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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."
Missiouri voters decided he was less fit for public office than a dead man. What more can I say?
I think the rush to download everything in sight will be proportional to the rush to NOT be one of the major nodes. I mean, who wants to be arrested? That means it will get harder and harder for the average user to download his/her stuff, which is exactly what the RIAA wants. They know they can't stop the determined ones (I mean there is always usenet and IRC) but if they stop the masses it will be enough.
If they dont intend to go after individual users and I dont think they will (Napster had what? 20 million + world wide users? They cant arrest millions). How will they deal with regular users connecting to nodes based in other countries? Will they make it illegal for ISPs to allow access to certain ports?
and does this only affect P2p software? What about websites and ftp sites?
- Tempestdata
I guess we should expect network congestion because of users, downloading everything in their sight to beat this initiative.
Let loose the sails, mateys! Aye, we be setting course fer WinMX fer one last pillaging, arr...
Don't we have terrorists roaming around? Haven't half of people's retirement funds vaporized thanks to big business' gluttony? ...and Congress wants Ashcroft to bust FILE SHARERS???!!
Somethings wrong here...
REALLY WRONG HERE!!!
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
The vast majority of p2p traffic violates copyright. Yes, there's legal sharing of music. And yes, we can disagree about whether the illegal sharing is wrong.
/. readers
would think I got what I deserved.
But it seems the suggestion is that the FBI uphold the law. They are not outlawing p2p. They are not prohibiting legal music trades. Instead, there's a suggestion that the FBI enforce the law against users who traffic in large amounts of illegal software and pirated music.
If I put up a web page with links to tens of thousands of dollars of pirated software, I should expect either my ISP to yank my connection, or to get a visit from the FBI. And I would expect many
If I do the same thing with a p2p server, however, there seems to be a belief that I had a right to break the law.
So, before we get hysterical about "protocols being outlawed", perhaps we should look at (a) the proposal, and (b) the ethics of those 'big fish' traders who traffic in warez and mp3.
Well, this will likely get a bad mod rating because it's not all "rah rah mp3 warez". But I'm an artist who needs these protections to feed my family. Sure, I've heard that sharing music and copyright-anarchy is supposed to increase sales in the aggregate, but it doesn't work for me any the genre I work in. So I need my audience to please be a *paying* audience.
I'd hate to see all the entertainment industry waste all that money on bribing so many of our nation's lawmakers without anything to show for it.
Seriously folks, when are we as a nation going to say enough is enough with this legal corporate bribery? Can anyone please explain the practical difference between bribery and massive "donations" ? I'm reminded of a remark made by George Carlin, who said "this country was bought and sold years ago". Was he right?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
This isn't intentionally a troll, but if it ends up that way, well, so be it.
Isn't this what we've wanted all along? Make the people stealing the music the ones who are culpable rather than outlawing the methodology... it seems like the right answer to me.
Of course there's the implicit requirment (in order for this to be a good thing) that legal activities not be persecuted under this initiative. For that I suppose I'll have to wait and see. Honestly though, I'm not upset in the least about this. When folks download songs they didn't pay for which weren't given away for free by the artist/copyright holder, whatever the downloader's philosophy about it that activity is still theft. And let's face it, that's probably the majority of what goes on with P2P music "sharing" networks... that's certainly all I've ever seen anyone doing with them!
Behold the Power of Cheese!
Among those signing the letter were:
Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden *
Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner
Virginia Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott
Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers
North Carolina Republican Rep. Howard Coble *
and California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. *
* We know many of these names by now, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the other payola-beholden media-whore "lawmakers" made up the other 13 signatures.
Welcome to the world of intergenerational warfare. I'll bet no science fiction novel you ever read prepared you for this.
Under Nixon an older, reactionary generation declared a War on Drugs, which was essentially a euphemism for a war on the lifestyle of the youth of that era and the values it represented (chemical experimentation, casual sex, a healthy skepticism of authority, and so on). Indeed, the prohibition of drugs and the actions that have been taken to try and stamp out its use has caused far greater harm, in both a humanitarian and economic sense, than the abuse of the substances themselves ever did or could have.
A War on Ourselves indeed, or at least a war on the younger generation, one that began under Nixon, was escalated out of control under Reagan and Bush Senior, to the point where we now have over fifty beaurocracies fighting for the collected spoils seized from non-violent drug offendors.
Now, with the new War on Copyright Infringement, we are about to target today's youth, who trade their music, their movies, their videotapes online, instead of via cassette tape the way us older folk did when we were in high school and college.
Another front on an intergenerational war, between the dinasaurs of the Jack Valenti Generation of Greed and the emerging, technically savvy information generation they seek to repress and quite possibly destroy.
This escalation will likely claim even more victims, fill our prisons even more with people even less inclined to violence than the many drug offendors who account for half our inmate population today.
Worse, we'll have to listen to even more self-righteous tripe along the lines "but these fans are stealing bread and milk from the mouths of Lars and Britney," and "we'll win the war on copyright infringement! These pirates will never see the light of day again! God Bless America!"
What's next, a broken egg on a frying pan with the words "This represents your Life on MP3?"
Make no mistake, this is intergenerational warfare, waged by the parents and grandparents upon the children who have chosen to live differently than their elders, indeed, differently than their elders can comprehend. As we draw closer to the technological singuarity I think we can expect ever more extreme examples of the same.
Hell, I haven't even finished writing a novel set in 2057 that depicts exactly these sorts of events. How close is one to the Singualarity I wonder, when real world events overtake science fiction faster than it can be written?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Above is partial quote from Carrie Fisher
This is a victory for P2P.
The more the United States congress thinks they have done something substantial that isn't, the better off the file sharers will be.
This will not have a chilling effect on P2P at all.
The first human face put on trial for this will inspire a journalistic feeding frenzy, particularly if he looks like you and me or the neighbor nextdoor, especially if he is filesharing documents such as "Declaration of Independence.txt " or "United States Constitution.doc"
Oh, my God! Did I just type Windows file extensions?!?
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Among those signing the letter were: Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden
Hmmm...this would be the same Joesph Biden who's 1988 Presidential bid was abruptly curtailed when it was revealed that he'd plagiarized passages in several of his speeches, and had also been involved in a serious plagiarism incident when he was at law school?
What an asshole.
Just like we can blame doom creator john carmack for inciting violence at columbine, we can blame the creators of gnutella for inciting piracy.
Lets create new laws to slowly shut down the world wide web, I mean we capitalists worked hard ot gain control of the web, and if we cant have it, no one can!
Lets show those GNU pengiun loving open source pirates that sharing is bad! Lets make them so afrraid to share that they'll be forced to work for us!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
- DOJ crawls through the P2P networks, scanning your file swapping list, and arresting everyone it can find which they believe is illegally sharing copyrighted materials. They prosecute a buch of big-time file-sharers, winning some, losing others. But they get enough that it scares most people.
- The big P2P sharers leave the networks. Usage drops drastically. However, the P2P software makers are still in business, as they are now left alone. Music is still being shared, only now its stuff that explicitly has been allowed by the Artists to be shared.
- Now that the P2P network isn't clogged with NSYNC tunes, people actually can find (and listen to) stuff that isn't on ClearChannel or the other big chain Radio stations. Bands have small successes - releasing 128Bit MP3s to the P2P networks, and selling 256Bit ones on their websites for a couple of dimes. It becomes possible for a regional band to make a few tens of thousands of dollars of MP3 sales per year (100,000 sales @ 40 cents each adds up), and people start to flock to the P2P networks again.
- Big-time artists notice it. Those which are in controll of their catalogue (through foresight, ownership of their label, or lawsuits), decide that its possible now. Somebody big tries it, and makes a couple million in sales on their back-catalog in the first month. The artists drool, as they see 75% profit margins on per-MP3 sales, with nothing going to the label (or other middlemen).
- Artists flock to the P2P networks to sell their songs, and the big labels are reduced to what they really are: promotional marketing houses. Artists contract with them for fixed fees (or precentages of gross receipts) to do promotion and such, and label no longer get ownership of the music, as Artists now have the means to say "Fuck You" if the label demands it.
I'd love to see this scenario, and I think it's realistic given two BIG "ifs":- IF they really start to clamp down on the big P2P users with huge illegal catalogs, so we can get all the infringing crap off the P2P networks. Once it's all legal and above board, you can start running real marketing analysis and do the business case studies that you need to make it a real sales market and distribution channel.
- IF the artists continue on the current road of fighting to get ownership of their music. If they quit (and continue with the Faustian bargain of their soul for 15 minutes on MTV), then it's over. I'm hoping they have the backbone to stick it out.
And realistically, isn't this what we want? P2P networks with LEGAL music for us to try out and see what we want? And an economically viable way for the artists to produce music and get paid for it in a reasonable manner?Call it what you want, but sharing copyrighted MP3s right now is definitely illegal, and in the long turn, harmful to everyone. Don't do it - it's NOT the Right Thing.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
This is new, so pay attention to what's happening. A truly new crime has been invented--that isn't something that happens often.
Copyright infringement has never before been a crime committed by individuals procuring their own entertainment. Always before it has been a crime that could only be comitted by major distributors. After all, those were the only people copyright law applied to 50 years ago.
Stealing a song is not like stealing a car. One involves the deprivation of a personal property, and the other involves breaking a social contract.
This is new, and I wonder how long this new crime will be with us.
I wonder how long a 15 year old kid would get in the slammer for downloading a britney spears mp3 vs the CEO of Worldcom who defrauded 7.1 billion dollars worth of employee's and stockholders life savings.
Manipulating and stealing Stock ok, downloading mp3's bad.
Same is true for packet sniffing and reverse engineering. Under the DMCA, packet sniffing to make a program compatable with something else is illegal and bad. However killing competetion and cutting tens of thousands of jobs who use to work for your competitors ok. If Microsoft never existed do you think Oracle, Borland and Watcom would have like 10x the staff they do now as well as enjoy healthy competition from companies that would of existed because Microsoft would never exist. My guess is that Netscape would be quite huge right now would and its software would be a whole platform and not just a web browser. Its a shame.
http://saveie6.com/
Because it IS illegal. Lending a CD to a friend is fair use (an important right that should be protected), "sharing" copyrighted material with one million "friends" is not.
Why not? As long as you're not expecting compensation for the songs then there is no difference. This is something the Supreme Court needs to decide on. At what number does "sharing" of copyrighted material become illegal? 5 friends? 10? 100? 1000? What if you laborously record audio tapes of the CDs for each of your 100 friends and send them out via mail at great cost to you? Does that make it legitimate fair use?
Congress is really showing its true corporate colors these days. It's time for a non-violent overthrow of our leadership come the next elections to sweep on these people that are consistently violating our freedom in exchange for satisfying their corporate masters. Personally my opinion is that in the digital age copyright needs to be seriously rethought of as a government granted monopoly on distribution of data. Perhaps it's time to shrink the number of years you retain exclusive copyright on a work to 5 years. Remember people, there's no inherent god-given right to own "intellectual property". It's an idea created by the governments to help urge artists to develop new works that would eventually be available in the public domain. These days with the way it works these works will never become public domain (Mickey Mouse for example) and will live forever under their corporate ownership. Something has changed horribly since the original ideas of copyright were penned by our Founding Fathers.
Just my 2 cents which are of course flamebait, a troll, overrated, and stupid. Bite me.
Inmate 1: What are you in for?
Inmate 2: I blew this guys face off with a shotgun because he didn't have my money. And you?
Inmate 1: I downloaded some Weird Al mp3's and uploaded that video of the monkey sniffing his finger and falling over.
Inmate 2: Sicko. You disgust me, its people like you...
Need a group on Terrorism, check
...
Need a group on Kiddie Porn, check
Need a group on Kid Napping, check
Need a group on serial murders, check
Need a group on drug traffic, check
Need a group on tax fraud, check
Need a group on smugglers, check
Need a group on file swapers
Hmmm
Note to self: Dont pay taxes this year
Ammendum to note to self: Dont pay taxes this year and move to zanzabar and start taking opium rectally
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
While the Congress did provide for Criminal remedies for copyright infringement, they did so only in cases where the individual was doing so for private financial gain, or for cases where the infringement was egregious and amounting to actual privacy (at least $1,000 value in 180 days). For Justice to actually make a case against any individual would require intensive investigation and monitoring over an extensive period of time.
It is for precisely this reason that the Congress provided for civil remedies for copyright infringement including awards of an attorney fee -- so that private copyright owners can pursue their remedies on their own dime -- if it actually creates a meaningful cost to them (and presumably to society).
RIAA would like for us to spend tax money to support them, and save them the costs of prosecution. These Congressmen are engaging in the worst kind of pork by suggesting that our Justice department should waste tax and precious law enforcement resources prosecuting penny-ante civil copyright infringement cases. RIAA neither needs nor deserves such public assistance. Save Justice resources for meaningful pirates, yet, or more important, for meaningful law enforcement matters. The RIAA should take care of itself.
Oh, dearie me, what shall we do with half our government in jail for illegal file sharing? ;)
m ai n/0,14179,2874687,00.html
;)
ZDNet posted an interesting opinion piece back in July about how we should quit using P2P now that the Senate has. Check it out here:
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/
The part that interested me most was this quote:
>> The Senate, which is now crafting legislation
>> that would further restrict the illegal sharing
>> of copyrighted works over networks, was
>> apparently a hotbed of illegal file sharing and
>> other peer-to-peer (P2P) networking activity.
>>
>> Last week, the Senate Sergeant at Arms clamped
>> down, and cut off all P2P networking within the
>> Senate. The reason? Such networking practices
>> were a security risk, and they were being used
>> to violate copyright laws.
As they say, "our tax money at work". The senators involved (it does not name names, but gives the idea that such activities were widespread) were not only breaking the law, they were using our tax money to do it. If you check the various news stories, at least two movies were illegally downloaded and watched by the senators during Senate hearings on legislation such as the Hollings bill. One of the videos was pirated by a senator, the other by the President of Disney.
If these congresspersons are correct (some of the ones asking for the FBI's "help" were senators), shouldn't the FBI take care of the most widely publicized cases first, the ones with easy proof, that involved public money?
After all, they are the ones who think this is such a henious crime that we have to pull the FBI off of child kidnapping cases and the "War on Terror" to deal with it.
Me, I think the FBI has better things to do than bother with people sampling music before a purchase and freeloading kids who wouldn't or couldn't pay for a CD anyway. But then our senators are the ones with all the file-sharing experience, not little old me. Surely they know better.
"Really, gentlemen, if that's the case, let's see the power of attorney given to you by Mothra."
Torahata "Mothra vs. Godzilla"
Alter or remove the laws regarding copyright until it's legal to "share" other people's work without their consent.
That's called "compulsory licensing," and many Slashdot readers have suggested forms of it in comments. Under a compulsory license scheme, a copyright owner would not be able to stop a particular use of a work (e.g. AOL Time Warner refusing to show Speedy Gonzales and also refusing to license it to other networks; see this K5 story and this comment in particular) but would be able to 1. collect a royalty (copyright law), and 2. declare unauthorized works "not canon" (trademark law).
Sounds fair to me. Can you see any reason why compulsory licensing would "promote the Progress of Science" (U.S. Const. I.8.8) any less than the current scheme?
Will I retire or break 10K?