Slashdot Mirror
MPAA Requests Immunity to Commit Cyber-Crimes
The news has been buzzing around for the last couple of days that Representative Berman, whose palm has been crossed with silver by the entertainment industry, would introduce a bill permitting copyright holders to hack or DoS people allegedly distributing their works without permission. Well, the bill has been introduced - read it and weep. Although the bill wouldn't allow copyright owners to alter or delete files on your machine, they would be allowed to DoS you in essentially any other way. Let me restate that: the MPAA and RIAA are asking that they be allowed to perform what would otherwise be federal and state criminal acts and civil torts, and you will have essentially no remedy against them under any laws of the United States.
Ok, so its open season. Fine. Game on.
If it applies only to big business (RIAA, MPAA, BSA), and not to joe sixpack, it's unconstitutional under the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Oh, and this post is Copyright (c) 2002, by me, "sconeu". I reserve the right to search any and all computers for unauthorized reproductions of this post.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If you've been living under a rock, now is the time to realize how deep it really is in Washington now.
This is complete and utter bullshit. My money stays home if this passes. Anyone read any good books lately?
The Register is actually looking forward to this becoming law!
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
"And someone said, 'Fair Warning, Lord.
The young man gone to town.
Turned from hunted into hunter.
Gone to hunt somebody down.'"
-Van Halen
... all the hell will break loose when Lucent Bell Labs will DoS all unix machines? Or virus writers will do DoS legaly -- "It is my virus, they stole and DISTRIBUTE it!!".
and then just wait till MS would do DoS to these nasty pirates...
As of a few days ago if citizen do these same things they can be considered terrorists and subject to a maximum sentance of life in prison. Now who again is being helped by our lawmakers now?
jello.
aka aron.
But otherwise illegal acts are already carried out by ruling organizations - this already happens and is endorsed on a much wider scale.
For example, the death penalty for serious crimes. It's murder - except when the government do it!
And just look at religion. One of the commandments in Christianity is "you shall not murder". How hypocritical when their own god went and meticulously tortured and killed sections of a whole race of people (the Egyptians.)
Don't be shocked about this. There are many, many occurances of the same sort of thing to show that history does indeed repeat itself.
I wonder at what point the revolt will happen. Something tells me it will be when it's far too late, and anybody trying to be proactive about it will be called a terrorist or something.
When will the American people wake up? It's so blatantly obvious to the rest of the world that your corporations are out of control. When are you going to finally realize it's time to put a leash on them?
Where will all of this end? Does the MPAA/RIAA actually need the right to attack individuals over the internet for having an mp3 of Stairway to Heaven on their pc? Is there anything dsl/cable/whatever providers can do to protect their customers from this?
More questions and a film at 11.
If they do not do this, then is it not true that they have proven that they (the senators) are no longer protecting and standing by the principles upon which the united states of america's constitution was written?
What's the purpose of having the right to bear arms again? (rhetorical question)
...hello again Fidonet, old friend. How you be? Here, let me help you with that (whatever.)
This had better not pass into law because it's an open invitation to civil war on the net. I can't believe such stupidity makes it this far in Congress, no, wait, yes I can believe it in the context of UCITA, DRM, etc., etc., seemingly ad infinitum.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
The Canadian Private Copying Collective wants more of your money.
On top of raising existing levys, they want to tax any media that can store copyrighted material. This includes Hard drives and Flash media. While the MPAA is crashing your computer in the US the CPCC is robing you blind every time you buy recordable media.. And how much are the artists getting??? According to reports, after 2 years of the levy being collected NOTHING has been paied to ANY artist.. Theroy has it they are spending all the money lobying for higher levys.
http://www.sycorp.com/levy/index.htm
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
I think it's the duplicity that the government is showing is what everyone has a problem with.
"DoS'ing people is bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. Oh wait a minute... except for them."
It's just another instance of someone trying to have it both ways.
MPAA - 'Can we have immunity from laws designed to protect the computer infrastructure and commit damaging acts against networks and computers that don't belong to us?' - Pending
John Ashcroft and Federal LEO's - 'Can we have immunity from the fourth ammendment and commit invasion of privacy against americans?' - Denied up until 9-11, then granted, despite the fact that they already had information about the WTC attacks. Permanent acception is pending the Patriot act's expiration date.
George Bush and Oil Industry CEOs - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting the environment and virgin wilderness in order to increase our profits and control of the energy industry by drilling in Alaskan wilderness and completely ignoring global warming and any other environmental concerns that are too expensive for us to worry about?' - Pending.
What's next?
Preists - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting children from molestation and rape so we can get our jollies with 9 year olds?'
Corporate Executives - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting our investors and the general public so that we can pad our pocketbooks and live lives of luxury?'
Police - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting citezens from police brutality so that we can beat, maim or kill with impunity?'
The Rich - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting people from slavery and oppression so that we can further entrench our selves in oligarchy and profit from the abuse of our fellow humans'?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
This reminds of reposession, where the repo man can legaly break into peoples home to take back a car or TV they're not keeping up payments for.
I don't really have point other than to point out the similarities. Discuss.
So if you managed to place the files in question on a server which also had some commercial purpose (say, hosting images for an eBay auction) might this trip the $50 limit and allow prosecution or civil action? I am only the son of a lawyer and not one myself, but this seems like a low threshhold for such a bill
The MPAA would hire a couple of "consulting" companies to carry out these acts.
These consulting firms would attack and disable some script kiddies computer who is serving MP3s.
So, what does the script kiddie do? He and his bunch of script kiddies go and shut down the offending consulting firms internet connection(s) with a DoS that's about 100 times more massive (because they can use everyone elses poorly protected servers to do it). And that's just if they pick on a teenager in the US.
Say they try and shut down some actual knowledgable hacker in, say, Russia. Wait a second... why are the bank account numbers, credit card numbers, home address and telephone for the head of the MPAA up on MPAA.com? Weird.
My question is, how does this web site even stay up?
I'm sure the script kiddies internet provider will just be pleased as punch that the MPAA just hacked one of it's customers and possibly used a DoS attack to do it (there by degrading the quality of service for all their clients)
Sounds great to me. It'll work like a charm this new law (if passed).
And why does the MPAA sound like a police orginization to me?
From their website:
To battle the problem, in 2000, the MPA launched over 60,000 investigations into suspected pirate activities, and more than 18,000 raids against pirate operations in coordination with local authorities around the world.
The MPAA/MPA directs its worldwide anti-piracy activities from headquarters in Encino, California. Regional offices are also located in Brussels (Europe, Middle and Africa), Mexico (Latin America) Canada and Hong Kong (Asia/Pacific).
Uhmm... that scares me
Casual Games/Downloads
I sent off this Letter to the Editor to newspapers in Coble's 6th District in North Carolina (Greensboro, High Point, Burlington, Asheboro, Lexington) this morning, before the bill was officially introduced. Hopefully it'll get published in at least one of the papers:
######
To The Editor,
For years, Congress and law enforcement has been telling us about the dangers posed by computer hackers. They have warned computer users about how you should be on guard for the damage that hackers can do to your computer systems.
However, Rep. Howard Coble is preparing to submit a bill in Congress that would grant almost complete immunity to large music and movie companies to hack into your computers, if they have the suspicion that you might be sharing copyrighted files. No proof or involvement by law enforcement will be needed. And what's more, if they damage your computers in this vigilante action, you'll need to prove real damages of over $250 and get the permission of the US Attorney General to file suit against them.
What Rep. Coble is saying is that computer hacking is bad, unless you're a rich corporation with lots of money to provide in campaign donations. The hypocracy of such a bill is stunning. The voters of Congressional District 6 need to decide whether Rep. Coble is looking out for their interests, or Big Hollywood's.
It WILL be an act of war. Arm yourselves, people. PGP your files and offload to a disconnected machine. And get a firewall. And Nmap. If they do this, we can fight right back and when they do, the government will finally see the error of this bill.
We're Doomed
We should still be writing our representatives but at the same time I don't really think this bill stands much of a chance. Congress usually understands when they are making something that is on the books illegal into something legal for elite groups. They know that if they pass the bill and it gets some publicity that there will be huge public outcry, probably enough to keep at least some of them from being re-elected.
Even if it passes its obviously unconstitutional and any judge in his right mind will strike it down.
(if it passes the house and goes to the Senate then I'll worry)
The Anti-Blog
Logically it seems impossible to me that they can do anything over the internet that cannot be said to cause economic loss to someone else. In other words, any traffic they put on the internet could be said to cause economic loss to someone, because ultimately someone is paying for that bandwidth.
This bill doesn't seem like a very solid piece of legislation, even for what they want it to allow them to do.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Loophole: Such DoS attacks harm the ISP.
The bill does include a counterclaim procedure.
In addition, if a studio abuses this privilege, the Attorney General can take the studio to court and get an injunction against the studio from attacking further computers. (This may not apply to Mr. Ashcroft, who has been sympathetic to the studios.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
...The combination of this new cause of action and pre-existing causes of action will deter copyright owners from using the safe harbor as an excuse to harass file traders, indiscriminately impair the operation of a P2P network, frustrate competitors, or otherwise take
...further limits the safe harbor created by Sec.514(a) by listing specific circumstances in which a copyright owner cannot rely on the safe
any action not encompassed within the safe harbor....
harbor. The safe harbor is unavailable if:
the copyright owner impairs the trading of files that don't contain her copyrighted work, unless such impairment is necessary to impair
the trading of her copyrighted work...
I need some help here. To me it seems that legally they'd only be able to DOS a "trader" if they could do it without limiting the trade on non-copyrighted material. I don't know the law well, and I definately need webster's to read some of this junk, but am I at all in the ballpark?
Some legal expertise might be helpful...
MessEdUp
#/var/www/v
Did the person who wrote the Slashdot editorialization for this story even read the bill?
..."
The very first page says:
"Notwithstanding any State or Federal statute or other law
Which indicates to me that you WOULD have "remedy against them" under whatever laws of the United States existed before this bill.
Furthermore, the bill makes it very clear that the copyright holder can only mess with your computer's ability to transfer copyrighted material, not anything else, and only if it does not adversely impact your computer with regards to anything other than the copyrighted material which is being illegally transferred.
And, far from being "allowed to DoS you in essentially any other way", they could only block, divert, or otherwise impair the UNAUTHORIZED transfer of copyrighted material. Whatever that other way of DoSing you is that you are worried about, it could only be used so long as it interferes only with the unauthorized transfer of copyrighted material. And only if it only causes economic loss to you of less than $50 per impairment to the property of the affected copyright holder, and only if it does not economically or materially impact anyone else.
I would say that this bill simply tries to put forth the notion that they copyright holders ought to be allowed to block illegal transfer of their copyrighted works, within very tight boundaries of conduct which ensures that they do not inadvertently cause any harm to any one else, or even to the illegal transferrer except for impairing their ability to make illegal transfers.
I am not saying that I agree or disagree with this bill, but the editorializer has clearly overstated the scope and effect of this bill. This seems to be a common tactic of those who rabidly defend an anti-copyright position with regards to modern file sharing.
You must be a troll (or a cartel lackey ... the hotmail account should give it away I suppose).
... they are preparing the public consciousness for exactly this event ... having the industry and government thugs come into our personal lives and, in a very personal way, tell us exactly what we can and cannot do.
A lot of people around here think there's no harm in hackers doing that to other people's computers, going so far to squeal when they get "ratted out" by others or end up in court for their actions.
Very few here thing that illegally cracking system security and breaking into computer systems is a "good thing." A fair number of people take exception to the absurd disparity between sentences and the severity of the crime, but few (if any) argue that engaging in this sort of behavior is in any way a positive act.
But when governments and large corporations can go around vandalizing and harming people legally, and the law makes it illegal to defend against such acts (by perhaps doing the same thing) for individuals, then, by any definition, we live under tyranny.
As uncool to say, and as extreme as it sounds, the digital sky is truly falling. Our freedom of expression is under wholesale and organized and concerted attack from both the media cartels and Microsoft, and the tame politicians they have in their pockets, and the reasonable sounding denials of these very stark facts don't make them any less true. We will either wake up and get involved politically and socially, educating our representatives and the lay public about these issues, or, just like the British Crown did with the printing press when it enacted the first iteration of copyright law, we will have the modern, digital equivelent of the printing press taken from us. In other words, our ability to speak and publish freely, and be heard, will be taken from us, and modern general purpose computers as we've come to know them will become a very restricted item.
Even Microsoft is publicly admitting that the end of open computing is at hand
If you are such a lackey, or so blinded by your own petty greed or agenda, that you cannot see this coming, then you will no doubt be getting exactly what you deserve. Unfortunately, the rest of us, who have the observational and congnative skills that exceed those of the common garden slug, will be taken down into the pit along with you.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
uh... oops. my bad my bad.
:P
WRONG article!!
like you've never done this before
well if they dos anyone outside the united states it might be considered an act of war
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
There is plenty of room within the existing laws for both these organizations to prevent piracy and safeguard their copyrights. Most people, even in liberal fora like /., consider piracy a crime today.
Such acts will only make these organizations lose their goodwill further and alienate people who are supporting them today.
We cannot enact more and more customized laws to solve problems. We need to effectively enforce the existing ones.
This will result in nothing short of a cyber-war.
All your favorite sites in one place!
Page 5, Line 4
You do have a remedy if they wrongfully attacked you and caused "Economic damages" in excess of $250.
The solution: Make a CD or an independent movie. Offer it for sale. Share it on your machine. If you are DOSed by the MPAA, sue them for lost sales (including sale of distribution rights).
Of course, you would might need to show that you had sales in the first place. I am not a lawyer so I wouldn't know.
Fuck these people. If *any* private organization launches attacks at my machine, I will defend myself electronically and fight back. If any LEO shows up at my door for defending myself against these legitimized criminal organizations, well, I'll start excersicing my 2nd ammendment rights how they were meant to be excersiced.
11*43+456^2
Write your representative online here
Unfortunately for me, my rep is Lamar Smith (R-TX) who is one of the bill's sponsors.
I wrote him yesterday (before I knew he was a sponsor) and made several objectsions to the bill:
1) It's vigilante justice. False positives -- the MPAA and RIAA have a strong market pressure to ignore false positives, because alternative methods of distribution challenge their business model
2) The "digital piracy" problem is not a problem
3) The MPAA and RIAA have subverted the democratic process and the will of the people regarding copyright law
4) Trying to stop file-trading is futile. Free Speech and "Total Control" Copyright are fundamentally incompatible. The People would rather have Free Speech than the MPAA and RIAA.
I wrote him today and told him I would vote against him.
I can find no mention of it on Thomas, and if I bug my representative without a bill number, his staff's just going to check the "misc. loon" box when I call.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
Please stop and read the bill before you go any further.
The article's claim about DoS-ing you pretty much any way they like is sensationalist and inaccurate. For a start, it refers only to a "publicly accessible peer-to-peer file trading network", and that is carefully defined. It also seems to require that the copyright holder give notification to the DoJ of what they're going to do at least seven days in advance. The affected file trader has various rights to find out what's going on, and to seek compensation if they are unduly damaged economically, etc.
In fact, it basically seems to say that if they can prove you're screwing them, they can DoS you to stop you, under the oversight of the legal system. Is that so unfair?
It's hardly the same as the DoSing that takes down systems that are there for law-abiding reasons, contrary to the "hypocrisy" chant of the slashbots here. They're only worried that they might actually have to pay for something for the first time in their lives anyway. :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Responding with...
This banner is copyright (c) 2002 by Stinky Wizzleteats all rights reserved. Any posession of the materials within this banner makes you subject to the provisions of the Berman Act.
Bend over.
First, copyright holders were allowed to take you to civil court for theft of copyrighted material, which was all well and good. Then, the big guys realized that civil proceedings cost them money, so they paid for a law (DMCA) that would make copyright violations a criminal offense so the government would foot the bill. And now that they aren't getting the results they wanted from the government they want to legalize vigilante justice? I guess buying your politicians in bulk really pays off...
do not read this line twice.
Sure you could use the link above to write in electronically, and that's fine, but you should more or less expect that if you don't write a physical letter then you'll be ignored. It's not always competely true, but it's true enough. If you don't write your rep and this thing passes then you've pretty much forfieted your bitching rights.
Behold the Power of Cheese!
Much better would be if, for the protection of infrastructure, all major ISPs drop packets from ??AA-controlled networks at their borders. Since ISPs are not obligated to carry any traffic other than that of their customers, and they are obligated to their own shareholders to protect and preserve their own infrastructure, they are essentially required to drop traffic from locations they may reasonably expect to be sources of attacks against their own or their customers' networks. Whether the attacks are legal or not, the ISPs still have a compelling business interest in preventing them.
May I suggest that while we are discussing this abomination of a bill here on slashdot we also take the time to open our word processors and write letters to our representatives?
Remember that technically they are supposed to represent US, not the person/corporation with the biggest checkbook.
It may also do well to write your senators -- A similar bill will likely start up there eventualy, or if this mess passes the house it will wind up in the senate eventually.
Find your Representative and your Senators and make your opinion known.
(BTW - remember that paper letters are far more difficult to ignore than outraged emails. Especially en masse.)
/~mikeg
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Before you can be punished for a crime, isn't due process required? And even if you are found to be committing a crime, since when were victims allowed to decide and administer punishment? This is seriously messed up stuff going on here, for this sort of thing even to be suggested by one of our representatives -- let alone if it actually passes!
Sure, the MPAA can argue that it's defending it's copyrights when it aggressively attacks some server with copyright infringed mp3's, but those packets have to travel from their servers to the target, and in that path there's no guarentee that it won't affect innocent bystanders who happen to be trying to use network resources in that path?
Let's take it to an extreme and imagine something crazy like the MPAA deciding to take down some kid's cable modem ftp server on your local neighborhood by DDoSing it. You don't think that's going to leave you uneffected with your shared bandwidth? Or what about the time wasted by your ISP when they try to slow down a DDoS attack, when they may not instantly know whether it's a supposedly "legal" MPAA tactic, or some script kiddies?
If the MPAA/RIAA get there way on this legislation, screw it, instead of being a legal purchaser of CDs and DVDs, I will start cracking and ripping their work just on principle.
That's what we're talking about here. Private individuals taking over the responsibilities of law enforcement and the courts. Not only will they be gaining unauthorized access to your private property, they will also be taking it upon themselves to judge you guilty and inflict whatever punishment they see fit. Where's the oversight? Where's the accountability? There's none. I always discounted warnings of corporations gaining too much power, simply because corporations only get the power governments give them. Now we see that governments may be all too willing to give it.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
...if you discover someone distribution [sic] your stuff on a p-p network, you should be able to take reasonable steps to prevent it.
Exactly. The sentiment that I think many of us hold is that a DOS attack is *NOT* "reasonable" - it's utterly ridiculous.
Nor does the absence of an alternative make the insane solution being offered acceptable. The RIAA/MPAA claims, "LOOK! We're being CRUSHED! We must do SOMETHING!" - and then go *way* overboard in their definition of Something. The onus is on them to come up with a reasonable solution - and this it not it.
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
In the movie script business there is a form of copyright protection of scripts. You register your work with the writers guild and nobody gets to see it except under court order. The point being one of protection against what is called innocent plagerism.......(someone reads a script, thinks nothing of it and then a year later they re-invent it as their own, maybe without realizing it)
This proposed double standard basicly makes that serious crapola, as I'm sure many script writters use the internet.......in other words the entertainment industry is seriously shooting themselves in the foot.
And again the suits shoot the talent
In my opinion, we should declare a DoS attack on all parties responsibile for allowing this thing to pass once this thing becomes law. Enough of this crap!
Like COPA, they can put an injunction on it -- which effectively puts the law on hold until the constitutionality can be figured out by the courts.
Two issues with that.
First, most of the users of p2p networks are home users who don't really do much other than play games, music, and otherwise entertain themselves. To the majority of users affected by this, it would actually be fairly difficult to claim $50 in damages.
Second, the way this law reads, as long as the MPAA's lynch mob reported the attacks to the government 7 days in advance and could claim that they reasonably expected they would only be hitting computers containing works violating their copyright, they could crash and burn any machine they wanted. Note that the bill clearly states that economic loss is limited to dollars. If they crash my hdd and I lose all the photos I haven't backed up to cd yet, there's no economic loss so I don't have cause to charge them criminally or sue them.
In addition, read d.1.a on page 5, which says you can't even seek recompense if your economic loss is less than $250. Thus, chances are my hardware damaged by such an attack, such as a hdd, won't even be of sufficient cost to seek damages.
Overall, I'd say this is vigilante justice of a type long frowned upon in this country.
If the MPAA or RIAA decides they want to DDoS him for sharing their material, it's darn sure going to impact my EverQuest and Warcraft III connections (as well as whatever more "legitimate" uses I may be putting my bandwidth to).
Will non-infringers who suffer such collateral damage have any recourse against the companies or trade groups who are "protecting their rights"?
Hmm...no cancelled checks in my account made out to any Congressmen, so I somehow doubt it.
Just do it, people. Don't be inflammatory, just ask whether or not they intend to support the bill (in its current form, or with modifications.)
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Norm Dicks (Washington, 6th district) previously wrote back to one of my queries on the CBDTPA, with the response that he didn't support it. I'm hoping he's got similar views on this bill.
got standards? --- http://www.w3.org/
SubSection b.A states that only the file containing the copyrighted works can be affected. Any legitimate files must still be fully accessible and unaffected.
So following those lines share some random txt file you wrote. If they DDOS you sue them since the legitimate file was affected by their attack. You could probably even tip toe around the fact that you illegally had copyrighted works on your PC.
Of follow subsection b.C which states the file trader cannot sustain more than a $50.00 loss for any reason because of an attack.
They also have to notify the DOJ each time they want to do it. Now I'm going to be writing my representative tonight on this but realize that this is not an unrestricted license to hack by any means.
One thing I've not seen posited in the P2P arena is a technique analogous to the spread-spectrum military comms. Howabout splitting the [bigbadfile] into smaller binary chunks based on frequency of access. Sites host [bi], [igb], [gbad], [dfi], [ile].
Assume the chunks can be split arbitrarily, and the P2P s/w can do binary patches of overlapping data, surely this would prevent anyone claiming you were serving anything they had an interest in. A chunk of binary data from one site would be pretty much akin to a chunk of binary data from another. It's only in the entireity that copyright is held anyway, no? I can't believe someone has a copyright on middle-C...
Additional benefits come from the robustness of the distributed data. If you use a one-way hash of the text-to-search-on to the item-description and index by hash, then even the hosts wouldn't know what it was they were hosting, and splitting the files up into small chunks would abrogate their responsibility further.
Indexing it becomes more of a problem, but this is simply the same problem as we currently have, with the addition of a byte-range. The client simply has to fetch sufficient data to create the entire range.
You'd want hosts to merge chunks that were adjacent for efficiency, to within a host-defined fraction of the total size - you'd not want to be suddenly hosting an entire object or you're open to DOS'ing.
Use gzip/ssh to tunnel all comms (data and metadata) so it's hard to intercept. Add XML-RPC or similar so it can be tunnelled through a firewall webserver port. If you're really paranoid, add a steganographic mode where requests and data are embedded in mpeg/jpeg files in the lsb. You'd have to have rewritten compressors for steganography anyway, so preserving the high-frequency bits for data would be possible.
I've thought about doing something like this before. The fundamental flaw is that an open-source client can be modified to inject rubbish into the network. You can compensate for this with a slashdot-style moderation system. Operating on the principle that there are more IP addresses for us than for them, and letting every IP address have a '+' and a '-' vote per day per hosting server, bad files could be marked as such efficiently by having a 'Click here if it doesn't work' in the client GUI. If your IP's moderation is inconsistent with the majority then your moderation rights for that server are suspended for a while. I think that would work.
Just ideas...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Self preserving networks should have a node notify it's peers if it's going under due to a traffic spike ("Avenge me my comrades . . . *gasp*"). At which point that node would tell a friend (or ten) to ping (or request a file if the attacker itself is on the p2p network) the attacker just to make sure they weren't injured in their own attack.
It would be like hitting somebody in the arm so they forget about their broken foot. It wouldn't be a DOS attack itself, just a thousand concerned P2Pers who want to make sure the MPAA's computers are in good enough health to continue their legal actions.
Notwithstanding
notwithstanding Pronunciation Key (ntwth-stndng, -wth-)
prep.
In spite of: The teams played on, notwithstanding the rain.
adv.
All the same; nevertheless: We proceeded, notwithstanding.
conj.
In spite of the fact that; although.
IN SPITE OF any other federal or state laws, they can do what they like.
Oh, and they can delete any file they want if it is "necessary" to prevent you from trading their copyrighted files.
Yes, it REALLY is that bad.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Take illegal copies of Godard's Hail Mary and place them on the website of Rome's Special Police Force.
Meanwhile, place legal copies on the RIAA and MPAA websites and alter Rome's Chief Prosecutor.
Then sit back and watch the fur fly.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Here is a list of top contributors to Berman.
$187000 is all it took to get this bill introduced?
Why haven't geek-friendly organizations been able to buy their own congresspeople - or have they, and in that case, which ones?
When corporations gain the right to hack people and to take away their rights faster than the FBI with a warrant, something needs to be done. The MPAA must fall if this goes on, or us Americans are doomed to follow the corporations' instead of the best interest of the people. ShadowRun, anyone?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Bonus, if you believe your computer has crashed and it might have been caused by the MPAA just send the AG a note... they'll have to look into it.
Was it the video driver, or the MPAA?
And if you have reason to believe the MPAA, RIAA, or *anyone* has your material on their system, you could use this sort of thing yourself. Hint: send them an email (you can add a copyright notice, but the Berne convention doesn't even require that) just to be sure they have something of yours. :-)
What this bill boils down to, is that a group wants a special privelege to defend itself against a crime that has technically not occurred. They're asking for the ability to act as an arm of the judicial system, wherein they can determine whether a crime has been committed and determine the proper remedy, and then become an agent of the executive, and actually dole out the punishment.
Not a whole lot of due process going on here.
I thought that DoS attacks are considered acts of terrorism under some new cyber-crimes law.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
1). make an innocent box with legal material under incorrect filenames (i.e. metallica - sandman)
2). wait.
3). when they attack, sue them in a class action lawsuit for harassment, stalking, and any other personal crime, sue for 10% of their yearly income.
4). when they say that's outrageous, point out how much the court costs were of your income, not to mention the actual denial of your internet connection which you pid for.
5). press chages for them under the patriot act or something for hax0ring your computer.
you guys are clever, turn it against them.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
The kicker is this. If your DoS does more than $250 of commercial damage to their system they can appeal to the AG and get an order for you to stop. For some nobody sitting on a cable modem this isn't an easy claim, however, for the likes of the MPAA or the RIAA this is a no-brainer. Any system you bring down will obviously be costing them $1000s and they have the accountants to cook those numbers right. Hell, one hour of a sysadmin's time to figure out they are being attacked would do it.
This bill does not protect the little guy one bit.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Doesn't this all seem a little too cyberpunk-ish? A limited number of sprawling corporate zaibatsu dominating the commercial landscape; government effectively void in providing any kind of checks and balances to those who dwell within its borders; a massive, generally unaccounted-for population that ekes out a living by catering to the needs within their demesne; and a subculture of highly intelligent, pseudo-anarchic, technology-savvy hackers who cut their teeth by fighting the system, be it for fun, principle or profit.
At least, that's what I feel. Government now seems to be more of a career move than a principled institution; despite our economic power, our government pisses our cash away on pork barrel projects; the military isn't able account for trillions of dollars it's ostentsibly spent to protect the populace it was created to defend; and a business ideology that is both morally bankrupt and would seem omniscient, were it not for the efforts of individuals who make it their duty to rage against the machine.
Honestly, it all makes me think about expatriating. Maybe it's not a war in the conventional sense, but it's certainly an assault on one's sensibilities.
GNUnet - Completely encrypted and completely anonymous file sharing. It's designed to be resistant to attack, let's see them go after that once it's up to a few million nodes. ;)
Oh well, IRC was fun while it lasted.
So, if this bill passes, and someone don't like the moderation they recieve from a slashdot post... would they be able to request the post be removed from slashdot, else legally be permitted to attempt to DDoS and otherwise attack slashdot for holding copywrited material? After all, is not all written material considered copywrited unless otherwise agreed beforehand? I'd hate to have to sign a license agreement for every slashdot post.
Ryan Fenton
Okay, we can't have "public" networks.
I'm a copyright holder.
What about a web of trust, you get someone to "sign" your access key and use that to get access, if these guys get on, we know who permitted them on, and can just kick that person off.
Closed communities are inevitable, that is why I sit on a 30 person IRC network.
"publicly accessible peer-to-peer file trading network"
thats every computer on the internet.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Lets just say that I have T-1 line to the Internet and Verio is providing that line. When a DOS attack is launched it could potentialy flood every router between my box and the intiator of the attack.
Okay by law they were given the right to DOS me but not the ISP which can still file criminal charges. So, it sound like they are still shit out of luck unless the law gives them a "get out of jail free card" for all acts commited during the execution of a plan to attack the offender. Wow, now if that were the case it would open up a huge new can of worms.
"Help me Obi-/.-Kenobi,your my only hope!" -$
I agree about the legal stuff. How about a demonstration or two in front of the movie theatres. Do people realise that these guys have the right to break into their computers and cause damage on suspicion?
See my journal, I write things there
Your statement is stupid. There is no all-encompassing unity among the posters of Slashdot on any issue. Many of the people you attack are, in fact, involved in system administration or security in some way or another, and certainly do not believe that it is A-OK to crack or DOS systems. Your stereotypes are useless.
As for this bill itself, I personally do not believe that it is "OK" for the government to dole out powers to enforce the law to anyone who feels threatened. This is not the way our society is meant to work. I certainly don't want to see this or any other examples of vigilantism around my town or country.
That's covered under the .jpg patent claims being pressed against everyone now....you know, the one that Sony coughed up 15 mil for even though the patent expires in 2004...
What is your Slash Rating?
Everytime this appears we get a bunch of "we'll show them posters" threatening all kinds of interesting punishments. Forget it.
If/When the law passes each attempt to hack into their computers for any reason will be met with the recently passes "capital crime" of hacking punishment.
You are an individual. They are a corporation.
You are a terrorist. They are protecting the rights of American copyright holders.
You will get 5 - 25 years. They will get new releases on how good a job they are doing stopping these kids from stealing their products.
They donate large sums of money to congress. You are listed as a non-voting demographic. [Better than opposition party or extremist, you are a non-entity.]
I will be surprised if this makes the nightly news anywhere. They want this to be a non-story and will pay plenty to keep it that way. Any story that does arise will be spinning the "protecting America against copyright theft."
If you really want to do something, take five minutes, right now and FAX your representatives [You could try email. Are they any better at reading them today than last year?].
Be polite, be firm and be specific. DMCA got passed because many people expected someone else(our representatives) to see the lunacy in the approach. This just proves we can never underestimate the ability of smart people to do dumb things with the right incentive.
Here are the contacts:
Senate Locator
House of Representative Locator
Do it now
The Register is actually looking forward to this becoming law!
After reading the bill, and then reading the Register article, it becomes obvious that Thomas Greene didn't even bother reading the bill.
Assume that the MPAA and RIAA will be able to block packets from any P2P network that they identify as containing their works. I'm not sure how they'll do it, but it probably involves paying off the backbone owners and/or ISPs.
It seems to me that the obvious counter-measure is to use encryption and "trusted peer" techniques to preclude their ability to join the P2P network and/or identify who is trading what.
Remember folks who are US citizens, Berman (D-CA) and Coble (R-NC) are up for election, as are the other 433 members of the House. Send a message if you're in their district. Berman, in particular, is owned by the entertainment industry, with over $100K from Disney, AOL-TW, Sony, DreamWorks, etc.
Coble, on the other hand, sold out for $5734 from the RIAA, according to www.opensecrets.org. I would've thought my rights would cost more than that.
If the government starts granting the powers of enforcement to other bodies, then what the fuck good are they? Am I paying taxes to these people so that they can assign all of their work to some corporation in California? Does anyone else see this as one step away from anarchy?
What's next - are they going to assign legislative powers to Microsoft, since making laws is too hard? Oh, poor fucking RIAA. Forced to live under the same laws as everyone else.
Seriously, if our government is not enforcing the law, and legislation can basically be written by someone else and just passed up to the Congressman they bought this year, then what, exactly, IS OUR GOVERNMENT DOING? Probably browsing pr0n all day, because they sure as hell are not RUNNING THE NATION.
Actually, depending on what "manner..the Attorney General shall specify," it may still be unequal protection.
/.ers) think it shouldn't be policed by local governments. But on the other hand, you can be arrested for blocking traffic or sidewalks...
As for whether or not DoS attacks should be illegal, that is a philosophical point. On one hand, the internet is global, so many (of us
-RB
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
It's simple. Pirates are very determined to continue piracy. If the MPAA, RIAA, or whoever start hacking, three things will happen.
1. The outcome will be true to the traditional form of computer security: the more people you have banging on something, the better it'll get in the long run. People who design and develop the P2P networks and the systems they run on will have intense motivation to make those systems more secure against crackers. More bugs will be found and squashed since the attackers in this case are not afraid of legal ramifications.
2. Pirates'll change their software. Most pirates are probably on fairly insecure systems at the moment. When they find themselves being shut down in this manner, they'll move to more secure platforms and services.
3. Whoever these entities are will eventually blunder such that they will destroy both their credibility and make them look like jackasses. In time, they are going to hire people who will abuse this to the maximum possible extent. There's also the extreme likelihood that some attacks will be waged on critical systems for businesses or whoever (someone sets of a warez depot on their company's xyz server).
These people who want this nonsense fail to realize exactly how pointless all this is. They don't understand that they are dealing with an animal that heals faster than it can be injured. When they took out Napster, a dozen file sharing services popped up to take its place. Likewise today, when they start cracking to take down sharing networks and systems, the users will only build them up stronger. Not to mention that no matter at what scale they launch these attacks, the MPAA, RIAA, or whoever could never have enough attackers to even make a dent on the whole system. There's at least an order of magnitude more pirates than there are people stopping them. Again, they will make themselves look like jackasses.
Damn fools. Greed makes them both blind and stupid. They could spend some time coming up with a fair business model that could survive out there today without a lot of extra bullshit (Palladium, DRM, etc). That would require a lot less time and money.
Why bother.
A good first step would be to exclude USA from international patent and copyrught organizations, allowing the rest of the world to freely copy anything American.
In Murphy We Turst
And that's a good thing? This just serves to deputize the vigilantes. No notice of the victim of this harassment is there except by his request, after the fact - and I guarantee the DoJ won't actively police the harassers, they'll rubber-stamp the requests.
Here's some text:
As another poster noted, this can easily be interpreted to mean the entire internet, or any application on it.This bill is probably unconstitutional, but it MUST BE DEFEATED. And the author MUST BE DRIVEN FROM OFFICE. Who's running against him this year? Where do I send a check?
sulli
RTFJ.
All I have to say, having read the entire bill, is that this is effectively an end run around my constitutional right to due process. Sure, they put in the caveat about having to notify the justice department, as if that's going to be effective.
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
So how is this any different from sinking the guy who didn't pay up with cement shoes? Mafia's often have legit business - they are just protecting their interests, right?
Will the MPAA & RIAA be allowed to assassinate pirates in the future?
Why bother.
- (B) causes economic loss to any person
other than affected file traders; or
- (C) causes economic loss of more than $50.00 per impairment to the property of the affected file trader, other than economic loss involving computer files or data made available through a publicly accessible peer-to-peer file trading network that contain works in which the owner has an exclusive right granted under section 106;
This means that if they dos someone on my local cable segment then I can sue them if it impacts my bandwidth, Comcast can sue if it deprives their customers of service and/or uses their resources, and all the backbones and other service providers whose bandwidth is eaten up can call for reimbursement.The two downsides of this is that the bill is not limited to dos. It is pretty wide open in that they can do pretty much anything technologically which has the effect of "disabling, interfering with, blocking, diverting, or otherwise impairing the unauthorized distribution, display, performance, or reproduction" of their material. Which includes crashing or otherwise rendering inoperable network communications on the computer.
Not only that, but anyone who tries to face up to them needs very deep pockets to fight them - even if they caused more than $50 of damage they'll still have to prove it in court.
In other words, "Shoot now, ask questions later" and "You are guilty until proven innocent" should be stamped across this bill.
Translation: Fight the bill here and now. It'll be ten times more difficult and costly to remove it from law than it is to keep it from being placed there in the first place.
-Adam
Folks, it is clear to me that the legislative process is so corrupted by the Copyright special interests that the laws that it produces are not legitimate representations of the will of the people.
I believe that the only moral response in such a case is to violate those laws. Screw the MPAA. Screw the RIAA. Screw Congress. It is time for freedom loving people to declare openly that they will not recognize copyrights held by the MPAA and RIAA.
I posted this in the midst of another thread, so re-post so it isn't burried deep:
This bill applies to every copyright holder. But therein lies some of the more farcical (and completely realistic) scenarios that can be envisioned.
Osama Bin Laden owns the copyright and IP to his own image. Do you have a video clip of him on your computer? Well he would be able to hack in and destroy the file if he had a reasonable belief that you were harvesting his files.
Wait, doesn't the US government have his image, perhaps on an NSA computer? Well that can be legally hacked.
Clearly this seems far-fetched, but will be perfectly allowed in the plain language of the legislation. Why on earth would Congress want to pass a bill that will weaken cyber-security? This is the one of the best angles of attack, b/c no legislator wants to be perceived as weak on computer security.
As an added irony, I note that Lamar Smith, author of the cyber-crime bill that passed earlier this weak (with only one dissenting vote) is a co-sponsor of this bill. So if I understand correctly, he authors a bill to give lifetime imprisonment to hackers, but also allows copyright holders to hack....mmm hmm, that is the consistency I love from our reps!
Also note that in the definitions, p2p services that have a central server are exempted (carve out for AIM, nah couldn't be). However, the idea of a centralized server was taboo under the Napster case. So run a de-centralized server, be subject to this Berman Bill, run a centralized server, be subject to Napster (which would have been immune to this bill).
The top industries supporting Howard L. Berman are:
1 TV/Movies/Music $186,891
2 Lawyers/Law Firms $97,100
The top industries supporting Howard Coble are:
1 Lawyers/Law Firms $35,515
2 TV/Movies/Music $33,483
There is nothing these two "gentlemen" would not to to keep sucking at the media industry tit. Even to the degree of drafting such nonsensical law that clearly violates the "equal treament" under privilege or immunity of the 14th Amendment by immunizing corporations against felonious activities conducted by them against citizens without considering due process.
Da Blog
There doesn't appear to be any mention of the DoJ having to approve the requests, just that you have to notify them 7 days in advance.
If the RIAA attacks a cable connection with enough behind it, they could flood the ISP's peering. AT&T is particularly susceptable to this. That could cost over $250, but then we'd have to expect AT&T to take up the fight...
care to explain your reasoning? they use bandwidth paid for by the victim, often crash the victim's computers, and prevent potential customers from accessing the victim's content. at the same time, dos attacks benefit absolutely.
the only person who gets anything out of a dos attack is some lamer script kiddie who thinks he's l33t because he ran some code he got from irc. everybody else is inconvenienced at the least, possibly even cost some money. it's not speech, so it's not a first amendment issue. so tell me -- why shouldn't it be illegal?
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
The Fathers of our Nation are slapping their collective foreheads and saying:
"WTF!?!"
I think one of these days Thomas Paine is going to show up in Hollywood and bust some heads. Either that, or someone with some clout (and some cajones) needs to stand up and say that shit is getting out of control in the U.S. ---
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
Since mere citizens are unable to buy laws that exempt them from prosecution for criminal acts, the thought occurred to me that we should all refrain from committing criminal acts.
An ICMP echo packet sent to www.riaa.org every 5 seconds could not possibly be considered an attack of any kind. I mean, people quite often ping prominent websites at regular intervals in order to keep tabs on their Internet connection, and to keep tabs on their upstream's peering performance. These things are easy to setup and forget, just a one-liner in the crontab, you know. It might be a problem if 100,000 people did it, but what can you do about it if people just picked your site outof the blue as one to monitor?
Just something to think about... no suggestion is intended.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Here's your chance to legally hack Microsoft and see if they're using your GPLed code.
Here's what I want to see happen:
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
"I think the MPAA stole a copywritten song from me"
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Why is it always "a week", or "a month". Why not just boycott the bastards for good?
Jeez, does this mean after the boycott week we can run back to the record store with a wad of cash and buy up all those CDs we went without for a week?
Do you really think "a week" boycott will matter one bit to these nazis? No, the only thing which will work is a boycott of these clowns and their "products" for the forseeable future.
DoS attacks shouldn't be illegal in the first place.
EXCUSE ME?? You (or some script kiddie) have ZERO right to impede the use of MY computer. None. Zip. Zilch. There is no justifiable reason on Earth why you, or anyone else, should have the ability to maliciously attack my computer, denying me service that I have paid for, let alone any sort of income I may be gathering from said service.
Your rights end at the tip of my cat5, and unless you can come up with some reason why your attacking me better serves the public good than my being online, you have no business interfering with mine.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Having read through the bill, I'd like to make some observations.
The bill defines a peer-to-peer network as being:
two or more computers which are connected by computer software that (A) is primarily designed to (i) enable the connected computers to transmit files or data to other connected computers... (B) does not permanently route all file or data inquiries or searches through a designated, central computer located in the United States
This would seem to obviate any centralized file-trading system (like Napster). In fact, it would exclude any system not truly peer-to-peer. Odd.
The bill also includes provisions for suing the copyright holders if they cause at leaset "$50" in economic damages to you. However, it specifies "Monetary" damages. Does this mean hardware repair, as opposed to the less tangible lost bandwidth? If so, can we throw this back at their somewhat intangible "losses to piracy"?
They also must notify the Justice Department 7 days in advance, as I read it. Given the shitfting nature of the Internet, that seems useless to the **AA.
Okay, this bill sucks, but it doesn't seem nearly as dangerous (yet) as everyone makes it out to be.
~Chazzf
No statement is true, not even this one.
I can just see a P2P network detecting a DoS attack and instructing other clients to fire shots back at the source. It'd be interesting of Kazaa or somebody were to develop it that way because it'd make anybody who intends to flood a network think twice about it.
Of course, this could potentially be exploited. However, if the MPAA angers enough people they might be willing to risk it.
It is not the place of private corporations to be actively enforcing laws. So, yes, it is unfair. Would you want insurance companies sending employess out on highways with radar guns to write speeding tickets? I'm sure speeders hurt the insurance companies' bottom lines. But enforcing laws is not the province of private individuals or companies. Corporations should not be given executive powers. This bill is the very definition of vigilantism.
i am not a hacker, and this is a troll, but possibly a good one.
The fact that this legislation has made it so far, and that nothing has really shaken the MPAA/RIAA in their successful attempts at re-writing laws to serve their needs is a testament to the lack of real hackers in this world.
I say this because of so many posts i've seen in the tone "...we'll show those fat cats when we take down their systems and publish their personal information..." Since nothing like this has occurred since DMCA, I can only conclude that there aren't any hackers with the skill to do this. OR, the penalties really are so steep that the government has succeeded in their goal to scare hackers into submission. I vote for the latter, in which case, they've won.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this leave Google (and a slew of others) open to attack from $cientology because of both cached copies of pages, and supposedly copywrited documents?
so tell me -- why shouldn't it be illegal?
I don't think any government should have jurisdiction over the internet. I believe this philosophically, but also practically, because I don't want my tax money going to protect the interests of corporate ISPs. ISPs should police themselves, by unplugging the connections of DoS attackers.
So what would happen if the MPAA started to hack your web site of ftp server and you redirected them to a site operated by the CIA? That would be fun. They could explain their immunity as they lie face down on the floor with a gun pointed to the back of their heads.
There are plenty of other things they can do to stop piracy but I don't see them doing it. Go to usenet groups or IRC rooms where movies are traded. Its the same people doing it every day. Is it that hard for the MPAA and RIAA to go to the ISPs, colleges, or even the local governments where these files originate and ask that something be done? It seems they'd rather attack everyone through legislation and abolish fair use than go after the source. Now they want to put themselves above the law and take things into their own hands. If this passes then what is next? I'm going to go write my representatives now.
'Same speed C but faster'
If anyone who has copyrighted material on the internet can attack a server to prevent the distribution, what will it mean for Google's humongous (and often convenient) cache of stored webpages?
On Kazaa or Gnutella? Gee, I can't think.
I'm sorry, could you please point me to the bit of the act that gives them the slightest permission to do this?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You know, I almost want to like this, but probably not for the reasons you think.
Were it not for the fact that legal corporate DOS attacks would kill EVERYONE'S bandwidth and violate every known acceptable network use policy for every upstream provider known to God, (and a few that probably aren't.) I'd almost say that it's a good thing.
Why?
Because they'd have to let all you, as copyright holders, play along.
Pity the day that a large media company steals your domain name and you DOS them out of several million in sales and service -- LEGALLY!
And stop, think and drool for a moment at the possibilities of two companies, instead of going to court over copyright issues, just DOS each other out of existance.
And lets not forget the wonderful economic stimulus that adding several million script kiddies to the payroll with bring. And it's cost effective! You can get literally THOUSANDS of underpaid, almost-unpaid, basicially unskilled Hindu hackers for the price of a good legal team.
But then, see, my solution to everything is to give everyone a gun. Sure, you have a period where all the idiots kill each other, but then, things quiet down, and noone uses them unless they really have to.
But, ya know, it's not like the copyright and intellectual property realms couldn't use that kind of shakeup. It does. Bigtime.
Not to mention that it brings the wonderful cyberpunk world just *that* much closer to reality.
Welp, I'll leave you to ponder that while I buy a stack of good books, and pack up my tent and 60 years worth of freeze-dried food onto the back of my ATV and head off for the wilderness of Pennsylvania. Cheers!
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Perhaps this will finally force security to the forefront where it belongs. File traders to protect themselves from Hollywood, Hollywood to protect themselves from everyone else...
--hsm
www.mpaa.org is down right now. Gee, I wonder what happened?
Cool! Amazing Toys.
...what they're about to unleash.
Even if this laughable bill doesn't become law, the very fact that the MPAA and RIAA are pushing for it is probably going to land the IP address ranges of both companies in an awful lot of locally-maintained E-mail and web proxy blacklists, just on principal alone.
As for their tactics; Any SysAdmin worth their salt can easily detect, isolate, and block a DoS attack at the router level. Such an attack has little effect if the attacking system gets no response whatsoever from the target IP.
In any case, that's really beside the point. The way I see it, this kind of crap has the potential to release a widespread public-relations and consumer backlash that the industry as a whole may never recover from.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Oooo who gets to be Einstein? The outspoken political genius who narrowly escapes the evil empire he openly critisies only to later coordinate with the most briliant men of the alliance to create the tool of the empires undoing? Since oceans present little barrier I wonder who we will invade first?
So many questions, so little time to polish my jackboots. It would be to bad if poverty was enough to make people realize that greed over patriotism and justice always leads to no soup for anyone. I think fighting the whole world at once could be fun. We might kick some good ass before the remaining world unites.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
...would my firewall be illegal under this law and the DMCA?
"...but you should more or less expect that if you don't write a physical letter then you'll be ignored."
What you stated is a myth, perpetuated by people who would rather that the American public stay left behind when dealing with the government. Using the internet tools available between congress.gov, house.gov, and senate.gov, along with various online news sources, any American can easily get in touch with his elected officials, using offical and verifiable information, at a speed exceeding anything avavailable before. America's corrupt corporate power base that controls the media works to keep Americans from exploiting the excellent resource that is the internet, so that they can use their own connections (Lobbyists.) to outweigh public needs and desires.
Officials do read and consider electronic messages. I regularly communicate with my elected officials via the internet, and have recieved the same courtesy and responses that handwritten, mailed letters get; ranging from form letters, to letters from staff, to individual letters from the officials themselves.
Every time an official recieves an electronic message, the internet gains more political power. Eventually, people using the internet to deal with politicians immediately will be seen as the serious, influential voters, and those who pull out the personal letterhead and sign with MontBlanc pens will be the foolish old guard too unconcerned to actually keep up with politics.
So stop discouraging people. Encourage the use of the internet, and teach America to use online resources to keep our leaders in check.
for the record, i agree when it comes to laws regarding what content can be served. for instance france's suit against yahoo comes to mind as a praticularly assinine example. however, if both the originator of a dos attack, and its target are in the same country, it should certainly be considered an crime.
international trade is not only possible, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have any laws regulating trade within individual countries, or that there should be no international standards regulating trade between countries.
if i mailed a bomb within my country it would certainly be illegal, even if nobody was hurt in the explosion. there would still be property damage. if i mailed a bomb to another country, that would most certainly be illegal. why should the internet be so fundamentally different legally?
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
According to purchase history (aquired through our "affiliate" credit card and market research companies), this person hasn't purchased any of our products in some time. They must be getting them off p2p networks!
:)
But I kid.
The enemies of Democracy are
Islam and Jehovah's Witnesses are not, and as far as I know do not claim to be, Christian because they do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God nor that he is a Divine Being of any kind. Christianity is not a specific religion, nor is it limited to Protestant religions. It is based on a belief in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, which is a category that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints falls squarely into. The examples you cite of "radically non-Christian" beliefs are among arguments commonly taken out of context to foster distaste for our belief system, and it is probable you did not hear them from a member of our church. For example, we believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. We also read in the Bible that Lucifer is a fallen from Heaven (cf. Isa. 14:12 -- "How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer!"), so we may infer that he, too, was a child of God, albeit "child" is used in a completely different context. So to say that Lucifer is a brother to Jesus Christ is nothing more than to say we are all children of God, but not in the sense that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, so Jesus Christ is a brother to all of us, but in an astronomically superior sense. The other example you cite is not something you will find anywhere within the canon of scripture used by the Church, and is extrapolated from a belief that cannot be intelligently discussed without a foundation of much more basic beliefs. In any case, the beliefs upon which those things are founded, even in context, are more like the quantum physics of our belief system. The basic algebra is mostly the same. I think it is much more important, especially in our interfaith relations, that, like other Christians, we believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ that instruct us to love our neighbors, do good to others and live good, clean lives. It is for this reason that Mormons can often be found working alongside Baptists, Protestant Christians and Catholics for common causes despite certain doctrinal differences (of which there are many -- that I do not dispute).
I know /. is not the best place to have a religious discussion, but these kinds of misconceptions are the things that get us classed and confused with JW's so frequently (I have seen so many people shocked at the fact that we celebrate Easter, Christmas and birthdays, I just had to say something).
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
So what? They are allowed to take action to stop you distributing their stuff. They are explicitly not covered if they take action that stops you distributing anything else unless it's reasonably necessary to stop you distributing their stuff. If you're not distributing their stuff, they can't touch you. They have no magic new rights to breach you privacy, install a virus on your PC or nuke your home.
Why do you think any action they are allowed to take as a result of this Act would be unconstitutional, or indeed unreasonable? What are you guys all so worried about, apart from your own hype?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Thanks to this bill, it will be legal to hack Google!
Google are distributing TERABYTES of copyright information without permission thanks to their cache. They take entire sites to put on their cache.. so surely they're breaking some copyright laws.
Well, if Google has cached your site, now is the time to FIGHT BACK! Get hacking Google today. I wouldn't have said this before, but it will be LEGAL thanks to this bill! Yay!
Hack your favourite search engine.. TODAY!
mogorific carpentry experiments
Well, if the idiots in the MPAA/RIAA think they are more clever than their customers, perhaps it's time we proved them wrong.
I've already stopped buying CD's unless they come from independants (not associated with the RIAA, at least that I can tell)...
Maybe it's time for that winamp/xmms input-type plugin that reads blowfish encrypted mp3 files. Then they can have fun trying to figure out what data's being transferred over that new p2p protocol that rides an SSL tunnel.
Let the fools implode under their own weight.
Seems the RIAA/MPAA are almost asking to have the hell sued out them if they even try to use this. The text of the doc says they are allowed to do this only if they:
1. Don't Alter/Delete any files on the end user computer
2. Don't interfere with anyone elses computer other then the file trader
3. Cause more then 50.00 dollars impairment to the end user they are DoS'ing
So the MPAA/RIAA would have to be pretty damn careful not to mess ANYTHING else up. Since later on it says that wrongfully DoS'd people can sue the MPAA/RIAA, assuming they lost more then $250. The question if this is actually consitutinal is how much is your time worth? Are you a consultant who gets billed out at 300 dollars an hour? And losing use of your internet connection for a couple hours while the MPAA/RIAA screw with you costs you a couple thousand? Well step right forward and sue the crap out of the MPAA/RIAA cause the law says you can.
If this passes, we should actively start hacking innocent folks' machines to build opposition to this bill. It could be done without liability (I purport.)
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Societal problems usually can't be solved with technical solutions. The law is there to directly address societal conflicts - using the law to back a technical solution simply results in technical workarounds. This is just bad law.
- Fzz
How can they sell the mass-market crap they pump out over Clear Channel and Infinity if the public has alternatives available?
The RIAA knows that broadcasting sells CDs. That's why they pay thousands of dollars for every single track that an FM radio station plays to independent promoters.
It isn't that they object to free promotion, they object to the idea that "just anybody" can upload to P2P or to an Internet Radio station.
They are looking at the end of their business model and will do anything to keep it going for a little longer and they simply don't care how much damage what they do occurs to the rest of America. The legislators they 0wn are too busy counting their bribes to realize that this kind of legislation will put their constituents out of work and the economy in a fatal tailspin.
If this bill passes, operations whose Web operations are critical to them probably should start thinking about relocating outside the USA.
Tech Public Policy stuff
if i mailed a bomb within my country it would certainly be illegal, even if nobody was hurt in the explosion. there would still be property damage. if i mailed a bomb to another country, that would most certainly be illegal. why should the internet be so fundamentally different legally?
Because bits can't physically hurt or kill people.
I live in the UK. If Disney hacks me, it's not a crime in the US because, well, it's not a crime in the US. And it's not a crime in the UK because nobody in the UK committed a crime.
Want to bet what'll happen if I retaliate? Do the names Jon Johanson and Dmitri Sklyarov ring a bell?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
No no no and no.
I've written about this before but the gist is you are making one HUGE assumption and that is that you have the same protection under the DMCA as the large companies.
You don't. In fact, you probably have next to none at all. The government can't be *forced* to prosecute anyone for criminal acts, and if you think that a network of geeks with MP3 libraries could, even as a collective, fund a civil challenge against Vivendi... (hint: ain't gonna happen).
That's a hole you could sail a battleship through.
Simply put, if you swap MP3s that you don't have the right to, you're violating copyright. The RIAA, et al have a legitimate point. Now, their tactics suck, and there are far superior ways to solve this problem than hacking/DoSing boxes, but saying we have the right to violate copyright and the law is on our side is foolish.
-- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"
Because bits can't physically hurt or kill people.
Sure they can - what if the DoS affected a hospital network, or managed to disable a system responsbile for controlling a nuclear power plant, or a train, or the air traffic control system?
Sure you say, these critical systems are behind firewalls. But what if your DoS shuts down a key network while at the same time, a doctor in Seattle is trying to send urgent medical information to a doctor in Chicago who is trying to save a little kids life? That might sound a little melodramatic, but the fact of the matter is, the internet isn't all online auctions and porn.
You are using a standard response when any script kiddie was caught - "I wasn't doing any harm" - but the truth is you have no idea whose other electrons are buzzing around out there.
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
Heh, good point.
Ya know, reading this further, since it's on the "file trader" (I love that term) to notice and complain about the action, any time you lose a file or "get hacked", you should send a letter all of the MPAA/RIAA folks asking for a report on what they removed and why (See 2A through 2C).
Since there's no way to know who actually did it, and there doesn't appear to be any reason to believe the DoJ would care to tell you, you'd have write all of them to figure it out. Wonderful law eh!
In the U.S. (where the bill has been proposed), 2002 is an election year. All members of the House of Representatives, and one third of the members of the Sentate, are up for re-election. Every one of them has at least one opponent (both major parties have already held their local primary elections).
Sure, write your elected officials. But write the people running against them, too. We want to send a clear message, no matter who wins in November.
For extra credit, in addition to the letters to D.C., write one to each "committe to [re]elect" (a.k.a. "Friends of Blah Blah Blah"), and enclose a personal check to the committee. (Do not send cash!) It doesn't have to be big; ten or twenty dollars is enough to get a little attention. Our money talks, too!
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
However, I don't think this law will allow DOS attacks and the other nasty things you enumerate.
"Sec.514(b) further limits the safe harbor created by Sec.514(a) by listing specific circumstances in which a copyright owner cannot rely on the safe harbor. The safe harbor is unavailable if:
the copyright owner impairs the trading of files that don't contain her copyrighted work, unless such impairment is necessary to impair= the trading of her copyrighted work (Sec.514(b)(1)(A));
the interdiction efforts of the copyright owner cause economic loss to any person other than the file trader (Sec.514(b)(1)(B));"
Since a DOS attack would hurt your ISP, it seems like that would be right out. Their "technological measures" are going to have to be more narrowly targeted than a DOS flood. There seem to be numerous other measures in the bill which allegedly prevent a copyright holder from abusing this safe harbor provision. Naturally, I don't trust that this is all on the up-and-up, but they are going to make the bill sound reasonable to many people.
What I am far more worried about in this bill is that it allows for vigilantism, which has obvious problems, and there doesn't appear to be a way to appeal this action, short of taking them to court for a long and drawn out court battle. This is completely unbalanced. The vigilante can take action against you without the burden of due process, but you must take on the burden of legal action to defend yourself. IMHO, our letters to congresspeople should concentrate on the circumvention of our courts rather than on internet traffic.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
i realize that it was a shitty example, but the point you're trying to avoid is that dos attacks do cause damage. why should something that serves no purpose other than to cause damage not be illegal if both the originator and the target are in the same country?
we're not requiring anything of isps, we're giving government money toward prevention. we're just talking about making an activity that serves no purpose than to cause damage within a single country illegal. what's the problem with that?
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
So, for the right price, can I get a law passed allowing me to summarily execute recording and movie company executives on site, without fear of punishment? I'd be really cool with that. Can it be done?
I'm only asking...
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
This kind of loyality needs to be rewarded!! We need to make up for all that money the RIAA/MPAA couldn't afford to contribute to the reelection after losing umpteen gazillion dollars.
We need to get ahold of the campaign propaganda of any Congress Critter that supports this law, and help him get the word out, by spamming every voter in his district 50 or 60 times a day with his reelection material during the final week before the election.
That should help bring his vote total closer to what he deserves after voting for the Cyber Vigilante law.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
You can cripple the MPAA and see every movie they release in a good theater with THX/Dolby/whatevertheheck sound. You can boycott every movie for the next 6 years and still see all of them!
What's that you say? How can that be?
Simply wait until the movie has been out 2 weeks and go to a matinee on the third week. It's that easy. If enough people do this we can cripple the movie industry and trash their stuck value BECAUSE they calculate the success of a movie and estimate profitability based on opening weekend returns!
As a test, I'm hereby calling for a 2-week boycott of the movie "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers". I'm calling it the "Boycott of the Rings: The Two Weeks". I will organize a group viewing during christmas week for anyone in my company, familly and circle of friends that wants to join me. We'll go to the Boston Common Lowes theater in Boston, MA at the closest showing after 2PM on Monday, December 30, 2002. Feel free to join us, and if you wish to wear a shirt, button or other apparel that displays your disgust for the MPAA, RIAA and whatnot all else, I invite you to do so, but please don't buy tickets for any showing before this or any full-priced showing after.
I figure if we're going to be lazy enough to not boycott the people who are trying to give us the shaft, we might as well pick a movie that a) won't benefit from the extra publicity among geeks b) will have its sequel no matter what we do and c) will hurt the upcoming largest movie season of the year!
Thank you all for your support.
Correct me if im wrong, but are their not bills which have been passed, or are in the process of being passed that make acts such as these considered terrorism?
Terrorism is wrong, unless your a big company....
Sure they can - what if the DoS affected a hospital network, or managed to disable a system responsbile for controlling a nuclear power plant, or a train, or the air traffic control system?
Then A) the hospital or nuclear power plant or train or air traffic control system should be sued for negligence and B) the DoS attacker can be sued for murder or attempted murder or terrorism or whatever is appropriate under the circumstances. Of course, I deny that such a situation is possible in the first place.
You are using a standard response when any script kiddie was caught - "I wasn't doing any harm" - but the truth is you have no idea whose other electrons are buzzing around out there.
Life critical systems should not rely on the internet, plain and simple. Also, there are already laws in place to cover this. Finally, it is outside the enumerated powers of the constitution to have laws regarding this.
I'm glad someone else thought of this..... Quite simple really - write a song, doesnt matter what it is, or even if you know how to play - bang two tin pots together or something, and record it. Then put it on a CDR, and copyright it. Sell it to a friend for 10 cents and you have LEGALLY distributed it. Now..... lets go see if anyone has pirated my song thru P2P. Where can we hack into and search first? Microsoft? Yahoo? Department of Defense??? The possibilities of what you can now do LEGALLY are endless.....
Recently there was a virus that caused WebTV consoles to dial 911. A possible place to apply that clause?
The middle mind speaks!
He's the ranking minority party member on the Standards (read: Ethics) Committee in the House.
So when the always-amusing-to-watch Traficant accuses people of hypocrisy, he's actually telling the truth for once? That is amazing.
Da Blog
why should something that serves no purpose other than to cause damage not be illegal if both the originator and the target are in the same country?
The question should not be why shouldn't there be a law. The question should be why must there be a law? The federal government of the U.S. certainly does not have jurisdiction over the internet. It's simply not one of the enumerated powers in the constituion.
we're just talking about making an activity that serves no purpose than to cause damage within a single country illegal. what's the problem with that?
The biggest problem is that enforcement costs money, and the federal government should not go around policing private systems. If I set up a network between my house and my friends house, should the government be able to regulate it? What if I set it up with 10 friends? What if it's my whole town?
The internet is a private system, it should be protected through contract law, not federal regulation.
That's a tough call. By the same token, we shouldn't be running a firewall on the office network to protect our own systems, because if anyone hacks them, the government should go after the crackers. While it may (or may not) be a laudable ideal, the world just doesn't work that way. The only rights you get to keep are those you're prepared to fight for. If your rights are being violated wholesale -- as the recording industry's are at present -- you have to fight back all the harder. That's all they're doing, and if you're not trying to justify your own illegal copying, it's hard to find fault in that. (Whether they should be investigated themselves for complex monopoly abuse and price fixing is an entirely different question, but that's not the issue here.)
No, I wouldn't want them issuing speeding tickets, but I'd be quite happy for them to charge higher rates for known dangerous drivers. Since I don't speed like a maniac, run red lights or use my mobile on the move, this will result in the lower premiums I deserve as a sensible motorist, rather than my having to subsidise the idiots who cause the accidents, and I really don't have a problem with that. After all, you don't really think it's the insurance companies rather than other motorists who pay for it, do you? (Of course, I'd rather the traffic laws were made sensible and the police allowed to deal with genuinely dangerous drivers rather than minor parking or speeding offences where the rules are silly, but that, again, is a different issue.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Congress needs cleaned out now. I've said it before, but incumbants need to go. All of them. It is quite obvious that the vast majority of people in our congress no longer represent the American people, but now represent whoever pays them the most.
If voters can wake up and realize this, and voted their incumbants out, it would send the message to congress that they can't get away with selling us out. It would also send a message to corporations that they need to get back to running their businesses properly, rather than buying a law to protect them.
Of course, this won't happen as long as both major parties are successful in duping voters into thinking that they "care" about issues important to voters.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Suppose I, situated in Europe, shared something your (RI,MP)AA would object to. What then? Would your p(r)etty "Congress" yet another time rule that fscking USian law has to be applied _worldwide_ (much alike Sklyarov)?
Right now I'm fantasizing about DMCA vs. EU cybercrime directives, the latter _explicitly_ making (d)DoS illegal.
But, as the old saying goes:
-- Q: What is the DMCA, exactly?
-- A: The Copyright Lawyers Lifetime Employment Act.
An AC wrote:
> A bunch of kiddies up in arms about their "right"
> to illegally traffic in copyrighted works is being
> "infringed". Get a real job so you can BUY the
> stuff. I doubt anybody here has actually CREATED
> anything, so you have no appreciation of the
> artists side.
I am 39.
I don't share mp3's.
I have an extensive collection of legally purchased CD's.
I have a real job as a programmer.
I have created copyrighted works in my name and those of my employers.
The rights that would be infringed by this bill are not "fair use rights", or any "right" to break the law.
The rights that would be infringed are the very real Rights in the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution. This bill, if it became law, would make the ??AA into a police body, that can, without a trial or warrant, break into your computer and damage your property. That is unconstitutional vigilante justice, and very, very wrong.
This law would turn the ??AA into real pirates of the digital sea. About the only difference, besides the fact that computer != boat, is that presumably their ability to do damage will not include rape and murder.
And while the ??AA go on their free hacking binge, any kid caught cracking a computer and/or defacing a website (which is also wrong), will be getting up to life imprisonment, a bit extreme if you ask me.
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, we need you today!
The Great Hacker War
That sounds like a great idea for a movie. I bet they could make a really cool soundtrack to go with it.
The Internet is generally stupid
My solution? Wait for someone at the RIAA to try and download *MY* own personally written songs, to see if they're copyrighted material, and then DoS them. :)
Or any other idea along that line. (Wait for the Gov't to download? Or anyone else?)
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
It would be unfortunate if in their zeal to go and hack any computer they think has copyright material they end up on an Canadian or European computer there.
They'd probably have a few nice lawsuits on their hands there after all.
And even trying to limit their searches to the US would most likely end up working imperfectly. I don't think that there's anyone who figured out a fool-proof way of mapping IP addresses to specific country.
But! Look closer:
Although a horrible clich, Sun was mostly right. In today's world, the network is the computer. If they disable my network connectivity (only "as reasonably necessary", of course), they have rendered my system useless, especially as I use my system on a regular basis to download drivers for clients. That is serious economic damage to me.
Plus, it appears I have to show that they "knowingly and intentionally" disabled my connectivity, and caused >$250 in damage, per incident. So they can cause me $50 or $100 of damage at a time, with immunity. Oops!
If I think my neighbor stole my lawnmower, and I break into his garage to get it, I'm liable for the damage caused, regardless of whether I was malicious or simply mistaken. Why do the RIAA and the MPAA get more protection than I do?
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
i agree, but i already said why i think there should be a law.
so if i took my privately owned can of spray paint, and painted a big, hideous smily face on your privately owned house, that's not vandalism, because it's all private? if i used privately owned equipment to tap into a privately owned cable system so i could watch hbo, that's fine? how about if i used that privately owned equipment to screw up other people's cable service?
get the idea?
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
FIRST, read the bill. Second, read Berman's analysis. Third, read Berman's statement.
Only then should you write a letter to your representative. And be sure to back up your statments very thoroughly if they contradict Berman's in any way.
If you'd like to have someone try to tear holes in your argument, feel free to reply here :).
American corporations are strong legal entities only because the American public let them get that way. The beauty of the US Constitution is that whenver Americans truly want to exercise their rights, they can reign in powers that threaten to undermine our freedoms.
It's happened before. Look at the Robber Barrons. Their excesses spawned a raft of trustbusting legislation. Of course, that legislation didn't just create itself. Normal voters rose up and made their voices heard.
Talk of revolution is nifty, and we'd all doubtless love to engage in a Matrix-style rampage against corporatism. But the real solution isn't revolution, it's working within the political system we already have. The problem is, that requires.. shudder!... actual participation in the process. You can't just write a fucking email or hack your Playstation and get results in politics.
Revolt? Not likely, when Americans can't seem to use the power they already have.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
For me (don't know if it is randomly inserted ad or not...) the CNN article about this bill here had a very large nicely placed ad for Philips DVD-RW drives that simply stated, in big letters, "Burn your own DVD's!". I laughed...
today is spelling optional day.
God dammit, I hate it when I unjustly get modded as a troll, anyways..
I've read all the responses thus far "Oh the MPAA doesn't have the right to go on my hard drive blah blah blah"
The one thing everyone has to understand is that when you share on a P2P network, you might as well walk down to the MPAA offices wearing a big sign that says, "HEY LOOK HERE I'M PIRATING YOUR MOVIES YOU FUCKS!"
A buddy of mine just left like 4 minutes ago, while he was here, he hooked his computer into my network and dumped a bunch of movies onto my hard drive. No advertising to the MPAA at all.
So if you're going to pirate movies, go ahead, but don't cry if the MPAA erases your collection because you were advertising on a P2P network.
so if i took my privately owned can of spray paint, and painted a big, hideous smily face on your privately owned house, that's not vandalism, because it's all private?
No, that's not what I mean. By trespassing physically on my private property, you are crossing the line. Why does it make a difference that the trespass is physical? I guess it's a matter of the fact that I can easily stop you from sending me bits, I can't ever stop you from physically trespassing.
if i used privately owned equipment to tap into a privately owned cable system so i could watch hbo, that's fine?
Absolutely, assuming part of the cable system you are tapping into is located on your own private property.
how about if i used that privately owned equipment to screw up other people's cable service?
I don't think there should be a law against that. Certainly not a federal law. It should be up to the cable company to police that.
Talking about "getting them back" is pointless.
They will probably direct their DoS attacks against the internals of the P2P protocols, rather than the users machines. They will use disposable (and anonymous) nodes to do so--they may be unscrupulous, but they are not stupid.
Nonetheless, the proposed law is extremely prone to being abused.
What we need to do is start designing the next generation P2P systems that will be immune to things like legitimate-looking users posting bogus files, etc.
----------------
Here's what I can think of on the spot
1) Community-based systems (akin to slashdot) where some nodes have more "credibility" points.
Node "karma" would be based on
-Total Kbytes streamed out
-Moderation by other "trusted" nodes
The community aspect must not get in the way of reaching a "critical mass" of users, without which any P2P system is bound to fall.
2) Ability to randomly sample small segments of files on remote nodes in order to determine whether they are legit. This would stop them from uploading complete garbage, or legitimate-looking beginnings followed by garbage.
3) Distributed method of establishing trust. This is the tricky part. We could use public-key crypto in some fashion. Perhaps nodeID blacklists or whitelists could be distributed among the users, or uploaded to FreeNet. Before downloading a song from an unknown node, my machine would query 10-20 random nodes for blacklist info. This would make it a lot more difficult to set up random nodes hosting garbage.
5) Other heuristics to determine the trustworthiness of nodes and/or files.
7) Doing all of the above in a relatively speedy (i.e., not impractically slow such as gnuTella) and relatively anonymous/pseudonymous way.
-----------
Please reply (i.e., follow-up to the post) with any further ideas. Perhaps we can seed the minds of the developers who'll be coding the next generation of P2P software. Are there any ideas we can glean from eBay's trust management system?
The legislative branch has a big inherent problem. If their predecessors did their jobs right, then theirs is essentially a maintenance function.
This would include reviewing laws according to a published schedule. With ammendments or repealing of laws which were either obsolete or needed be somehow brought up to date, including changing the language to make them easier to understand. If things were working correctly the total ammount of in force legislation should not change that much.
This function does not appear to be being performed. Anywhere on the planet. Including the passing of new laws which are utterly redundant.
That they work for US.
WE pay their salaries, WE pay their employees, WE pay their artists when WE buy their products.
If they get us sufficiently mad, WE will not spend our hard-earned money on their products any more and THEY will feel it.
It's about time to organize a month-long media boycott. Show the "big boys" exactly how much power we have over "their business". Pick a nice date like January, 2003, and just swear off ANY CD/Movie Ticket/DVD purchases for a month.
Easy to do - if you wanna watch a movie or listen to some music, just borrow it from a friend, but don't spend a RETAIL DIME purchasing anything.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Once again, we have the RIAA/MPAA asking for special treatment. Wah.
Once again, we have idiots trying to treat cyberspace differently from real space when the situations are identical and can be treated the same way.
Basically, what the RIAA/MPAA wants is to be able to break into people's computers, and mess up their computers, because they think that those people have infringed upon their IP.
In the real world, if I *think* -- or even *know* -- that someone has stolen say my MP3-player and put it in their house, that does not give me the right to tresspass on their property, break into their house, rummage around looking for my player, and mess up their house.
In short, you have to go through LEGAL channels. That means the courts.
This measure is particularly troublesome because it further empowers the rich and powerful (RIAA/MPAA) against the impoverished and disenfranchized (us). Its little different than the mafia.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
The episode with the monster called "skuzlebut" and the hunting? "No, it's not poaching if you first yell 'Look out, it's comming right for us.'"
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
In short, the copyright holders become judge, jury, and executioner in regards to a section of Federal Law. And if you want to dispute the judgement, you can in some unspecified manner get a notification after the fact from a copyright holder that is unknown to you.
Except that it isn't something which applies to all copyright holders. Otherwise the likes of the RIAA & MPAA would disappear uttterly with the possibility of half a billion (a wild guess at the number of both real and corporate "people" in the US) suspect copyright infringments.
Hey, I'm sure the MPAA would love to kick in my door without a warrant and see what I've got in my box of dusty VHS tapes. Why aren't they asking their pet congresscritter to pass a law that says I can't shoot them when they try it?
If anyone was wondering whether the MPAA was in fact evil, this should settle the matter.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
How long will it now be before Slashdot posts a story praising the latest movie?
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
The law only provides for the copyright holder to impede distribution over a public, decentralized p2p network. Here is the text from the section by section analysis.
"Sec.514(a) provides copyright owners with a safe harbor from liability under= state or federal law only for actions designed to prevent the unauthorized= distribution of their works via a publicly available, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-trading network. The safe harbor provided by Sec.514(a) does not allow= the removal of files or data from a P2P user's computer, the corruption of= files or data on a P2P user's computer, or any other actions that would impair the integrity of any computer file or data. Sec.514(a) does not specify the particular technologies that a copyright owner can use pursuant= to the safe harbor. Rather, it allows the use of any technology that performs interdiction functions within the parameters outlined."
I don't know what methods are left if DoS and virii are out, but I'm sure the *AA people had something in mind when they gave the bill to Berman.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
And then the Vatican, the MPAA's own web site, the RIAA's site, Disney machines, NYSE's machine.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Basically, what it comes down to is that the RIAA/MPAA have no nice way to go after Gnutella. P2P networks with single points of failure have already been attacked. Their proposal is to legalize opening tons of connections to download files and then just letting data trickle through.
There has been extensive discussion among the many, many people involved with the Gnutella protocol on how to beat this. For example, instead of using "number of downloads" as a cap, one could use a hybrid "number of downloads/total bandwidth used" limiting factor.
Still no word on how they'd take out Freenet.
If you want to help fight this, grab an editor and start adding countermeasures and send in a patch to your favorite piece of Open Source P2P software. The coders already in the trenches would appreciate any additional help you could give.
May we never see th
Not law yet. The new bill (CSEA) still has to pass the Senate and the White House. But given that only three congressdroids in the House opposed it and hundreds on both sides voted in favor, I don't hold much hope that it will be defeated.
I notice that this excerpt doesn't include any provisions for actual APPROVAL of the methods or hack that will be used by the copyright owner.
Thank God for that. There's no way I'd trust any government official or agency to choose which hacks are allowed and which aren't.
"We're going to douse their server with gasoline and set it on fire."
Well, you make a good point, and the law should be modified to only give immunity for specific laws (DoS attacks, presumably), so as not to allow something like murder. But, your particular example "impairs the availability within a publicly accessible peer-to-peer file trading network of a computer file or data that does not contain a work, or portion thereof, in which the copyright owner has an exclusive right granted under section 106" and isn't "reasonably necessary to impair the distribution, display, performance, or reproduction of such a work, or portion thereof, in violation of any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner under section 106" It would also "[cause] economic loss of more than $50.00 per impairment to the property of the affected file trader, other than economic loss involving computer files or data made available through a publicly accessible peer-to-peer file trading network that contain works in which the owner has an exclusive right granted under section 106"
But murder, for instance, probably wouldn't fall under either of those two exceptions.
You could stop someone from physically trespassing on your property.
Not if the person is determined enough to break in.
Look at a jail, they stop people from trespassing all the time.
Without using the law, they would be unable to do that. I could break into a jail if I really wanted to. But I'd get caught, and probably shot, as a result. Without physical property laws, we'd have chaos. Without laws against hacking, we wouldn't.
You can't tap into a cable line that is on your property, because you don't own the mineral rights to the land most likely.
Mineral rights to the land? How does that apply?
I mean, by the same logic you should be able to tap into the electrical pole and bypass the meter because it's on "your" property
Oh, I see what you're saying. I was referring to a cable which was entering your house. As in, you pay for basic cable and then "steal" HBO. I don't think that should be illegal.
What the MPAA and RIAA don't seem to get is that people like me, who really hate them, are also copyright holders.
So, what happens when the MPAA and RIAA use phrases I've used? I accuse them of violating my copyrights and crack into their systems.
Open season, nothing. It's more like opening up a case of tactical nukes for public consumption.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Oh, that's silly! A perpetual war against The Enemy, designed to keep the lower class complacent and under control so that those in power can stay in power? Nonsense, that could never happen in real life!
How will this work for a letter of marquee? This law basically states, "this action is legal". The courts can't throw someone in jail for doing something the law specifically permits. If the Supreme Court refuses to enforce this law, they have accomplished nothing.
It would seem to me, that in order for the Supreme Court to rule this law unconstitutional, they would have to rule the entire computer hacking code unconstitutional.
I am not a lawyer. I may be way off base here.
Writing to our elected officials is important. We also need to remember that there are some very good organizations that really understand these issues and are out there fighting for our rights every day. They need and deserve our support.
Even small donations will make a difference. There are a lot of us, people; once we get into the habit of putting our money where our mouths are, the **AA's will be in deep trouble.
If you can afford it, consider donating $100 a year to each of these organizations, as I do. It's really worth it.
- The Free Software Foundation
(click on "Donate", or volunteer, or contribue hardware or expertise)
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
Someone could probably break into your computer given enough motivation also. Firewalls aren't foolproof.
They're not foolproof, but properly installed most of them are hackproof. On top of that, anything which you aren't willing to have hacked probably shouldn't be stored online anyway. At least not unless you really know a whole lot about security, and only then on a private machine which doesn't allow incoming connections.
As for credit cards and other data stored on servers, it's not that big of a deal if that gets stolen. Besides, my original statement was only about DoS attacks, though I do believe that anything occuring solely over the internet should be legal.
... just write an article about it and post it on this site. They be slash dotted. Kind of like a legal DoS!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
It appears that the MPAA/RIAA, etc. will only have the ability under this law to:
a) restrict people from trading works to which they are the copyright owner (meaning every company that owns copyrighted material will have to employ these countermeasures or have someone do it on their behalf)
b) intervene only on the P2P network itself (deleting files on file traders PC's is expressly prohibited by the legislation) as those files may have been created via fair use.
c) only affect "Public" P2P networks (e.g. Gnutella)
What they are trying to get approval for basically amounts to running programs (some kind of bot maybe) that interrupts or interferes with downloads of whatever files they are trying to prevent from reaching public distribution. They can only
"block, divert or otherwise impair the unauthorized distribution, display, performance, or reproduction of his or her copyrighted work on a publicly accessible peer-to-peer file-trading network, if such impairment does not, without authorization, alter, delete, or otherwise impair the integrity of any computer file or data residing on the computer of a file trader."
This will deter casual users from trading files with P2P, and the most popular media will probably be very hard to obtain for some time after its release. I don't think they'll give a shit about your rare old Morrissey bootlegs or anything that's not on the Bestsellers lists.
Al Gore would weep for his child and GWB would think that Al Kie-Duh had destroyed the internet and all ecomerce. Better send a cruise missile at them right away!
And I thought their current DoS attacks, which fill the sharing databases with crap music, was bad. Then I turned on the radio and heard how bad it really was.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The quote you provide from Elder Ballard is both accurate and in context, and you are quite correct that the proper place to find out about what Mormons believe is to visit either lds.org or mormon.org, both of which are operated and overseen by the Church and can be trusted to contain correct information.
However, byu.edu cannot be trusted as a source of doctrine, and particularly, the page you visited seems to just be the reflections of a random student or professor. The link does not work, so I can't see who wrote it, and I can't claim any more authority to define church doctrine than the author, so I will defer you to the pages at lds.org and mormon.org above. Some of those assertions you will find on the pages above, and those you can call LDS doctrine (you are quite correct that many of them will be different from what you believe). Others you will not find (I do have to address the worst fallacy: Yes, God did create us. I don't know what the context of that quote was or what the author was trying to point out, but it simply is not true. Gen 1:27 -- God created man in his own image. The only thing I can think of, besides the author just being whacko, is that we believe that God the Father directed the creation through Jesus Christ, who is also God, but since you believe they are one and the same, I can't see a whole lot of divergence there).
If you are seriously interested in what we believe on those subjects, there is a link to the scritpures on the lds.org site, and you can look up the following references, which pertain to the assertions in the page you found:
Gen. 1:26-27 (Bible); Alma 34:8-10(Book of Mormon); Doctrine and Covenants 131:22-23; Moses 1: 10-17, 31-42 (Pearl of Great Price); Rev. 12:1-11 (remember, we identify Lucifer with Satan) (Bible).
The scriptures are the basis of our beliefs, and anything else you happen across on that site, you can trust, especially if it is a quote from one of our General Authorities (like Elder Ballard), who are the ones authorized to interpret scripture.
In summary, yes, we believe in Christ and all of his teachings, yes, we believe in the Holy Bible (we particularly prefer the KJV), yes, we probably have very similar beliefs about what is right and what is wrong, yes, we celebrate holidays, birthdays, Easter, Christmas, and any other excuse we can find to serve red punch and cookies, yes, there are sometimes substantial differences between Mormons and other Christians, but no, that is not a reason that we cannot all work together for good common causes. If you know many Mormons, you will probably find that they are overall pretty normal folks. So, I think that other than a difference in definition of the word "Christian," we pretty much agree with each other. And that is indeed the most religious and off-topic discussion I have ever had on Slashdot.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
"if such impairment does not, without authorization, alter, 19 delete, or otherwise impair the integrity of any computer 20 file or data residing on the computer of a file trader."
From my limited personal experience with DoS attacks, I've found that a sizeable force attacking even a cable modem user can have unforeseen consequences.
I had a network admin friend of mine that worked for a DSL ISP shove a DS3 line full of packets directed straight at my cable modem one early morning. He performed a brutal DOS attack on me for about 20 seconds.
As soon as "Doing it... NOW" came across the IM, the lights on my modem fired up solid and my mouse quit working. The only remedy I had was to disconnect the cable modem, but it still had caused my system to become unstable to the point where the reset button was the only remedy - no mouse or keyboard response whatsoever. When I restarted, the Windows Scandisk message came up and, sure enough, it found problems with the file system... files lost.
DoS attacks do not have to take the form of network flooding. One form of DoS I hear most about is offering bogus material with filenames/tags of popular movies and music, on P2P networks. Also, there may well be ways to frustrate programs such as Kazaa by opening lots of connections, sending it invalid commands or things like that. That would not have to take up lots of bandwidth, nor would it alter any files, which is one of the provisions in this Bill.
Another thing: doesn't this bill state that they can hack or DoS in order to prevent (suspected) illicit distribution of their works? Does this mean that they can cause collateral damage and side effects, such as preventing you from using the net at all or swapping legit files? Or are they allowed only to stop you from swapping illicit files? To me, the bill isn't clear on this (though IANAL). Of course, the RIAA and MPAA may interpret this bill in the broadest sense, so yes, they will be allowed to DoS your internet connection, and not just the P2P part.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The music industry is already using a company called NetPD to hunt down and kill copyrighted material. Unfortunately they don't just go for the files. They were interviewed for a 'cybercrime' documentary on the BBC recently and they explained they find out who is distributing the files (includes P2P clients as well as websites) and sends one of those we've-got-lawyers, your-customer-hasn't letters to your ISP.
(I'd LOVE to waste some of my spare bandwidth/cpucycles hammering the servers they use to search for files - but this would have to be done by a larger number of users than just me.)
insignificant sig
For more proof that the recording companies expect special dispensation when it comes to engaging in otherwise illegal acts check out New Zealand's copyright law and Sony's blatant flouting of them.
According to Section 37 of the NZ Copyright Act, the importation, sale, hire or in some cases mere possession of any device "specifically designed or adapted for making copies" of copyrighted works is a breach of Copyright Law.
However, in the advertising for their Mini Disk player, Sony claim purchasers can "quickly and easily connect Net MD directly to their PC in order to download music files from the Internet or their CD-Rom drive"
Now excuse me -- but since Section 30 of the NZ Copyright Act clearly states that "The copying of a [copyrighted] work is a restricted act in relation to every description of copyright work", then it is obvious that Sony are promoting a device that is designed to break the law.
However, do you think the local recording industry has lodged a complaint about Sony's law-breaking?
Hell no!
Could it be because the head of Sony Music NZ is also the guy the recording industry has given the task of heading up their anti-piracy campaign?
For more information on NZ copyright laws you can check out the article on Aardvark.
I am sure that if they recieved 100000+ messages through this system, not only would coldfusion throw a spaz attack but they might start getting the message. Slashdot is the best DDoS system I have ever seen. ;o)
I've essentially told them to think twice before going after everybody, or they will have trouble on their hands from nations who's premiers aren't president ("tatoo idiot on forehead now") Bush's lapdog. Companies never listen to complaints until you explain to them how their actions will lead to a decrease in profits for them. That's how I get £20 off my mobile phone bill some months...bad reception, I tell them about all the p**sed off people in the area who are thinking of leaving, I get £20 off and am happy until I have to complain again.
The RIAA and MPAA should realise that by walking down this very dangerous path, not only could they lose a lot of business, look bad, but also start an international incident that could have serious ramifications for years to come.
I mean, terrorists already get pissed off by the U.S.A.'s desire to control everything outside their borders...this just gives them more ammunition.
Good luck to the RIAA and MPAA, they're going to need it.
I am NaN
Nothing in this bill states that a copyright holder has a right to perform electronic attacks against those they believe are infringing apon them. Rather, they simply will not be penalised if they find and exploit the means.
The distinction here is subtle, but can be summed up as this: no-one (including a copyright holders ISP!) is obliged to allow an attack to take place.
ISP: "I'm sorry sir, I know you can't get any network connectivity outside of our network, but that seems to be because you've violated their terms of service."
Any ISP which has an even remotely sane Terms of Service is well within their contractual rights to terminate, without compensation, any wrongdoers network link if they start abusing it - copyright holder or otherwise, regardless of whether this bill passes into law.
Why is it that we have to obey all the laws, but nobody in power does?
These people can seriously do whatever they damn well please, can't they? Hack your computer, lie to the SEC and their shareholders, whatever. And nothing ever happens to them.
At the same time, the penalties for people like us keep getting harsher and harsher.
Know what? Obeying the law looks like a long-term losing proposition to me. I don't think I'm going to do it anymore. Fuck the law. If the law doesn't protect equally, there is no law.
Mr. MPAA, from now on I am going to do everything in my power to rob you blind and make you suffer. I'm not going to pretend that my p2p client is for any legitimate use. My p2p client is for theft purposes.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
but the editorializer has clearly overstated the scope and effect of this bill. This seems to be a common tactic of those who rabidly defend an anti-copyright position with regards to modern file sharing.
So what ? you know it, I know, the poster knows it.
What you are forgetting is that Geeks are mirroring a 'common tactic' because it WORKS, we've been taught that lesson by some of the best practitioners of the FUD in the world.
The real question is why YOU oppose any effective technique?
If the MPAA/RIAA heads surf the 'net (which isn't a forgone conclusion) then they'll have copyrighted material in their web caches.
Everyone should monitor their web server logs for hits from the big five music companies. When you see one, launch a "probe" against that IP address and ensure that they don't have any of your copyrighted material (say that logo on your home page, or maybe use an IE exploit to shove an MP3 onto their box) in their computer. (You'll have to make sure that you place language on your sight asserting your copyright and restricting the permissions to your logo.)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
He gets all of his freakin money from the entertainment industry. Have a look: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.asp ?CID=N00008094&cycle=2000
and:
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/indus.asp?C ID=N00008094&cycle=2000
You know all those undercover cop stings to test store clerks if they will sell tobacco and/or alcohol to minors in the US? Look up your state's statute on this, and they will list an exemption specifically for this kind of operation.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
OK, just suppose that this law doesn't pass and the MPAA/RIAA go ahead and launch DOS attacks anyway. What precisely are you going to do about it? No-one here has anything like enough money to sue them anyway.
DDOSing them will very simple. All we need to do is to try to force them to think logically, a la Captain Kirk with the super-brain computer. The hamster wheels that pass for neurons in their heads will seize up.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Then A) the hospital or nuclear power plant or train or air traffic control system should be sued for negligence
That makes as much sense as suing me for negligence if I'm driving down the street, someone shoots me, and I run off the road and kill a kid on his bicycle.
and B) the DoS attacker can be sued for murder or attempted murder or terrorism or whatever is appropriate under the circumstances. Of course, I deny that such a situation is possible in the first place.
I wonder whether, under this bill, the MPAA or RIAA could be prosecuted in the event their actions caused this sort of damage. As far as whether it's possible, I know a radiologist who reads CAT scans and such from home when he's on call, but I'm not sure whether it's over the internet or on a dial-up line - and I would hope that they have a 'Plan B' for life-threatening situations.
Life critical systems should not rely on the internet, plain and simple.
No, but that doesn't mean the internet shouldn't be protected from attacks wherever possible. There are businesses large and small which rely on the internet to communicate and to conduct operations.
Also, there are already laws in place to cover this. Finally, it is outside the enumerated powers of the constitution to have laws regarding this.
There I have to agree. The computer crime code is basically useless; anything that can be prosecuted under it should have been prosecutable without it. If someone damages a person's property or deprive them of their livelihood, they should be held equally accountable whether they use a computer, a gun, or a salami.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Ah.. but if that happens, they won't be looking for copyrighted works on consumer's machines. They'll be attacking my business. I don't need permission from "the guy who got beat by a dead guy" to sue them for that. $250 isn't hard to prove either.
Not likely, I and my kit live in the UK, So ...
I'd report them to the Police under Section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
The police would collect all the evidence under criminal law, for me.
The UK/US has a extradition treaty, so the 'Consultants' would spend upto 6 years in Jail for each attack/Offence.
The Management that ordered the attack would spend upto 12 years in Jail for count of conspiracy.
I sue them under civil law and gain a default judgement, because they've already been convicted under the heavier burden of criminal law.
I would claim for punitive damages since the damage was wilful.
I would then gain an Anton Pillon Order and cease assets cash/takings from their Cinemas and Stores.
http://www1.excite.com/home/technology/tech_art
It also starting to Look like Valenti has been forced to back down.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26402.ht
Now they are on the run do NOT take this as victory and relax. I advocate moving onto the attack and pressing home the advantage. Tell your friends 'Look what they tried to do', tell them the MPAA/RIAA et. al. need to be watched they are trying to steal your rights, If we Geeks where not on the ball they may have suceeded. They still could. In short, rope likely future allies into the victory.
Irvu.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/2
If you are honestly interested in the subject, we can continue the discussion off list. My e-mail is listed with my information. As for the BYU link to "The Book of Abraham Project" (it works now; it must have been down last night), I have not read the whole thing, but the author quotes lots of scriptures and some addresses from the semi-annual General Conference. Those are things you can find on lds.org, so feel free to look up those references, but remember that the author's interpretation is not authoritative. You will have to form your own opinions on the interpretation unless you can find an official source (i.e., somehting living in the mormon.org or lds.org domains) in which a General Authority has interpreted the passage. Again, anything you find at lds.org or mormon.org, you can consider official. Anything you find somewhere else on the internet is like most stuff you find on the internet -- may be true, may not be true. The problem with BYU, and that area in general, is there are just way too many Mormons there (I mean that quite seriously -- I live right in the middle of the Bible Belt and couldn't be happier).
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
I like the way you think!
And what when those official agencies fail to uphold your rights effectively? See "self defence, individual's responsibility for".
And neither does this Act give any analogous rights to any copyright holder. Get over your sensationalism and RTFA already.
Given your legal culture, I imagine heavy punitive damages would quickly be slapped on the big boys if they go beyond the rights granted in the Act and abuse their systems. Nothing in this Act removes your right to have a go back in court if they do something unreasonable.
Oh, please. We are talking about publicly available files. They can be searched freely by anyone. There is no extra power needed for the MPAA or RIAA to search your machine than Joe from Texas. And if they find their copyrighted stuff on your box -- the only time they are allowed to take action under this Act -- you have already been proven guilty.
Ah, yes, the old "name calling instead of reasoned argument" approach. Very convincing. I'm suitably impressed.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
because of this payoff (that's been going on since the 80s) I can feel comfortable in copying whatever I want, whenever I want. And no MPAA goons are going to come knocking at my door. Seems a small price to pay to get them to shut up (in comparison to this legislation). Yay Canada.
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
Actually, if you live in almost any first world country, you're wrong both in theory and in practice. For example, there is some sort of power of citizen's arrest in many of these countries, though not necessarily conveying the same powers as a police officer would have. In practice, tell me that if you came home and some kid was jacking your car or attacking your daughter you'd feel obliged to let law enforcement do law enforcement and leave them to it.
You're still confusing prevention with punishment. This Act makes no allowance for punishment whatsoever. It allows one party to defend their rights at the time they are being infringed and no more. This is not unique, and there are several fundamental laws in most Western countries that take a similar approach, e.g., your right to act in the above cases.
Yes, I can see that. That's why your argument is without merit. Nothing in the Act supports corporations acting as either of the above. Nothing allows you to be found guilty of any crime without a court hearing, and nothing gives anyone the right to punish you without a court hearing. The act only allows them to take action to prevent you from continuing to break the law if they can see that you are doing so, and violating their rights as a result. If you object to such action, you are quite at liberty not to break that law. In the meantime, you are objecting to parts of the Act that do not exist.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'm no lawyer, but AFAICS, the bill doesn't seem to be about "reasonable suspicion" at all. It provides for various penalties to be applied if they block you where such does not exist, but does not seem to give any right for them to block you based only on suspicion, nor to limit any other action you could take if they block you otherwise.
It is indeed about a DoS attack of a sort made legal, but doesn't the bill explicitly state that they mustn't interfere with any other distribution unless it's necessary to stop you from distributing their stuff? If you aren't breaking the law, they can't touch you under this act, and AFAICS it's really as simple as that.
That seems fair enough to me. If you're wholesale ripping someone off and they take steps to stop you which happen to inconvenience you otherwise as well, I'm afraid you won't find any sympathy here. I buy my games and CDs, because while I disapprove of the aggressive pricing and complex monopoly used to enforce it in certain industries, I also disapprove of the wholesale flouting of a law that is, in principle, actually in the interests of the population as a whole.
It doesn't limit your rights at all if you're not already ignoring other people's.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.