Congress to Ashcroft: Go After Song Swappers

saikou writes "Yahoo has published a news about proposal of 19 lawmakers to prosecute P2P systems' users. Allthough Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, said that FBI should not go for casual users but but instead to go after operators of "network "nodes", there is not enough info in the story to see if this "should" will change to "must in addition to", if or when trying to arrest major node operators fails to curtain song swapping online. Of course, questions of what to do about foreign users and foreign music are omitted. RIAA claps its hands. I guess we should expect network congestion because of users, downloading everything in their sight to beat this initiative."

Comments

Target Kazaa

[Anenga]

I freely invite the RIAA to cannonball their blood sucking lawyers over to the FastTrack Network's Kazaa.

Time to get rid of that Spyware infested, Computer-taking-over, garbage. Then I'll celebrate as I watch the users pour onto Gnutella - an open, free, decentralized environment.

The free (as in "Centralized") ride is over folks'.

Oh, is the war on terrorism over now?

[phillymjs]

I'm sorry, I must not have received that memo.

I'm so glad we have vanquished Al Qaeda and their like-minded brethren, so now we can go after the REAL threats to the American way of life-- the people who are depriving Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti from the cash with which they stuff their mattresses.

Those file downloaders can share prison cells with those kids who got 20 years for selling a shroom to a narc in the parking lot at a Phish concert. Meanwhile, the evil CEOs that have looted companies at the expense of their employees' livelihoods and 401K's continue to walk around free.

Memo to Congress: Get your fucking priorities straight.

~Philly

Re:uh oh

[Moridineas]

Well so much for free speech

FOOL ALERT!!!! Free Speech doesn't give you the right to steal someone's work. Free Speech doesn't give you the right to listen to anyone's music whenever you want to. How about some common sense please!!

Re:Yeah!

[LiquidPC]

Singing a song and/or playing an instrument is most definately NOT hard work. It's certainly not so much work that its worth the millions that the artists/record labels make off of it. Not that I don't think the artists shouldn't be paid, but the amount of cash they make severely overweighs the amount of work they put into it. Yet, they STILL complain about losing money, its just absurd.

Re:How about gnutella?

[Olinator]

Blockpoth the quoster:

[...]is installing Windows from a legally purchased and licensed CD a crime?

<cheapshot>
A crime against humanity, maybe...
</cheapshot>

Ole, who knows that the shortest distance between 2 puns is a straightline