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Congress to Ashcroft: Go After Song Swappers

Posted by chrisd on from the the-fascist-states-of-america dept.

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."

24 of 599 comments (clear)

  1. Ashcroft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Missiouri voters decided he was less fit for public office than a dead man. What more can I say?

    1. Re:Ashcroft by zCyl · · Score: 4, Interesting

      With an intelligent, educated populace, the politics will never follow the money

      I agree completely. I think the federal government should mandate at least one year of Rhetoric classes for every high school student. If we can develop an entire generation of adults who understand how they are being swayed and have been taught the skills for critical analysis of media and information, then politicians will have to focus on issues. Money can't buy issues like it can buy the swaying of people's emotions.

  2. Thar Be Network Congestion Ahead, Mateys! by DarkZero · · Score: 4, Funny

    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...

  3. Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! by Newer+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!!!

    1. Re:Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! by Dryth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      With all these evil terrorists and executives roaming the streets, I'm appauled we're still busting all those poor innocent shoplifters and breaking up domestic disputes! Civil servants should be profiling foreigners and storming office buildings, not enforcing all those trivial matters that don't REALLY effect us! *end sarcasm*

      Terrorism is a matter being dealt with. Big businesses are under the microscope. Are we to put down everything else until these matters are completely resolved? 'Cause y'know what? They won't be. Ever.

      File sharing is a matter of concern. I think we all accept that illegal activity is the norm on P2P networks, and I'm not just talking music piracy (noting the bias hereabouts against the RIAA). Just because there're bigger things going on in the world, doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to all the smaller concerns.

    2. Re:Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! by Stonehand · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They've got three choices, really.

      1. Alter or remove the laws regarding copyright until it's legal to "share" other people's work without their consent.

      2. Enforce the laws regarding copyright and those who violate them.

      3. Tolerate an increasing disregard for the law, and have yet another law on the books which /might/ at some time be selectively prosecuted, but isn't often.

      1, alteration or dropping, probably isn't going to happen until either the voters make it such a priority that they're willing to sacrifice their incumbents for it, or until SCOTUS says so.

      2, is what they're going for.

      3, leads to a situation where people may get used to non-enforcement and then get burned later if, say, a prosecutor feels like raising his profile, and where people may feel free to start disregarding other laws as well.

      And law enforcement is /big/. It's capable of multitasking, believe it or not...

      --
      Only the dead have seen the end of war.
  4. I don't understand... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    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 /. readers would think I got what I deserved.

    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.

    1. Re:I don't understand... by lunenburg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      If I hear your music (assuming you're a musician), I just might want to buy your CD. Which ClearChannel station can I hear your stuff on? Or possibly MTV? With P2P out of the picture, those might be the only ways I'd hear you.

  5. Well that's good... by Loki_1929 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."
  6. Good. by kabir · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!
    1. Re:Good. by kabir · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When the music industry charges 20 fuckin bucks a CD; with pennies on the dollar going to the actual artist; with 3 of the top 40 songs available as singles, THAT activity is still theft.


      Actually, no it isn't.

      Sure, it's a horrible deal for the artists and should be corrected, but it's not theft. No matter how much it sucks, or how much people want to call it theft to justify their own actions, it just plain isn't.

      The artists signs a (very likely terribly unfair) contract with a record company. That's an agreement between two parties who (should, if they are responsible) know exactly what they're getting into, and do it willingly.

      A legal tranfer of rights is not theft.
      --
      Behold the Power of Cheese!
  7. The gallery of idiots... by silentbozo · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  8. Intergenerational Warfare by FreeUser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  9. Shut down the whole WORLD WIDE WEB! by HanzoSan · · Score: 4, Funny



    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
  10. This will help the REAL artists... by trims · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Imagine if you will, this scenario:
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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).
    5. 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.
    1. Re:This will help the REAL artists... by serutan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That sounds great until you consider that the end result of your scenario is that the music industry dies. Musicians absolutely can survive without the industry, since there is now a free mechanism to distribute their music without signing away the rights. As new bands flourish on the Internet and popular bands move to the Internet, the Music Industry is left with only their existing catalog of increasingly moldy oldies to peddle, becoming a nostalgia industry that eventually folds up.

      Oh, sure, Hilary and her sleazy friends will settle for that destiny. They'll never see that one coming. Naww. No way they'll react by doing something like this:

      Paying their lackeys in Congress to force hardware makers to embed DRM that REQUIRES security technology that is owned by - guess who!! - which gets licensed to aspiring musicians for, oh, say the same-ish terms record companies have been imposing on them for decades. The industry retains control over the master access valve, we get to hear the same stream of big-hit bands selected for us by assholes in expensive suits, on computers and other machines that will no longer play just whatever we want, and 99.99% of the population of musicians grubs along like they do now.

    2. Re:This will help the REAL artists... by kcbrown · · Score: 5, Interesting
      2. 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.

      Huh? How naive can you get?

      You think the RIAA will just be nice and leave P2P software makers alone once trading of RIAA 0wn3d music on P2P networks drops through the floor? You think the RIAA will just ignore all those independent artists that they don't have any control over but who would now have more relative exposure on P2P networks?

      You've gotta be kidding me. What world did you grow up in?

      The RIAA will not stop until all music distribution methods are completely under their control. Total domination is what they're after and they're not going to settle for anything less. And because they 0wn Congress, they have a reasonable chance of succeeding. Oh, yeah, they might destroy the Internet in the process, but everyone knows that the only people who use the internet as anything other than a glorified TV set are 3v1l h4x0rz and terrorists, right?

      Sigh...

      --
      Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
  11. Re:Oh, is the war on terrorism over now? by dimator · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Memo to Congress: Get your fucking priorities straight.

    I prefer:

    Memo to Congress: fuck you!

    --
    python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
  12. This is new folks by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:This is new folks by dboyles · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Copyright infringement has never before been a crime committed by individuals procuring their own entertainment.

      I don't think this is either. While obtaining material that you know to be stolen (s/stolen/infringed\ upon) is illegal, I think everybody is wanting to go after the actual distributors. I don't think even Ashcroft would go so far as to say we should go after the kid who downloads a copy of a latest-and-greatest MTV single.

      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.

      Are you sure? I don't have any citations to back this up, but I doubt it was legal fifty years ago for someone to copy a book and distrbute it without having permission from the author/publisher.

      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.

      You're exactly right, and that's why someone who steals a car is probably going to prison for a short period, while someone who illegally copies a CD will most likely get a very minor punishment.

      --
      -- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
  13. Its ok to steal stocks but not britney spears by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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/
  14. Re:uh oh by civilizedINTENSITY · · Score: 4, Interesting
    "I think the rush to download everything in sight will be proportional to the rush to NOT be one of the major nodes."
    Its also time to start considering alternative modes of communication. Consider college LAN parties. Consider the bandwidth of a VW bus full of MP3 CDs. Latency *sucks* but oh the throughput once it arrives! This might also put Freenet on the map.
  15. Scenario by Ironpoint · · Score: 5, Funny


    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...

  16. So, will the FBI arrest our Senators?!? by Melantha_Bacchae · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Oh, dearie me, what shall we do with half our government in jail for illegal file sharing? ;)

    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/m ai n/0,14179,2874687,00.html

    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"