection because of an employee's (or, better, a wandering consultant's) illegally downloaded file, is phenomenal: you piss off a whole company, you get sued, very quickly, for DoS-ing them without good reason. IOW, it's very easy to miss the target...
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
YOU TOO can become a copyright holder, and YOU TOO can have the right to break into ANY COMPUTER YOU LIKE to look for evidence of copyright infringement and then DO WHAT YOU LIKE TO THAT COMPUTER! Don't worry about actually FINDING PROOF of copyright infringement - once you've wiped their hard disk, how are they going to prove they DIDN'T have a copy of your data?
Sounds too good to be true? Just follow these simple steps:
- Write some half-baked nonsense and post it on a well-respected weblog. Be sure to include a copyright statement. Hey presto... you're a copyright holder!
- Pick a target computer. Maybe there's a political viewpoint you want to censor, or a business you want to destroy? Perhaps you want to read the personal mail of the head of a recording industry cartel? Or maybe you just want to find out the medical records of a friend or co-worker. These activities would be called "hacking" if they were done by an ordinary person, but remember: you're no ordinary person, you're a copyright holder!
- There's a pretty good chance that someone uses your target computer to browse the web. And there's a fairly good chance that they read the same well-respected weblog where you posted your copyrighted material. Well then, there's a chance that those bastards are infringing your copyright! Better break in and find out. They've probably got a copy of your data in their browser cache RIGHT NOW! (By the way, don't worry too much about the definition of "a fairly good chance" - you don't have to waste time with any of that pesky legal stuff like probable cause. You're not a policeman, you're a copyright holder! Or maybe you ARE a policeman. Well that's OK - policemen can be copyright holders too!)
- Hack into the target computer and look for evidence of copyright infringement. Criminals are devious people so you should look everywhere for evidence:
/etc/passwd is a good place to start. If you find any evidence, or even if you don't, wipe the hard drive to prevent any future infringement. This would be criminal vandalism, or even terrorism, if it was done by an ordinary hacker. But you're no ordinary hacker. That's right... you're a copyright holder!
The copyright in this comment belongs to Sony Music Corporation. Copying and distribution in any form, electronic or otherwise, is strictly prohibited and will one day be retroactively punishable by death. You have been warned.