Slashdot Mirror
Legalizing Attacks on P2P Networks
miniver writes: "Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) wants to legalize DoS attacks on P2P networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus by 'copyright holders.' The Washington Post reports on his proposed legislation here. Berman's bill, to be introduced in the next several weeks, would attempt to minimize the illegal trading of copyrighted songs and other content on "peer-to-peer" (P2P) networks by permitting copyright holders to use technology against pirates. As can be expected, the RIAA is in favor of the proposed legislation."
No wonder we never understand politicians.
RIAA can suck my CD's
-- RTFM:Slackware::Beer:Saturday
On one hand a DoS attack is an act of terrorism, but it is OK if you are a record company? Hmmm.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
Fuckers.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
They get granted permission to DoS anyone they suspect HAS pirated files. After all, in the cases of Gnutella clients, it amounts to the same thing.
The senater has to be kidding, this is moronic at best!
Open Source: Every now and then, you get what you don't pay for.
DMCA = use technology to pirate copyrighted works, break the law
This = use technology to stop people from pirating copyrighted works, be a good citizen
Boiling this down to its essences, there is neither contradiction nor illogic. Copyright infringers are by definition in the wrong and copyright holders should have the legal means of stopping them.
I have been pwned because my
Yes folks, your Fourth Amendment rights are going up in flames to special interests. Fight it or enjoy it.
While I think that technology is really the only thing that's going to realistically provide the media industry the defense they've been searching for, I'm wondering what exactly this law will permit. For example, I produce copyrighted works on a daily basis on my website, at my office, etc. So do I then, suddenly, have the right to launch attacks on P2P networks? Furthermore, what kinds of attacks will be legitmized. Would be rather bizarre to have a nasty and dangerous worm become legal simply because it was launched against a P2P network.
Seems like another case of a congress critter trying to bring the law into an area he truely does not understand..
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
that suddenly want to see something I have a copyright for being traded by warez-kiddies on AOL???
I'm a concientious
1. Copyright Song.
2. Wait for someone to e-mail it to someone else on AOL.
3. Massive DOS Attack on AOL tottaly taking it out forever.
4. ???
5. Profit.
"Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) wants to legalize DoS attacks on P2P networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus by "copyright holders".
Umm okay. They can have that right if I can have the right to DoS the RIAA for infringing on my fair use rights. After all, all men are created equal.
"Derp de derp."
Since when is it legal to take the law into your own hands.
They want to make it ok to take the law into your own hands, well, their hands anyway.
Isn't it the job of the local,state and federal law enforcement agencies to enforce the laws? Deputizing the RIAA doesn't really sound like a good idea.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
I think we should declair war on the record companies because they are terrorists!
I wonder how it would be possible to DoS P2P services without destroying legitimate uses for P2P as well...
Additionally, wouldn't DoSing P2P services slow the Internet as a whole, harming all legitimate users of the Internet?
Just some thoughts from an only slightly technical (compared to everyone else on Slashdot) person.
where does it say anything about DoS attacks? From the article:
... "
"His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems"
And further along....
A copyright owner should not be allowed to damage the property of a P2P file trader or any intermediaries, including ISPs," Berman said. "(I) wouldn't want to let a particularly incensed copyright owner introduce a virus that would disable the computer from which copyrighted works are made available
Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a good thing, but I also don't think we need to blow it out of proportion, who does that really help in the end? No one.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
AS usual, the laws all apply till they come pointing at you. Ala the American Taliban's who the law is not good enough to convict so they just ignore it and the American media campaigns every day to say its the right thing to do.
Laws are laws and were a nation of Laws. AT least they want to legalize it as opposed to just doing it and saying its ok...
I wonder if Rep. Berman has a website? If yes, you know what to do.
if they would just lower the price of fucking cds it would be a moot goddamn point. all people want is to not be suger fucked by the record companies. hell, even the music artists know that the consumer is getting it hard. tell the fucking RIAA to kiss you ass. dont buy ANY cds until they get the fucking point. they obviously havent so far... fucking retards. how in the fuck they get all that money anyway ... they dummer than a pot luck ho at the maple syrup tastee test.
"...set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail,..."
i already get this when i try to download music. they're usually the wrong song or labeled as something else. then there's the blocking and cutting me off in the middle of a download.
Only a Republicant would misspell "hare-brained".
I have been pwned because my
His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems.
It seems like a futile attempt, however, as people can always route around trouble, and if such tactics become commonplace, software will soon adapt so even the most clueless newbie can be autoupdated with the latest and greatest roadblocks to avoid.
Great, another piece of legistlative junk that will never passed. The RIAA tried to intergrate this into the PATRIOT act, but failed. How does downloading an MP3s of Hanson music constitute as terrorism, besides diminishing my IQ in a mere 3.5 seconds?
this will never pass, and if it does, well need to use file-sharing clients with encryption, IP masking, and checksums. Someone ought to set up a verification server in a country that despises the U.S.-such as Iran or Iraq. This way, file-sharing wont go down for decades. (unless there's some suprise revolution, of course)
Even if this little tidbit of corporate lynch mobbery manages to get passed, would it even work?
DoS attacks work great if the targets are small, but attacking pirates on a P2P network will likely be analogous to punching a swarm of flies.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Why not make the internet more flooded with useless crap.. of course now it'll be legal..
so when someone gets in trouble for DoS'ing someone you can say he was running a p2p client..
I can't wait till the internet becomes so flooded with crap that its unusable by everyone and hey, it'll be legal in the USA.. Way to go US government..
I see the potential for weeks of amusement here.
Just keep piling up those wrongs. We'll get a right sooner or later ...
Wasting your time since 1997.
Yup, our country is going right down the shitter. Wipe your asses goodbye. Welcome to America, Inc.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
Hair on your head, waskly wabbit hare. Everyone wins!
Everyone who has already knee-jerked at the Slashdot summary and decided that this means the RIAA can start ping-flooding people on P2P networks needs to read the article.
Yeah right, the poor little guys is a big dangerous criminal, while the big corporations are the little innocent parties.
We can't commit crimes, but the corporations can, and are even encouraged to do so by the government.
Well, there's some kind of problem here.
What is this the Wild West? You have the pirates' IP addresses. SUE THEM!
Representative Howard Berman (D-Viacom) has introduced legislation which will legalize the use of pipe bombs and plastic explosives against photocopy machines to enforce the rights of copyright holders.
"I am a strong believer in the beneficial potential of photocopy machines," Berman stated, "but most people currently use them for unbridled copyright piracy. Billions of copied pages every month constitute copyright infringements for which creators and owners receive no compensation. Photocopy machine piracy must be cleaned up. The question is how."
Berman suggested that the solution to piracy involved many elements. He noted the importance of widespread, online availability of copyrighted works through lawful, consumer-friendly services, strong digital rights management, law suits by copyright owners, and prosecutions against the most egregious infringers.
"Technological self-help measures," he said, "could be yet another part of the solution. Copyright owners could employ a variety of technological tools to prevent the illegal distribution of copyrighted works over photocopy machines -- tools such as detonating explosives, pouring black paint over the lens, or simply smashing the machine to bits with a sledgehammer."
"Use of such self-help measures is nothing new," Berman pointed out. "Satellite and cable companies periodically employ electronic countermeasures to thwart the theft of their signals and programming. However, when such measures are used to thwart photocopier piracy, they may be illegal. Their use may run afoul of certain common law doctrines and state and federal statutes."
His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems.
Sorry guys, it's really not as exciting as everyone would like to cause an uproar about. I'll hold back comments on journalistic integrity, of course.
Is your browser retarded?
Who wants to bet that CD sales will go down even further?
I wonder what scapegoat they'll find then. Once people have had a taste of the freedom that online file trading offers (making sure the latest CD *cough*18*cough* isn't crap), they're not going to want to back.
I have to credit the lawmakers though. Their ideas get more and more creative (though less and less effective).
First server that gets DOS'd by a record company....ooh, I know about fifteen attorneys who'd love to get their hands on that case. Damages for loss of business, trespass, illegal taking, etc. etc.
And this says nothing about the legit filesharing that it'd potentially end.
Time to drop another letter to Rep. Boucher (D-VA), and Senator Leahy (D-VT)......this can be nipped in the bud.
I find it ironic that the real threats to the U.S. are elected...
At least we know where to find the latest DOS tools, in #R114_l337_h4X0R or #M374L1C4
-------
Drink Coffee - Do Stupid Things Faster And With More Energy!
Since KaZaa isn't based in America, I'd wager that KaZaa would retaliate by filing destruction of property charges, and suing in civil court for all profits lost as a result, in their jurisdiction.
Only a Republicant would misspell "hare-brained".
Is that like a replicant?
Hey, I've written a couple things. I've got some copyrights. Looks like I needs be doing some port scannin' n' box rootin' for my own defense! Now, I won't "destroy or damage" your computer or software, understand...cuz that would be wrong. But, rifling through you hard drive or using your system as the launchpad for my blind DoS assault on a few random targets is OK...cuz God knows someone out there just MIGHT..MIGHT..be violating my precious, precious copyright. Ya just never know.
If I don't root your box, the terrorists have already won.
using my copyrighted material I can do the same thing ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
after reading the article it appears as if legislation like this could have way to many ends not tied and leave a free ticket to anyone to hack. Who's to say that my garage band's copyrighted work isn't being pirated, we'd betterd DoS them to make sure. It's a script kiddies dream....havn't any of these senators tried to use this programs. I'm not sure how much 'pirating' is going on when you can only download half a song on Kazaa at .6k a second..
ahh, the egg in the basket..
... if someone from europe or aisa was affected by this could they (legally too maybe?) fight back?... would it be legal to use counter-counter measures?
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
I see where they're coming from. Could be interesting. Can "they" come up with attacks that "we" can't defeat? Would it motivate those on the sidelines (like me) to choose a side? Thoreau comes to mind. Maybe we should campaign against any politician who comes out for this. Question - where do the RIAA and MPAA get their money?
quote:
"The Recording Industry Association of America said in a statement that it supports the Berman proposal, adding that 'Internet piracy undermines the growth of legitimate online music sites and hurts all consumers in the long run.'"
i think what the RIAA is trying to say is that if you guys keep pirating musical masterminds like n'sync, britney, j-lo and hootie, those groups are going to go bust, leaving _EVERYONE_ without their music.
wtf j00 waiting for?
RAMMING SPEED!
release a virus that will copy itself to e-mail from an MP3 then mail it self out...mua ha ha.....well, if I knew on bite of code I would.
True capitalism = lots of similar companies = jobs for everyone who wants one.
This reminds me of a story I read a while back (several years ago) about software that would watch over your network for an attack. Upon catching one, it would automatically retaliate against the source of the attack, performing a DoS or some other damaging act. Several corporate management types were interviewed, and they all thought this was the greatest thing they'd ever heard of.
When I read the article, the first thing that came to my mind was spoofing. How hard would it be to spoof my identity while attacking one of these corporations, through either IP spoofing or bouncing an attack off an unsuspecting victim? If done right, it would be possible to make these corporate hosts launch an attack on anyone you wanted. Needless to say, this type of "counterstrike" software never caught on.
Now I see that the RIAA wants free reign to DoS P2P users. What happens if someone is able to spoof their identity and trick the RIAA (or copyright holders, etc) into attacking someone else? What are the legal ramifications of this? Now, having said that, if someone can spoof their identity to trick the RIAA into DoSing themselves, I'll gladly turn my back while I laugh my ass off.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
They can have that right if I can have the right to DoS the RIAA for infringing on my fair use rights.
The difference is that stealing music is not covered by your fair use rights.
You're absolutely right: people automatically think flooding or hacking when they hear DoS. But denial of service attacks can mean rendering a network virtually useless in what it's supposed to provide. In the case of a web server, you use up so many connections no one else (ie: valid clients) can connect. In the case of Morpheus, you imitate so many false matches that clients can't get valid results (they can't retrieve the information, even though the information is available and the server -- or network -- should technically be able to produce it).
The RIAA has already started doing this -- by posting songs with repeated choruses or large sections of the songs faded to silence, but the calibur has been relatively small -- you can usually pull off a legitimate copy after a few searches.
Legalizing this operation would give the RIAA a defense for using these mechanisms, and they could avoid [further] bad publicity. They would also be permitted to store massive amounts of slightly varied mp3 names that house illegitimate or incomplete songs, register numerous Kazaa/Morpheus/etc. accounts and attempt to pose as valid song providers, flooding the network with useless information.
He's al-quadea, not talliban.
Alegedly, anyway.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Who is this congressman and what the fuck has he been smoking? You can't legalize revenge, and if you think you can, be prepared to become a victim.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
The scaring part is that it indicated that this decoy mey destroj or interrupt the com puter that uses it. I other word that may add a virus to the decoy. But still it's not clear from the article what they may do.
His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems.
P2P systems should copyright and copy protect the out-of-band packets (the ones used to search, return search results, etc), then use the DMCA to prevent these types of DoS attacks. At the very least they should also specify in the EULA that intentionally supplying misleading files will result in being banned from the P2P network.
_______
2B1ASK1
As an example, one of the things that normally stops child pornography from getting too popular is that people are embarrassed to look at it, and will express strong social disapproval of anyone who makes it or uses it.
Another example is that if there's a social vacuum surrounding a P2P network, then there's not much incentive to donate bandwidth and disk space. Nobody gives you a pat on the back for running a useful node.
Free speech doesn't mean that the ideal social environment is one where your speech has no consequences.
Find free books.
Someone posts the IP addresses of the "legit hackers" on the web? You can bet that all the script kiddies will come out of the woodwork then...
As for the dummy files, what about a system that allows people to A) vouch for their songs, and B) give an MD5 hash?
Sure...pass this stupid bill; the ramifications will be FAR worse. You cut off one head of this monster, and 10 heads will grow in its place.
Instead of passing this shit, why not give people an INCENTIVE for buying the cds (like free coupons, chance to meet the band, concert tickets, login to their website, etc.)
This is what was actually said
His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems.
The Recording Industry Association of America said in a statement that it supports the Berman proposal, adding that "Internet piracy undermines the growth of legitimate online music sites and hurts all consumers in the long run."
What they dont realize is that a combo of the economic downturn and those excessive prices indies charge them (as mentioned in an earlier article about payola) drive up CD costs. Us consumers, being the thirfty people we are, detest the 20-dollar asking price for, what most of the time is, slivers of silicon worth 5 bucks. Who wants to buy a disc with one good song and 10 filler songs? File-sharing's popularity is what caused their problems, and they look to nuke our haven of free music. As I had stated before, the RIAA started this fiasco, and they need to clean it up. They will not force us to pay for crap CDs.
and less technocratic, to just outlaw all music P2P programs and then hunt down the people who enguage in it?
I mean, if you make the law, then advertise it and run lots of ads on it, 95% of the people that use Morpheous and others will stop becasue they are "law abiding" AKA, follow the law as long as they can get caught.
True capitalism = lots of similar companies = jobs for everyone who wants one.
I just wonder, how much longer "customers" will put up with this bull. I have NOT purchased a CD in years in protest. I listen to the radio, change stations during commercials (am I a thief?) and rely on my rather large MP3 collection. I am actually enjoying music less than before, since the RIAA's actions always linger in my mind. But I guess as long as people still buy music, the industry will continue on their track. Sad.
And now this. I see a war starting here. And everybody will loose. Actions from the RIAA will cause retaliatory actions from programmers, hackers, crackers, script kiddies. This will lead to more incrediably stupid laws, the slashdot crowd will decry. DRM will be mandatory (and Microsoft will provide it). MP3 format will be outlawed. Welcome to the Corporate States of America. We are fucked!
My friend, do not post anonymously.
This guy is obviously a made-man: paid-off, bribed, owned by the RIAA/MPAA -- in their back pocket.
This probably won't get passed, because numerous representatives will raise objections, as it'll prevent people from sharing non-copyrighted files. As P2P may be the future of communication, such a bill threatnes that very future.
However, rest assured, that if this bill passes, counter-measures will be taken. There are ways to deal with people offering fake files. There are also ways to make a network resistant to various types of attacks.
Normally, the attackers of the network have the advantage, but not in this case. In this case, P2P, the P2P community has the advantage b/c we have far more programmers, and the code is open, and anyone around the world can contribute.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Let's see when radio first came out the record companies freaked. They figure that no one would buy a record if you could get here it over the radio. They were wrong.
::sigh::
When the tape cassette came out, the record companies freaked, everybody would copy thier friends tape or tape off the radio. They figure no one would buy would buy their tapes. They were wrong.
When the vcr first came on the scene, the movie industry freaked, who would go see movies if you watch it for free? They figured people would stop going to movies. They were wrong.
Don't have the stats but I would guess that the above three all made them more money than without them.
Now, we have recordable cd's and dvd's, and they are freaked. Who will buy music/movies if people can copy it over the internet?
I believe I am sounding like a broken record, but these folks are obtuse.
Flip forward 150 years, and those who copy data without the authors' permission are called pirates. Fearsome mercenaries of the sea, to be sure. But in an ironic turnabout, California wants to make it legal for mercenaries to get under the skin of these modern pirates.
I wonder what they'll call these P2P mercenaries once the states change their minds?
Ok. Let suppose the following hypothetical situation:
I have cable internet, shared bandwidth. I do not use file trading networks (either because I'm a good RIAA-clone or because the materials I get off these networks is crap). I share my bandwidth with Kazaa lusers. DoS is allowed against my neighbor, the Kazaa luser. I suffer reduced ROI for my connection as a result. Pop quiz: Who do I get to sue? Who do I get to sue?
"(Berman) has called for a posse of copyright vigilantes," she said
If a posse of copyright vigilantes actually forms, what's going to happen is they're going to turn their attention to the RIAA.
"Ah, so you don't want to support people's rights to fair use, mmm? You want to pass overreaching legislation like the SSSCA, hmmm?"
"Derp de derp."
...use tanks or something? Maybe
military aviation?
A gunship for RIAA, a gunship for MPAA. It's the least their money could buy.
Considered harmful.
First, how should a normal (well, aside from the "Campaign Contributions" to Mr. Berman) corporation be allowed to do this? I wonder when the RIAA will realize that if they continue to piss people off like this, they wont get customers.
Someone should setup a database of mailing addresses for bands so we can all start sending check's instead of paying in a way the RIAA gets a cut. Maybe then the RIAA would get the idea that NOBODY LIKES THEM.
As can be expected, the RIAA is in favor of the proposed legislation.
Should read,
As can be expected, the RIAA proposed the legislation.
;)
I stole this Sig
Sounds like all the RIAA is doing is offering up crap to people who ask for their songs. (And I'm sure someone will want to make the obvious joke about there being no difference, so I'm beating you to the punch.)
"The difference is that stealing music is not covered by your fair use rights."
... well that's a little different, isn't it? What if the person on the other end downloading it owns the song? This is the type of case that could go on for quite a while.
It's not their place to judge. Since our rights aren't defined in this area, then all they can do is attack this little guy and that little guy.
A guy stealing a car is a theif. A guy uploading an MP3
"Derp de derp."
So, 1st comes Kazaa, and apparently the Gnutella network (ie Morpheus is nothing more than Gnucleus). Next, IRC, then the ISPs of people hosting illegal files. Then, they'll start sending millions of illegal letters through the postal system so that people sending pirated CDs through the mail cant do it as easily, then they'll fix up the CDs so that you cant listen to them. I see a problem developing here, what about you?
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
My take on this article is that what they are seeking to do is essentially drop honeypots on the P2P nets to discourage would-be downloaders of copyrighted material. Using misleading tags to trick someone into being redirected to a web /dev/null isn't anything new, or particularly illegal for that matter. The warez and porn sites are practically doing that anyway with the 'vote for me before I'll let you mouse-over this option' redirects, and 248 pop-ups of promising links of underage girls and unsuspecting barnyard mammals. There is no mention of Denial of Service or anything destructive. In fact, the article goes out of it's way to specifically state, that there will be no attacks that will be detrimental to carriers or the downloader's machine. Sounds like they're trying a new tactic, and as much as it might disappoint me, there is certainly nothing that I can find that raises the morality alarms. Just another pawn moved on the board while both sides jockey for the quickest checkmate.
DMCA = use technology to pirate copyrighted works, break the law
This = use technology to stop people from pirating copyrighted works, be a good citizen
Just because a technology exists to "stop people from pirating pirated works" does NOT necessarily warrant its use. (If that was the case, then why don't we just drop a nuclear bomb on those suspected of infringing on copyrighted works?)
Assuming I hold a single copyright then, and assuming a massive P2P network (the internet) is being used to distribute my content, can I therefore engage in widespread DDoS attacks against major internet sites? Better yet, assuming I see a copy of my copyrighted work on a .gov or .mil site; I can DDoS the hell out of the legally, right?
Those in power really ought to think (or have someone think for them) before they open that wide contraption from which so much foolishness and BS spews.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I would think the last thing the RIAA or most any other non-technical or even technical organization would want to do is go head to head with the net in what amounts to a hack war.
If this bill came to pass and some company stated publicly that they are participating in trying to disrupt a particular service of a P2P network then they have just placed a giant bullseye on themselves.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
One day while I was surfin' round the internet
I came upon I sight I know I won't forget
A naked man with anus stretched there was no doubt
That he had nearly turned his colon inside out!
And I said GO!
Go goatse go, go!
Go goatse go, go!
Go goatse go, go!
Goatse be good!
I know that when he started with his streching ways
That other people must have showed him much dismay
But he paid them no mind and kept on streching his ass
And now he is a hero to the public mass!
So I say GO!
Go goatse go, go!
Go goatse go, go!
Go goatse go, go!
Goatse be good!
So take a lesson all of you both near and far
Be like the man whose rectum shines forth like a star
If he can stretch his ass like that you can't deny
There's no limit to what you can do if you just try!
And I say GO!
Go goatse go, go!
Go goatse go, go!
Go goatse go, go!
Goatse be good!
So when the clouds of gloom are gath'rin round your head
And you think you might be better off if you were dead
Oh when the bombs of stress are burstin' in your brain
And you feel just like a ship tossed in a hurricaine,
Just think about the man whose anus gapes so wide,
And you'll find a source of power hidden deep inside!
And you'll say GO!
Go goatse go, go!
Go goatse go, go!
Go goatse go, go, go!
Goatse be good!
were p2p nets even covered by the national information infrastructure protection act in the first place?
I can see a lot of scary situations.
Can Microsoft DoS anyone who they suspect to be running illegal copies of their products? (some may argue they already do, but that is a different topic)
It would be easy to put in a check in any software that compares the serial number to known pirated ones and, say, wipes your hard drive clean. Would that be legal?
Would anyone be allowed to attack any system that is in "Public Domain" (as they are part of the "Public" thus share the copyright?
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
What company is this guy's sugar daddy? It would be interesting to find a correlation there...
...doesn't this give me the right to DoS for the kick of it too? Heh...nevermind...that didn't make sense. But still, this does strike me as quite strange...shows how twisted things ahve become. Some can destroy property, but others can't. That's like legalize grafitti for advertising, but not for gang tagging.
Gnutella, etc are not networks confined to the USA, and make no distinctions about national borders. A DoS attack of any kind launched by, say, the RIAA in the USA affects _all_ users, even where such attacks are illegal, the use of the software is legal, etc.
As usual, American senators fail to see this - after all, they can do whatever they want to the rest of the world without consequence, right? *sigh*
Given the recent willingness worldwide to cry "terrorist!" at anything and everything, and the somewhat... flexible... definition the word has taken on (read: anybody we don't like), it could be argued that the USA is about to legalize "cyber-terrorist attacks on other countries". It'd be funny, if only the people responsible for these laws would actually get the joke.
I think it's understood by everyone here that a denial-of-service attack against a remote system is illegal. Those who perpetrated the attacks against Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, and a number of other high-profile sites a couple years ago were prosecuted. This brings up a point that I think should be brought right out in any letters or other contacts to legislative representatives. Why should the RIAA or any other business entity be allowed to commit an illegal act in the name of protecting their bottom line? A distributed denial-of-service attack can even have an effect on the Internet at large. What gives the RIAA (who would most likely employ some geek with a workstation to do it, I doubt Hilary Rosen knows jack shit about ping packets) any more right to bog down a worldwide communications infrastructure than me? Nobody, not even a behemoth corporate conglomerate, has a right to do that.
Oh wait, I forgot about hefty campaign contributions... So a fat check puts you above the law.
I've noticed that stuff like this "false files" seems to be going on already. When I've searched Gnutella I always get a a bunch of maches with files that contain only my search terms plus .mp3 .avi .mpg .exe and others. Either sombody is trying to get people to download nastyness or somebody is tying do this already.
Rep. Howard Berman ought to read up on message digests and then try his "file decoy" strategy. Many P2P's today employ some kind of hashing which isn't too easily fooled by file naming dissemblance.
...the government goes bankrupt, and private rent-a-cops and robotic guard dogs keep everyone in line.
Anyone for another round of fiscally irresponsible tax cuts?
Corporate power is the ONLY power that half of this country trusts anymore...thank conservatives and libertarians for decades of anti-government rhetoric.
I think we should lobby for a law that says that a consumer could use the presently illegal techinque of prirating any IP of monopolists and price-fixers.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
If I steal something, the police may obtain a warrant and enter my house and sieze it. The person I stole from does not have the right to break down my door and steal it back.
The fact that we're considering the online equivalent of this right seems to say that Congress (or at least this particular congressman) has given up on the constitutional guarantee of "due process of law" because they don't want to deal with a controversial problem.
I'm a copyright holder, in fact I distribute my works for free on P2P networks. AND NOW I WILL BE ABLE TO DOS THEM LEGALLY!
Then let them come. For there is still one knowledgable user in Pennsylvania that still draws breath.
I do not support the piracy that goes on over Morpheus/Kaaza/et cetera. However, if corporations suddenly have the 'right' to commit criminal acts against me, then I will have no other choice than to carry out my patriotic duty of sacking the holdings of record companies and slaughtering the seditious traitors therein.
Hack me, you bastards, and I'll teach you the true meaning of the word hack. (It has to do with lengths of steel.)
Careful, if you're caught running one of those nasty little P2P clients, the RIAA will stuff your hard drive full of the latest Backstreet Boys, NSync, Creed, and Barbara Streisand albums. That'll show you!
The agony!
Only sheeple would willingly partition themselves
off into two camps, and let the leaders of the camps decide their positions on the actual issues.
From the article:
"Despite the passage in 1998 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, piracy continues to nag at copyright holders and businesses."
In other news, burglars are still burglarizing homes despite the practice having been illegal under various statutes for the past few millennia.
Remember people--by definition--criminals break laws. If only lawmakers would realize this fact in creating legislation, as the only people who are affected are those who are willing to obey it.
I don't have time to log in - but this is crazy. I'm a tech lawyer who specializes on the computer fraud and abuse act - i.e. hacking and network security. He is careful to stay on the lega side of the CFAA, and will encourage bogus files, etc... The headline read DoS attacks. That is against the law. But from the article, I didn't see where he advocated DoS. Can anyone add light in this area? I predict that the RIAA filtering analysis that is used to determine authentic song based on binary distribution will be used against them by P2P networks who will use the technique to filter illegitimate or bogus files without the right fingerprint. When are they going to realize that for every effort they make at controlling the fire will fan the flames in another quarter? What does it take for these pople to learn?
Why would he need to pass a bill for that? I don't remember it being against the law to be deceptive on P2P...(I'm not being sarcastic here, I'm seriously interested in knowing why he'd need laws passed for this?)
I thought this was already legal. In fact, I thought it was already employed by artists.
That's a good way to prevent piracy. Chew up all the bandwidth with DoS attacks so no-one can download anything at all!
So if I ever release a product that is pirated by the movie studios, this would give me license to DDOS their asses out of existence?
They don't seem to understand that doing this is like assassinating foreign intelligence agents - you don't do it out of fear that it will escalate out of hand. On the other hand, I see lots of employment opportunities for blackhats on both sides of the fence now...
*sigh* Nice troll :p
Here I thought I'd get to die in glorious combat against the oppressive hand of cyberpunkesque corporations who dared to harm the property of citizens.
Bah. So they want to put fake files up. Oh, big deal.
'Berman said such P2P networks should not be "cleared out," but "cleaned up."' - That's probably the most sensical statement I've heard from a politician this year. Jeebus, that someone actually has a clue and realizes that P2P *is* a bloody useful idea.
*grumble* You'd think after reading Slashdot this long, I'd know enough to read the article before grabbing my sword and shouting in a Scottish accent about "Freeeedoooooooom!". But you'd be wrong.
Someone needs to build a new P2P client that allows filesharing between millions of people meanwhile the client should also perform a massive DoS attack to bring down the RIAA's web and mail servers! Fucking assholes!
This is a sign that CLIT is like Linux--it's dying!
can i DoS the RIAA site because I believe that they are secretly going against copyright legislation???
what kind of fucking hypocracy is this? lets fuck with their bandwidth because we don't like what they're doing??? Eat shit RIAA....
I recently decided to scour the P2P networks just to see how they work and I ended up downloading a few viruses rather than what the files actually claimed to be. Of course some people probably don't have virus protection, and sometimes that's not even enough. I always scan everything I download. I'm paranoid, but, it's worth it. I ended up scanning an 20kb exe file which seemed suspicious due to the MS-Dos default icon but was claimed to be a key generator for a program. It wasn't actually. Norton AntiVirus didn't detect any virus either, but, it infected my test computer. It self-replicated itself thousands of times and added entries to the registry in many places so as to self-replicate itself continuously and boot on start-up. I'm sure there's many other kinds of false programs and media available. - I was using KaZaA and had the config to filter bogus files accordingly. It didn't seem to filter the supposed generator though.
If you're religishitty, KILL YOURSELF!
This will become law.
Wanna know why?...
- because the US govt can wiretap and you can't
- because the US can have nukes but other nations are punished for the same thing.
- because US govt can use high level encryption and you can't
- because cops can speed and you can't
- and finally because you live in America
But don't forget that the price to actually buy boat loads of computers to attack P2P networks will be payed for by the little teeny-boppers buying N'Sync CDs and they'll get so angry that they'll just start using Kazaa anyway. Kind of shooting yourself in the foot huh RIAA?
The real generation of high Gnutella user counts will occur when those service based P2P applications get attacked.
Well, they could engineer their own client to fake MD5 hashes...
::sigh::
But that would be reverse engineering, which is gonna be illegal soon, anyway!
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
There are media claims that Germany's secretary of state, Otto Schily, was talking about government-sponsored DOS attacks on Nazi sites - which would mean the German government, for example, trying to take down all of those U.S. sites that violate Germany's anti-right-wing censorship laws. There was some discussion, however, just what was proposed by whom, as Schily's spokesperson later denied anything of the sort. Check Heise here for more information (in German).
...there should be no way that can pass because you do not know weather or not the people trading the files have rights to the music.... what if i bought a CD, but it got so scratched that i couldn't listen to it anymore, and i downloaded the song because I paid for it? are they going to DoS me for that?
there is NO way to tell who is going against the copyright or not.... this idea is totally insane...
The big problem with this is that for copyright holders to conduct their DoS attacks, they have to traverse other people's networks. I certainly would'nt look kindly to someone pumping a stack of packets across my network, even if it is for 'legitimate' purposes. How exactly they plan to DoS someone without impacting upstream users I can't see.
"I'm tired of all this 'Aren't humanity great' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes" - Bill Hicks
Here's one example: If a person is on your trusted list, you can get files from them, people they trust, and so on down for as many levels as you like.
Each trusted node would be identified by a unique ID and a matching key. All that's needed is an optimized searching system for finding friends. It would be easy to cache friends' trust lists, signed with their key. When trusted friends aren't on, you can check with their friends for caches.
Searching would be expensive while priming caches, and there'd be a bit of extra traffic involved with this, but you might also limit friends to people with decent bandwidth and be sure to have a few friends who're always connected. Include blacklists as well in the same scheme, and sites giving bogus data (as well as sites that like to shut-down with transfers incomplete or allow too many connections for their bandwidth) would vanish from your acceptable search set in a hurry.
How many members of Congress have actually SLEPT with sheep...and how was the RIAA and MPAA able to get all those pictures of them doing it!
It's the only way to explain how anti-constituent Congress is turning out to be!
There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob."
Ah, that's the one.
As far as big business is concerned the stock market is where they bilk the suckers. Governement is where they invest their money and those investments are paying huge returns.
Half the gnutella (morpheus) servents are open source. How long do you think before a fix would come out for this DoS attack?
And wouldn't hax0rz have already tried to DoS gnutella or some other distrubuted network by now. Why is my gnutella still working perfectly? It's distrubuted. The advantage of a distrubited network is that you can't shut it down without targeting the whole network, which you can't do anyway. Anyway, if someone froze my system by DoS over gnutella, do you know what I would do? Reboot.
There is no such thing as IP spoofing, it is all a myth from braggarts in #hack (back when it was oldsch00l).
That is actually pretty cool though, automatic flooding retaliation... and if you are indeed correct about spoofing, then why don't you whip up some code so that when you find companies using this auto-retaliate software (perhaps by hacking the servers of the company that sells this software), you can spoof yourself as your target and send some whacky DoS packets to initiate this erroneous counterassault but with much more powerful bandwidth?
Fucking douche bag!
[and]
INAL, but,
Wouldn't the people trashing a particular P2P session in progress have the burden of showing:
A) A particular file being transferred was copyrighted. The title of a file does not necessarily reflect the contents of a file.
B) The people doing the trashing were having their copyrights infringed upon?
BEFORE they went and trashed someone's download?
Even after a particular download was trashed, the trasher would have some sort of obligation to notify the person whose download they just screwed up WHY their download was screwed up.
After all, the party who trashed the download just diverted a transmission for a purpose it was not originally designed for, and, since some sort of law was being enforced, the lawbreaker needs to be informed.
Mike Nomad
Leagalize DOS? I'm just sitting here shaking my head, wondering when everyone will wake up... Maybe it will be when the Democrats (sic) want to create laws to allow the RIAA to use deadly force and limit the liabliity of thoes actions. Practice genocide you fry! Practice RIAAcide and you get a pat on the back, slap on the wrist and another 100 million dollar bonus. I can see it now...
In today's news: Two twelve year olds were executed in the public town square by radical music copyright factions...
What if I make content (as in my own music) that I want to distribute over Kazaa or Morpheus. Will these attacks stop the entire network and thus stop people from downloading my music?
In other words can you attack a P2P network if you see even one file being shared/exchanged that is copyrighted? How does this affect those who use the P2P network to distribute non-copyrighted material?
Kind of like shutting down a company that makes knives because one guy used their knife to kill somebody. But here in the US you'd be surprised what makes it into law.
I can see lawsuits emerging over this too.
Blacklisting.
If song are incomplete , with silence, or break somehow the intended usage of the P2P network then put the user on black list with a "reason code".
If a user reach an amount of "blacklisting hits" (10 hits ? 100 ? 1000 ?) then he is put "out of the search" automatically.
He then either have to make another user name or show "white paw", that is explain why he was blacklisted, depending on the reason code.
People abusing the black listing on obviously "innocent/innocuious" case can be automatically black listed themselves.
That is a solution off the top of my head, my be in-implementableb but i am sure you see where I am pointing at :
If what do the RIAA doesn't disable the network in a more fundemmental way, just putting wrong result on the search will not really deny service after some thinking.
They would really have to either attack the node with a payload or invest a lot of money into flooding kazaa with a lot of user and stuff such that a black listing system would break down.
but then would not that open them to lawsuit, since a P2P network isn't unlawfull in itself, only its content may be ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'm electing myself dictator. Someone has to be a supreme thinker to run this country. OK. Maybe I won't take the job. But we have some problems.
These fucking democrats just kill me. I used to be one. In the last few years they brought so much shame that I can't take it anymore. Can we ever get a good libertarian? I end up siding with the Republicans more and more and feel like a moron whenever democrats do stupid shit like this.
They're totally run by big business. Didn't they used to at least try to portray themselves as the party for the people.
Check out OpenSecrets.org if you want to see who's financing this guy's campaign. Top donors, surprise surprise, are: Walt Disney, AOL Time Warner, Viviendi Universal, Viacom, DreamWorks, and Sony. Gee, no bias there.
So a single copyright holder could attempt to take down an entire network because a single song is there? Shutting out thousands and thousands of users? God bless America where the individual has more power then an army of users.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
What did you do actually read the article ? That is contrary to /. policy :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
There's nothing like a little adversity to foster innovation. Of course there are gaping holes in the current suite of P2P apps. The upshot to RIAA or the record companies trying to disrupt service is that it will force people to sit down and actually think about these weaknesses, and fix them. End result: much more secure, robust P2P networks. Just off the top of my head, adding PGP-style "webs of trust" on top of any of the current P2P networks would seem like a good way to circumvent this sort of attack. Someone sends you white noise in place of your Black Sabbath? Shitlist them. Similarly, clients that you repeatedly, successfully transact with become "trusted" in your eyes. And depending on how much you trust them, their "trustees" become trusted (and their shitlisteed, erm... shitted) to you, as well. Granted, it's 12:50AM and I'm babbling, but the beauty of this approach is that it harnesses the inherent power of the a distributed network. There's no single point of failure, so there's no way a rogue client could spoof these webs of trust. Every client speaks for itself. Get enough shithits (God, the lingo alone makes fleshing this system out worthwhile) on a certain client--for the sake of discussion, we'll call him "dmca.riaa.org"--and you just start ignoring it. And so does everyone that trusts you, etc. etc. etc. This type of system has I'm sure been worked out in much more detail and analyzed for potential weaknesses than I'm capable of doing at the moment. Anyways, moral of the story is that this sort of forced evolution, even though it usually gets painful and ugly in the short-term, is often be a good thing in the long-run. (If you haven't guessed yet, you're speaking to someone who treats capitalism as a religion and social Darwinism as God's gift to man :)
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Now if you all direct your attention to Howard L. Berman: 2002 Politician Profile, you will see just who's been primarily contributing Berman.
'nuff said
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
steal their IP and get DOS'd. that's perfectly appropriate, and the same folks who are taking down freenet will probably be hired to help the RIAA do this.
pirates suck.
Don't kid yourself pal. The Republicans are just as stupid. Just look at our leader: George "Dubya" Bush. The guy is a fucking moron.
So the induhpendents get to jeer from the sidelines while the political parties do all the heavy lifting. Remind us again why we let you vote?
I don't think anybody's yet brought up the more important consequences of this legislation (which basically legalises a sort of vigilante justice). Consider the long-running feud the CoS has had over Scientology documents. It's not difficult to imagine this being employed offensively against websites which host disputed materials.
Then we'll all run and hide behind the giants like AOL, MSN, etc... to exchange our files.
Do you think they (RIAA, MPAA) will litigate giants like this?
RIAA, if you're scanning this text to gauge the reaction of this please know that the people who download songs are not pirates but potential customers. If they want music they're going to get it. It doesn't matter how many networks you dismantle. It will keep occuring and may even become more defensive and efficient than it is now. I'll say it again, these are potential customers. Even me. I downloaded Gameboy Advance games and then I went out and bought a Gameboy Advance and Mario kart to play on the subway trip to work. If Nintendo came after me you could be sure I wouldn't purchase their systems.
When I think of DoS, i think of ping flooding with big packets. Ping flooding pirate computers to give cruddy bandwidth??? All I can see is lawsuits on their hands. Internet traffic usually goes through anywhere from 4-8 routers. That would mean 4-8 routers would suffer the effects of a ping attack. If this were to be done on a large scale, the whole internet would be crippled. After all, Yahoo.com traffic goes through the same routers as MP3 files, and if the RIAA attacked thousands of hosts at once...
:P
A lot of WAN links are rented. Local ISPs do pay for the bandwith that they use. You don't think the RIAA would be able to get away scott free from lawsuits comming from cable ISPs only able to offer their customers 8 kilobytes a second to the website of the user's choice? I wonder when the RIAA will realize that the people who pirate on P2P networks normally wouldn't buy a music cd anyway. I suppose they have the right to place dummy files or whatever, but not cripple the internet. Seems like the RIAA is just wasting time on this P2P thing. If they didn't want P2P networks, well they should have used Microsoft tactics on the companies when they were small -- buy them out
"(I) wouldn't want to let a particularly incensed copyright owner introduce a virus that would disable the computer from which copyrighted works are made available ... "
Gee that's sweet of him, but would a law like this permit the RIAA or someone else to write a legal virus that contains its own Gnutella or Morpheous client and offer bogus files (1) to clog up the system, and (2) spread itself?
This would arguably be a kind of legal distributed file-spoofing on a massive scale without technically "disabling" any of the infected machines.
Or, if a virus is too unpalatable, this law might let the RIAA sneak Kazaa file-jamming software into the "bonus" software they include on CDs.
Either way, it would be kind of ironic if the RIAA used distributed methods to attack Kazaa, considering Kazaa built a secret virtual network within their own client.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Mr. Berman,
I would like to urge you to reconsider your proposed bill allowing "copyright holders to use technology against pirates" (Washington Post). This is a terrible bill, giving power to already too powerful corporations to overstep the bounds of decency and fair practice. This is not a moral issue of pirates vs. Good People. This is a copyright law issue, which should be dealt with in our justice system under the DMCA and other copyright laws setup for this purpose. If you haven't realized it already, the current system of intellectual property rights is outdated and just plain stupid. There needs to be change that benefits both the media creators (note, I am not taking about the RIAA), and the consumer. This bill is a giant step backward in this regard. Your bill is also in very poor taste, akin to giving Hitler an ICBM. If you seriously consider going forward on this bill, I say you are nothing but a pawn of the RIAA and the MPAA, an embarrassment to California, and to our government, and to the American way of life.
James
Computer Scientist, Informed Citizen, Patriot.
PS I hope you enjoy your new Mercedes, you sleazy sellout.
I find unclear in the article if it would allow DoS attacks,
His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems.
However if this law is passed and does allow things like DoS attacks I would think it would be very prone to abuse. Are they going to have to get a court order to launch an attack? Sounds very cumbersome the alternative would be to leave it largely at the discretion of the RIAA which could mean just randomly attacking any files that look suspicious or that they just plain don't like. Perhaps a recording of a band that label has a beef , a news story that they don't want getting out or maybe just someone they don't like. I would think it could be pretty hard to prove that your site was clean and didn't warrent an attack. I don't see a way this law could be effective without being a license to kill for the RIAA.
I stole this Sig
Does no one else smell the strong stench of desperation? I mean, think about it, the RIAA is so desperate they're willing to do cheap, immature hacks to protect their content. The script kiddies that everyone is posting about are going to be HIRED BY THE RIAA to do these attacks!
The problem with this, if you didn't see it already, is not that it allows them to attack, it's that is gives them the ability to enforce the law.
It makes the copyright holder a law enforcer without all the nagging issues about due process.
If something like this is passed, how likely do you think it would be that is would include statues for just cause or disclosure? They could empy it just on the off chance they "think" something illegal is going on, and if they get in trouble they can plead ignorance. It could vary easily be used by companies against individuals or companies against companies.
A good example -- and one where I pick on microsoft too -- would be easy. Owing that this legislation simply says "copyrigth holders" and not "musical copyright holders", it could be used by anyone. So, suppose Microsoft wanted to buy some technology from a company, and the company didn't want play ball? Well, Microsoft could do around the clock DDOS attacks to tie up all ther bandwidth (which the company would be unable to stop, as it would be illegal under such a law), and cause the company to be able to do no business and as such go out of business -- and they could do this all under the guise of "well, they were using a pirated copy of Excel 97".
And suppose it doesn't lay out what kind of retaliation is allowed, or on what medium? Suppose ClearChannel Communications (who own 87% of all radio in the USA) "though" that some mom&pop station iun Bumsville, Iowa was inteding to rebroadcast one of their programs? There stand a good chance that CC would be allowed (under such a law) to jam the offending stations signal until they got satisfaction.
Ever play Shadowrun, a game where giant corporation war against each other?
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) wants to legalize DoS attacks on P2P networks...
As a Trek fan, I have to wonder if there is not something seriously wrong with people from California named Berman.
Ellen
mods metamodded as "Unfair"
Simple solution. Totally black list any riaa sites from the rest of the net. Enter their ips on the major backbone routers, and blackhole their traffic. Think about it, you dos someone, and we blackhole 100% of your traffic. No email, no vpn's, no nothing for you riaa pigs. A dos attack is an abuse of the net. And if the fascists want to abuse the net, then they simply dont need it. And i think its likely that the riaa WOULD get their net nuts cut off if they started this crap, simply because a dos is against any kind of TOS (terms of service) in existance. If your uunet, exodus, etc, would you tolerate that kind of crap on your network? i sure as hell wouldnt.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
http://www.house.gov/berman/
Let's /. his ass into next week!
What if I'm a rightful owner of a copyrighted material which I want to distribute in these networks for free to everybody? Can I also do what they're doing since they impedes the distribution of my material? In some sense they're pirating my material before it reaches the user. That's if what the title says, copyright owner can DDOS against illegal takers. I can't see where the DDOS came from in the article but.. Can't they also be a pirate since they're taking my ability for my material to pass thru. Geezz... what a stupid....
I think we're too late to stop them! Everytime I download a new techno song it's the same few bars over and over again!
oh wait...
I'm a friend of a friend of the working class.
I don't have the right to put a bomb in my car and make it explode if somebody steals it.
Is there a law against this? It sounds like a good idea. It also reminds me of a Slayers episode.
Now the government wants to give businesses the right to DOS P2P networks without considering the accepted legal standpoint (that DOS attacks are illegal).
The one question you've got to ask is, how is this in any way suprising? The government has learned that it can basically ignore issues of rights and legality so long as it's dressed up as being against evil bad people (how long before the RIAA renames Pirates (who were never actually committing piracy) Terrorists?). Sadly, we sold out our rights in order to have cute, safe, little doggies.
Don't get me wrong... I love America and what it's supposed to stand for. But, to do that, I don't have to love a bunch of politicians who're scaremongering for their own benefit.
I didn't witness this firsthand, so it could have been a rumor, but I was told that Barenaked Ladies pretty much did what this article talked about with "Maroon". They released everything on Napster... but cut out a bit of the middle of the song with a message asking people to buy their album and not simply steal the whole thing. The copies propogated through the network... and at first (before many people had bought the album) those copies were the easiest to find.
Personally, I thought the idea was brilliant. The mangled copies would disappear as people actually bought (and ripped) the CD. The music mostly got out there for people to sample, and the slight mangling provided a nice personal touch from BNL (who are hilarious whenever they say almost anything) and incentive to buy.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
You see any heavy lifting being done? I don't.
"Berman, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee's intellectual property and Internet panel..."
Wow, I don't know how else to define "having the fox guard the hen house"...this is going to be hell for their ISP as their bandwidth use skyrockets. Mabye we could ask or petition our ISPs to block all incoming traffic from the RIAA's ip block. =)
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
Now I ask you, how narrowly do you think the phrase "damage and destroy" could be interpreted? Hardly anything is ruled out for sure. Remember, this is the same legal system that considers loading something into RAM to be "making an unauthorized copy" when it suits them. The same government that interprets "regulate interstate commerce" as "do whatever we feel like."
I am going to be very angry when I can't get my tunes from emusic because the RIAA is flogging my fileswapping neighbors.
What a load of shit.
So this means if I own a copyright to something, I will have access to this technology as well? If so, what's stopping me from taking down other stuff that I don't have the copyright to? Say, MP3s made by indie musicians who wish to distribute their works online for free? How would they plan on preventing abuse?
Pft. These lawmakers watch too many movies.
One without any commercial companies on it, much like how the Internet was pre-1990? Make it sponsered by np orgs and whatnot, and strictly disallow any corporate or governmental agencies on them. Hell, maybe it's time to bring back BBS's. Im all for that.
A Copyright holder is not a policeman or government agent. This is like commissioner Gordon allowing a VIGILANTE like Batman to run amuck without worrying about all the red tape if his officers did the same thing. Yeah I figured out the flaws in my analogy but please ignore them.
Haven't you ever heard of Gibson Research?? http://www.grc.com
After suffering a DoS attack he fought back.
Radio, audio and video tapes were in fact not a big danger to the sales of the quality originals. They were analog, thus copying (especially with consumer devices) depricated the quality quite a bit (remember dolby-b/c and dbx ?). Plus there were a legal 'incentives' as well as financial (cost of the tapes and second VCR, for instance) and logistical (you have to spend 2 hours of your own time to copy a movie that you may or may not watch in the future) ones for not to copy.
The 'quality' aspect is obviously not the case with digital copying, when the copy is always as good as the original. From financial/logistical perspective - well - you are all set if you can read this post, right ? It means that the copyright law is all that remains.
So, get real, Quill. This time they are freaking scared for the reason !
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Now, we have recordable cd's and dvd's, and they are freaked. Who will buy music/movies if people can copy it over the internet?
::sigh::
I believe I am sounding like a broken record, but these folks are obtuse.
The difference is if you want to record a song to a cassette, you need to find a friend who has it, drive to his house and pick it up, drive to the record store and buy a blank cassette, record them over (taking a sizeable amount of time) and then return the tape to your friend.
When I want a new song with mp3's, I type into what I'm using "Britney's New Cookie-Cutter Song," I click download, and I'm done. That said, I'm starting to believe in an eye for an eye in response to their tactics, which is a very scary thought.
Berman is just another RIAA sellout. What individual in his/her right mind would even consider presenting such regulations? I guess he got a little jealous of Hollings cocksucking and wanted a piece of the action too.
Why is it surprising to anyone that local companies are contributing to Rep. Berman's campaign? (He apparently represents an area around or near Hollywood)
Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
What are we coming to? Obviously no one has a right to steal "intellectual property," but when did intellectual property, which is handled differently in the Constitution itself -- distinct from other forms of property in that the rights to it are mandated to expire -- become real estate?
I am deeply worried about the present legislative climate. We are turning intellectual property slowly into real property, which IMHO defeats the entire purpose of enshrining intellectual property in law in the first place. We didn't have intellectual property until the 18th Century and somehow plays got written and music made.
These various proposed laws (and the scary enacted ones like the DMCA) require organized confrontation. I'm not affiliated with them, but I'd like to plug the Electronic Frontier Foundation here. They fight these things. They could use the help.
I'm also frightened by the proposed Palladium system from our favorite software monopoly. The notion that machines I buy for my own purposes will be "checking up on me" to make sure I'm honest is profoundly disturbing.
If I may throw some blame in the other direction, think about these developments the next time you violate someone's copyright. If weren't doing that, the motivation behind a lot of these "Big Brother" technologies would go away. Your crime is not victimless.
Write and fight or lose your rights. (Sorry for the jingoism). Express these concerns in your own words to your Congressional delegation and to both of your Senators.
For those of you outside the US, use whatever means you have to influence instituions in your own states, because if these technolgies become mandated, they will show up in your equipment too.
I don't know if this will work or not... I feel like I have to help stop this law.
I live in Texas, would it help if I wrote my Senator telling him how rediculous this is? Maybe, if we all write our Senators (and Congressmen) then this will be dead before it is born.
If a corporation can commit a crime to protect themselves against individuals, then surely, following the principles of the American constitution, an individual should be able to do the same against a corporation.
/.ers get together and destroy the MPAA and RIAA headquarters through the use of "strategic concusive weaponry" designed to "protect the best interests of the people of the nation."
So... I suggest that us
Hey, if protestors have the right to trash peoples' homes to get their messages across, surely we have the right to destroy the operation facilities of a bunch of greedy corrupt sleezebags, correct?
Does anyone have any information on how they propose to define the P2P networks they will be targetting? The lawsuits that shut Napster down were able to be directed because of its centralised nature. Fake files, multiple accounts and the like can certainly slow users of sharing networks, but what happens when the next generation of software allows for filtering by IP, allows search by some form of checksum or provides a 'thumbnail' in the form of a low quality/highly compressed image of the original?
Is anyone who uses file-sharing software part of one of these 'pirate networks'? If that argument can be sustained then the more common DoS that we see from script-kiddies may become if not legalised then certainly decriminalised.
This, then, begs the question - Is it possible to characterise the RIAA as a P2P network under this legislation?
This is great news, however the bill is too limited in scope to be really effective.
The bill should be expanded to allow the victms of all crime to directly take action against those who commit crimes against them, be it copyright infringement, property theft, assult, or murder.
Imagine a world where the RIAA can commit DOS attacks on those who they claim would infringe their copyright. Imagine a world where a rape victim could stalk and ultimately castrate her attacker. Imagine a world where parents of murdered children could take the life of the person accused of that crime.
Allowing the RIAA to DOS p2p networks is legalising revnge and retribution. Keep going down that road, and you will find the above examples. I cant beleive there are people in your government that actually believe this would be a good thing. I only hope such people dont exist in ours.... Unfortunately Im beginning to think they do.
"If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4... " -- Wil Wheaton
Why don't you read the article before posting it.. NO WHERE DOES IT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT DoS ATTACKS! Thank you.
why can't I? We make it legal for some to do, but not for others. Like celebrities getting away with murder...
You know, I was just thinking about how things have changed recently with all things that can be transmitted digitally.
The RIAA/MPAA/whatever can try to do whatever they want to stop file sharing, but there's no conceivable way to stop it, short of taking down the entire worldwide internet (which won't happen any time soon).
They should accept the fact that they can no longer expect to simply put out a product that can be digitally shared and expect it to sell itself. They need to give incentives and provide things that you simply can't get digitally, like experiences (live shows, parties, etc), prizes and merchandise. I know I would buy a CD or movie if I got a free t-shirt out of the deal. Kinda reminds me of that one pinky + the brain episode where they use free t-shirts to attract people to their new chia earth.
Vote Geek folks, run this guy out of office. No votes, No money that simple. Maybe he can become Jack Valenti's valet....
I commented on that story saying that corporations could do this kind of attack without fear of legal reprisals. I think the Senator is just saying, "Here is a GUARANTEE that we won't come after you if you do this, mister Sony."
oakbox
Not just answers, the correct questions.
Total troll.
Me to but whatever. Go listen to your Garth Brooks.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Considering that flooding a P2P network is easiest when you have the greatest resources to throw at the task, it's hard to imagine that this recourse would be viable for any but large corporate powers or those lucky enough to find themselves in the RIAAA's, etc, best graces. Thus this technique would have the effect of extending the monopolies of the most dominant players, and would choke off P2P distribution paths that could be used by any dangerous upstart rivals. Maintaining their distribution monopoly has, of course, long been the recording industry's primary concern.
It is also perfectly plausible that any organization with sufficient resources could squash any sort of offending content, beyond any specific type of media, rendering entirely useless existing P2P systems. Note, however, that by sufficient resources I don't mean just network resources. Rather, the most useful resource will be money. Since this is designed as a tool of harrasment, it's likely there would be lawsuits -- but small entities might not be able or willing to risk the cost of a lawsuit. That could work in favor of large entities in two ways: first to limit the ability of individual parties to sue those disrupting a network, and second to empower only the wealthiest entities to venture to disrupt that network. So once again the largest entities benefit at the expense of the little guy.
I don't see any mention of any special recourse unfairly targeted parties may have, but it's not far fetched to assume that by design any recourse wouldn't be very effective -- otherwse there wouldn't be any point having the law in the first place (It's hard to image much opportunity for recourse when the law is designed to inflict haphazard damage.) Without disincentives, why shouldn't companies spam & otherwise disrupt the P2P for any perceived or concocted reason?
Thus the system could be ripe for abuse, but without the opportunity for that inconvenient oversight afforded the wronged under our official legal system. But then again, that's why modern society doesn't tolerate vigalantes...
Of course these concerns are on top of the already harebrained notion that it would be a good idea to destroy the current implementations of an extremely popular emerging technology that can be (and is) used for legitimate purposes.
Finally, what's to prevent a broad interpretation of a law like this? At this point the details are too vague to comment on with certainty, but it's not far fetched to imagine that a few poorly worded lines could turn something like this in to another DMCA.
Fortunately for the 'net and the economy, it shouldn't be difficult to make someone -- even a typical luddite congressman -- understand that unleashing vigilante chaos on the Internet is a very bad idea. With only a small amount of luck this media industry power grab will be quickly defeated.
Finally, I would like you to consider that corporate censoship can be more dangerous than government censoship, since we do not have any direct individual control over corporate power as we do (theoretically) with our government. Plus, the more control corporate interests with agendas have over mass communication, the harder it is to democratically render grass roots changes. This self-reinforcing cycle of corporate media power is well evidenced by the proposed legislation.
...and send a copy to your congressman.
If he laughs at you, vote his lame ass out.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
As an aside, of the people I know that use Kazaa or Morpheus, there isn't one of them that doesn't use it to obtain copyrighted works illegally. That doesn't mean that such use doesn't exist, it may only say something about the sorts of people with whom I am acquainted. Seriously, I would love to see these people punished to the fullest extent of the law, but unless I start carrying a tape recorder with me everywhere and recording these people's admissions, I'd never have any court-admissable evidence. At the very least, it would be my word against his -- case dismissed. Anyways, as for the legally obtainable stuff on these networks, such material is likely available elsewhere anyways. Given the sheer magnitude of illegally shared material on these networks, I see no reason not to give this a go. When legitimate use is ACTUALLY compromised, I have no doubt that there will be a sustainable court case.
Yeah, I'm ranting... I'll shut up now.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Honeypot!
Perhaps a Karma or feedback system might be able to weed out the RIAA red herrings. It'd work kinda like /., but the trick would be to make it just anonymous enough to circumvent legal trouble, but accountable enough to prevent abuse.
Just as in karma systems, saboteurs with bad karma would not be able to bring down the karma of "law abiding" p2p users very much. Using a system of digital IDs will prevent the RIAA from casting massive spells of negative karma on p2p users.
The service (e.g. Kazaa, Morpheus, etc.) would act as a trusted third party and handle identity issues. The identities establish you as a registered user, but should not keep track of what you download. (Perhaps Kazaa is a bad example for not tracking you!)
The service would issue each user a digital ID, and keeps a database that links usernames (me@kazaa.com) to digital IDs. This would not be absolutely critical, but it might help prevent sabotage.
The digital IDs (and a smart registration system) keep a person from switching screen names to evade bad karma.
There are a number of nonrepudiation schemes that would allow you to prevent the RIAA from falsely giving other users bad karma, and these would come in handy to prevent attacks like that.
Im in Europe...
That's say that I can setup a P2P server, and the sue some US corporation...
Gee, I'll get rich..
"By clicking 'I Agree' you hereby certify that you are not in any way affiliated with the RIAA or any similar organization..."
Nice try, but the spelling mistake within a spelling correction troll is a bit passe these days.
Suprising, no. Meaningful, yes.
Campaign contribution is the same as if you tried to hand a cop a twenty before breaking the law.
There are laws against bribery in some contexts, why do we allow it in more important contexts?
Corporations having the right to judge when a violation of law has occurred, and then having the right to take relieving and/or punitive action?
Nahh never happen. Not in the USA. Our patriotic values hold Justice and Liberty too high in esteem to let this happen.
At least not so blatantly. It will wind up being tacked on to the end of a school lunch budget like any respectable purchased legislation should be.
There is a thread here with a running joke in it. Try to see if you can find it!
Once again a nice display on how the government trys to win 'brownie points' with Big Business. Not that I really care to stir up the discussion, just the fact that noses are getting pretty brown on capital hill and the RIAA is smiling all the way.
What's even more disgusting about all this is that this Politician probably forgets his password at least once a week, Yet, he's right there in one of the more powerful jobs one can have in our country, trying to push moronic laws and amendments and pointing the finger in directions that he blatantly has no clue of.
When will these assclown's get a fricken clue and instead of trying to find legal loopholes for the RIAA, spend that time and really take a good look at what they're playing against. They might be surprised at what it's all about and who is helping to keep it going.
======
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
As long as the client tests the MD5 sums of the chunks it downloads it can decide when to ignore a certain user.
Pick a version you think is likely good, request an overall MD5 sum and that of various parts. Now download from other people and test blocks at random.
You need to trust someone, either the P2P service, or a single user in a list, but considering you could block a user from showing up again (either in the download list, or from the automated download splitting) you could simply try another user, having weeded out a few cheaters.
D.D.o.S them back. It shouln't be hard to wail out that port bomber, or a few little syn flood tools on them if they attempt to do the same to you. fsck them up. You can sue anyone, for anything in this country. This would be a good chance to challenge immature laws.
--------------------------
Is this a sig?
--------------------------
mv
(why does
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Can you imagine Charles Bronson kicking down your door while you're sitting in front of Kazaa?
This isn't really a case of enticement because they're not asking anyone to do anything illegal, the copyright holders are simply setting up decoys for people who WOULD be doing something illegal to fall for. Even if people download the decoys, they aren't breaking the law, since even if the decoy _DID_ contain copyrighted data, it would have been distributed by the legitimate copyright holder, who already has the right to distribute. Further, since they do hold the copyright, they have the right to use the name of the work in whatever manner they desire -- including labelling false works. Those who are genuinely put out by this to the point that it infringes on their fair use rights would doubtless be able to band together and launch a class action suit against them. Of course, if you're going to go to court about that, I'd be willing to bet that you'd have to substantiate your "fair use" claim.
Flames, etc, in email only... let's not tie up this discussion arguing amongst ourselves.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Bring it on!
LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!!
Sorry RIAA attempted occupation of geek territory will result in heavy losses for you...
Obviously no one has a right to steal "intellectual property," but when did intellectual property, which is handled differently in the Constitution itself
The Constitution does not mention, not even in a single phrase, the idea of "intellectual property." The founders saw copyright and patent as a way to grant very limited monopoly in order to encourage creation.
In no way were they ever envisioning their laws being excuses to treat the intangible as if it was physical. Jefferson agonized over this, opposing the copyright and patent additions until the last minute, and even then reluctantly.
We are turning intellectual property slowly into real property
We agree on the basics of this issue, and I think I'm just writing to point out this: "intellectual property" is a trojan phrase, meant to imply what we're arguing against. There is no "intellectual property." You can own something that isn't real in the physical universe. If you could, it's tantamount to slavery. Do you own the part of my brain that knows the song you wrote?
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
You can own something that isn't real in the physical universe
Of course, I meant to say:
You can't own something that isn't real in the physical universe.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
After reading this I was letting Kazaa index my full 47GB mp3 collection.
It took 2 hours to index, kazaa crashed and it won't start up anymore.
Wanna be a rebel but the software is letting me down here people....
Does this mean I can attack spammers?
No? Oh darn.
Marc
The RIAA has already started doing this -- by posting songs with repeated choruses or large sections of the songs faded to silence, but the calibur has been relatively small
Everytime you get a file like this you should email it to the RIAA and MPAA. Send a CC to every email address you can find within their organizations.
Lessig makes this point in his writing on these issues. He too dislikes the term intellectual property when it is used outside the group of "legal cognoscenti" for the same reason you dislike the term. "Intellectual Property" means something ovebroad in common parlance. It implies the permanence we both know it should lack.
A very close approximation don't you think? The RIAA gets to presume guilt and act towards anyone who they think may be violating copyright... even if they only find files with 'names' including their copyrighted material's reference. 'I hate tha Back Stret Boys.txt' is now a punishable offense and subject to DOS, Denial of Sovereignty.
In The Minority Report (I might get DOS'ed by Hollywood just for writing this), 'potential' murderers are hunted down and imprisoned because they 'will' commit murder. In the present day our government is considering a law which will allow a non-government body to hunt down and 'imprison' a person's right to fair use because they presume that it will lead to piracy.
In other news: guns, pencils, nunchakus, and gasoline are all deemed illegal because a person might in the future use them to commit crimes. Castration and hysterectomies are now required of all people because sexual organs and sex could lead to rape and/or abortion/murder. Literacy has been outlawed because it may lead someone to learn how to build bombs or start a revolution.
Cheers! Here's to the future of living in a prison state....
What ever happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
or even Life, Liberty and Property
...for those cynical historians out there.
Remember that fair use is part of Property, as in I can own a car AND I get to drive it, just not recklessly while in town.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
exactly how is the above post a troll? Looks to me like an on-topic parody of the Senator's press release.
1. Boycott the recording industry
2. Download indie music from sites (Don't forget - they track downloads and will notice your interests have changed)
3. Go to record stores and fill out questionnaires. Begin with the title: "I'm boycotting the RIAA because of their DoS attacks of P2P networks!"
4. Write a hearty letter in your favorite editor/word processor and send it to every e-mail address and comment posting page you can find on www.riaa.org.
5. Educate your technically-savvy friends regarding the issue.
One thing you should know:
The comapnies that make up the RIAA are not known for listening to their customers. Doing the above will get them ticked off and they'll blame music pirates for the lower sales. There is no turning the RIAA around. They make a lot of money off the inefficiency of producing and distributing CDs and they don't want this to stop. Would you want it to stop if you made millions of dollars a year off imprinting pieces of plastic at $N and selling them for $Nx5? The money they make goes to pay for their lawyers who take all your actions against them and turn them against you in court. The RIAA is a machine that needs its cord unplugged and only the consumer can do it. You need to do all the above and get everybody around you to do the same. It hurts as you can't listen to new music legally but if you don't do it you'll be another sheep in their grand scheme of DRM.
Consider your options wisely!
His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems.
Destroying, crashing or damaging people's computers, software or other technology systems is illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as are many of the ideas Berman is suggesting should be available to content owners - though he said that viruses should not be used as defense mechanisms.
The major goal of this bill is probably not to give the RIAA and MPAA new tools against p2p pirates, but legitimize tactics that they're already using. I can't imagine that they haven't already started putting up bogus files - I mean, people are already doing this to each other (go find the Minority Report avi on gnutella and tell me if you like watching the Scorpion King trailer over and over and over again). What probably spurred on this proposal was that someone, somewhere within the RIAA and/or MPAA realized that they might be breaking some sort of laws relating to online misrepresentation or - god forbid - violating the Terms of Agreement of the p2p software, so they're just making loopholes in existing laws in order to wreak havoc legally.
What would happen if the RIAA violated the Morpheus terms of agreement? Would that mean we're allowed to redirect their network connections or flood them with bogus files, since they're using the software in ways other than it was originally intended? Does that misuse violate the DMCA, or are they going to write the bill so that they are allowed to get around the DMCA in order to protect their copyrights?
Finally, as someone else suggested, are they allowed to spew garbage traffic all over private networks on which these p2p apps are run? Of course, I'm sure Roadrunner (a la AOL Time Warner) won't mind, since they're aligned with the RIAA and the MPAA, but it should be interesting if someone sues because they can't legimately use their favorite p2p app because the record labels have been flooding its network.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Maybe this is a stupid question, but what do they need a law for that permits them to do something that isn't illegal?
After all, they'll be allowed to spread bad files, set up their own servers with slooow downloads, etc - they won't be allowed to do real DOS attacks in the way we usually understand the word.
Yeah, I'm a Lessig fan, even if he's a little more conservative than I. (Although I can afford to be less conservative; I don't have to argue in front of the Supreme Court this year.)
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Actually, why can't we DoS attack the RIAA for suspected infringement of our copyrights. The RIAA doesn't seem to realize that any provisions they are granted to "enforce our copyrights" must apply to all copyright holders. That's pretty much everyone in the world.
If the RIAA doesn't need a warrant or reasonable doubt, neither do I... the DoS attacks start at dawn!
Right, so this may become legal in the US (after all this is a US senator speaking). How will Disney tell that my pc, sharing this great amount of Disney movies, is not actually located in the US? We're still talking a global network here, so having decoy packets out there without any warning may still be considered illegal in my country.
When will government finally see that legislation is not the way to control these things?
The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
"Now download from other people and test blocks at random."
Just test all blocks. MD5 hash creation isn't THAT processor intensive... :)
This is just going to mean that in the long run we
will end up with better p2p networks.
Viva La Evolution Baby !
Go ahead, life will find a way !...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
If I'm using a P2P system in Europe how can American law be justified in destroying my access to the system?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Just a little idea.
m p3.2
:-
.0 file, and have the software follow the instructions to reassemble the original.
:-)
Say you had a mp3 called "Unforgiven.mp3".
Run progA to separate "Unforgiven.mp3" into 3 files;
Unforgiven.mp3.0
Unforgiven.mp3.1
Unforgiven.
Unforgiven.mp3.1 contains odd bytes from the file, Unforgiven.mp3.2 contains even bytes. A file on it's own is not copyrighted material.
Unforgiven.mp3.0 contains a script, indicating how to reassemble the original file. So in the above case it might look like this;
Unforgiven.mp3
FH1 = open("Unforgiven.mp3.1");
FH2 = open("Unforgiven.mp3.1");
FHOUT = open("Unforgiven.mp3");
while ( true ) {
currByte = readByte(FH1);
writeByte(FHOUT, currByte);
currByte = readByte(FH2);
writeByte(FHOUT, currByte);
if ( noMoreData(FH1) ) break;
}
Its not necessarily a script of course, just some sort of reassembly data.
Each file is p2p'd to different machines and thus percolates throughout the network. To get your music just get the
You never ever distribute copyrighted material, just 'random' bytestreams
cool. if it is all made in the name of profit, I guess that Microsoft could start DoSsing IBM or Walmart if they supply linux on their customers computers, thus 'stealing' profits from Microsoft.
welcome in the age of the Netstrike!. Have fun.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
A pertitent quote:
Cthulhu for President! Why settle for the lesser evil?
I have downloaded music and will again in the future. It does not harm the music industry because the quality is so much worse than a decent CD that if I like something I will go out and buy it. If I do not like it I won't. I get to listen to the music and decide before I but using the net. A lot of people feel this way and I have read independant sureys that say that downloading music actually helps music sales. I do not know but I do know it is true in my case as I will not buy music I have not heard.
As for video, take a look at a downloaded film (if you can see it). I would not bother.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Reminds me of Kornbluth and Pohl's novel "The Space Merchants" (AKA "Gravy Planet" in magazine form)written around 1950.
The good Senators in the chamber were from United States Steel and other corporations. The country had cut through the intermediaries by having the corporations elect their own reps.
This was back in 1950. I swear, that book made a cynic of me at 12.
It isn't the politicians fault, it's our own, as citizens, for not insisting on tax paid elections, and NO CONTRIBUTIONS from corporations or individuals. Money ain't speech, it's bribery. But without those bribes, you can't get elected. Remember, Bush and company have almost a billion dollars in the election kitty -- they've declined taxpayer money.
But how can you defeat that kind of money? You really can't, not in the long run.
So anyway...
Last night I was DLing off Limewire and I came across 2 versions of a Radiohead cover, "Creep". One was by Bob Dylan and the other was by U2. I clicked on both of them and realized the address it was coming from was the same. So I figured its some other guy who likes covers and likes that paticular song Creep.
The Bob Dylan version came in first and the U2 version came in a couple hours later. So I'm listening to the Bob Dylan version and its obviously not Bob Dylan. Its these jokers recording themselves playing guitar with one guy doing a really bad Dylan. It sucks, but its hilarious at the same time. The guy is even laughing as he sings.
So anyway...
The U2 version finally comes in and its U2 live in concert. The Edge starts the intro and as the audience recognizes the song they start cheering. Then Bono starts singing and there's a second wave of cheers. Then I start noticing that Bono's voice is heavily augmented. Is it just a bad recording? So I start to think, "Is this the same jokers again?" If you had a friend that could pull off a pretty decent Bono, and some other friends that knew all the chords to Creep, you could pretty easily mix in a stock "audience cheer" and the DLing public wouldn't be the wiser.
So anyway, I don't know what really happened there for sure, but I got a big kick out of it, especially if it is bogus. Its like a whole new kind of copyright infringement where you don't just steal the song, but the artist's identity. (I personally would never try to pull one over on Mr. Dylan, but fuck U2. The jokes on you Bono!)
Civil disobedience hard at work.
(This post does not contain emoticons or l337.)
DoS attacks on computers running p2p clients would not be covered by the law.
The planned changes will only allow copyright holders to fight the "abuse" of p2p systems by misleading those who search for copyrighted music.
So it is a step in the wrong direction, but a rather insignificant one. After all there is something like the constitution that would limit the government granting the music industry the right to start an all out cracker war against p2p users. ;)
Line 9: Argument of type SIGNATURE expected.
Ok then. DoS all the P2P networks you like. If you get to DoS p2p networks because it has a file you dislike, i want to be able to legally DoS certain government organizations on the interweb if i don't agree with their policy and/or they do me wrong in some way, like taking away my civil rights.
This is a very spooky bit of news. But let me throw out this idea: If the open P2P networks get clogged up by corporate bullshit how long before DJs and music fans start to set up smaller private P2P networks which require validation to use. I guess the main problem is the small size of the communities likely to form this way but a couple of users with large mp3 archives could at least distribute to their friends without having to worry about getting spoofed by tha megacorps.
alex
Is this possible with current P2P systems? I don't think it is since all peers currently connect freely to all othe peers. We need a way of restricting those connections to "known good" peers.
--- Wherever you go, everyone is always connected...
What happens when they enter the wrong IP address into their DoS client and eBay gets knocked offline?
A bit off-topic, but what the hell.
The fundamental issue here is greed. Copyright and patent laws protect financial interests, which is fine by me. Everyone should be compensated for the work(s) they produce. However, to create a machine that produces feces (which, IMHO, *is* art), does not justify incredible compensation, and neither does being a dictatorial oversight committee (RIAA/MPAA) for artists who are not at all interested in the business aspect of their work. The RIAA, as you all know, is not interested in protecting the interests of their artists. They are protecting their own. See below.
Basically, a true artist, (again, IMHO), is not interested in money. It corrupts and degenerates emotional inspiration.
The money spent bribing congress to support rising drug costs is an analog of this issue. Money is a tool of morality (or lack thereof), and it is exponentially powerful.
Morality, however, is merely a human construct. It irks me that people don't realize how greedy they really are. Copyright and patent owners will fight till they're dead to protect their work. Why? Money.
It's interesting that until the last hundred years or so, people wouldn't make a dime from their artwork (music, painting, etc) unless they were dead. With technology today, some have been given license to make millions of dollars and trash hotel rooms. Art should be about emotional release, not financing your petty desires. Especially not financing your petty desires vicariously through the artists who you knew would give you an autograph.
Life is emotion. Use it wisely.
So, I guess you're either a copyright holder or you're not.
Congratulations, America. Just over 200 years and you've developed your very own class system.
Oh man, I am getting so sick of this crap! So its OK to attack other people's networks maliciously if you are a rich and capitalistically greedy record company, but not OK if you are some kid hacking in your parent's garage?
What the RIAA and its little friends try to do gets more and more ridiculous every time! What's next?
1) Hard drives that autodestruct when copyrighted mp3s are written to them.
2) P2P network company staff allowed to be legally beaten up, so long as its by an RIAA employee.
3) CDs created with hidden data tracks on them containing software that reports the user when illegal mp3s are written on them?
When are these people going to realise that they have already gone to far and that anyway it doesn't matter how far they do because P2P file sharing will never die! Its the basis of the entertainment backbone of the 21st Century! 50 years from now, I am sure that you will be downloading your TV programs from your neighbour's house next door. Broadband internet access with kazaa is already a viable entertainment alternative to watching TV if you learn all the tricks. One the genie is out of the bottle, I don't think it can be put back in.
The Internet has crashed...permanently
Moments following a unanimous decision by both House and Senate to legalize computer crimes for a select few VERY rich people, total bandwidth load increased to an all-time high today as supercomputers throughout the world attacked every computer on the planet in an unprecedented Denial of Service attack. When asked for an estimated downtime AOL spokesperson Mr. Time Warner stated planely, "Until hell freezes over, 90% of our main trunk lines have melted. I can't imagine that the Internet will return any time soon."
Experts in other countries agree, "When and if we manage to fix this it has become obvious that the United States is simply going to have to be denied access to the Internet. We simply do not have the ability to operate under such load. If the nimrods in Washington don't pull their heads out of their asses in the next decade, we estimate that the United States will degenerate into a prehistoric state before the end of this century."
In a related story, sales in sun glasses and sun-block are at an all time high today as millions of geeks, who no longer have Internet access, step out of their darkrooms and into daylight. Five year old Lisa Carter from Pensylvania sobbed, "But mom said vampires weren't real!!"
Little league coaches throughout the country say, "This is the best thing that has happened since Babe Ruth."
On a personal note: "You assholes, I was at 99% on my download of Matrix 2!"
NR
"His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems"
use wget on goats.ex (so u do not need 2 c anything an then rename the file to "hot_virgins_first_time_all_girl_action.jpg" and let bearshare or anyother P2P file network make it available 4 download.
for everything else there is mastercard_we_ownz_u.com
HEY!!!
That is pretty harsh! You can't categorize people like that, if you do you have to be at least partially accurate.
Morons aren't that stupid.
If he had the intelegence of cheese mold I wouldn't be so scared.
NR
YaY. i w4n7 s00m bl4ck 1c3.
well. seriously.. just use edonkey and fck them. and get your links from reliable post site's.. unless they create crc matching shit they're screwed.
What are the media companies waiting for? It's
great idea. I thought justice is made by the court, not the industrie.
whatever... %)
This is more like promoting and exporting counterfeit goods to other coutries. Even though those goods might legally exist in US of A, they have no right to do the same outside the US. Btw, how would a EULA work against this? "By using this client, connecting to this network or whatnot, you agree to the following; (i) You can not share intentionally fucked-up stuff pretending to be real"
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
At this stage, it seems likely that it will work best with a trust metric only, rather than a mixture of "trust" and "distrust". Mechanisms which simply block nodes based on the "denouncements" of (even trusted) others are a bit risky because they are an obvious tool for DOSers themselves.
That's not to say that a p2p network couldn't have an "immune system" -- but they need to be very carefully constructed.
Fixing copyright
Surely UseNet would qualify as P2P. Would that be the end of P2P free speech?
By the same token, the authorities should be able to stop car thefts by blocking every road in the country.
I mostly agree with you, however I thought I'd dispute a few points.
Palladium doesn't check up on you. It makes sure you can't do anything a few hardware/software venders don't want you to do. ...and it also enforces what you are allowed to do with specific files--set by the creator of that file. It's like they own your computer, and you are just borrowing it from them--funny how they're taking away ownership from the common person. Next, you'll be considered property of various corporations because you ate some of "their" food that you "rented".
I agree that copyright infringement has victims, however they are only victims if they lose a sale. IANAL, but that appears to be part of fair use--"(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." ( Title 17 of the United States Code - chapter 1 section 107)
However I disagree that infringement is the cause of these "big brother" measures. It's all about how many corporations believe that they have a "right" to profits. Why else would that clause in NAFTA chapter 11 be an issue? Corporations' interpetation of this law allowed them to sue the United States and Mexico because those countries enforced antitrust and environmental law! The entertainment cartel is no different--they believe that they should be allowed to sell plutonium laced food to children if they can make a profit from it. ...or create laws that allow them to control all audio and video distribution systems.
As for me, I'm going to avoid doing business with the cartel as much as possible. I just recieved my order from CDBaby, and I'm very satisfied with it. At least I have a resonable assurance that the money I pay them won't be used to take away my freedom, deny me the ability to play CDs I bought, or steal money from me.
And when the hit UK based sites they'll get themselves charges under the UK's Anti Terrorism Act, which is now so loosely worded that DoS attacks can be considered a terrorist attack. I like the irony.
On a slightly more serious note, what makes the US think it can claim juristiction over systems in other countries, when no-one else is allowed to do it back to them; you can't your cake and eat it I'm affraid.
And I suspect all that will happen is the RIAA and anyone else trying it will find their routes getting droped at core routers all over the world. BGP can be wonderfuly selective.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
[insert obligotory MS-DOS / Denial Of Service pun here]
Don't be surprised if that's not far from the truth. Anyone who remembers the RIAA's bid to gain the rights to hack into peoples' computers looking for pirated music, and was, around the same time, a Politech reader, might remember an exchange with an industry spokesman where it was openly admitted that the RIAA sits in and even drafts pieces of legislation.
Let me guess, they've been sending these files to radio stations recently?
You may now respond to force or threat of force with an equally powerful force, percentage-wise. eg: The RIAA does everything they can to shut down a P2P network, unleashing 100% of its destructive power on that task, the whole of the internet may respond with 100% of /its/ destructive power in eliminating the threat.
One vote for Aye.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
And I just lost respect for the washington post.
:)
Oh thats right, in order to loose respect, you have to first possess it.
Never mind the fact that one writer out of a million wrote it
That Rep. Howard Berman is supporting legislation to further the RIAA's defense against alleged Fair Use violations is not surprising given that his district, 26th Congressional, is in Los Angeles. http://www.house.gov/berman/district.htm In fact, it even includes N. Hollywood. A reminder, Hollywood is not only famous for the film industry, but also for its music industry. This is where the biggies like Capitol Records are located, his district is one of the places the influential people working in the industry live, and it would not be too much of a stretch to assume they are lobbying for his support. Perhaps being a Democrat, many may have even supported his campaign and now he feels obliged to look after the interests of his constituents. Such is politics. Unfortunately, he's on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, and he's the ranking Dem. His suggestions may carry some weight in the committee, but it wouldn't likely proceed beyond there to a floor vote.
Additionally, his background is as a lawyer and a beauracrat, not an expert in technology and the internet. Hopefully they will call for some good testimony if this proposal isn't just smoke.
P2P networks are different from the tradition ones. We will start by attacking their traning camps. The campaign is not over until the last P2P pirate is dead.
But it seems not to reach the moderators around here. A pity, its a nice derivative work which has been modded down instead of up.
Enoc
Well, since almost every one of us were on the net before any of those "copyright holders," I claim a copyright on the head(which is actually prolly copyright W3C, but hey, we've been using it all this time). I'd like to hire all of you to help me "protect" my copyright by DDoSing Sony, Vivendi, etc....hmm, one LARGE DDoS...that should get them thinking who they're dealing with....funny thing is, they're prolly gonna have to pay us to help them DoS the P2P networx, which, if happens, will be just plain stupidity. "When Masturbation's Lost it's fun..." - Oh wait, that's copyrighted by Green Day....guess slashdot's in for a DoSing by BMG now, huh?
this is not very different from casual traffic violations. only harder. imagine you are driving too fast or parking at the no-stop sign. and then the friendly officer comes presenting a ticket.
now imagine a private corporation owns a freeway/highway/whatever and they have a strict policy of rules if you want to use their roads. (do not repair your car yourself - "security of vehicle", do not let someone other than the car company's official contractor repair your vehicle - "security and genuity of spare parts" etc etc. etc.) soo, and if they find your car on "their" highway, they will totally WRECK it, if they think you violated their policy.
exactly the same - someone puts up unreasonably perverted rules of "fair use" for some property they own. and then shoots everyone that violates these rules - on suspection, not on proved guilt. this sucks, and would even think we're approaching a point, when somebody VERY VERY unhappy with RIAA &co. will "revenge" the consumers with his trigger.
not that I would advertise this, as it is illegal and cruel BUT i would not be surprised if this happens soon.
If CD's were cheaper there would be no more problems.
90% of a CD price goes to the record company
and 10% to the artist. (Raw figures, just to get the idea.)
This is where the problem is. Not in P2P networks.
and if i think someone has some of my personal information on their system can i DOS them as well?
I mean really? How can it possibly be illegal to lie about some files that you'd be providing on the network?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
If they put the rights to "attack" a P2P network into the copyright holders, you take out the courts of the equation. If you want to attack someone you could almost say, "whoops I believed they were violating my copyrights".
Normally you need a judge to allow "attacks" on someone, like entering a private apartment or tap a phone line. Why? To protect the public from misuse of power.
Now lets say I don't like a specific company (a competitor). By chance I discover that one of their employees share some mp3 files, and I feel my copyrights have been invaded. Now should I be allowed to take out the entire company or only the addressed files? If I take out the entire company, then later on in court I can argue, that I believed they had thousand of illegal files. The legal mess will become very difficult to untangle. But I could (with a little luck) do severe damage to the company in the process.
--
Some of the comments I have read say damage to the systems would not be allowed. Read this from the article:
Destroying, crashing or damaging people's computers, software or other technology systems is illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as are many of the ideas Berman is suggesting should be available to content owners - though he said that viruses should not be used as defense mechanisms.
I haven't seen the text in the bill, but it appears to me, that it contain damaging ideas.
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
Contrast this disgusting RIAA funded practice with the screams of delight that emanate from SlashDot when Activists perform Electronic 'Sit Ins' (i.e. DOS Attacks) at politically un-liberal sites. It's well enough that you pull out the "one law for the rich..." argument, but at least recognise that it's a basic variation on accepted /. practice.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
'cos they only like it when market forces drive the prices upwards. When the forces apply pressure to the price the companies fight back. It's all perfectly natural but it's a shame they never admit these things.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Various other posters have cited this proposed legislation as yet another example of the old adage 'money talks'; I happen to agree with them. The way I read this - feel free to correct me if I am wrong - is that this legislation would give content owners (who are not necessarily the same as content creators) untrammeled authourity to take the sort of actions usually within the purview of law-enforcement agencies, without having to deal with such things as due process. It is especially noisome that the content creators wanted free rein to perform acts that are already classified as illegal. Using the same apparent logic behind the owners' ideal of this proposal, a company suffering from a DDoS incident would be able to, for instance, track down the owners of X number of zombie machines and confiscate their equipment... or maybe 'arrange' for those owners to suffer 'accidents'... to set an example. Or, if they are so inclined, put out a contract on the ultimate authour of the attack. We have laws, agencies to enforce them, and a legal system to interpret them, for a reason last time I checked.
And then, of course, it seems that content owners and the good Sen. Burman have forgotten that the Net is a transnational entity, and that as such no one nation can impose its own laws upon it.
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
There have been loads of claims that CD sales have gone down as a result of people illegally copying music over the internet, but has anybody researched the sales of blank cassettes, Minidiscs(tm), etc?
To be honest, as much as I hate the illegal copying of copyrighted works, (I earn a living creating copyrighted works, and do symathise with people who are having their work stolen), I don't think that the recording industry is providing a good service to the artists - I think that the amount of illegal copying going on probably hasn't changed much.
In the 80's, I'd frequently buy a song on a vinyl single, a 12 inch single, the transparent vinyl single, a picture disc, etc, etc.
These days, I buy one CD.
That's probably why sales are going down - CDS ARE BORING!!!
Vinyl is fun.
Why not bring back 8-track, it's FUN buying different formats.
Oh, yes, the quality is inferior. At home, on my 200 watt RMS amplifier, that matters. On a personal stereo, 10 yards from a pneumatic drill it doesn't.
Anyway, if the recording engineers cared about quality, why do they over compress, (in the analogue domain), the recordings?
There again, in the past, extremely skilled people were hired to cut vinyl, because cutting a dub plate is a skilled job. So is mastering a CD, but because it's digital, I get the impression that today's technicians just fiddle with the controls until it 'sounds right' out of the monitor speakers.
Is anyone else tired of seeing repeated stories, blatantly hyped stories, stupid stories, old stories.. etc. I think the quality control dept. is in need of help..
Just because you disagree doesn't mean it's not true.
next after the Ddos on p2p networks we can Ddos any other undesirable, like governments, corperations, hell even some poor kids homepage on geocities, when will it ever end, what a bunch of ignorent fools we have in Washington...
maybe we ought to pass a law against stupidity in politics...
His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use
other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P
pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from
employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer
systems.
This is already done routinely by pr0n sites on the web!
Eat at Joe's.
A certain amount of "piracy" is CRUCIAL to keeping IP monopolies honest, and to keep prices reasonable.
When the day comes when there is NO WAY AT ALL to copy and distribute something (ie, unbreakable copy protection), the price of IP will have no brakes on it at all.
I'm not saying that it's right to "pirate" music/movies/software, etc, but that when the government grants what is, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly on IP to the IP rights holder (and the trend is to diminish if not completely eliminate any "fair use" rights), "piracy" becomes the only mechanism by which competition is introduced, and any pressure to NOT raise prices comes.
Do you think the RIAA really CARES if CD sales would fall by 50% if they jacked the price up to $60 a CD? No, they don't. Because they will find a point somewhere where they are saved money by being able to produce LESS, versus how many they can sell.
Indeed, the RIAA/MPAA would realistically rather have you IN a "pay to hear/view" situation than sell consumers copies of their stuff.
The upshot of all this is that "piracy" is the ONLY source of incentive for these guys to NOT jack up prices. Which is why they are so fanatical about eliminating it as a threat.
Of course, the best copy protection is reasonable prices. $20 for a CD, especially when I've not heard ALL the tracks is not reasonable. P2P is one way to do that before I do buy a CD.
There is also the fact that I'm perfectly willing to pay $30-40 a month for a fast, Napster like service. But they won't sell that to me at ANY price, which means that there is no way to obtain/swap MP3's legitimately.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Someone could set up www.MP3-MD5checksum.com (supposedly to check your MP3-encoder), this will make sure you have downloaded exactly the MP3 you need.
If they DoS P2P they are fucking with everyone's network not just file traders.
Eat at Joe's.
I envision a whole new world. One in which differences of opinion are solved by ddos attacks. Don't like the way your senator voted? ddos him. Object to the afghan campaign? ddos a few military networks. Think that abortion is wrong? ddos ddos ddos.
Blah. Why do people elect retards?
I still wonder how it is possible for companies in the US to "finance" these campaigns. Isn't this exactly what bribery is all about?
Somehow it seems like the US is one of the most corrupted countries in the whole world. The only difference between the US and corrupted countries in Africa and South America is that there the people paying money to politicians are criminals and that doesn't happen that much in the US.
Moreover, this move makes for a more equitable social contract by placing the financial costs of copyright enforcement directly on the shoulders of those who benefit the most from said enforcement.
Isn't the free market grand? We ought to increase the number of representatives in Congress. With greater supply, the price should go down.
Has anyone noticed how all the FUN is being sucked out of computers? I'm beginning to think the Internet should be abandoned, all the infrastructure destroyed and we should just chalk this one up as a failure and go back to hacking and having fun.
Where is that elite squad of hackers and why aren't they hacking the living f!#@$ out of the RIAA? Apparently it's OK to DoS anybody you feel like, even if their service provides legitimate FTP traffic. Don't shut down highways even though thousands of ticketed people transit them daily. You pull over the individual, not close the highway.
A Search Engine allows you access to child porn, warez and Mp3 archives all day long, so WTF? Somebody provide a link to a reflected DoS attack tool and an address that could cripple them as well as that brain dead Senator. They want to play Dirty Harry with a DoS attack on something that nearly everybody supports? Fine. But they should get more than a verbal scathing. After all, it's OK for them. No due process, right?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
If the RIAA or copyright holder is smart enough to get my IP, why don't they just report it to my ISP? I am sure my ISP keeps a log of what IP is in use by which person. Wouldn't they then shut down my service?
What it equates to more acuratly is allowing ordinary citzens to find seek out those who stole there property and burn down the guys house.
I mod down any one who says "I'm sure I will get modded down for this"
Its not surprising at all. Its just usefull to know who this little bitch belongs to.
The ones paying money to the politicians ARE criminals. The difference is that in the US the criminals also happen to be corporations.
Basically, piracy is stealing from the rich and giving it to the poor.
I hope people can see the problem with allowing an unaccountable corporation to shoot first and ask questions later.
..that the term 'homeland security' wasnt mentioned in the article.
I'd bet that the official bill actually states that a P2P network is a form of terrorism.
The more and more i get informed about the goings on of our elected officials, the more and more I see how useless they really are.
I'm curious as to how they'll identify whom to attack (ie, who has coprighted material on a server), and how'll they'll ascertain when they no longer need to maintain their DoS attacks.
This is absolutely crazy......
First, someone who has been hit by a DoS attack has no way of telling if it was from a hacker or the 31337 R144 h4xx0rs. So being techno savvy like most p2p users they report the abuse to their ISP and cause immense hassle for them in following up these DoS attacks (I know, I have to deal with these for some of the systems I administer)
Second, if there are many cases involving DoS or other attacks on an ISPs customers, then the upstream provider or the ISP may start serious filtering or cutting of connections to protect their bandwidth as bandwidth costs them money. ISP based filtering would be a terrible thing as it would put a stop to many legitimate internet activities
Thirdly, this is so open to abuse. If an ISP is being bombed with abuse requests then it can take weeks for them to deal with these. The real hackers get lost in the noise and cannot be caught. An ongoing abuse to one of my systems from a Blueyonder customer in the UK has taken 5 days now and still no response from the abuse team. After speaking to tech support I was told it can be a fortnight for them to give a first response. All the time while my systems are being hammered by email bombs that I'm having to block at the firewall. A longer response and abuse teams are useless.......
Disney, AOL/Time-Warner and Sony
..of The Right to Read fiction by RMS. They had SPA - Software Protection Authority, possessing unlimited rights on copyright control and license enforcement. And I thought that was a grotesque...
Sure RIAA is no SPA yet, but it is slowly getting there.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
The mechanism allready exists for the **AAs to "shutdown" users of P2P for sharing of copyrighted material. They just need the balls to do it and take the PR consequences. But like most corporations they prefer to work in the shadows to not upset the "public image".
Oh great. They can legalize hacking but they can't legalize it
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
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-pwpbot
How do they expect an administrator to respond to a DoS attack on their network, even if it is legal? You block and report the offender, pass the word. Last I checked, the US still operates under Innocent Until Proven Guilty. I suspect it may be easier to prove the guilt of DoS than P2P; and certainly an Admin is more likely to lean against DoS than a P2P user.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Than they should just rip the mp3 themselves. It's not really difficult and most media players these days will rip the CD for you. Next argument.
However, if their DoS attacks intefere with any transfers of material to which they do not have a copyright, then they should face the same criminal and civil penalties that someone doing a DoS attack on the FBI would face.
I am curious about one thing: in a hypothetical case where an evil recording corporation is threatening my security by launching electronic attacks on my means of communication, is it okay to use arms to defend myself? After all, "a well-regulated militia is necessary for the Security of a free State..." right?
Bush Lies Watch
a DoS attack is an act of terrorism, but it is OK if you are a record company?
Not according to the writeup... this allows copyright holders to legally launch a DOS..
You become a copyright holder as soon as you create anything that could be copyrighted... so all you have to do is write a text document, (say, a letter to your mother), and you have permission to DOS to your heart's content.
I don't know _anyone_ who's not a "copyright holder" in some way.
So what happens if a P2P client makes it looks like CNN, Yahoo, and Amazon just pulled dowm um-teen however-many songs. Will the RIAA have to pay the supposed bilions of dollars in lost revenue from bringing other people's sites down in mistaken retaliation.
And what if people start making P-2-P DDOS decoys, will network backbone providers start charging the RIAA and "copyright protectors" for all the traffic that traverse their lines?
Also could this be the start of a network blacklist disabling networks that would engage in these types of actions.
When I was your age we didn't have music file sharing utilities. We had to go out to a store and shoplift the CD.
I guess having a AUP that forbids them from doing harm to the p2p network, then sueing them when they do wont work...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Actually it's more like "We have the way IN."
"Since I gave up hope I feel a lot better" - Steve Taylor
Who are you (and who is the RIAA) to decide what I "should" do with music I own on media I own?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
That Microsoft gets to attack users of unlicensed copies of their software too? If so, I am definately reassured that I should not be using Windows.
i just put in
The recording industry will be flooding P2P networks with useless junk data?!?! You mean instead of me downloading the latest NIN hit, I might actually be getting a bunch of hissing, screeching and static?
Look, I'm all for campaign finance reform and trying to reduce the influence-peddling going on. But this statement is simply over the top. It's perfectly valid to donate money to candidates whom you believe share your values, legislative agenda, or whatever. The line not to be crossed -- and it is a thin one -- is for the legislator to take instructions from the donor. Things like the DMCA bother me because, from all appearances, they're written straight by industry lawyers.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
If they're going to impact the ability of innocent people to trade legal files (which of course will happen when they DOS Kazaa as not all files being traded are the RIAA's), then I say people should DOS the Sony's and Warner Bros' of this world.
Why should they be above the law? The hell with them I say...
While we try to scrounge up enough money to buy some music from our favorite artists, they're trying to get slimy, easily-bought politicians to screw us out of more of our freedoms and get even moer of our money (all the while sitting intheir mansions and Lexus's).
F*ck em!
Think I'll go home and start ripping my CD collections for posting on the Net.
I've always said "Buy the album if you like it", but from here on out, if it's a major label release, it's getting posted as soon as I have it.
Thanks big media... If you keep pissing enough of us off, perhaps soon more people will join me and then there'll be no need to give you money.
God... All of the crap going on in the world and then at home we have to deal with this bullshit.
What is this? Domestic terrorism's now potentially going to be sanctified by the government if this passes...
Sheesh. Too bad we can't wrap all of these idiots up with a big American flag and drop them off into the mountains of Afghanistan.
Please, everyone stop looking for ET or cures for cancerand instead use distributed network computing power to search for a cure for stupidity!!!
That's been going on for awhile. It's from altered Gnutella clients that are designed to return search results from any query (for spamming the network). It's easy to block with one of the many Gnutella apps have a "ignore results from these IP addresses" feature. You simply search for a nonsense string (e.g. oufhjoesbjl). Any matches will most likely be the Gnutella spammers, so you add those IP addys to your ignore list. Now you will be able to search without those spammers sending results from any search.
If the RIAA tries to take down a P2P network via false results, I predict that the P2P networks will "evolve" defenses against this. Then again, I'd much rather see the RIAA taking technological steps to prevent piracy than suing everyone in sight.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Set up trusted CRC clearing houses. If the file isn't verified as "real", don't download it.
Anyway...
I don't see legislation like this getting anywhere in either chamber of our legistlative branch. There are way too many holes in such a piece, at least in its current form. What if you were to have two people LEGITIMATELY sharing music (ie: they both have the CDs and are trading in .mp3 format)? Your going to use currently illegal tactics against these people? That seems really... democratic?
"His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techo-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems."
What techno-tricks? What the hell is file-blocking? Redirection? The hardcore pirates I know are of a very savvy caliber, I fear such techno-tricks won't do too much.
"The [RIAA] said in a statement that it supports the Berman proposal, adding that 'Internet piracy undermines the growth of legitimate online music sites and hurts all consumers in the long run.'"
Of coarse they support it -- it grants RIAA currently illegal tools that only they can wield. We all of coarse know who is really hurting legitimate online music sites ;)
mix_master_mike
vafrous
Call me paranoid but i get a litle woried where this world is going to. I wonder what will be next. Some sort of ear implants that will disable you hearing music if you didn't pay for? Legalyzing DoS attacks for big corporations is madness. The next news will be: M$ will DoS everyone who doesn't use Windows. "Dear Sir, by checking our logs we found out that you downloaded an Linux ISO. We will check your HD tomorow and if it is not removed we will be forced to destroy your computer." I mean there must be milions of people who are downloading and sharing MP3's. You DoS 100000 of them and they get pissed this corporations will have a hard time staying connected to the internet. You'll have a hard time anouncing and selling new CD's on your web site. It will be an interesting war. On one side the big corporations with their advanced technology on the other side milions of angry users fighting for their freedom. It will be even more ineteresting if this will be Americas law only. The rest of the world could say: from 5 pm to 8 pm every day we'll split American servers and share our MP3's. Violence will only brig out more violence and i wonder where all this violence will stop. I don't download or share MP3's. I listen to shoutcasts so i'm not directly indagered but when i hear something like this it makes me go mad. Inernet is changing from free place into a jail in wich only big corporations can be happy. Nobody can stop theft an robberies in real world and corporations will fail stoping it on the internet to. They can only make life harder for many users of the internet. But remember that those same users are your customers and you need them. For me it's much easyer to stop buying CD's and listening to MP3's than take all this shit from you. Hell if you want to treat us like this you can even take the whole fawkin internet an shove it up your fat corporative arse then you can live in your perfect world browsing the internet alone.
Come on, the real goal of the RIAA is to close down the whole fricken internet. This is just a step in that direction.
write yourself a song. doesn't have to be any good -- i mean listen to the trash that there now -- then copyright it and voila, along with the copyright 'certificate' you also got yourself deputized and you are now authorized to go take a wack at whatever network you think is involved in trading your song... metnick is wishing he had waited for this. script kiddies, get your favorite song-writing pad and pen out.
I think it is now time to enact our god given right to revolt against this socialist non-sense. I suggest fight fire with fire as many readers have pointed out. Lets use these foolish laws against the makers of them. Lets start using the DMCA agaist those special interest groups. I am tired. Time to fight back. Use their own crap laws against them.
Just how are they planning to DoS the Direct Connect network? Short of flooding individual hubs, I can't think of anything they can do to harm the DC network.
If lots of clients pop up with fake files, they'll get noticed by the ops sooner or later and get kicked. Or banned. Or most likely both -- the DC community isn't gentle to fake sharers.
And sooner or later the DC protocol will be rewritten, implementing checksums on files, so you just need a checksum to find the file, no matter what its name is.
Leveling up builds character.
This bill as well as all this man's other tech related bills were obviously just handed to him by someone else for him to trumpet. He worked on the DMCA. He's on the "Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property." This guy is just a media industry puppet, and it's not because he represents a district with media companies in it.
He's a lawyer. He has no technology background.
Assuming this idea goes through, and RIAA's minions can attack P2P sites, one has to ask what constitutes a P2P network. Yes, there's Kazaa, there was Napster etc., but the most fundamental P2P I'm aware of is good old FTP. A *lot* of stuff is transferred through FTP, much of it quite legitimate (I shift scientific data almost daily with FTP and SCP when I'm being security conscious), but a lot of it is probably also MP3s etc.. So would this give RIAA the right to attack anyone running an FTP client or other file sharing utility? If so, you've just destryed most scientific use of the internet, and much more besides.
Yes, but those people can get into trouble for that.
What this sets up is for the RIAA to be able to attack any site they want. An if/when there is retaliation, the retialliators can be caught and sent to jail.
Great law. I don't know, I think my confidence in Congress just went up. I'm now fairly confident that Congress is rapidly approching the point where I don't like any action they are trying to take. They are making progress in approching perfection in their ability to do absolutely the wrong thing every time.
moderators do your job
...if people checked the files they downloaded. Right now, without the RIAA involved, there are sooo many currupt/partial/bogus files out there. It seems that most people download files, and then either don't check them, or don't care, and leave the bogus file in their shared folder, where other unsuspecting users download them. If people cleaned up their shared folders once in a while, this wouldn't be such a problem. After all, how many bogus files can the RIAA possibly put out there? How many machines can they set up for sharing them? Their presence would be a drop in the bucket. If everyone deleted bogus files instead of passing them on, their whole plan wouldn't work.
Look at my karma - I'm bad, just like Michael Jackson!
Palladium doesn't check up on you.
I don't think we know what all Palladium will do. If you combine digitally signed code with the provisions of the DMCA that allow for the remote disabling of code, including the ability to have code disable itself if you DON'T connect the machine to a network, one can easily imagine that Palladium will be used to "check up on me."
I don't think this is paranoia. Gates in his famous letter to hoobyists from the 80's makes it clear how thoroughly he believes that the only value software has lies in its "semi-encrypted" nature. They will be going one step further here with code that is genuinely encrypted AND hardware that can check that code against a license database anywhere on the net. Each time you execute a program, it may go out over the net and check the key.
This is any code. At all.
This is pure evil. Pure, pure evil. This is "checking up on you."
The intent to do this is implicit in their claims of Palladium's use as a Digital Rights Management tool.
I'm against the fact that they may be able to target users for whatever reasons. But I'm also against P2P networks. It is stealing, no matter how you look at it. This isn't robin hood, people. You aren't getting food to survive on. You are getting music and programs. Music and programs are not necessary for life, so there can be no justification for stealing. If your family is poor and are on the brink of starvation, I can see justification for stealing from a garden.
I can't see why somone doesn't just shut down the P2P networks instead of targetting the users. It's like a war on drugs where the dealers are allowed to walk and the junkies are targeted and jailed. It simply won't work in the long run, imho.
-= Why can't I add 'Anonymous Coward' to my list of Foes? =-
Actually, there are two flaws in your reasoning. Firstly, you're not legally a copyright holder until you actually hold a copyright; that is, you have to have applied for the copyright to enforce it. Second, being a copyright holder does not give you carte blanche to start DoSing systems at random and at will. You are only allowed to avoid legal ramifications on DoSing systems that host your copyrighted work. In your example, although there are legal arguments to support your right to your letter to mom (meaning you would not have had to have applied for a copyright on it specifically), you could only legally attack machines that are hosting that letter. You can't enforce someone else's copyright unless they specifically authorize you to do it.
Virg
How about real questions like "To protect yourself from terrorism would you be willing to give up your right to legal counsel?", "Would you give up your right to criticise the government?", "Would you endorse a law to curtail the information the press can give you?", "Would you be willing to revoke the 2nd admendment and make all purchases of handguns illegal for US citizens?", "Would you endorse a policy to register all persons of Islamic faith?", "Would you be willing to give the government access to all your personal correspondance or to all your property?"
Those are questions dealing with rights. Standing in line at the airport for two hours is an issue of convenience. Now when Americans confuse those two then it is a sad day indeed.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
It appears that they want to register many names and files as "ghosts" for users to download, as possible. Where are they going to get the machines for this, letting them run 24/7? My guess (since they're not to bright to begin with) is they will use their own computers in their own domain. An easy fix? Write a chunk of code that blocks all search results from users of a specific domain - problem (and crappy files) solved......
Not necessarily. I'm not defending the RIAA or this bill, but what's much more likely is that this guy *already* had these pro-media feelings and those companies contributed to his campaign because he was "on their side".
What I don't understand is how the RIAA could take legal action against a person that posts a list of checksums for songs on a P2P network. It's just a description of a piece of data... Is it the case that any unique descriptor of a copyrighted piece of work also falls under that copyright?
Does that mean that I can't take a picture of something (unique descriptor) that is copyrighted and sell the photograph as my own work?
...could it be they put out one too many lousy records?
I certainly don't think it's got anything to do with P2P and CDRWs...history repeats itself. In the early '80s, after all, they were blaming the sales slump on video games...
(First two lines are "MTV Get Off the Air!" by the Dead Kennedys, from Frankenchrist.) Should that be RIAA Get Off the Air now?
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Does this mean that if some troll posts a message with a copyright notice, and then demands that Taco take it down, and he doesn't, they'll be legally able to do automated crapflooding on a large scale?
Sounds to me like you'd get kinda panicky about not being able to get your free tunez anymore.
How many minutes before we patch our p2p programs to prevent these kind of attacks? And how do they know I don't own the CD?
They can already put up mp3's with misnamed titles or fake versions, can't they? Thus, why would they need this at all?
Thus, I conclude that they law gives them the ability to attack the network ITSELF, not just create spoof files of their artists (which they can anyways)
For example, connect to a server hundreds of times, then pull files in at 10 bytes/second, to consume all the download slots of the server.
They're already DOING it !! They're just covering their asses for when they get exposed for all these attacks already being staged against Morpheus, Kazaa and Gnutella and such.....
Than they should just rip the mp3 themselves.
The point is that that you have absolutely no right to tell them they can't.
For all YOU know it's Modonna uploading or downloading "Ray of light". As for why she's doing it, that's none of your bussiness. Maybe she's at a friends house and it's convient.
File transfer is as much a crime as a swiss army knife.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
When people invented writing, town criers thought it would put them out of work, but instead it gave them work as journalists.
The RIAA et. al. want to find a technological/legal solution to their business problems. When you have a business or management problem, technology solutions don't work. Think of facial recognition, or the war on drugs, or prohibition, or crippled cds, or the Titanic. As long as they keep trying technology solutions, we will get to download as many free songs as we want. As long as they keep trying technology solutions, they can never win. There should be a law of technology like Moore's law that any single technology will always be vulnerable to the combined weight of a gazillion hackers. Look at the post-it-note-on-the-crippled-audio-cd for an example.
;)
Apart from that, this story raises other interesting issues. First is that this bill won't go anywhere. Congress won't want to touch this with a barge pole. Remember that while any given representative can be swayed with influence and campaign funds, differing interests will ensure that it will be almost impossible for one group to sway all represntatives on the same issue at the same time. For example, MS can't set the agenda in Washington because Utah, California, New York and Massachusets have large companies that compete with MS. Which is why Orrin Hatch is an MS critic.
Second, Congress and the law enforcement communities will recognize this as a minefield. The FBI et. al. don't like vigilantes. Its bad for business. Messy. Amateur.
Third, they don't need this. MS will solve the problem for them with Palladium. MS will simply ensure those nasty P2P programs won't run on Windows.
BTW, second thoughts on Palladium. A hacker's paradise. MS is incapable of building the system they described. It will be so full of holes that hacking will be child's play BUT, everyone will THINK they are secure.
Let's give them some credit, they do know, for example, how to line their pockets. They also have a tremendous knack for constructing arcane bureaucracies. They aren't completely incompetent :)
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
A guy stealing a car is a theif. A guy uploading an MP3 ... well that's a little different, isn't it? What if the person on the other end downloading it owns the song? This is the type of case that could go on for quite a while
Or how about this:
1) Buy CD, do not open shrink wrap
2) Download mp3's of tracks on CD
3) Listen to mp3's
4) Decide that CD is not good, delete mp3's and return CD to the store
or
4) Decide that CD is good, keep CD, keep mp3's. Optionally open shrink wrap.
Zoot!
God forbid anyone go up against the holy slashdot freeloading doctrine, lest they be modded into oblivion. 2 negative mods on this post ? It's not a "troll", it's a sensible rebuttal to the blatantly false (+5) parent post.
Well, if they think they can have an effect without getting retaliation from the side of the p2p users/servers, they are gravely mistaken.
They better make sure they know what they are doing when they attack some 1337 running DChub off a linux server, or whatever p2p program they serve or they may not like the end results when their own servers are getting their own redirected attacks. How about we all point our standard p2p ports @ the ppl who try to attack OUR systems? Have fun playing with my switch, gateway and firewall technology.
Muahahahaha
Large P2P networks have people from all over the world, how would the US look if it was the only country to pass a law like this and ruin the p2p networks for the rest of the world?
Libertarians recognize the administration of justice as an essential function of government. It is one of the few things that CAN NOT and SHOULD NOT be privatized.
Corporations taking the law into their own hands, assuming what was once the government's role... Shadowrun, anyone?
We could be on the path to a bad place.
What will the RIAA do when they discover that some clerk at whitehouse.gov has downloaded an MP3 of a copyrighted song. Would they unleash a DoS attack on that domain?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
these 'socal politicians are the epitome of corruption, they get a nice condo in hawaii and their pockets lined, while an industry gets free reign to go about phreaking the public! i mean where does it end ?? it starts with this, and ends with the 'intellectual property sluts bombing mailing lists that post copyrighted song lyrics & tab ? one wonders what is going on with our politicians, maybe they fail to realise the gravity of their rule on such a fundamental aspect of freedom, i mean if technology and culture are the hallmark of civilization and if the free propagation of technology and culture is what drives societal evolution then it looks to me that corporate billchasers are trying to eke out their vision for society, one which everyone obeys the rules even if it stifles innovation. a certain orwellian view might say that this is something our gov would easily support for the fact that it reinforces their own way of thinking, and as evidence there certainly does appear to be a good deal of legistlation related to technology giving more power to the gov and/ or corporate entities and taking more and more of our freedom. it appears our checks & bounds are off getting laid at the beach while we the people are getting chained to an anchor of sophistry.
OK, so I live in Canada and exchange files with friends in Brazil.
How can the RIAA use an American law to "legalize" an attack on me?
Who are you (and who is the RIAA) to decide what I "should" do with music I own on media I own?
I am a voting member of society, and I vote in favor of artists being rewarded for their work. Anonymously allowing the world to steal music takes money away from the artists.
For all YOU know it's Modonna uploading or downloading "Ray of light". As for why she's doing it, that's none of your bussiness. Maybe she's at a friends house and it's convient.
If a Pizza Parlor's primary purpose is to launder money, it's still shut down even if it sometimes legitimately sells pizza.
File transfer is as much a crime as a swiss army knife.
And switchblades are still often illegal.
Making it legal to DoS the P2P network, but what about the other networks the DoS attack is going through? If I was an ISP I would be pissed about this. We have enough geeks here to make a massive DDoS attack, lets start posting the IP's of people DoSing the P2P, or better yet, lets do a terrorist attack on the RIAA. Tell them that the Slashdot crowd will /. there website everyday that they continue to DoS the P2P. Nothing illegal about posting a link to there website and having everyone visit it every 30min. Besides, think about the bandwidth costs the RIAA would have to pay for. Be a patriot, visit RIAA today!
http://www.BackYardParty.com
Just wondering... Is this the digital equivalent of the American right-to-own-a-gun?
/. and I never do that ! :)
This subject is so absurd that made me actually post something on
Sure. And giving money to the cop wouldn't be a problem if he didn't give you preferential treatment for it.
The problem is that it's almost impossible to tell what someone wants. Maybe I simply want him to go eat donuts for a while to let me break a law, maybe I want to be arrested for a minor crime to distract for a major crime, or maybe I want him to go stop speeders, paying special attention to a certain car I need delayed.
Because nobody can look at this and tell if the $20 I gave him is having the desired effect (ie, a bribe) they simply rule that the giving of the money is the crime and prevent that.
There are times you could give an officer money and not mean it as a bribe, but the thin line is so difficult to see that it was decided to avoid the whole issue.
I think we should have a system where all candidates are given campaign funds by the state based on the number of "signatures" collected by certain dates. There are drawbacks to the plan, but it lets us remove the undue influence of money.
I'm sure there some of that. Some things are just too much for campaign contributions to twist, gun control, abortion, and other flamebait topic.
It seems a bit like bribery still though. Undue influence because of money.
If you pay a cop $20 to ignore your speeding, that's a bribe. If you pay a supervisor $20 to put a lazy cop on your route, that's still a bribe, even though it's indirect and not as guaranteed as a direct bribe.
We already say that some things are off-limits during elections (campaigning near polling stations, early release of results, etc) so why not go one step further and forbid giving politicians any money, directly or otherwise?
"Than they should just rip the mp3 themselves."
I don't think most people can rip a damaged CD. All you're doing is giving the RIAA the ability to screw you on the replacement. "yep, that's a damaged CD. Buy another one."
"Derp de derp."
I wish the RIAA would just set up a database where I can put in my CD and go to their site. They look at the CD, determine the songs on it, and build a database of the songs I have legally acquired. Then, I can take the MP3's that I've grown attached to, have them check the identifier on them, and send me a bill for the licenses I need to have them.
What's great about this idea is that people could buy songs without bandwidth overhead to the RIAA. Give me that ability, and the RIAA may start getting money from me again. In the mean time, I visit the pawn shop alot.
"Derp de derp."
Death row justice!
You know what this does! it sets a legal president that if the RIAA infringes on my song and shares it (P2P) I can make sure they go belly up by seeing that their DoS'd.
Stupid fucking americans
This is like saying, "Hey, can you legalize assult and battery for a second so I go beat up this guy? It's OK because he really pissed me off."
At least not outside the priesthood.
So if i make a crappy tune and make it copyright, I can dos anyone I want on Kazaa....
Sounds a very dumb idea.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
I'm not sure, but we may be arguing about terminology here. I suppose the demonlord Gates will put in technology that monitors what everyone does--in fact what you're saying already appears to be in XP. But what I was saying is palladium is worse because they'll be preventing you from doing things they don't approve--like writing your own programs without M$ approval, or even competing with M$ in any way...
You sir have your head so far up your ass you will never see the light of day. How does it feel knowing that you'll live your entire life with shit stained eyeballs? Your misery is quite amusing. I shall chuckle over it at lungh today...
in other news, RIAA has annouced that the prices of CDs will take a general increase of three (3) US dollars. This is to finance the massive array of servers and fat OC pipes that will be employed by the RIAA to do round-the-clock attacks on P2P networks for the benefit of the consumer.
yuck.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Don't bother using an over-simplified metaphor to prove me wrong. It means you don't understand my point.
You realize that this sig is a truism, right? It's like saying, "Don't bother using irrelevent information to prove me wrong. It means you don't understand my point". Well, duh. Your sig is true by definition.
The article basically states that it is a QoS attack
(Quality of service) instead of a DoS attack.
As far as I can tell, and IANAL this is perfectly legal in the first place.
Hee hee. You're the first person to spot the irony in it. That was intentional.
I got involved in a thread where like 10 or so people all tried to use a metaphor to prove me wrong. All of the metaphors they used were horribly oversimplified and were really not about the point I was trying to make. The worst part was they didn't glance at the other people who had already commented. So I ended up repeating myself 4 or 5 times to explain my side. Eventually I got fed up and put that in the sig, hoping they'd get the point.
Pity I ran into a character limit though. I could have made the irony of it a little more pronounced.
"Derp de derp."
The problem with this type of tactic is that it conflicts directly with the very nature of the service. People are not going to continue sharing bogus files they've found, they're going to delete them. The only effect this sort of attack will have is to increase the overall traffic with users downloading multiple copies of the same file so they can find a legitimate (by which i mean pirated :-P) file. Furthermore, the problems caused can be easily avoided by simply giving out a list of the usernames of the biggest sharers (those guys who have several hard drives full of shared files), you just search their shares and get it from them...thats what you do most of the time anyway!
You report, Slashdot decides
Prevueing you're poast ownly hellps iff ewe no how two spel inn teh furst plase
Given some of the tactics employed against internet radio, where it's pretty clear the RIAA is mainly out to stop the proliferation of UNSIGNED artists' works...
I foresee this "attack on pirates" being used not just to slow down or dilute the quality of available downloads, but ALSO as yet another assault against independent music. What's to prevent the RIAA from crapflooding not only against copyright infringement (which may well be their right, however unethical the methods), but also against legitimately-offered MP3s??
I think, as others have pointed out, it's all about their fear of losing CONTROL over the entire industry, and "piracy" is just a convenient excuse.
Letters of Marque and Reprisal, indeed. Don't forget that privateers tended to become a wee bit unselective when their approved pickings grew lean.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
...there was a P2P network that hashed the files for what they are---OH WAIT!--There IS! . . (love the donkey, love it long-time)
I have no love for the BS/MPA/RIA/A, but I really don't see anything wrong with this. Thet cannot destroy your computer. They can only make it more difficult to get copyrighted files. It will only be a matter of time before they are foiled. Big Media vs P2P, Round...I Lost Track! Let the games begin!
PS: Please do not use the term "pirates". It implies that unauthorized copying is equivilent to kidnapping, rape, and murder on the high seas. Use the term "unauthorized copiers" instead. Thank you.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
The RIAA is NOT deciding what you can do with music YOU own. However, you do not own the music on CD's you purchase unless the copyright holder explicitely grants you those rights. You only own the physical media the music is on.
However, you and I both know that the far greater majority of people on the P2P networks are illegally sharing copyrighted work. Movies and CDs are being traded BEFORE they are released to the public by the copyright holders. EVen under a more fair systm of copyright terms this would STILL be illegal.
The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright.
So I would like to know how what my chances are when I get taken to court for DoSing a big company site because I believe they are infringing on my copyrights by copying some of my website design. Do I have to prove first that they have infringed on my copyright before I can DoS them, or can I state that I DoSsed them because they were infringing on my copyright (IMO)? The P2P 'DoS'ing proposal by the big companies doesn't appear to require any prior court order allowing them to DoS till their hearts content, so why should mine?
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/indus.asp?C ID=N00008094&cycle=2002
1. Decoy files
I think they will be shortlived on the network. They won't propagate on the network when people realise they are duds.
2. Built in file verification (checksums)
Software would evolve to have these features builtin.
3. Blacklisting of nodes
Software could evolve to black list these nodes and propagate this list throughout the network. I think this would be the most usefull of all.
4. Ranking trusted node/peer
There should be way to rank or flag a node as trusted one by the users who download files from that node. Multiple users flagging would result in RIAA operated nodes sinking to the bottom where they belong.
He could hijack all shortwave radiostations in the U.S., take over Clear Channel with a dummy corporation, flood P2P with Hanson mp3s, and broadcast "Mmmmmmm...Bop" 24/7. Think of all the brain cells we'd lose.
Of course, with his sleeper cells and all, you may not by the time you read this.
To be fair, who are these companies supposed to donate money to? They can't be expected to support somebody who proposes bills that they think hurt their business interests.
Shouldn't they be able to support a politician whose wrong-headed views match their own? If you think somebody else would do a better job than this guy, why don't you just send some money to one of his competitors?
Of course, maybe the solution is to ban donations to political candidates. Then only the super-rich can become politicians. Yay.
I am outraged at this. If it actually allows DoS attaacks on P2P networks then the RIAA better be willing to pony up the funds for my lost bandwidth and the lost customers when they legally attack one of my clients on my ISP. They can pay the ISPs out of the money they get from the government from various media surcharges, fees, etc. that normally would be turned over to them. Hopefully someone will point out to this representitive that a DoS attack effects more than just the target of the attack. Time to set up an ORBs-like server for RIAA (and friends) so I can block them at my border routers.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
So does this mean that if they're allowed to do this that the P2P networks can attack them back? I mean, if someone jumps you on the street, you're allowed to defend yourself. They're not operating in any sort of law enforcement capacity, so they have no legal privelege of protection from retaliation. (i.e. this is why retail security guards are told not to lay a hand on shoplifters)
If it comes down to a DoS pissing match between the RIAA and millions of P2P users, my money's on the P2P users. I can just see it now...a Kazaa option to "Flood RIAA attack servers during idle time" option.
I highly doubt this bill will ever pass anyway. If my bandwidth dies suddenly because they're launching attacks on someone on the same node as my cable link, you can bet your ass there's going to be a class action law suit started.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
If a Pizza Parlor's primary purpose is to launder money, it's still shut down even if it sometimes legitimately sells pizza.
Then you arrest the people laundering money, and only if they are in your jurisdiction. You don't go after every restaraunt on earth.
And switchblades are still often illegal.
Quick! Somebody call the police! My local supermarket is selling contraband!
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
So with the UK banning DoS attacks and since the US and UK have so many treaties dealing with technology, who would win?
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
That's what I don't get either. If you write some dickhead code to attack other peoples' computers, you're a copyright holder on that code. So, you should be able to use it to check if people have that code on their computers or not. Of course they will once you put it on there so...
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
I'm kind of surprised this wasn't posted before (at least that I could find), but you can find Rep. Berman's comments here.
I'm sorry sandwich! --Brak
Yet there are no times when giving him the $20 is necessary to his fulfilling his task (or, for that matter, getting the job). In the system we have, money is needed to get your name out, to fund a staff, to do research (both polling and actual issues research), etc.
Just because a thing is difficult, is not sufficient reason to not do it. Making the judgment call would be tricky but judgment is a human faculty and shouldn't be avoided just to be avoided.
Here's a slashdot example: From what we've seen over the past year or two, I think Rep. Boucher (NC?) is a great guy. I really am considering sending him a donation for his next election, because I think we need to keep intelligent, independent, tech-savvy thinkers in the House. I don't expect him to vote one way; nor do I expect him to pass bills I point out. I just want to help ensure that someone I trust to make decisions gets that opportunity.
So perhaps a solution would be that all donations be logged (but secret) with the FEC, and that all donations be made in an anonymous manner. But I just made that up and don't expect it will really survive analysis.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
you know..if someone's gonna do that, i'll just hack em back. I'll just call it "self defense".
we should DoS the hell out of their machines that will do the DoS attacks...
I'm not a script kiddy...but if this goes through...we should all be one for a couple days...
about legal denial of service attacks across their networks? Any small ISP owners/industry association members want to weigh in?
Your local supermarket sells *switchblades*? You push the button and the blade pops up? Really? What, do you live in L.A.?
you've nothing to say, i must have blown your little mind away, it is i who laughs
Because politicians need a lot of money to field a successful campaign. If they don't get it from campaign contributions, I shudder to think where they *will* get it.
Hacking = Terrorism
RIAA is in favor of hacking
This means the RIAA supports terrorism!
"as you know, our blocade is perfectly legal..."
While it is true that end users use client software to access an nntp server, the nntp servers are peering. I.e., there is no one master server that contains the official set of articles. And servers can peer with multiple servers and integrate multiple feeds. This makes UseNet free of single-point weakness and also out of the control of a single entity (in contrast to Yahoo! Groups, for example).
I don't P2P or trade music or warez, but maybe this will help. Start your own encrypted private networks. What's wrong with P2P as I understand it is that it'sopen to anyone. Well, "anyone" means cops, jerks, feds, music company execs and minions, foreign despot goons script kiddies and other undesirables. So-o-o. STOP DOING THAT. Only let in new members into your private sharing WAN who have been vetted by several other members. Vetting is serious, because if a new member that you as a current member gave a vote to turns out to be a bogus music company nark, that means YOU lose your P2P access along with the bogus nark you sponsored, with ZERO excuses. Enforce that one rule and it would be mostly smooth uninterrupted trading and sharing. Think of it as a sharing WAN. Obviously you can do this starting like at colleges or inside big corporations where you physically know the folks in meatworld.
i just saw someone's comment about the RIAA supporting terrorism (since hacking = terrorism) .. that's funny as hell. .gov servers in the ass when they feel like it right?
this is ridiculous though... they're gonna let the record companies fuck p2p in the ass because they feel like it... so that means it's okay when people fuck the
heh - awesome.
What goes around, comes around. The RIAA hacks me, then that gives me the right to super hack them back to pen and paper. The RIAA has obviously thought long and hard about this. How many RIAA hackers are there compared to script-kiddies and pro's?
*switchblades*?
I wasn't paying close enough attention. I had mentioned swiss army knife and didn't notice he substituted switchblade. I know they carry the swiss army knives, but I don't recall seeing switchblades. Not that I would think anything of it. They carry kitchen knives that are just as deadly should someone choose to use them that way.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Thank you. This really is a fascinating case study in mass delusion. The whole thing makes so little sense my uncontrollable laughter is sometimes mistaken for sobbing.
I think you finally found the issue both Democrats and Republicans can agree on. Voting outside of party lines should be prohibited.
Am I a copyright holder?: [YES]
Select p2p network:[DNS]
Attack: [DNS-spoof]
Live free, long, happy live: [FAILED]
so, is DNS really p2p network? Kind of, i think.
Ok, then we'll just have a DoS attack on the Microsoft Windows Update Servers too, crash all those, and then Microsoft can't track everybody...Also have a DoS on the RIAA, and so on.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
When you understand the difference between kitchen knives and switchblades, and why one is legal and the other isn't, you will be Enlightened on this subject.
knives and switchblades, and why one is legal and the other isn't
That statment is completely false in many states. They are split somewhere around 50/50.
And child porn is legal in many countries. What's your point?
The point is not arguing whether switchblades are illegal everywhere, or even whether they should or should not be illegal. The question is WHY a switchblade would be subject to legal questions and a kitchen knife wouldn't.
Cops need money to better perform their duties. Haven't you ever seen them looking for more funding?
Of course, there's this expectation that the police will make due with the money they're given... Politicians don't seem capable of sticking to a budget.
Money is only needed to get your name out if you don't have a system that supports everyone equally.
If we have a system that basically requires bribes to function, maybe we should change the system.
I am fundamentaly nervous with a system that has people paying the politicians in charge of making laws that affect the people...
Not sure if anyone's put this up, but the BBC has put up an article in their Sci-Tech section on this matter. I'm guessing that if people with backgrounds in international law weren't looking at this before, they sure are now. This is also where I remind people to write and/call their elected representatives and let them know just what they think of this proposal. It also wouldn't hurt if people voted with their pocketbooks... that is, if a record label or movie studio is found to be doing this, don't give them your money.
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
Cops don't have to mount national advertising campaigns to get hired.
If all politicians were stuck with the same budget, why would any of them need more?
It's good that I checked the calender
Because they would each need an insane amount of money (modern media is *expensive*). And with the government involved in the accounting and administrative process, the cost would easily be several orders of magnitude higher than even what was required. Oh, and we wouldn't be able to increase the exposure of candidates we agreed with.
One of the conditions of purchasing access to the airwaves is providing government access. Just write it into all the new contracts that they get more. Not a biggy.
And the argument that anything government does costs more is tired libertarian bullshit. Something done seperately by every candidate is much less efficient that something run by a central authority.
And yes, not increasing the exposure of candidates you agree with is a feature. Let them compete without outside help.
The idea being that everyone who can get a basic number of signatures gets a certain level of support for round 1, for round 2, get more signatures, etc... Like 1000, 5000, 50k, 150k, etc.. Anyone who can get people to sign a petition supporting them (not even promising a vote, just supporting them as a candidate) gets the support.
A lot of it? We can't just go around ordering people to give free services.
And the argument that anything government does costs more is tired libertarian bullshit. Something done seperately by every candidate is much less efficient that something run by a central authority.
Now you're definitely losing me here. With government comes accountability. This is a good thing. Sort of. The problem is that you need someone watching everything. And someone watching the watchers. And someone watching the people watching the watchers. And someone....
And yes, not increasing the exposure of candidates you agree with is a feature.
I don't consider that there is anything even close to enough exposure right now. I want to see *real* debates by candidates.
By real, I mean detailed expositions of candidates' views on issues like the existence and nature of absolute truth, the inherent evil or goodness of human nature, the purpose of human laws, the origin of government, the existence and nature of God, the existence and nature of "Natural Law", and other general philosophical topics essential to understanding whether that person really represents me or not. I want to know that if that person makes decisions based on conscience, the likelyhood is that I would have made the same decision under the same circumstances if I had the same level of information they had.
This is where a connection can be made between a politician's personal convictions and the representation of the people.
Why can't we order them to provide free services? We "auction" off the public airwaves at way below market value. I agree that cable companies are harder to control, but those using the airwaves can provide them.
Airtime on cable stations can be purchased with money from other sales of public resources.
I would agree that there isn't enough real debate between politicians, just sound-bites. That's why I don't like the idea of the rich (or well-backed) politicians buying a ton of airtime for these sound bites.
If you provided free airtime for them it could be with the stipulation that they debate other candidates at the appropriate level, etc. As is, the debates are really worthless, they pick their opponent and it's a big PR thing.
But, they just loaded up a lot of routers along the way. Are they going to forewarn ISPs that they're about to swamp them? Are they going to reimburse that ISP's customers who couldn't connect? It seems to me that these fucking morons think that Britney Spears CDs should cost money, but bandwidth is just there for them to clog and abuse. If this passes, the first few court cases should be VERY entertaining.
It's not that I really disagree with you, per se. It's just that I don't really like the idea of corporatism (the union of public and private interests in one body).
Airtime on cable stations can be purchased with money from other sales of public resources.
That's a good idea, however.
I would agree that there isn't enough real debate between politicians, just sound-bites. That's why I don't like the idea of the rich (or well-backed) politicians buying a ton of airtime for these sound bites.
True enough. Of course, just because someone is wealthy doesn't necessarily mean they are immoral or self-serving. Some are, some aren't.
If you provided free airtime for them it could be with the stipulation that they debate other candidates at the appropriate level, etc.
Sure.
As is, the debates are really worthless, they pick their opponent and it's a big PR thing.
And grandstanding. That's really in the tradition, of course, but they did have *some* content at one point.
I don't really see the corporatism. I assume you're talking about the idea of requiring stations that use the airwaves to provide free time?
If so, it doesn't seem like a problem to me because they'll know about the requirements up-front and can bid for them with that in mind.
And no, rich politicians aren't inherently more trustworthy than the poor. But allowing them to buy publicity (which directly translate to votes - at least to a point) seems to violate the spirit of the system where people vote for the best representation.
In the last local election I barely heard about the Green Party candidate because they didn't have many yard signs, where three major parties had plastered the neighborhood with their signs. The simple issue of funding prevented one party from being as widely known which no-doubt cost them votes.
No, not really. Corporatism (derived from a Latin word for "body") is the cooperation of the private sector (business) and public sector (government). This doesn't include government hiring of private business. But it does include the intertwining of their affairs (like the airline bailout, government sponsorship of private research, and businesses giving their services to the government on different terms than to the public). It's a blurring of the lines between private and public sector.
And no, rich politicians aren't inherently more trustworthy than the poor. But allowing them to buy publicity (which directly translate to votes - at least to a point) seems to violate the spirit of the system where people vote for the best representation.
It's a lot like advertising. It's necessary to advertise so people will know that you exist, as you note with the Green Party candidate. The problem is that it's just plain difficult to get exposure to all candidates and parties without the government getting involved. And since the government is dominated by the two major parties, I don't think they're going to be fair to third parties.
I think the most effective way of doing things might be to go evangelize for your favorite third party. For instance, I'm very enamoured of the Constitution Party. So, every time I get the chance, I tell people about this party. Almost no one I talked to knew about the party before I told them. But they all know about it now. Granted, it didn't make a huge dent, but I felt like I at least did something. I don't think trying to change the law is going to succeed or do as much as I did.
Well, the idea of requiring stations to show airtime for all candidates "for free" in trade for airtime could simply be changed to a requirement for all stations to accept paid political advertisement from all registered political parties, regardless of views. So Ted Turner's stations can't refuse to show ads for political parties he doesn't support, for instance. And then just use public money (some perhaps from the sale of airwaves) to purchase the airtime. That removes most of the differential treatment.
As for advertising, versus changing the laws to forbid cash donations... Yes, advertising would in the short term, and donations to my favorite parties, accomplish the goals of getting them publicity (especially in Canada where we don't have just two parties). And yeah, it's a lot easier to dip into my pockets for some cash than to convince enough people a new law is needed that it'll make a real difference.
The problem is that it falls into the trap of not really accomplishing anything. The next little party trying to be heard has the same problems. And I'd end up buying influence in this party by being a large supporter, which while nice for me isn't the idea.
I'd like to be able to change the laws (or work towards it at least) such that parties like that can get airtime on their own and perhaps also to reform the voting procedures such that they can actually get seats without having to beat the incumbents in any area.
You familiar with proportional voting? A party with 10% of the vote in all ridings now gets 0% of the representatives. Ideally they'd get 10%...
Anyways, gotta run for now.
That would be a better plan, I think.