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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
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.
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.
...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!
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
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
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.
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!
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
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!
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.
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.
It doesn't have one yet, but the text of the bill as introduced, is posted (in pdf format) on Declan McCullagh's site.
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.
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. ;)
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!" -$
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
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.
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.
- (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.
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
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)
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.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
...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
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
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
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....
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
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?
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
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.
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
There is a catch in the bill, so that it would not have the undesired effect of granting equality under the law. You are only allowed to sabotage publicly available peer-to-peer systems. I doubt Big Business use those systems, so it will still be illegal for you to attack them even if this bill becomes law.
Irvu.