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.
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
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
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."
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.
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...
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.
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.
What is this the Wild West? You have the pirates' IP addresses. SUE THEM!
Have fun!!
using my copyrighted material I can do the same thing ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Try re-reading the article. All it's saying is that you can offer up a fake version of "(your garage band)-(your hit).mp3". It's not carte blanche to take down the P2P server or even other users sharing your file.
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.
"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."
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?)
"Derp de derp."
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.
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 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?
"(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."
No one. If you'd read the article, you'd know that it appears to be a bad content and/or slow download DoS, not your typical "ping flood"-type DoS. In short, your neighbor will be downloading songs that aren't what he was looking for, it'll take him longer, and your bandwidth will be just fine.
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."
Exactly... The fasttrack network is homefree 'cause they've already got the checksum stuff in there. If you try to download a song and get the wrong one, you simply mark the checksum as bad and grab one with a different checksum. Heck, the clients could even communicate with the main fasttrack server and identify the bad files. If enough individual users marked a checksum, it could be filter.
;o)
The only way to thwart that would be to buy a very large number of unique IP address and then mark good files as bad, but I'm not sure there are even enough left
Gnutella would be fighting a little rougher battle 'cause I don't think it has the checksum ability (at least none of my clients use it) and there is no centralized server. On the other hand, it wouldn't be hard to establish a communication method for nodes to report bad files across the network and the checksumming could probably be added as well (that would be so cool).
The media people are fighting a battle off of their turf and it's really showing...
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."
How does downloading an MP3s of Hanson music constitute as terrorism
Playing these MP3s within anybody's earshot would certainly qualify as terrorism, I think.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
And this says nothing about the legit filesharing that it'd potentially end.
Do you honestly think that the RIAA gives a shit about this?
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Important notice to everybody in California: if you value the Internet or fair use rights, your Senators and Representatives could use a good flushing. It's obvious that this fellow has no respect for or understanding of the Internet, even assuming he's right about the idea that P2P services need to be eliminated, and frankly expressing this type of thinking alone should have Silicon Valley up in arms. Get these people out of our government -- they have no business representing anybody but those who are already entrenched and extremely rich.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
They already do this.
I tried to download Rush's Vapor Trail album but just got a bunch of garbage.
I suspect that individual artists and companies already do this.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Yes, gnutella clients do support hashing. Gnucleus, Xolox, Morpheus(gnucleus 1.9), and others.
u tella v0.6 Handshake - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_g...king%20Proto col (Yahoo account required)n utella protocoll specification v0.4 revision 1.2 - http://www.clip2.com/GnutellaProtocol04.pdf/ 1.0, RFC 1945 - http://www1.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/rfc1945.html 7 h tml (Yahoo account required)" - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_g...Proposals/HU GE/ (Yahoo account required)
Its not really standardized yet, check out the GDF
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf/
More Links:
Gnutella v0.6 Handshake Summary - http://www.gnucleus.com/research/connect.html
Gn
Gnutella V0.4/0.6 File Transfer Summary - http://www.gnucleus.com/research/transfer.html
G
HTTP
Gnutella GUID tagging - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf/message/139
"Ultra"peers - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_g...Ultrapeers.
ISO 8859-1 character set - http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/charset/
"HUGE
http://www.angryburrito.com/ The best, completely unfinished software review site ever.
I think they care a lot. About making sure that no-one can record, sell, or even give away music through in any way without their memebers getting involved. Why, competing companies and individual musicians might make money! And making money when you're not an RIAA member is the same as theft!
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
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.
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.
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.
The RIAA and MPAA really do believe that buying politicians can protect them against the consequences of their own actions. They believe that the FBI can track down the origins of any DOS or defacement or database or other attack against sites that they are interested in and that the 'evil, terrorist hackers' will be put in prison, end of problem.
Tech Public Policy stuff
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
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!
What's going on here? I can't get through to his site!
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Don't be too sure it won't pass. Elections are coming up and the Congress are all looking for money. Don't forget DMCA.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
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.
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.
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 heard a story of a guy who put razorblades around his stereo. A would-be thief sued him over it and won.
.. well.. gone! The MPAA thinks that I should pay for the Star Wars Triology again if I want to watch it again. I think I should be able to download it if somebody was nice enough to backup their copy.
There's another story about a guy who boobytrapped his wallet. When he was pickpocketed, it exploded and blew the thief's hands off. The 'victim' got to pay the handless thief for the rest of his life. (Note: That may be an urban legend.)
The law doesn't allow you to do things like that. I can only guess at the reason.
It seems to me that a DoS (yes I know that's not what the article's about, don't wast your time telling me I didnt read it) attack on P2P would fall under that law. If anybody does get attacked in any way by the RIAA, they could probaby take them to court and teach them a lesson.
What really irks me is that the law conflicts a bit. If I have the right to make a backup of a CD, shouldn't that allow one to make that backup available to others? The MPAA/RIAA calls that piracy. I don't call it piracy until somebody retrieves the backup who hasn't paid for a license.
I bought the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition a few years ago. The tapes disappeared when I moved. I didn't sell them, they just
The law supports both what I think and what the MPAA/RIAA thinks. It is for this reason, that I do not believe that either of these organizations should be given the ability to pass judgement against me. Instead, USA should do what DigitalConsumer.org suggestions: Create a set of rights for internet users.
If the law says 'you can backup your media', then the RIAA cannot sue me for having an MP3 copy of a song from a CD I purchased. Since an MP3 is a backup copy (can't play an MP3 in the standard CD Player...), then transmitting it to somebody else isn't a crime. It's not my job to judge who's licensed and who isn't. That's between the RIAA and whoever is violating it.
Frankly, I see this as a serious flaw to the DMCA. It creates provisions for fair use, but doesn't define them. So really, anybody can twist the wording to their own ends. Imagine if gun laws were like that. It'd be like "You can own a gun,
"Derp de derp."
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
"Frankly, I see this as a serious flaw to the DMCA. It creates provisions for fair use, but doesn't define them. So really, anybody can twist the wording to their own ends. Imagine if gun laws were like that. It'd be like "You can own a gun,
... It'd be like "You can own a gun, you may not shoot it unless: 1.) You are in danger. 2.) It's for educational purposes. 3.) You aren't aiming to harm. 4.) You have permission from the victim to be shot."
I apologize, I hit 'submit' instead of 'preview'. Let it be documented that I'm a dome ass.
Continuing:
Personally, I think it's better the way it is now: You may not kill people. You may not endanger people. You may not scare people. You have the right to have it and defend yourself.
I know, I'm oversimplifying, but hopefully my point comes across. DigitalConsumer.Org really struck a chord with me by defining what we can do with our digital rights. It seems like if those rights were passed into law, then the RIAA could clearly define what a 'pirate' really is. Only then would they be able to take steps to stop them.
They wouldn't be able to, for example, make un-backupable CD's. They wouldn't be able to put up fake files on P2P. And they wouldn't be able to make accusations against Apple for their 'Rip Mix and Burn' campagin, that'd be defamation.
I can see things making a whole lot more sense after that. Of course, the RIAA would have to develop a digital licensing database to know who can do what.
"Derp de derp."
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?
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?
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.
mv
(why does
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
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'
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.
If you own the corporation and the corporation has the power, you have the power. It's like the old saying, "he who has the gold makes the rules".
Communism in a nutshell: "They have money. They have power. We outnumber them. We steal from them and set up a new government. Money is power. Power corrupts. New government becomes corrupt. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss."
My other first post is car post.
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.
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
...but if or when legitimate file-sharing _IS_ affected, let those put out by it come forward at that time and start a class action suit for the costs of lost bandwidth.
How does a bankrupt company that has had its funds drained by a continuous attack on the bandwidth pipe that it pays for and its revenue stream taken away by the fact that it can no longer serve advertising banners pay for a class action suit? Oh, that's right, they don't.
A defendant in a civil suit has his money taken away from him AFTER he is found guilty and not before for exactly this reason. That, and that insignificant little "innocent until proven guilty" thing that the courts are so hung up on.
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!
As for the "innocent until proven guilty" thing... that is only true to an extent... You sacrifice the right to unquestionable credibility when you take the stand (or else you would not be required to swear in). This is why a person who has been accused of a crime had better be able to provide hard evidence that he didn't do the crime (unless it's murder - which only requires "reasonable doubt").
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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)
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.
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.
The reason law generally doesnt allow traps to be set is pretty simple. Imagine Mr Razor Stereo forgets to remove the razors when leaving the car for service, or imagine he gets stopped by Customs when going to Mexico. Ow. Imagine Mr. Exploding Wallet drops his wallet, and a friendly person picks it up, intending to return it to Lost Effects at the police, or something. Boom.
Traps have a tendency not to be picky, so while allowing them could deter a few crimes, I think the average trap would be more likely to catch someone without criminal intent.
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.
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?
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.
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.
This is why a person who has been accused of a crime had better be able to provide hard evidence that he didn't do the crime (unless it's murder - which only requires "reasonable doubt").
Ummm, no. You've got it backwards here pal. The burden of proof is on the prosecution, not the defense. Innocent until proven guilty is still, ostensibly, the law of the land. And requiring reasonable doubt is not limited to murder trials. It you are indeed telling the truth about having four lawyer friends, they must be pretty bad ones.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
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.
'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
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.
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 $30-40 a month for a fast, Napster like service. But they won't sell that to me at ANY price, which means that there is no way to obtain/swap MP3's legitimately.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
I envision a whole new world. One in which differences of opinion are solved by ddos attacks. Don't like the way your senator voted? ddos him. Object to the afghan campaign? ddos a few military networks. Think that abortion is wrong? ddos ddos ddos.
Blah. Why do people elect retards?
Moreover, this move makes for a more equitable social contract by placing the financial costs of copyright enforcement directly on the shoulders of those who benefit the most from said enforcement.
Isn't the free market grand? We ought to increase the number of representatives in Congress. With greater supply, the price should go down.
Where is that elite squad of hackers and why aren't they hacking the living f!#@$ 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
Once you've downloaded the garbage file, the damage is already done, you've wasted your time and bandwidth. Besides, such a site would have to get its checksums from the general public so nothing would prevent RIAA agents from uploading checksums of their choice for their members' product. You could try to create a community so checksum uploaders had a reputation and only those with good reputations would have their checksums accepted but that would dramatically slow down the process and still leave it imperfect. Also, you'd need a different checksum for every different encoding level (128K, 160K 192K, etc.) and you'd need a tailor-made client which would only check the audio portion of the file or every modification of the ID3 tags would invalidate the checksum.
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.
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.
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
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?
But leave that aside. Who the hell cares if it destroys an industry? It's not the role of the state to guarantee the validity of a business model.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
...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?
Speaking of Open Source, does this mean that I can start DoSing anyone sharing a copy of Debian which may include a package that I own the copyright to, perhaps the Debian guys themselves?
-twb
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.
You can also thank decades of lying, cheating, and stealing politicians.
As to corporate power being trusted... You may trust them. I sure don't.
Looking over the past few decades, I don't see any power group that has proved worthy of trust. So the first problem is to design a "government" without power groups, and the second problem is to devise a way to implement it. I think the first step would be even harder than the second, and also even more urgent. And don't forget the importance of debugging, even in the sections where you are sure that there just can't be any errors.
A start toward the government without power groups is exemplified by internet development. (I didn't say it would be unemotional.) Unfortunately, a part of what makes it work (to the extent that it does) is that a person can withdraw at any time, and participation is strictly voluntary. It's hard to translate that off the net and into the physical.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Uh... If I'm reading the lawyers comments correctly (awhile back) there probably aren't any non-copyrighted files. The laws have been re-written so that everything has the copyright owned by someone unless it existed before, oh, around 1950 (and the person wasn't trying to get copyright). Or sometime in the 1930's if the owner was trying to preserve copyright.
Everything recent is copyright even if you didn't intend it to be. You can't give it up. You can say that people are allowed to copy it, but you still own the copyright. (Also, appearantly public domain only applies to those older works. The legal existence of the intellectual commons has been deleted [except for those older works].)
Still, IANAL, so don't rely on this. But that's what I understand the law to be.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
Only in civil court (eg the plaintiff is not The Government - "State of", "United States", etc). In criminal court (the state versus defendant), the prosecution must prove their case "beyond a reasonable doubt".
I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Blah blah blah.
funny munging
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
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?
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 $20 to put a lazy cop on your route, that's still a bribe, even though it's indirect and not as guaranteed as a direct bribe.
We already say that some things are off-limits during elections (campaigning near polling stations, early release of results, etc) so why not go one step further and forbid giving politicians any money, directly or otherwise?
"Than they should just rip the mp3 themselves."
I don't think most people can rip a damaged CD. All you're doing is giving the RIAA the ability to screw you on the replacement. "yep, that's a damaged CD. Buy another one."
"Derp de derp."
I wish the RIAA would just set up a database where I can put in my CD and go to their site. They look at the CD, determine the songs on it, and build a database of the songs I have legally acquired. Then, I can take the MP3's that I've grown attached to, have them check the identifier on them, and send me a bill for the licenses I need to have them.
What's great about this idea is that people could buy songs without bandwidth overhead to the RIAA. Give me that ability, and the RIAA may start getting money from me again. In the mean time, I visit the pawn shop alot.
"Derp de derp."
At least not outside the priesthood.
I'm not sure, but we may be arguing about terminology here. I suppose the demonlord Gates will put in technology that monitors what everyone does--in fact what you're saying already appears to be in XP. But what I was saying is palladium is worse because they'll be preventing you from doing things they don't approve--like writing your own programs without M$ approval, or even competing with M$ in any way...
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.
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."
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?
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.
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.
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
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 think they can have a significant impact anyway. The labels are large organizations but are tiny compared to the masses of people using P2P software.
*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.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.