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P2P File Sharing Could Cost You A Bundle
geekee writes "CNET posted an article claiming you could be liable for $250,000 in fines and up to 3 years in prison for p2p file sharing. This is due to an obscure law called the No Electronic Theft (NET) act passed in 1997 (signed by Bill Clinton). Although the Justice Department has not prosecuted anyone under this new law, some members of congress have asked John Ashcroft to begin prosecuting. In response to the request, John Malcolm, a deputy assistant attorney general, said to expect some NET Act prosecutions."
Just don't take my porn!!!
Long live heather brooke.
woot.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
(signed by Bill Clinton)
Under the new version of the bill, signed by George Bush, violaters will be declared "enemy combatants", will be stripped of all rights and will be held for life on the Guantanamo Bay military base.
I would go to jail for what I believe in.
But I do believe that theft is theft.
Everyone gets pissed off when someone threatens to take away their pirated music and videos.
If you want to make a backup of your music and videos fine, but don't share them out to other people to freely copy.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I'm moving to Russia where it's more free.
Everytime there is any mention of peer-to-peer, the same old arguements get trotted out 'it's stealing', 'the RIAA deserves it', 'musicians are getting screwed', 'yeah, by the RIAA'.
/.
Maybe just read the Kaaza article from last week, and if a viewpoint is not mentioned there, then post. But there is only so many times the same arguements can...
Oh, right I'm on
Nevermind.
Of course, there's still the "pre-dawn-raid-and-seize-hard-drive" tactic which I've heard makes that moot...
(a) DEFINITION OF FINANCIAL GAIN- Section 101 of title 17, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the undesignated paragraph relating to the term `display', the following new paragraph:
`The term `financial gain' includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.'.
Very nice. I just traded some recently-read books with my mom. Does this mean I'm gonna fry (she'll probably turn me in 'cuz she's like that)?
As much as i haten Microsoft i have to wonder why the RIAA and MPAA can have a Monopoly but the RIAA cant.
does it bother anyone else like me? The RIAA and MPAA bother me because they are the ones who fought to pass the DMCA, but...now they have the biggest problems with it.
---
The Combined Forces of the RIAA and MPAA arrests half the Populous of the United States for Illegal File sharing under the No Electronic Theft Act.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
.NET and now NET... maybe we should get rid of that TLD altogether, before it sparks even more evil...
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
The problem with giving people freedom and liberty is - you never know what they're actually going to do with it.
You know, like invent a decentralized p2p system and then trade files with it.
How dare they!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
At least in our great state north of the 49th parallel we don't really have to listen to our music with the fear of the FBI coming in and arresting us for listening to music we downloaded to evaluate. Our wonderful government just takes our money from buying blank media instead.
but it would be nice if we could get some kind of representation in the senate or congress so we could voice out conserns.
What ever did happen to representation in government?
Honestly, this law will never be used against the "normal" citizen. However, what should worry you is this, the law can be used to imprison or harm people who the gov't (or a malicious DA) wants out of the way.
Let's say you have a paranoid administration like the Nixon one, or a socio-fascist one like FDR's that wants an easy way to get rid of dissidents. What's a good way? Find out that they used Kazaa a few times, and imprison them for a few years.
This law is another example of government intrusion into your everyday life through regulation and taxes.
"Bring back the Articles of Confederation!"
See Pirates With Attitude for one instance in which I was personally involved.
Oh well, I will just have to use DirectConnect or IRC where the 431.322.12 of the Internet Privacy Act applies, it saying that if you are affiliated with any government, police, investigative, ANTI-Piracy Group, RIAA, MPAA, Universal, Fox, any other movie production company or video game company or console manufacturer or distribution company or group, or any other related group, or were formally a worker of one, you CANNOT enter. If this is violated, any evidence obtained during this violation can be thrown out of court.
On a side note, with the average user base of Kazaa averaging over 1 million constantly not to mention the tens of millions who log in periodically, I am so sure that the US government will jail half the teenage population in the US. This is a bluff plain and simple.
Do you legislators ever vote for you?
I have a hard time believing that Swiss Citizens have voted on every single line in the law books. When Switzerland joined the UN recently, did you actually vote on that, or did some representative vote in your name,.
Not a flame, but I'm curious how it works in other countries (I got some idea when I spent a week there in June, but a week is so little time).
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I'll go to jail for what I believe in. .. said the anonymous coward.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
File swappers are already commiting theft. This changes nothing except that it spells out the the sentences you could get.
Even if this law didn't exist, and the feds raid your house and take your mp3 filled drive away, you are still going to be indicted.
No sig
So don't let more than $1000 of stuff get up and it looks like you might slip under it.
I might be reading that wrong, but that is how I am looking and interpeting it. IANAL of course. Of couse I am probably interpeting it wrong or taking it out of context.
Instead of hammering redhat, Freebsd, ftp.kernel.org every time the latest and greatest is released, wouldn't it be a better use of resources to make a kazaa-like program that distributes the bandwidth of multiple mirror sites? I seem to remember something similar to this being discussed before but has anything like that been done? I actually feel kinda bad that my most "local" redhat mirror is ftp.redhat.com so I purposely rotate ftp sites to even things out.
" It doesn't matter if you've forsworn Napster, uninstalled Kazaa and now are eagerly padding the record industry's bottom line by snapping up $15.99 CDs by the cartload. Be warned--you're what prosecutors like to think of as an unindicted federal felon."
So in essence, theres no reason for me to stop, now that I've already started.
we voted actually :p
and our system works
with and without holes in our cheese
stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!
"CNET posted an article claiming you could be liable for $250,000 in fines and up to 3 years in prison for p2p file sharing"
Good thing I'm a leecher!
But, but...The artist has the original. How is it stealing?
or
I was never going to buy it anyway, so how's it stealing?
or
I should be able to loan anything out to my friends. What happens after that is none of my business.
or
I'll strike at the evil heart of the big anonymous corporations by downloading, uploading every book, music, etc. That'll show them.
Lets ask law enforcement to prosecute the NET charges against the MPAA and RIAA agents that violate the terms of use and copyrights of websites while they search for pirated software.
Fight Spammers!
"So a person goes and STEALS music. He gets sued and has to pay money / sit in jail. What's wrong about that ? If you start seeing people who get sued for downloading songs they ALREADY OWN, then raise hell."
We're not talking about a suit. We're talking about Fedral felony. Do you think the punishment fits the crime? Personally, I think jail time for sharing a file on a P2P network is over-the-top. And I think the FBI has more important things it should be doing.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
I am truly inspired by your courage. The sheer testicular fortitude it must take, to stand up and proudly say, "I, Anonymous, will *NOT* be played for a fool any more! I will hide behind the deeds of others to stand up for my beliefs in truth, justice, the American Way, and free shit that I didn't pay for!"
I salute you, sir. Guess with which finger?
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
Lock all 60 Million + users away? They'd have to build at least another 1,000 prisons. Even if we're just talking America here. Plus, jailing that many people may just up the defecite (sp?) of the US, because not only would the government have to pay for new jails to house all us bad file traders, but they'd also loose tax income.
:) So if you have a quarter TB of songs, better move. :O
All this so the RIAA/MPAA can get a few hundred thousand back?
Here's a better idea: Find everyone who trades. Go to their house. Ask them for five dollars. Everyone can find five dollars. Pay that once, and the RIAA will get upward of 100 million (25,000,000 * 5, figuring that there are 25,000,000 P2P users in America). That will hold them over for a few years, I think.
If they do use this, they'll probably go after the people who have the most files downloaded and share the most. Makes me glad I only have 300 songs (and not all copyrighted) and don't share.
Dnaumov - Meta-modding tends to be unkind people who speak out against the "everything should be free" dogma surrounding Slashdot. I disagree with you, but I've seen enough of your posts before to know (hope) you're not trolling.
Yes, I steal music. If you've read the latest article on the RIAA's trouble regarding price-fixing you'd realize they also steal from me.
That's all I have to say.
~D:
Um... Actually the act says that it only applies if you something with a value of $1,000 or more. So just don't build up $1,000 of Mp3's, Porn, Movies, Warez, etc. I think that's quite simple... Except that since a hammer costs $500... Who's to say that your 2 minute and 30 second mp3 isn't valued at 50 hajillion dollars!?
Location: Mt. Xinu
RTFL = Read The F'ing Law `(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000 You have nothing to worry about, continue file sharing!
"How fortunate for leaders, that the masses do not think." -- Adolf Hitler
Man, these are going to get overcrowded... !
Bah, all they have to do is let the minor-crimes guilty people go out of jail with a promise never to do it again... You know, little crimes like rape, murder or pedophilia... It's REALLY much worse to have stolen 20$ from a company who already makes millions of bucks than to have killed someone these days.
"No Sergeant, stop putting efforts in finding the serial killer in this city, we have to find all those P2P users instead ! Much more dangerous are these guys..."
Damn. What a society do we live in where legislators are actually putting some efforts in arresting teenagers who steal a couple of mp3 off the Net rather than building social programs to help those in need. Heck, I was watching the Superbowl yesterday, and with all the money those fireworks probably costed, you could have fed one or two countries in Africa... But no, hell, no, Americans need their fireworks at the Superbowl. Much more important than those Africans dying of malnutrition.
I mean, couldn't you, if you got caught, just go out and buy the CDs that they accuse you of illegaly downloading?
Or what if your friend, who owns the latest Eminem CD, comes over your house, downloads it and plays it for you, and then deletes it? Or rather, how can they ever prove that that didn't happen?
I would guess that they only will prosecute people who upload stuff. Actually, I would guess that it's just a scare tactic; or maybe they'll pull a Mitnick and throw some random college kid in jail for 5 years, just to make an example of him. Yikes though.
c-hack.com |
So if they're going to be staging mass arrests of the millions of P2P users in this country, there will be no more excuses or evasions for all of us out there trading files. I've called for it before, but the silence was deafening: we need to stage CD/Hilary Rosen-poster burning rallies and organize ourselves politically. When the sons and daughters of all those congresspeople join (I'm sure some of them will be on the Justice department's blacklist) we'll see some serious changes in short order.
Thus far wealthy lobbiests and cynical bloodsucking lawyers have carried the day, but let's see where the chips really fall when 3 million people of all ages assemble on the Mall and burn Congress in effigy. That, my friend, will get results, not posting endlessly on Slashdot.
I mean c'mon, is anyone else out there tired of the same old truths in this issue being rehashed ("copying is not stealing since you don't take away others' right to use it" or "I only download to backup what I already own" ad nauseum) on this site with the amazing result that things continue to go against us? Let's get off our butts and take some action!
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Let's try not to mix the two because P2P is a great technology. Stealing music is just stealing. Let's not muddy P2P's name by calling it what it isn't.
"Let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average." - A. W. Tozer
Also, if someone logs on to a file-trading network and shares even one MP3 file without permission in "expectation" that others will do the same, full criminal penalties kick in automatically.
"I'd imagine there are, at minimum, several thousand file-swappers meeting this definition," said Polk Wagner
I'd say this is a gross under-estimation... How do you criminalize something everyone is doing? This is just like prohibition, if you make it illegal people will just switch to more secure p2p clients.
The Swiss actually voted on that yes, not some representative in their name.
Yes, the Swiss had a public referendum on joining the UN. It won in a squeaker: 12 cantons (like US states) for, 11 cantons against.
In Switzerland, important changes to the law must be approved by the public.
...if artists are happy that their fans are being put into prison for listening to their music.
Listen to the radio, no problem (but don't skip the commercials you criminal!). Download an MP3, huge fine and jail time.
Land of the free. *puke*. What a fucked up world we live in.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Let's see, 3 years in prison, 20 million or more P2P users. Yea, that should take about 10% of the population out of commission for awhile. Listen guys, the average P2P user is a middle class person. These type of people do not go to jail. Only scummy drug users and low income people go to jail. Don't worry about it guys.
I just brought up the text of the bill. I'll give my obligatory IANAL here, but in order to be prosecuted under the bill, it looks like you must:
Traffic copies ammounting to over $1000 in retail value within a 180 day period.
Engage in electronic reproduction for financial gain
So, if you aren't selling the right to download your MP3s, or burning and selling (at a profit) CD s of material you download, or even if you do these things on a very small scale, it looks like you can't be prosecuted. This law does not affect the average P2P user, it just affects people who bootleg as a business and happen to use P2P networks to accomplish their goals.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
Plus, if they locked up everyone, it would be something like a big LAN party IRL, minus the actual LAN. People would meet people they know online, friends will come together. Nintendo can go to the massive prisons (not the small ones, because they would be worthless) and set up real Camp Hyrules! because, of course, everyone would sneak in their GBAs. :)
This isn't about just any P2P file sharing, it's about sharing copyrighted files without permissions.
That is blatantly illegal, whether it's P2P or not.
if they catch all worldwide p2p users USA government will never have financial problems
You just pay outrageous taxes on everything including blank cds and mp3 players. Little difference.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
You aren't going to get thrown in the slammer for P2P File Sharing. Your going to get thrown in the slammer for illegal P2P File Sharing of copyrighted material. Granted that 99.99% of P2P File Sharing done now is illegal, it is wrong to label all P2P File Sharing as illegal.
Just because you don't know of any legal P2P File Sharing doesn't exist. Here is Open Office v1.2, Matrix Reloaded Superbowl Trailer, and this website has a lot of legitimate P2P content including Linux Distro's. Do note that all of the content above is on the Gnutella2 Network using Shareaza.
Tax the poor(read: college students) with outrageous 250,000 dollar fines and give it to the rich.
I know lets ban the radio. You do not want to hear any copyrighted songs in which you did not pay for. After all its a public performance according to the RIAA.
On a more serious note is it just me or was this act imposed by Clinton more targeted for mass pirates with cd copying equipment? Puting a file in a directory that is shared is not the same as bootlegging tens of thousands of copries a day and selling them on the street.
Also what really bothered me was that one of the kids arrested so far only downloaded a single movie of star wars. He did not have any other files. Just one in which Lucas didn't like and called Clinton to bust his ass on. The reason why I am concerned is I downloaded a copy of Decss for Windows so I can rip my own dvd's that I purchased. Will I go not into the state prison but rather the maximum federal Pound my in the ass prison because of this? If I want to rip my own dvd's then its dam my own choice. I should not go to jail for it and ruin my whole life (no respectable employer would hire a convicted felon)to practice fair use. But under the dmca and now this a prosecutor can easily equit me of a serious federal crime. I dont own tens of thousands of mp3's but decss really pisses off alot of hollywood executives.
John Ashcroft also prosecuted thousands of kiddie porn suspects under a long investigation. My guess is he is looking for movies and evil programs like decss over those with thousands of mp3's.
http://saveie6.com/
Bill Gates appeared before Congress today to propose the .NET Act of 2003, which would impose a fine of up to $250,000 for running a pirated version of Windows.
Are those congresscritters bored with the War on Terror already? Do we need another War on Drugs so we can spend vast amounts of money imprisoning vast numbers of citizens for petty crimes?
We have GOT to put an end to corporate control of our national legislature.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
forgot the link
that Hollywood needs Digital Rights Management legislation because copyright laws lack teeth, and there are no effective means to deal with copyright violations online.
Catching copyright violators will be a good thing for copyright reform: suddenly the same people who currently just ignore the laws will press to see them changed. Still better, the legitimate calls for copyright reform won't be drowned out or confused by the wails of spoiled teenagers who just want to grab free music.
Copyright needs reforming, nationally and internationally. Grabbing all the music you can in violation of copyright doesn't help the cause of those who actually want to do something about the problem. Enforcing the existing laws, and getting rid of the violators can only help the cause of copyright in the long run.
--
Ytrew
Yes, that is entirely legal. Ally MacBeal says so.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Based on the education system here, I doubt if your from the US you'd not know that either.
50 blanks in Canada cost 20-30 Canadain dollars including or "outrageous" tax. You get charged with this and pay $250,000 and posibility of jail. I would hardly consider that similair.
Yet. I'm sure we're all well aware of how US law (or its equivalent) will eventually make its way to your neck of the woods, wherever that is.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Actually, it's more like Australian PITA father-in-laws that sadisticly stir the bejesus out of their Canadian son-in-laws that "can't" tell the difference.
;)
(No offence to any Australians; my mom's Australian. Confused? Good, I am
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
It specifically says if you upload a copyrighted file in order to be allowed to download other copyrighted files, the downloads count as financial gain even though you don't get any cash. Welcome to the doublespeak future.
The idea of facing even $5,000 in fines for obtaining a few hundred songs illegally should be considered ludicrous. This fine should be at the top of such a penalty, and only in extreme circumstances. A $250,000 fine for such a thing sounds, to me, simply un-American. We like our lax criminal penalties. Who does the RIAA think they are?!
In Switzerland, they actually let people VOTE on whether they want these acts or not.
Nice to hear it. Wish we had that here.
Got to love America?s "Democratic" government, passing laws without even letting the people know.
Actually, the US isn't a democracy. It's a republic. The general population doesn't vote on the laws (as in a democracy). The enfranchised portion of the general population votes on the legislators, then the legislators vote on the laws.
Originally the general population voted on the representatives and the states chose the senators (with the states' population in turn chosing the state reps and governor who were the ones chosing the senators). But that got changed so the population votes directly on both.
Of course sometimes they pass laws without the CONGRESSMEN knowing.
- The congresscritters rarely read the text, but depend on the recommendations of their staff, their party, (or sometimes their major contributors B-( ).
- Even if they want to read what they're voting, often it's impossible. The staffers put together the final text of enormous bills, which appear on the legislators desks within hours, or even minutes, of the final vote. (I recall one that was a stack of paper several feet thick that showed up in just such a fashion.) I've yet to hear of a congresscritter voting against a bill because "I haven't had time to read it."
- A conference committee might completely re-write a bill (possibly with similar staff "assistance"). Both houses normally rubber-stamp a conference committee's results.
And even when the congresscritters know what they're voting on, maybe nobody else does, or has a chance to comment. For instance:
The "Firearm Owners Protection Act" was a bill to protect gunowners from the web of 30,000-ish conflicting state, county, and local firearms laws when traveling. A tiny bill that said ~"If it's legal where you start your trip, legal where you finish it, and locked up in between, it's ok to transport it no matter what the state and local laws say in the places you pass through"~. Much support from pro-firearms groups.
In the minutes before the final vote it was amended to also ban the manufacture of new machine guns for sale to private citizens in the (already heavily regulated) private market. So the supply would be limited to those already papered - and thus become obsolete, expensive, and eventually disappear.
SURPRISE!
Of course it passed. (And some pro-gun organizations got a lot of undeserved flack for "selling out" the machine-gun fans, when it was really a crooked political gambit by the anti-gun politicians.)
Of course the Swiss don't have this problem. Their government REQUIRES them each to have a machine gun (or some other piece of large-scale military nastiness) handy. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Why is this causing such an "outrage"? Stealing copyrighted material IS wrong. If you don't like it, then well, tough shit. Copyrights are there for a reason (let's forego the whole argument about Disney and never-expiring copyrights -- that's a different topic). If I own a work of art that I've put a lot of effort into, I certainly do not want it copied around without any control on my part, unless I've specifically granted everyone permission to do so by releasing it under the "free unlimited distribution allowed" license (e.g. this creative commons clause). If you violate my copyright, then I want you punished. If you think this is unfair of me, then fart in my general direction and don't use my work. I will certainly understand and not be offended in the slightest.
You cannot expect every artist to put their works into the public domain or license them for free distribution. That's just not how this world works, whatever your youthful idealism is telling you. Please respect people's copyrights and don't steal their works. If you do, then don't make a scene when they press charges.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
what is commonly called the "Hillary Rosen Retirement Fund"!
I asked for a refund - and got my monkey back.
Regardless of how much you disagree with a license, doesn't make it any more right to turn around and do the same thing that you hate so much when you're on the other side.
At the risk of being labeled a troll right off the bat, quite a number of people here seem like a bunch of whiny people who feel that they can just take what they want from other people, but their heads virtually explode when the shoe is on the other foot.
We have a Democratic Republic. This means that we elect people to hold office that we feel will act in the best interest of the American people. Also keep in mind that Switzerland is .0043 times the size of the US and its population is .0262 that of the US. It's a lot easier to have a smaller population have a more active role in government like this.
I certainly hope "important" has a definition attached to it. :)
What I want to know is how does the government determine the value of a song?
Is it based on the fractional value of the current retail price (ie 13 songs on cd 'foo' with current sell price of $13.99 would be 13.99/13 per song)?
If so, what is the current retail price; Amazon at $9.99 or FYE at $16.99?
When is it evaluated; initial prosecution, during the trial?
Who determines the price?
Who keeps track of all of this?
In a recent story, it said that KaZaA has 60 million members. Now that is a LOT (given that this many people would never have allowed such stupid law to pass had they had a chance to vote).
A more interesting thing is that assuming that each of those KaZaA members has at least downloaded anything, they're probably already guilty. Now, 60,000,000 * 250,000 = 15,000,000,000,000. Isn't this greater than the US Gross National Product?
Where do they come up with figures like this?
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
The world's greatest civilizations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from great courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again to bondage."
Wow, that quote was so convincing, it almost makes you forget about the working poor.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
I'm not sure how our republic is any different than this vision of democracys. :/ I'd say we are somewhere between complacency and dependence.
..[Eventually], the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public Treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy. . . The world's greatest civilizations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from great courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again to bondage."
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
--Andrew Tyler Fraser
CNET posted an article claiming you could be liable for $250,000 in fines and up to 3 years in prison for p2p file sharing.
No it did not.
It posted an article saying that you could be [etc.] for p2p file sharing of COPYRIGHTED WORKS, WITHOUT PERMISSION.
It's just FINE to run or use a p2p network and share UNCOPYRIGHTED works or copyrighted works WITH permission.
Let's get it RIGHT people. If we let "p2p file sharing" become synonomous with "p2p file sharing of stolen intelectual property" we've lost half the battle.
It used to be - as with "hackers" vs. "crackers" - the mainstream media getting it wrong and tarring the good guys with the bad-guy brush, and the nerd sites getting it right but crying in the wilderness. Now we've got a mainstream site getting it right, while the slashdot posting gets it wrong.
I can just imagine the RIAA lawyers pouncing on this article as further evidence that "the only use for p2p is theft". "See! Even they admit it!"
So let's have a little more attention to such distinctions - from the posters, or for GOD'S SAKE at LEAST from the EDITORS!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But under the dmca and now this a prosecutor can easily acquit me of a serious federal crime.
I believe the word you're looking for is 'convict.'
If a chair is thrown in a forest, and there are no witnesses, did Ballmer still do it?
They say that just to make these people scared, I am connected to KaZaA right now and status: 4,082,386 people online and sharing, and thats just KaZaA not counting a whole bunch of other major P2P clients. It will be simply impossible to give all these people fines and/or put them in jail. As much as 'they' will be to do is close KaZaA servers and every user will just move to another P2P client. Re-run of the whole napster thing..
In the US I always thought you were innocent until PROVEN guilty. The DMCA and copy restricted material draws a very fine line but it is still LEGAL to more your media from one form to another. What if you already OWN the media in another form and simply d/l it in a different form like divx or mp3? Before someone could bust your doors down would they not have to have a reasonable doubt or some proof that you do not already own it? I don't think FBI raids are based on trial and error. I have over 30GB of divx movies that I either downloaded or converted myself for use on my laptop when on the road, everyone of them I own on DVD and a few on VHS.
In 5 years if all movies and audio were magically locked down, completely copy restricted, and required some non standard method of playing it, I would stop buying it completely and move on. Yeah I currently enjoy certain groups and certain types of movies but I'm sure I could find something equal in entertainment value by a no name group that was NOT restricted in any way. This is what I think the RIAA/MPAA is really afraid of and I believe the 'piracy' card is a front for this. The RIAA is not the only group sellng or distributing music in this world, that would be like AOL numbers falling and someone claiming internet usage is dropping. I wonder what total "music sales" numbers would like if you counted all the indies and free unrestricted stuff that is already on the internet.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Rebublic. Democracy. Nothing quite as fun as splitting hairs, huh? By the way, neither is a synonym for oligarchy, or capitalism for that matter.
How ya like dat?
Of course the Swiss don't have this problem. Their government REQUIRES them each to have a machine gun (or some other piece of large-scale military nastiness) handy. B-)
...
Well, a little red knife, anyway.
Or the big red knife:
- Tiny little scisors
- Tiny little screwdriver
- Tiny little tommygun
- Tiny little satelite uplink
- Tiny little antitank missile
- Tiny little tactical nuke
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
yeah of course :p :p
if we join the army we get a automatic rifle and even some bullets to keep at home (it's part of our militia system)
but it is not legal to buy or own other such weapons
they wanted do requier tank crews to keep their tanks at home but nobody had space for it, so they just sold the old once to people for near to nothing,
it's a shame that you have to keep it inside of a building or i would have bought one
what we have is called a half direct democracy
that means we have some sort of congress too and to my happiness no president(if i look at bush). but we have also the possibility to infulence our law or constitution directly by a public vote
what you have is called a indirect democracy in our schools
stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!
They are probably going to say you saved the money by from not buying the song/movie and thus had financial gain.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Ripping songs is not a matter of one or two clicks. You have to enter a lot of the song information by hand, if you want it to be worth having.
While I'm perhaps an oddball in that I actually use digital music legally, I "rip" with Media Player and it nicely includes all of the pertinent information. Pretty much all ripping software does. The "it's an ease of use thing" is one of the weakest excuses out there.
All of those theft victims still own the rights to that music.
Interesting quandary there. Of course if Bob collected from his insurance company for the value of the CDs, is Bob guilty of insurance fraud because he supposedly maintains intellectual rights over it? That one sounds like a "doubt it" scenario as there is no way that law enforcement could prove that Bob really ever did own the CDs, or hasn't sold them, if he no longer has possession of them.
What if I use an FTP server to share my files and don't let people upload? Then I can go on using LimeWire to download things as long as I don't use it to share files, right?
That way, when I'm sharing, I'm not doing it in return for more copyrighted material...though I'm still depending on others to do so if I want to continue to download stuff.
The only hole I see in this is that it'll be hard to get files on LimeWire if I'm not sharing anything, because people don't like to share with leeches. If there's a legal hole anyone can think of, I'd like to hear it...'cause I'm nervous.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
Will you stand up and be counted Mr. AC? No? Then why should anyone else stand up for you?
Go here to create your own Slashdot dis
OOP! Boomtown Rats-Fine Art Of Surfacing CD - Item #2501717xxx Final price: $72.00 Your maximum bid: $19.00 End date: Jan-23-03 16:29 PST
First, in re: the NET Act, what is the "retail value" of an out-of-print title? My assumption is that it is zero, otherwise the record co., in this case CBS/Sony, would market it. By my reading, this Act applies only if the copyrighted material has retail value.
If the retail value is zero, then I don't see how this NET Act can possibly apply if I would choose to download the MP3s of the entire album and burn my own CD. Perhaps a lawyer could shed some light on this matter.
Secondly, why won't this record co. and others wake up and see that there's obviously a market for this CD, and presumably thousands of other out-of-print titles? Why are they pissing away this revenue stream? (No pun intended) Maybe they're too busy scrambling after the next Britney?
In the case of OOP titles, do I have to become a criminal to obtain my music or else pay $72 for a used disc on Ebay? Totally bizarre.
I've thought along those same lines of late. This idea could be the reason we've seen the big push to lock down wireless networks for "national security" of late. If these prosecutions take off, expect helpful visits from law enforcement to "help" you secure open wireless networks in the near future.
Welcome to the doublespeak future.
If you perform an activity and recieve for it something that you would normally pay money for, you can (and sometimes have to) consider your pay for that activity the cost of the object that you've given.
Doublespeak would be equating "financial gain" with "giving money away"--for example, if a webradio station decided to give away paid-for licenses to listen to MP3s, the station is, by no stretch of the imagination, gaining financially.
You have to enter a lot of the song information by hand...
That's funny, most of the stuff I download, doesn't have *any* ID3 info.
Most rippers connect with CDDB or FreeDB anyway, so at least you can get the titles and album info automagically.
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
In fact, this NET act sounds like a nice cost-saving opportunity for police departments, which can always use some more of those fancy high-end computers that MP3-collecting geeks use. Not as good as the cars they get from "drug dealers", but still useful in these troubled times.
it always strikes me funny that everyone got in an uproar over p2p when we've been doing the same thing with usenet for ages. ok, usenet may be harder for the newbies to figure out. its not always point click simple, but when p2p is dead (not saying thats an inevitability) then folks will say "hey, geek, is there some other way for me to download britney spears?" so when are they gonna try to shutdown usenet? or irc? two things I enjoy far more than the p2p proggies.
-
Yeah. The news story would be covering your free side trip to Guantanimo Bay. Or maybe not.
~~~
The wrongness is not that relevant--the punishment is completely disproportionate to the offense. Letting your parking meter expire is also wrong, but when we catch someone doing it, we write them a ticket. We don't send them to prison for years.
In the P2P situation, there's no demonstration that the copyright holder actually lost the "value" of the copied works. So it's ridiculous to treat it as if that amount was actually lost, rather than (realistically) a few percent of the amount, tops. So if uploading $1000 of CD's is "theft", it's theft comparable to shoplifting a pair of blue jeans, and should be prosecuted about the same way. Also, the stuff defining downloading more stuff as "financial gain" is positively Orwellian. What we're seeing is War On Drugs Part II.
ObLink: The Right To Read.
Section 5, subsection b) number (2):
by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
So in other words, if within a 6 month period one were to download a total of $1000 worth of music - they would be in violation of the NET. I have a feeling that this applies to most p2p users.
Only thing that bothers me about this whole thing is that they supposedly say that file swapping is analgous to stealing, yet it carries a higher punishment. If I shoplift, I am not fined for 250k. What is wrong with this picture? If stealin is stealin, then punish people accordingly. I am not charged 250k if I go into a store and copy a magazine.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
Not used it myself yet, but it sounds neat.
Be careful! New moon tonight.
Unless you plan on listenings to those MP3z in the photonic domain, I imagine they've still got you :).
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Well if you're going to be that pushy about it, we're also a theocracy. :P
"One nation, under God..."
Where i live (BC, canada), ICBC (the ONLY car insurance company here) will not refund you for CDs stolen out of your car, a friend lost a ton of CDs and ICBC said that unless you can prove they were stolen (hard) your outta luck.
Hell they didn't even pay for the nice car radio that was taken to.
Insurance my ass.
Maybe from the army?
If your math is correct, then, the RIAA will end up with $15,000,000,000,000 if the RIAA succeeds in arresting every music pirater(they probably won't succeed, look at their previous efforts to stop illegal filesharing). What do they plan to do with $15,000,000,000,000 u ask? They're gunna buy the USA, tax everyone for doing anything, and retire on trillians of dollars.
The labels group as the RIAA and lobby the gov't to pass laws limiting our fair use rights.
Then the labels settle a suit from the DoJ where they admitted they were overcharging customers for CD s for years
The labels then lobby to add "works for hire" added to copyright language so they can steal song rights from the artists forever (this was later repealed under pressure from artist's organizations).
Then the RIAA lobbies their puppet gov't official to unleash the dogs of the DoJ on P2P users using a law they themselves lobbied to get on the books.
When the gov't shows up at your door and tells you that you have stolen copyrighted songs and the law says you must be stoned, then your response should be "Let he who has never sinned cast the first stone".
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Millions of dollars in politicking and legal fees of course. I wonder if the music industry cut back on political donations and spending millions of dollars on lawyers to issue lawsuit upon lawsuit and C&D upon C&D, if this would improve their bottom line...
A rather high percentage of content must be Canadian, no? i believe it's something like 30% can-con, but it's really not that bad, as canadian stuff tends to be pretty good. And the media is forbidden from broadcasting news about trials, right? i think that it's just for pre-jury selection stuff, but dont quote me on that, i'm not sure. the best aprt about canadian tv is the lack of content censors(ie, full nudity, language,gore etc) what so ever. if i'm gonna watch a movie on tv, it's gonna be on one of the true canadian channels, not the cross border crap.
Strategically, it's flawed. Sure stealing is stealing is stealing, but the value is so high en mass and the method of stealing is so easy (you don't even have to intrude or even interact with the person being stolen from) that people will find ways to circumvent it.
Since (I imagine) there are literally thousands of amoral people with enough programming talent, knowledge of network protocols, and spare time, I can't see a few "test cases" putting an end to sharing.
Essentially, the investigators will have to monitor the networks to see where files come from, then seize the computers to show that the file lists are the same as they monitored.
If one builds an IP spoofing scheme (similar to Triangle Boy, for example) into a P2P protocol, the actual IP of the sharer could be hidden. Then reasonable doubt goes out the window.
Prosecutions would then have to focus on the downloaders, which is a much more difficult problem because it takes quite a bit to get to the value trip points.
(Not that I'm trying to give anyone ideas or anything or trying to suggest that there may be a degree thesis in this scheme.)
This is the beginning of a war that will make the War on Drugs(tm) look like a warm up exercise.
The RIAA and the MPAA will escalate this to the point that the drug war is now.. get caught with an unlicensed MP3 file and watch as sadistic rapists and child porn directors get less time in prison than you do.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
Might be splitting hairs, but its important.
In democracy, its mob rules.
A republic is mob rules, but with protections for the minority as well...so that its not really mob rule.
At least, thats how its supposed to work i believe.
I've been waiting for this to happen for some time. We are now on the cusp of our latest suicidal "war" on our own society. I have no problem with protecting copyrights, but this law puts the Draco in draconian. Do we really want to head in this direction again? Do we really want to start locking people up for years for an arguably victimless crime? How about solving all the murders first? How about the punishment fitting the crime: perhaps a fine and restitution?
Your accusation of thoughtcrime is based solely on doublethink...
I'm looking forward to blowing this bullshit law off the books with my 1337 lawyer team that I will pay with the book/movie royalties that I'll buy when I sell my story to...
D'oh.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I noticed that too. Some federal recorder was probably on autopilot and had just finished typing in all the l337 h4x0r.
On a side note, saying Sweeeeden is kinda fun.
Actually I have been doing this for a while now. Kazaa is too much trouble.
Setup ssh plus a few user accounts. Swap with friends, one to one.
No different than trading tracks in the old days via analog methods. Remember ogg/mp3 is a lossy format.
Blogging because I can...
That's it! I'm moving to Canada.
Volunteer Mozilla developer, RPI Student.
So in essence, theres no reason for me to stop, now that I've already started.
No, there is. IIRC, there's a three year statute of limiations on copyright violations, criminal or civl. (IANAL, duh)
Stop _right now_, and the chances of you getting smacked for P2P start decreasing by 0.09% every day.
Capitalism is an economic system, the rest are all governmental systems.
Don't be intentionally confusing.
-Terralthra...
OK, let me try nice, short words:
Q: How long would Sony stay in business if no one bought their stuff?
A: About three months, tops.
Q: How long would movie studios stay in business if no one watches their movies because they support MPAA?
A: About two months.
Get it? Want to watch CNN? OK, then write to the advertisers on CNN and tell them why you won't buy their products if they continue to advertise on CNN.
No stopping Disney, they just have to go.
Once some big players start to do the dot-bomb burn, others will learn. Until that happens, this is all so much eyewash. Quit postering and start paying dues to EFF and the like.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Don't all movies and such say in the beginning that there is a $250,000 fine for pirating movies? People say it is their first amentment to and they want to move away from America because of it. I always understood that if you are making money off it is when you get in real trouble. The law is the law, and it will remain in tact. Theft != 1st amendment.
Interestingly enough, I get this all the time.
I have 15GB+ of mp3s, ripped from CDs.
My CD's were stolen from my father's car, so now I don't have the discs anymore.
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
Yet Another Reason Clinton Was a Buffoon.
He also appointed Judge CKK who BTW gave M$ that completely useless "settlement".
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
`(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
`(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
Exactly what is a Phonorecord? Does this mean that in order to procescute, the RIAA will have to bring back vinyl records, then prove that converted your vinyl "phonorecords" to MP3, prove you shared it for 180 days, and then find the retail value of your online P2P collection to make sure it's in excess of $1000? Does the retail price take into account inflation or is the "original" retail price of the "phonorecord"? I just called Wal*Mart and tried to get the price of my "Buck Owens, Under Your Spell Again" phonorecord, but didn't have any luck.
If they can apply this law to P2P sharing, I will be amazed. I still can't believe that the US Congress, (the government of the most technologically advanced society in the world), used the word "Phonorecords" in 1997. How embarassing. France and Germany are probably still snickering.
As far as I am concerned, anything that came out only on "Phonorecord" should be in the public domain already. Looks like the geeks are going to have to organize a political party if we want this nonsense to stop. I vote for TUX as the party mascott.
According to the code (electronically stolen from their p2p web server and copied into this post below };-) I don't think most people will fall und er the criteria for prosecution, this was probably a first feeble attempt to stop the dreaded Napster. (for those young folk, napster was a music sharing network that began in late 20th century, the creators of said network were persecuted unmercifully for the crime of providing free access to Milli-Vanilli and ABBAs compiled works).
===
`(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
`(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.'.
------------
I always carry my favorite LART with me, just in case. Come ClueBringer, we must off.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
There has to be some way we can blame George W. Bush for this!
What is music when you despise all sound?
Price of a empty CD: 1.5$
Price of a CD: 18$
Buy a CD writer: 150$
Buy a PC to do P2P: 1000$
illegal P2P usage: 250.000$
Living outside the US: PRICELESS!
(disclaimer: this is humor and does not mean I am a illegal P2P user
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
If you have never seen this:
m
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/
Is there a site for boycotting the MPAA? The old one seems to be gone.
I wish we could also boycott movie ratings. What right do they have telling us what movies we can and can't see? Movie ratings are supposedly voluntary, but the theaters are given an ultimatum (uphold them or don't get the movie). Doesn't sound voluntary to me.
***
Look at this written by the guy in charge of MPAA:
http://www.mpaa.org/movieratings/about/index.ht
By summer of 1966, the national scene was marked by insurrection on the campus, riots in the streets, rise in women's liberation, protest of the young, doubts about the institution of marriage, abandonment of old guiding slogans, and the crumbling of social traditions. It would have been foolish to believe that movies, that most creative of art forms, could have remained unaffected by the change and torment in our society.
A New Kind of American Movie
The result of all this was the emergence of a "new kind" of American movie - frank and open, and made by filmmakers subject to very few self-imposed restraints.
Almost within weeks in my new duties, I was confronted with controversy, neither amiable nor fixable. The first issue was the film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," in which, for the first time on the screen, the word "screw" and the phrase "hump the hostess" were heard. In company with the MPAA's general counsel, Louis Nizer, I met with Jack Warner, the legendary chieftain of Warner Bros., and his top aide, Ben Kalmenson. We talked for three hours, and the result was deletion of "screw" and retention of "hump the hostess," but I was uneasy over the meeting.
***
screw! hump the hostess! Oh no, we are all going to die if we hear that, huh? What kind of super-conservative nutcase is he?
And nudity? A PG-13 can have quite a lot of violence (even kids shows have violence), yet it can't have full-frontal nudity? What kind of puritans come up with this stuff?
Volunteer Mozilla developer, RPI Student.
I've been saying since I was downloading mp3s on my Mac IIci (and converting them to mp2's because it wasn't fast enough to decode a single mp3 in less than 20 hours), that THIS is what the government and record labels should have done about widespread copyright violation from the beginning.
And after all the "It's not theft, it's copyright infringement" arguments we've seen here, now we find out it HAS been "theft" for the last 5+ years.
Let's face it, everyone who's ever used Napster or the like, has known full well they were stealing. Why should they not be prosecuted?
Yet,
and are quite relevant points. It is absolutely NOT stealing. If you have a car, and I take your car, you no longer have that car. That is stealing. If I get myself a car that is exactly like yours, I have not stolen anything (unless I stole it from someone else. But I haven't, this is just an example, I don't even have a car).I have never felt remotely inclined to buy anything by, say, George Michael. But what if, for the sake of argument, I was using a file-sharing system, and chose to download something by George Michael. Before I'd even heard of any of the filesharing networks, I'd felt no inclination to buy anything by George Michael. I've not heard anything since I heard of filesharing networks, that made me think "Hmm, I want a copy of that", so what then? Simply not buying something is not stealing. In fact, I could download something by George Michael, and then, choose the next day, to go down to the shops and buy it on CD. It would be no less possible, than me opting to not buy it in a world without p2p. Of course, I've never actually downloaded music by George Michael, what sort of person do you think I am? This is just another hypothetical.
I often hum tunes that I hear, or try to play along with them on my bass (yeah, yeah, with varying success). But I don't pay to have the priviledge of performing those copyrighted works to myself, is that stealing?
Or how's this one: If I buy a solar panel (OK, I mean a huge number of Photovoltaic cells) to power my house, and get an electric car (that possibly looks like yours, I don't know), I would not need to buy petrol from the petrol companies or electricity from the electricity companies. OK, sure, I'm living with my parents right now, don't nitpick. If I didn't have those photovoltaics and the electric car, I (or my parents) would have to buy petrol from the petrol companies and electricity from the electricity companies. Or we could alternatively not use a car, and live in the dark. But would the use of that solar panel and electric car be stealing?
People should not take the sort of crap that groups such as the RIAA tries to clobber the world with. I didn't elect them, I don't even live in America, and yet these groups affect my life. What do I owe them?
"Waah waah, our business model might not be worth the paper it's written on if people keep doing this" Well tough shit to them- It's like candle makers trying to ban light bulbs.
Be careful! New moon tonight.
yo home boy dont u try telling those n00bie rascals about the underground net...
hell, I give my bros glimpses of the golden internet: a place where you can trade,post, and download how much you like at full speed with 100s of gigabytes of songs in just one 'site'. They tell me "where? how?", and I tell 'em "fuck off, me never telling you the sacred code of usenet".
Man, I wish I had some of last week's mod points left. If you are correct (and it appears you are), this whole article/thread is a waste of time. It's almost a case of Slashdot trolling itself!
-- MarkusQ
I hear lots of people saying "it's not theft; if it is, punish accordingly." OK folks, quick lesson from a non-lawyer.
Winona Ryder (sp?) or Joe Blow goes and shoplifts some things from a store. They have some probability of getting caught and convicted p_{phy}. If they steal value c, they should be punished at least c/p_{phy}.
Maryter for the P2P Cause illegally acquires software/mp3s/divx of value c, but has a far _smaller_ probability of getting caught and convicted p_{elec}. He should be punished at least c/p_{elec}.
This punishment scheme was ruled constitutional by the Supremes in Harmelin v Michigan, 1991.SCT.3666 , 501 U.S. 957, 111 S. Ct. 2680, 115 L. Ed. 2d 836, 59 U.S.L.W. 4839.
Sorry, I forgot to include a link to the software.
Yeah thats why the prime ministers brother had to wait a month to get his appendix out. Hell tom green didn't even have his ball removed in canada. shitty service and piss poor infrastructure? Haha examples please. And whats that yankee shit? You aren't even from canada. Only brits talk like that. In the words of judge jimbo browntown SIT YOUR ASS DOWN MOTHERFUCKER!
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
A quick check of Kazaa on Friday afternoon showed that there were 4.1 million users online
4.1 million * $250,000 ~= 1 trillion
Cool, now we can pay off the national debt and pay for the tax cut. Oh wait, the national debt is 6.4 trillon. Better raise the fine to a couple million!
Most insurance companies here in Ontario will compensate for stolen CDs up to a certain number (and it's rather low...like 6). The reason is that beyond that and the CDs represent a visual inducement to crime that greatly increases the chance that the breakin will occur in the first place..sorta like leaving money in plain sight, and they know that the recovery rate for that is about 0%.
If they didn't pay for the car radio then what's the point of having theft insurance in the first place?
I agree. Here in Washington (the state), there is a strong history of the population taking a direct role in politics via referendums. I was pretty excited about that when I first got here. Unfortunately though, if too many things come to referendum, things can get really bogged down because the public can't make the tradeoffs necessary to run the government especially with respect to money. It's hard for the public to see the whole picture when voting on only one issue. This gets worse as the population gets bigger. I do like the referendum process when it comes to social issues though. So, I disagree that we should be able to vote on individual issues at the federal level. However, it would be nice if there was a way to make sure representatives listen to the individuals in their constituency instead of just the lobbyists or corporations.
Democracy isn't orthoganal to a republic. Thats a myth.
: a government having a chief of state who is not a
monarch and who in modern times is usually a president : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government
:a government in which supreme power resides in a body
of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives
responsible to them and governing according to law : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government
c : a usually specified republican
government of a political unit <the French Fourth Republic> : a body of persons freely engaged in a specified activity
<the republic of letters> : a constituent political and territorial unit of the former
nations of Czechoslovakia, the U.S.S.R., or Yugoslavia
: government by the people; especially :
rule of the majority :a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people
and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation
usually involving periodically held free elections : a political unit that has a democratic
government : the principles and policies of the Democratic
party in the U.S. : the common people especially when constituting the source
of political authority : the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions
or privileges
republic
Pronunciation: ri-'p&-blik
Function: noun
Etymology: French rpublique, from Middle French republique, from Latin respublica, from res thing, wealth + publica, feminine of publicus public -- more at REAL, PUBLIC
Date: 1604
1 a (1)
(2)
b (1)
(2)
2
3
democracy
Pronunciation: di-'m-kr&-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
Etymology: Middle French democratie, from Late Latin democratia, from Greek dEmokratia, from dEmos + -kratia -cracy
Date: 1576
1 a
b
2
3 capitalized
4
5
So we in the USA live in a Democratic Republic .
I agree. Removing money from the US economy by moving out of the country with all of it is the way to pay the bastard government back.
Volunteer Mozilla developer, RPI Student.
living on SS and it's petty larceny. Maximum sentence of about a year. If she wants her money back she can sue you when you get out.
"Steal" a $.50 song from Metallica, go to jail for three years and pay a $250,000 dollar fine.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
KFG
But converting CDs to MP3 is a drag
MP3 maybe, because licensed encoders cost money and use of LAME is illegal in many jurisdictions, but it's dead easy to reproduce a phonorecord in Compact Disc Digital Audio format to Ogg Vorbis format. Under Windows, use CDex.
Now you can play your .ogg files in AOL's Winamp 2.80 or later.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You're arguing more semantics than the issue itself here. All of your analogies involve physical objects, or objects that cannot be duplicated infinitely (cars, gasoline, electricity). Obviously though, with downloading music you aren't depriving someone else of their copy in order for you to use it. The fact remains, though, that you are depriving the artist of compensation for their work when you take advantage of it for free. Fine. Don't call it stealing. You're still cheating/ripping off/whatevering the artist, semantics be damned.
An idea I've been musing about for a little while- instead of distributing copies of files to each other the usual way, what of a communal lending library? The idea would be that each person provides a small selection of legitimately purchased material (music, probably mostly) to others to borrow over the internet. While it is being borrowed by one person, it cannot be borrowed by another, just like lending out a CD to a friend, which I assume is fair use. The efficiency is that the average person owns N CD's but can enjoy only 1 of them at a time. But with the lending library, other people can be enjoying any selection from the other N-1. Ideally, each person would have to purchase only one CD to make it all work: since the average person listens to music only a fraction p of the time, this would a 1/p-fold oversupply, probably sufficient to ensure that everyone can find what they want when they want it.
It would require some mechanisms to enforce the lending aspect of the policy (one could even allow local caching for bandwidth efficiency). Although IANAL, it sounds legal to me, and still obtains an enormous efficiency from digital distribution. Does that seem reasonable?
Curtains for windows?
In 2001, a 21-year-old Michigan man named Brian Baltutat was successfully prosecuted under the NET Act for posting a mere 142 software programs on the "Hacker Hurricane" Web site.
'Mere'?
I didn't even know that there were 142 software programs out there worth stealing...
~Idarubicin
There is a levy, and they want to make it bigger:
Check out this site for details
do i: 1. spend $30, 2. spend $30, or 3. pirate it?
4. Spend 13 USD (20 CAD) at a store that doesn't charge $30 for an album. If you don't boycott Amazon over patent issues, Amazon has several affordable copies.
How do you know you won't like the other ~15 songs? For example, I bought The Eminem Show and found I liked "White America" best of all the tracks.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It appears this is just a rehash of the same old copyright enforcement act. You remember, that annoying FBI/Interpol warning before every movie on tape, LD and DVD. The warning that somehow never makes it into your 'archival' copy. States something about several thousand dollars in fines and possible jail time for non-archival copying of the movie.
Want to hit these jokes where it hurts? Write a decentralized Kazaa that uses pseudo-random rotating ports and a healthy encryption mix. Make sure you use all the standard ports as well as ports for gaming systems (PS2 & Xbox). Encryption doesn't have to be too heavy - 128bit for searches and 40bit for transfers. When the court commands the ISPs to monitor traffic the ISPs have to tell the court to stick it since the DMCA (?!) won't allow cracking/breaking encrypted communications.
Kazaa has an estimated 60 million users. There are MANY more P2P services abound.
The US alone has 270 Million or so citizens. Don't you think when a certain ratio of the population is violating the law, they might start to think about changing the law?
What I'm saying is.. If the laws are for the people, and what has to be closely reaching a majority of the people are breaking said law, shouldn't it be changed to a legal activity?
No, they can show all the killing they want, just don't even think about a nipple, that would warp people!
And for murder with attenuing circumstance ? And finally, how much do you really do for both those crime with if you are a nice guy in prison ("Model" prisoner) ? Nuf said.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Of course, the Patriot act is a pile of crap, and no one (except the terrorists) should have voted it in; this does go to show that a congresswhore shows some spine every now and again.
I won't let them push my Gramma's wheelchair, but hey! Baby steps...
We have a Democratic Republic. This means that we elect people to hold office that we feel will act in the best interest of the American people.
At least this was (maybe) their original intent, before being bought out by lobbyists and other bribes we call "soft money." Democracy goes to the highest bidder and corporations rule the land. All hail Caesar(r)!
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
after reading this i now am sharing every pice of softwhere i have lol. so they beleve they can sue 4.1 million us users. good luck to them we will run out of jails first. i also think the riaa will go broke with loyer fees. they seem to think that aculy scares someone. bad thing for them now everyone will use kazza and if worse comes to worse we will start using none centerlized p2p again (gnutella based systems). 4.1 million users vs the riaa good luck to those idots. rember in the napster days when it was put on the news that they where having issues there user base whent from 1 million to almost 40 million. i guess its time to make kazaa famus to.
I don't have a legal right to distribute someone else's intellectual property, so .....
Let's see some sensibility. When someone is busted for selling bootlegs, they are punished by what they have, not by the possibility (or actuality) of their customers re-copying and redistributing.
So we determine actual damage. I don't think that everyone who downloads a song would have bought it, but let's say they do. There are 1 million downloads of Britney's latest crap. Let's say that represents lost revenue of $2.00 per song. $2M in lost revenue. 100 people download from me (of course, maybe I deserve a fiercer penalty for bad taste, but I digress). 100 downloads = 0.01% (1/10000). $2M*.01% = $200. Send me a bill, or meet me in small claims court.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
RIAA has tried suing, and will continue to sue just 'normal' people in proving a point. However, this is a band-aid that will not change anything. MP3s are here to stay. Anonymous networks are not impossible; one can even mask themselves in Kazaa effectively. The main problem is the fact that if this is the solution RIAA has to MP3s, it is a very bad one.
Sooner or later, it is going to have to face up to the real challange of MP3s in a more constructive way. Looks to me like they are binding time until they think of something better.
Yes, the Swiss had a public referendum on joining the UN. It won in a squeaker: 12 cantons (like US states) for, 11 cantons against.
Yeah, but that last canton had a huge number of disputed votes mistakenly cast for Pat Buchanan!
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
Don't be so hasty to knock this idea, the government need to find creatiev ways to generate revenue streams. War is expensive :)
Since this is related to the RIAA, could anyone tell me why their site has been down for like 3 days? That's a long time!
:) It's about how their business model is way out-of-date, and they're approaching this problem from the wrong direction.
I need to get their email address so I can send them a link to my article on why they're stupid
They're trying to legislate their way out of the piracy problem, and are attacking their customers in the process. When what they should be doing is developing constructive solutions like setting up a well-designed and complete online music purchase system.
We in the states can ammend our constitution with a vote. But it takes something like 90% of the vote. And getting 90% of Americans to agree on anything is pretty tough, so it hasn't happened in quite a while.
Funny, but to be fair, it's entirely possible he doesn't have a /. account and doesn't care to make one.
Considering some of the crap I read here daily (not referring to your comment), that's understandable.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me!
8 -words-we-wanna-
know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-an y-other-kind-of-thing-
you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I- want-to-know-arresting-
officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-got ta-say", and talked for
forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had
fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there,
and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it
down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the
pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the
other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on
the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the
following words:
,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get
anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $250,000.00 and turn in my harddrive." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "mp3 filesharing." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said...
"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-5
("KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")
I went over to the sargent, said, "Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington."
And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are
And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar.
With feeling. So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and sing it when it does. Here it comes.
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant Walk right in it's around the back Just a half a mile from the railroad track You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
That was horrible. If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud. I've been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it for another twenty five minutes. I'm not proud... or tired.
So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part harmony and feeling. We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.
All right now.
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Excepting Alice
Make sense to me that Ashcroft would go after the little guy who does what the music industry tells him to do, rather than the music industry that is known to be stealing money both from consumers by illegal unfail trade practices and from artists. After all, the little guy will not pay off Ashcroft.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
A fine should relate to the damage done, right? How to prove you did so much damage? The RIAA would like people to believe that every single CD shared is the full price of that CD stolen from the artist. Come on! We all know that the truth is far from that, and hard to calculate, or even prove that damage was actually done.
Prison? Aren't they already crowded in the US? So, next to thieves and murderers, fill them up with P2P file sharing folks? Yeah, sure.
Prosecution by the Justice Department? I thought they were there to serve the public, to keep serial killers of the street and so on. Spend tax payers money for prosecuting folks that share their favourite musician's work with other fans? Get real.
And get it to stand up, when going through the higher courts? I don't think so.
Who to begin with? More users of any P2P network than there are lawyers on total in the world...
It's really amazing that such nonsense laws actually get passed in 'the land of the free'.
And really useful too. Crackdown on KaZaA, and the next popular P2P network will be one that's harder to force out of existence.
Reading the summaries I can find of the act, it seems that even *reproduction* is considered a felony, in the absence of distribution.
Uh?
I've ripped a bunch of my CDs and encoded them into Ogg Vorbis files for convenience. I've not distributed them, nor have I downloaded any illegal music files. All I've done was format shift. I had thought that sort of thing was legal under fair use. Is it not? Am I a federal felon under the net act because I've reproduced copyrighted works, even though they're from CDs I own and just for my own personal use?
If so, then our country is even way more out of joint that I had previous thought. (And I had already thought it was pretty bad.)
-Rob
not to mention harsh language!
I thought till now that if there was a draft I would move to Canada...now I've changed my mind. Switzerland it is.
I have no idea how the government is set up, but if I can vote and feel that my vote actually makes a difference, that's good enough for me.
Of course, then there's the obstacle of becoming a Swiss citizen to think about...how does one go about this, just out of curiosity?
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
Have we won ANY of these wars?
How about a war on those who would call a war for anything.
The 'war on piracy' (wait for the MassMedia catchphrase) will be another failure, brought to you by those who would profit by its existence. Just like all the other 'War on' groups.
Hey Ashcroft, how about a war on puritanical Fundamentalists who see art as pornography, and symbols of fair Justice as dirty, masturabatory 'distractions' that should be covered up. Loser.
The American people want to see some titty.
It wouldn't take much to convince a jury and a judge that the value of those mp3s is $0.00 simply because it's out of print.
That's a good point. See my armchair legal analysis of fair use vs. copyright infringement on out-of-print works.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I was just wondering, when (and if) the **AA association gets up the nerve to finally prosecute somebody, couldn't there be a case be made that the one person that is prosecuted was prosecuted unfairly?
"There are millions of other users violating copyrights, however you are singling out this one user based on _______, I contend for a dismissal," or something along those lines. It wouldn't be that lame, but oh well.
I was listening to a ClearChannel radio station the other day (WTAM 1100, it was during a Cleveland Cavs game, so I wasn't listening to shitty music). They had a commercial on it. "The internet has spurred a technological revolution in the way new music gets to people..." yatta yatta yatta, and then they get to this part: "Count up all of the MP3s on your hard drive. Now, multiply that by one dollar. That's how much you'd owe if stealing music was punished the same way as any other crime." First of all, I have about 900 MP3s on my hard drive - a grand total of 13 of them are ones I am not legally entitled to own. Fucking bring me to court for $900, then the Supreme Court can finally rule, once and for all, on Fair Use vs. Their Right to Exponential Profits. I think that this commercial, as well this whole big mess, is just another of the scare tactics that the **AA is using against the average joe.
But I am curious as to who would stick up for the first guy who was charged. The ACLU, maybe? I haven't been a big proponent of them in the past, however as my horizons broaden, their works are becoming increasingly worthy in my eyes.
According to the laws of probability, it's sinister for Malcom to blend together philistinism and plagiarism in a train wreck of monumental proportions. Or perhaps I should say, it's uncontrollable. All such combinations of audacity with ignorance would be supremely ridiculous but for one consideration: The only weapons he has in his intellectual arsenal are book burning, brainwashing, and intimidation. That's all he has, and he knows it. The underlying message is that Malcom wants us to believe that we can all live together happily without laws, like the members of some 1960s-style dope-smoking commune. How stupid does he think we are? No, don't guess; this isn't audience participation day. I'll just tell you. But before I do, you should note that he coins polysyllabic neologisms to make his reinterpretations of historic events sound like they're actually important. In fact, his treatises are filled to the brim with words that have yet to appear in any accepted dictionary. I see how important his inane biases are to his sycophants and I laugh. I laugh because he is doing everything in his power to make me become increasingly frustrated, humiliated and angry. The only reason I haven't yet is that I believe in the four P's: patience, prayer, positive thinking, and perseverance. But this is something to be filed away for future letters. At present, I wish to focus on only one thing: the fact that I am reminded of the quote, "His adherents are stampeding happily and mindlessly toward the precipice of goofy terrorism." This comment is not as hectoring as it seems, because I shall not argue that Malcom's newsgroup postings are an authentic map of his plan to twist our entire societal valuation of love and relationships beyond all insanity. Read them and see for yourself. Now that you've heard what I've had to say, I want you to think about it. And I want you to join me and take action.
--
kvetch, kvetch, kvetch
Is it just me, or does it seem like the harder it is to catch someone doing a particular crime; the more extreme the punishment can be. Regardless of the seriousness of the offense
Take for instance harrasment. You harass someone in public; that's a misdemeanor in most cases. Now, if you use a computer to harass someone-- THATS A FELONY?? Read the LAW, in Arizona at least. Basically, if you use a computer to do pretty much anything; you're a Felon.
The only reason I can think of is because it is harder to catch people online. But is that a fair reason to increase punishment? Because most investigators don't know how to use computers?
sounds like a nice place...perhaps I will move there one day :-)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Recall how Microsoft inflated thier operating systems source code from 12 million lines to something like 30 million lines. This to me seems a good analogy for the current state of the US' legal system.
follow me on this. Many of the lines in Windows 2000 and XP's code are likely fixes. These additional lines are put in the source in order to fix some of the more common problems. But the crap is still in there! it just has some staples and tape sealing it up.
We have these copyright laws that were written around the turn of the century at the inception of the phonograph. Now, rather than replace, or better yet, remove these laws the lawyers are happy to just tack on another 150 pages of legal jargon and loopholes that would cause a cyclic redundancy error on any system.
so stupid. So lame. just venting.
everyone thinks that politics is more corrupt today than in the days of yor...the truth is that after the founing fathers did their stints as president politics were more corrupt than today. the dead voted very often, gangs were hired to intimidate the opposition voters....corperations actualy had MORE power than the government (thank god for TR).
we have a much less corrupt system today...though there is MUCH room for improovement.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
You state that nobody has been prosecuted under the NET Act signed by Bill Clinton. This is not true. Please see the following URL:
http://www.cybercrime.gov/ipcases.htm
If you search for that phrase in there you will see just a few of the cases that have been prosecuted under that act.
Nice try, Mr. Eisner. Unfortunately, this is exactly the topic. The fact is that businesses which benefit from copyrights that don't expire are co-opting the legal processes in the USA, which is what the original post is about. This law is just an expression of a more general malaise.
That's nice that you own a copyrighted work. I have the right to incorporate your work when making a parody, whether or not you are offended by it-- I think Mattel proved that today. But that's not the point. The point is that I used to have a second option- I could wait for you to die. Once you were dead, there was a proscribed period during which I could not use your original work- but if I was lucky enough to live 100 years after you, well after world+dog had forgotten your name and what you used to be famous for, I could take your idea and breathe life into it and bring it new relevance in my new time so that people could enjoy it again. And if I had a proper sense of humility, I could even give you credit for inspiring me.
As it stands now, I can do all of that- but I have to pay Disney, or BMG, or SONY for the priveledge of trying to make a house on the foundation that you built, so some random fuck that neither you nor I have ever met (you've been dead for 50 years, remember?) can keep making the payments on his goddamn X5 beemer.
nooo-ooo, but I can expect that the Constitution of the United States should mean more than the wishes of Disney, Inc. to the lawmakers in this country. After all, that's the oath they swore to when they took office. Right now, my expectations are not being met. Since I don't have the financial power to impact(read: buy the vote of) 95% of the lawmakers, especially the ones who benefit the most from 'donations' made by the content industry, I'd rather exercise my power of civil disobedience against the companies who pay for their re-election campaigns. Make 'em feel it in the pocket, dontchaknow. And I don't think that Rosa Parks intended to make a scene, I think she was just fed up by the bullshit she had to go through every day. People aren't stupid- if they learn of a better way to get to what they want, they'll take it. Right now, the record industry doesn't need more laws protecting copyright- they need someone to build a better mousetrap.
I'd be thrilled if someone would press charges- I'd go to jail (or guantanamo) first. File sharing cases would overwhelm the courts, and the laws would be changed. I don't see change happening that way, but I guess anything is possible.
Let's make a test case. Why don't you put your money where your mouth is? I'm not the Devil, testing your faith... Michael Eisner is the only man who can currently claim that distinction and I no longer think you're him. Send me some of this 'content' you claim to have, via Kazaa. Call it "Mr_Icon.MP3" or whatever you want. I'll download it, and then re-publish it, and you can sue me for copyright violation and charge me for criminal violation of the NET act. I'll be waiting for your reply...
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
I understand exactly what you're saying and yes if we lived in a perfectly ethical/moral world where everyone agreed on ethics and morals that would work great.
But we don't. We live in a world where if you put your music out for other legitimate owners to download, you're going to tempt non-legit owners to grab it.
I personally think that unless there is some way for the legit owner to verify that they do indeed own the copyrighted material, they shouldn't be allowed (enabled?) to download the music.
I mean it's like saying, I'm going to sell newspapers and put them out on the street corner to sell. All subscribers are allowed to take one. Non subscribers aren't. The only difference is that you aren't losing money when people "steal" your music since it's a potentially a perfect digital copy.
Alright I'm done. People will never agree on this subject. I understand most of the sides of the argument. There just isn't a perfect solution.
Fining the crap out of people just happens to be the one that the people we voted in chose.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
...is:
1. U.S. bandwidth providers will drop the flat rate billing approach and start metering useage -- the more bits you move across their network, the more they charge you.
2. Suits against ISP's will increase; ISP's will pass the cost on to customers.
3. Hardware and software will be developed to support "Copy To Local Machine Only" digital entertainment.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Hmmm... What about this:
I like Brian Eno stuff. I wanted a copy of his Vocal 3 cd box-set. I've been trying to get shops to exchange my money for one for about 2 years, no one will give me what I want for my money.
I have, however been able to download a copy of one of the rare songs [not on his albums] from the box-set on Kazaa [Seven Deadly Finns.]
I also have about a dozen Alanis Morissette songs I never even knew existed, thanks to Kazaa. They were not and are not available for purchase, or if they are, I've never been able to find them [except through Kazaa.]
Also, the US edition of "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts" has a track called Qu'ran, which the EU version doesn't have. Who knew!? I didn't, but thanks to some nice person on Kazaa, with a good taste in music, I have a copy.
Am I comfortable with all of that?
Well, yes, why on earth wouldn't I be?
Is there anyone out there who would be uncomfortable with my above catalogued use of P2P?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
copyright violation is essentially the theft of potential profit right? Profit for the artists, profit for the money hungry record labels and profit for the end chain distributors.
If you have the copyright/patent/trademark on something and I create a near perfect copy and start giving it to people. Am I not robbing you of credit and profit that you could have made?
I understand what you're saying, but according to our current laws (regardless of how bad they suck.) copyright violation is every bit the same as theft.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Well, if you want to get picky, the U.S.A. is a republic, not a democracy. Recite the Pledge of Allegiance to find this out.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Well if you don't like that, there's still the question I raised of what happens when I hum a tune that someone else wrote without paying them royalties. That could well be considered taking advantage of that persons work for free (especially if I merely heard the tune on the TV or radio). And once I've heard a piece of music a certain number of times, I end up hearing it in my head anyway. Perhaps the RIAA should make a law that we should not be allowed to listen to any music without some means to ensure we can't remember it afterwards - like some drug, or electric shocks to the head, or a bullet.
Finally, I quite like Mozart. He never received a penny from me, and no-one is going to convince me that even 5% of the "artists" that the record companies push at us are remotely as talented as he was. OK, I suppose this sounds like I'm whinging now. I probably am. Meh. I do still buy some CDs, for groups that I think are truly good, but those are few and far between.
I don't feel like arguing this any further today, I think I made my main points in the previous post- If somebody finds over time that their line of business is becoming less and less workable, that's very sad for them, but doesn't mean it's OK for them to stop the rest of the world from turning. Many industries come practically to a halt, even today, and many people have to find themselves new jobs- yet people who go on about how fantastic capitalism and the free market are feel that the IP industry should receive special treatment. But I doubt I can convince you or them, and I think we shall have to just agree to disagree.
Be careful! New moon tonight.
In order for this to happen, however, the jurors need to some how be informed of this constitutional right. Which might not be easy, but it is certainly possible.
I strongly encourage anyone reading this to read the essay linked above and then go to the FIJA page to find out more.
Some numbers had to be put down.
Excessive is in the eye of the beholder.
They could have made it $.01 and 1 day of jail per MP3/OGG, who is to say that's not excessive?
I mean is a $1000 fine excessive for people who throw litter on the highways?
A number had to be picked, $1000 is what the people we voted for chose.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I read about this awhile ago and tried it out. It's totally 100% invisible. No one knows who the hell you are, not even the people running it. There is no possible way for them to find out either. Obviously it's run on it's own software, a frontend to MIRC, and you can only connect to IIRC servers, but like I said, there is no way to find out who you are via ANY method. Here is the rundown of quick stats and then I'll post the url:
Perfect Forward Security using Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange Protocol
Constant session key rotation
128 bit Blowfish node-to-node encryption
160 bit Blowfish end-to-end encryption
Chaffed traffic to thwart traffic analysis
Secure dynamic routing using cryptographically signed namespaces for node identification
Node level flood control
Seamless use of standard IRC clients
Gui interface
Peer distributed topology for protecting the identity of users
Completely modular in design, all protocols are plug-in capable
http://www.invisiblenet.net/
http://www.invisiblenet.net/iip/index.php
Will people stop spouting the above nonsense about republics not being democracies? They are!!!!
Take a dictionary, look each up, and you will see that they're BOTH democracies, except that a republic is defined as a democracy which specifically does not have a monarch.
That is the only difference!
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
While I do enjoy the thought of many of you leaving the US...
As for me, I'm covered. I already pay royalties on any of the songs I download. In fact these royalties are paid for me by CDR manufacturers and CD recording equipment makers.
If someone is failing to collect or distribute these royalty payments that is not my problem.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch10.html
So, when they come knocking at my door I'll just smile and wave "sittin there on that case of blank cd audio disks" whistling "wildwood weed".
Presuming of course that they want you there. Maybe they look on the americans the way we look on the mexicans.
War is necrophilia.
It sounds to me like you're ripper doesn't support CDDB. Thus you're using a bandaid solution to a temporary problem.
I agree with you about the music theft. I had my window busted and my CDs stolen as have friends of mine.
In these instances, I think the rightful owners should be allowed to continue owning their music. However, we currently have no way to validate this.
What if we built a system that was guaranteed privacy and you could register your CDs with them and download your music as often as you like for the rest of your life... Oh crap, that's DRM.
Seriously though, everyone slams DRM, but it could have some good uses if it were done correctly. It could make stealing CDs obsolete because without the correct rights, you couldn't play them anyway.
Not that I think DRM is the solution, I just think that in the right hands (us) we could make it benefit both the consumer and the artists.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I told you .NET was going to be the end of free computing.
If you think
A surefire way [no guarantees etc.] to avaid prosecution: Change your Kazaa Username to "Bobby-Sue," "Stargurl," or "Spiceworld47893."
Basically anything that suggests you're a blonde, pretty teenage girl. There's no fucking way the RIAA et al. are going to sue someone like that; the publicity would decimate them.
Oh... you might have to stop sharing all those German Leather Dungeon mpegs, though, just to keep up the facade.
Although, who the fuck knows what teenage girls are into these days...
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Catbeller said:
You may argue that IRC has substantial noninfringing uses, but so does P2P. P2P is a file sharing system, not a music/movie sharing system. The fact that it is perfectly legal to trade information and that there are more substantial noninfringing uses than infringing ones in P2P has not caused the RIAA or the MPAA to skip a beat.Why would the RIAA/MPAA not use the same tactic against IRC? IRC is not decentralized. It needs servers to run. Not only that, but they would gain the side benefit of shutting down a major avenue of criticism against and communication about their activities.
I would not be even slightly surprised if the RIAA/MPAA were behind the DALnet DDoS attacks, anyway. If it is not them, then it has to be somebody that wants to silence communication. Why would script kiddies want to keep up a sustained attack? I am sure their friends would get bored of them bragging about it for more than a week, and then they would have to find a harder target to get more bragging rights. Long term communications breakdowns do not come from people who are cracking for entertainment. They come from people who want to silence others.
Another substantial element to this new development is that they are not sueing the people supplying the filesharing tools. They are talking about putting people who swap files in Federal Prison. It does not matter how many apps are available, how easy they are to use, or how well they mask your identity. If people are afraid of Federal Prison time, they probably will not use it. The threat of punishment is a deterrent. Look at all the consequences of the DMCA. Most of those are the result of fear about what might happen. If that is not enough, go to ChillingEffects.org to see the effects of cease and desist letters that have never even been exposed to the odor of a courtroom upon legitimate people engaged in legitimate activities.
Conclusion: Bill Clinton has scewed us once again. The law has to be changed.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Back off America sue-crazies! I'm Glad I live in Canada... our Government could care less about p2p.
Fucking awesome.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
What are they gonna do? Put millions of p2p users in prison?
The fear of getting one's door kicked in will be an initial threat to keep people from "drawing attention to themselves", but once, say, I'm thrown in jail for hosting this site, my friends and parents may want to see the law changed.
Not that I could actually be thrown in jail (under this law, anyway) for owning a computer like Louise, since she's a download-only server for everone but my friends, so there's no way for people to pay me for the material they download. But the first paragraph still works as a hypothetical situation.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
Those figures were determined using RIAA math. It's actually only like 200 bucks, and 6 months probation.
"These type of people do not go to jail. Only scummy drug users and low income people go to jail. Don't worry about it guys."
Don't be so sure.
The prison labour sector is the fastest growing sector of the US economy, and the only one which can compete with third-world manufacturers. Until recently, prison labour was limited to unskilled jobs they can get drug users/wife beaters/gangbangers to do.
Now imagine if they had a virtually limitless source of highly skilled, computer-savvy labour, such as a law which targeted people who had computers and knew how to use them. They could put that labour to use in ways that conventional prison labour is unsuitable for.
Copyright infringement is not theft. You can go ahead and argue that the "poor starving" artist needs to be compensated, but that still doesn't turn copyright infringment into theft.
>> Unlike the US, where a lot of people are still fuming about how Gore won the popular vote but won the election.
Actually, we're fuming about the fact that Gore won the popular AND electoral vote, and Bush had his daddy lean on the Supreme Court Justices who owed him political favors to convince them to overturn the will of the voters in Flordia.
Just to be accurate. =)
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Anything short of physically destroying the platters with thermite or acid would not suffice.
The FBI has the capabilities to recover data overwritten any number of times by using an automated scanning tunneling microscope to analyse residual magnetic patterns. This has been used to put away paedophiles who thought they deleted everything; there's no reason it cannot be used on MP3 d00dz.
They were not and are not available for purchase
It may actually be considered fair under copyright law to trade in unauthorized copies of copyrighted works that are out of print. See my armchair analysis.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I know I'm coming pretty late into this discussion, but I'd like to throw this out there...
The *manufacturing* cost of a CD is dirt cheap, yes. I hear this all the fricking time. Apparently a lot of people tend to forget that people liked to get paid to manufacture, distribute, promote, perform, and record music. Pay for the factory, pay for the employees at the factory, pay for employee benefits, pay for distribution system, pay for delivery vehicles, pay to insure merchandise and vehicles, pay to hire someone to hire people and go through resumes, place jobs ads, go through resumes, interviews...pay for the building where those music people work, pay for their offices, pay for their computers, pay lawyers, pay lawyers more, give arms and legs to lawyers, pay for packaging, pay someone to design packaging, pay for talent recruitment, pay for recruiter transportation and accomodations.
It's not like the gov't is subsidizing all this or something... as far as I know
I'm sure they could toss some burnt-out crackheads out into the street to make room for IT-skilled labour in the prison workshops.
The key part of theft is that someone is taking something from you, and you no longer have it. And "potential profit" loss isn't stealing, because I can't steal something from you that you don't have. That's why we have copyright laws to insure that people are compensated for their work. Violating those laws is called copyright infringement.
The IRS should hire people from the RIAA to start calling tax evasion "cannibalism" and see how many people start beliving it.
Switzerland also has widespread private ownership of firearms, but they also have mandatory gun registration, require a permit to buy a gun, and a separate permit (which requires passing an exam) is required to carry a gun in public.
No, he's not arguing semantics you twit. Calling something exactly what it is is not making "excuses". If you want to argue that copyright infringment is immoral, illegal, fine, wonderful, more power to ya, but copyright infringment still is not theft. You should go work for the IRS and start insisting that tax evasion is cannibalism.
Do you think all the reasons you've seen on Slashdot everytime this topic comes up would fly with you? Imagine if it became known that huge, significant chunks of GPL'd Linux kernel code was used by Microsoft in their next release of Windows. When confronted by the Free Software Foundation, Microsoft claimed that it was ok because "they were never going to license their code under the GPL anyway, so nothing was really lost by the open source community." Do you think that the folks here on Slashdot would accept this argument and agree that it was OK for the GPL to be violated in this way? After all, it's not stealing, that's just an emotionally-charged word to make you feel bad about copyright infringement.
You're probably right.
Copyright infringement is pretty dang close to theft.
However, the end result is an "unethical" loss regardless of how you term it.
It's not pareto optimal.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
According to the NY Times Article it is actually only 1 dollar per song. However, Kazaa has completed 7 uploads in the past 3 hours, so the final total stands similarly.
The ______ Agenda
I'm curious how it works in other countries
in our red china, they lift your hands, and say: "Hey, this guy vote yes!"
That would mean they have to start cooperating with the P2P networks and go after the individual... Something they seem so opposed to doing it makes the threat of this fine a joke.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The instinct to share with your friends is natural and healthy, and trying to destroy it with scary laws cannot possibly be good for society.
If I swap files, how can you say that is theft? Or even a copyright infringement? What theft is there if one copies or swaps data? Someone patented and copyrighted binary (those ones and zeroes) already?
- Voice of Ambience -
- Voice of Ambience -
I'd say we lost half the battle when people started accepting "stolen intellectual property" as a meaningful term.
Yep. But that's a separate issue.
The legal system currently recognizes the right to control the distribution and/or copying of certain creations as a property right. Don't like it? Get the law changed, struck down, or overthrow the whole system.
But be careful if you want to exercise that last option. If you succeed, you'll take pot luck on the NEXT system. Meanwhile, the system has lasted this long, in part, because it resists being overthrown.
And ignoring the law in this case - by breaking it - may be effective. But it's not "passive resistance", and may attract undesirable attention from the authorities.
In the '60s many of my peers thought the drug laws could be overthrown by saturating the system. Look how effective THAT has been at getting the drug laws ended. And unlike the drug laws, the copyright laws have a clear "victim", in the form of someone with a legal and financial interest in pushing the government to enforce his privileges.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
First off, if you know anyone who's been raided, it's quite likely the first indication you have that it's all going down is the power shuts off, THEN the agents kick in the door. Or, they just walk up on you in the street while you're eating dinner. If you don't have a UPS, or some secure means of signalling your PC quickly, you're probably not gong to be doing much of anything.
If you don't run a crypto FS and are that paranoid, then you're pretty much SOL. You might have enough time to scramble things enough that it's not worth their while to get you, or delete the keys, or somesuch. That's assuming they don't throw you in jail to rot for hindering procecution though. That doesn't happen very often.
Basically if you're in posession of a geniune rason to be THAT paranoid, and you're not using a cyrptographic filesystem combined with offsite/distributed storage, then you get what you deserve.
..don't panic
You don't have to have an unsecured wireless network. Just repeat to yourself "Wep is about as secure as a postcard" 1,000 times. Now can you say plausible deniability? Good. I thought you could.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
All this P2P stuff was (originally?) supposed to fossilize the likes of the RIAA and transform the music industry into one where middlemen were eliminated, artists were (finally) fairly paid, and consumers reaped the benefits of abundant free content. But none of this happened.
A comparable analogy would have been if the Open Source community, instead of creating their own, superior free software, had all turned into lazy warez junkies. You can't win a war relying on your enemy's resources
So what we need is an "Open Music" revolution. But that will require educating artists who don't spend their days reading Slashdot. They need to learn that a record label deal is not the holy grail of their career, but rather in most cases, a hindrance. Artists need to treat their talent as a personal enterprise, not a raffle ticket to ride the gravy train.
When this dream is realized, the lawsuits will end, the fascist laws will be repealed, the manufactured pop-icons will vanish, and the world will be a better place. Get to it.
Sure. Just use one of these optical processors that the media has said are just two or three years away for the last twenty.
Once you've decompressed the audio, amplify the light (see LASER) in a fashion whereby each bit releases twice as much energy in the form of heat as the previous bit, then use that to heat and cool air in a nitrogen-cooled, sealed container--a coffee can, perhaps--causing the air inside to rapidly expand and contract.
Replace one end of the coffee can with a thin membrane. Attach a mechanical pickup to the membrane and route the sound out a horn. Behold, the photonic speaker.
Don't laugh. I've heard of worse.... (Plasma speakers, anyone?)
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
Yet more proof that "we in the states" need to ammend 90% of our public education system.
In fact they did recount the votes because it was so close. In the UN referendum b.t.w. it was not the majority of cantons that mattered, but the overall majority of votes.
For some referendums both a canton and an overall voter majority is required, for some only a voter majority will do.
The Swiss have indeed not voted on every single line of lawtext, but if anyone disagrees with some part of a law, he can start a referendum to have it changed.
Because of the growing importance of foreign treaties in these days, the law is being changed (a referendum follows in 2 weeks) to extend referedum power: in future foreign treaties must always be ratified by the people in a referendum. This because more and more of the states sovereignty is influenced by foreign treaties.
Should you want to become a Swiss citizen, here's what you gotta do:
-move to Switzerland
-meet a Swiss citizen to marry
-wait for 5 years (or is it 10 now?)to get your citizenship. Don't divorce right away, otherwise you may lose the passport.
Very few places let foreigners vote (local stuff only), but once you got the passport you'll vote 7-12 times a year. Check this post for more info on how we vote.
Cheers,
max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
Presuming of course that they want you there. Maybe they look on the americans the way we look on the mexicans.
We have more respect for Mexicans. Americans are more seen like primitive, aggressive and ignorant fuckwits and it ain't getting any better. Most 14 year-olds here have more general culture than an American out of college.
OTOH, there are more and more Americans who give up their "americanism" (or even their US citizenship), ashamed by the USA's internal and foreign politics. I don't blame them.
As usual, watch your mouth when travelling abroad as your government's opinions may very well be extremely unpopular where you're going, even if you're not at war with us.
Cheers,
max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. I'd blame it on an erratic sleep schedule, but I suspect that it isn't too far from the norm arround here. So I'll have to just plead careless reading on my part.
So i agree that the punishment doesn't fit the crime, but consider this: the point of this law is to punish the people who are actually infringing. It doesn't involve flooding the network with crap. It doesn't legalize the RIAA haxoring your computer looking for files. It has no effect on people using p2p networks for trading free (libre) music. It's not a proposal to cripple computer hardware (CBTPA, DRM). I'm not so good at legaleese (yet), but the gist seems to be that it clarifies penalties for infringement. While i agree that the penalties could be overly severe, the ones mentioned are maxima, and i would hope, at least, that you have to guilty of some serious infringement to get the full penalty.
I have to agree that we'd be better off just sharing legal music across p2p networks and let the RIAA go fuck themselves. Back in college i pulled a bunch of songs off of other people's share drives. I since bought CDs of most of those. But now i know better. If they don't want me buying their music, so be it. I just wish they'd blame their shitty sales on their shitty products and consumer-hostile attitude.
Just my 2 cents.
According to the Audio Home Recording Act, as long as the audio recordings are not for commercial purposes, there are no legal probs.
Here's a cool demo explaining it all - needs flash and sound... even has Robin Gross -EFF and mentions OGG is not a crime with an unauthorized cameo by Emmett Plant.
http://electroniclaw.org
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
electroniclaw.org
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Blade Runner
Braveheart
Cube
End of Evangelion
The Matrix
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Office Space
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek: Insurrection
Terminator
Terminator II: Judgment Day
With a few more in progress right now... ;)
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
if we join the army we get a automatic rifle and even some bullets to keep at home (it's part of our militia system)
I understand you can only keep a limited number of bullets, correct?
In America, we are limited to semi-automatic weapons, but one can have as many guns and ammo as one wants.
We have a lot of gun crime compared with any European nation though.
Copying the software/music/video is really different than producing the car. Writing the software is similar to designing a car. I think it is worse if you steal a car than if you copy a software/music/video. Maybe punishment should be more adequate. Let say, you have to pay double (tripple, etc.) the price of what you have stolen.
Democracy and Republic are two things that can or can't be found in the same country.
Mexico has always been a Republic, but was not always a democracy.
The UK is not a Republic but is a democracy.
The US is both, burro.
Unless you have a very contrived defintion of either concept, in which case the PR of China is both or none if you so wish.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Copyright infrigement and theft are two different things, otherwise it would not be legislated like that in most civilized countries.
Please mod down the parent.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Where this libertarian argument breaks down is when you consider the healthcare dollars.
Anyone can go to any ER in the United States and they HAVE to be seen and appropriately treated (all that stuff about uninsured people having no access to medical care is crap)... it's federal law. I can't tell you how many illicit drug-related illnesses I've treated; overdoses, infections, complications, drug-induced abortions, etc, etc... the monetary cost is huge.
When someone, decades ago, decided to fund healthcare for society out of public funds (we are about half-socialized already), I don't think they had any idea what they were buying into. Funding healthcare for everyone, regardless of their unhealthy habits, is astronomically expensive. Naturally, this leads to the plea from people who either don't want to pay for the stupidity of others, or want to control the behavior of others
"Look how much money this is costing society!!"
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Write a song, put it in the public domain, upload it, and there you go.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Oh, yes we do.
The owls are not what they seem
What scares me more is the prospect of people being sued by the RIAA, MPAA, and the member corporations of those associations. Many people are unfamiliar with the court systems and civil litigation in general. Civil action is a much bigger stick for Hollywood to weild simply because of the likelihood of people to scoff at a summons and complaint, thus leading to an enforceable judgment against them. Additionally, other people's reaction to civil litigation may be to delete the subject files from their computer. This is evidence, and attempting to delete it would also lead to an automatic loss of a civil case.
Of course, this will lead to an overburdening of an already overburdened court system. The five courts that are in NYC already see more than 150,000 new cases each year.
There is less to fear from the DOJ than from the litigation arms of the RIAA and MPAA members.
if we are not criminals we can keep semi-automatic rifles at home and i dont think ammo is limitet (not exactly sure about this) :p another the mentality about use of a gun
for a hand-gun you need licence (silencer, laserpointer and knifes with blades over 9 cm are no longer allowed
we are not allowed to have full-automatic weapons except of the army rifle
we have not many gun crimes compared to US
one point is the size of our country
stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!
When they start fining people $250,000 for downloading a song worth $1.20 if you bought it, it won't take long for the people to assert their rights. I'd be surprised if the courts let the law stand anyway because punishment is unusually severe.
-- $G
Quite true, from a polisci perspective. The problem is that de factor we're not a democratic republic either.
I use decoy computers. I have a fairly large media collection, and even though downloading movies and music is legal where I live, I am somewhat paranoid. (Btw, I am also prepared for large-scale power and water outages, something my friends used to make fun of me about until one of them had to borrow my stuff when an outage hit his part of town...just to set the tone for my odd mental condition.)
So anyway, I use decoys. I have old decommissioned miditowers sitting under my monitors at my desk, constructed from broken parts. I have even physically removed the platters from their hard drives, but otherwise the would-be-computers appear operational (fans humming, cables connected in the back, etc).
The real computers are hidden away in a closet and not immediately apparent. Cables do not reveal their location as these run inside the drywall.
No, I don't think I will ever have use for my decoys. I certainly hope I won't. But then again, I don't think I will ever have use for my fire extinguisher, kerosene-fuel emergency heater, or motorcycle crash helmet, either.
They also got a chunk of change for my blank Music CDR's. I did buy some Music CDR's for use for copyrighted music. I pre-paid for the content. So why are complaining? They shouldn't collect royalties on blank Music CDR's if you are not allowed to use it for Music.
The truth shall set you free!
Even if they want to read what they're voting, often it's impossible. The staffers put together the final text of enormous bills, which appear on the legislators desks within hours, or even minutes, of the final vote. (I recall one that was a stack of paper several feet thick that showed up in just such a fashion.) I've yet to hear of a congresscritter voting against a bill because "I haven't had time to read it."
Sounds a bit like the US Patent Office. A default of passing anything without even bothering to understand it. As opposed to a default of throwing away anything not understood.
The "Firearm Owners Protection Act" was a bill to protect gunowners from the web of 30,000-ish conflicting state, county, and local firearms laws when traveling. A tiny bill that said ~"If it's legal where you start your trip, legal where you finish it, and locked up in between, it's ok to transport it no matter what the state and local laws say in the places you pass through"~. Much support from pro-firearms groups.
In the minutes before the final vote it was amended to also ban the manufacture of new machine guns for sale to private citizens in the (already heavily regulated) private market. So the supply would be limited to those already papered - and thus become obsolete, expensive, and eventually disappear.
This appears to be the biggest problem with the US Congress, riders being added at a very late period.
Of course the Swiss don't have this problem. Their government REQUIRES them each to have a machine gun (or some other piece of large-scale military nastiness) handy.
As well as knowing how to use whatever they have.
In more contemporary usage, the term has been broadened to include also what the American Founding Fathers called a republic -- a governmental system in which the power of the people is normally exercised only indirectly, through freely elected representatives who are supposed to make government decisions according to the popular will, or at least according to the supposed values and interests of the population.
Does the modern US even meet that definition. Given the way in which US elections (at many levels) tend to be dominated by the same two political parties.
everyone thinks that politics is more corrupt today than in the days of yor...the truth is that after the founing fathers did their stints as president politics were more corrupt than today. the dead voted very often, gangs were hired to intimidate the opposition voters....corperations actualy had MORE power than the government.
The thing is that the modern US political scene is quite easy to corrupt. All a corporation needs to do is buy off two political parties. As opposed to having to "persuade" many (quite possibly non national) political parties and individuals.
Quite true. And if one reads the background information on the Constitution, specifically, the Federalist Papers where the authors of the Constitution argued over many illuminating theoretical points of the then-proposed government, you'll see that many of our system's policies and procedures (e.g. the difficulty in making amendments, the fact that senators are elected in 1/3s over 6 years) were specifically designed to stop, make difficult, or thwart the democratic will of the people from being realized.
It will also become clear from this background reading that the original intent of the Constitution was never to really represent people, it was instead to represent the states. Most of the democratic tendencies that we have now in our government (e.g. that the people directly elect senators) are the results of decades of struggle by the citizenry to make our government more democratic.
Actually, we're fuming about the fact that Gore won the popular AND electoral vote, and Bush had his daddy lean on the Supreme Court Justices who owed him political favors to convince them to overturn the will of the voters in Flordia.
Shhh! Shhhh! You're not supposed to talk about that! We're supposed to pretend that we're a happy democratic republic and that George Bush was really elected fair-and-square.
And before you mention it -- just to give you a reminder -- you're not supposed to talk about the fact that Richard Nixon and Ronny Raygun also successfully rigged US elections either. Shhh!
The thing is, many drugs deprive you of any real choice. It's like someone grabbed your arms and said I'll let go, but only if you let me beat you around your head for a day. Most people wouldn't have the person let go, but it's not like they want the person grabbing on to them. That's what facing withdrawal is like.
Of how misaligned crimes and sentences are.
By file sharing some songs, can a person
really inflict $250,000 worth of economic
damage to record companies and society as a
whole?
Also keep in mind that Switzerland is .0043 times the size of the US and its population is .0262 that of the US.
You'll need to put that in units we can all understand over here... How many "Rhode Islands" is that exactly?
Kineska: Cinema, soapbox, music & musings
No, I don't curse the fact that a disaster didn't occur, though I gave a maximum-7-day power and water outage a 10% probability of occurring and prepared accordingly for that new year's (got a kerosene burner, fuel to heat one room for one week, and spare water to last me for one week).
:-D
OTOH, perhaps I _should_ be cursing that it never happened. The "passed on to future generations" implies that my genes would be wildly dominant, which isn't very exciting in itself, but to achieve that result, lots of women would need to have sex with me
The fact that my friend had to borrow the stuff when an outage hit _him_ sort of validated my preparations, anyway *laugh*
Ok so the courts say file swapping of copyrighted material is "clearly illegal" but then again these are the same courts who "claimed" Micro$oft "clearly violeted the monopoly laws". Oh and Micro$oft is stronger after all the court room monkey business.
.go figure :D
I guess we should turn P2P into a monopoly, dominate the world in P2P and force the courts to claim we are illegally swapping files then turn around and let us continue business as usual.
And yes I'm pissed at this. The reason for the post. Since when have we been able to rely on the courts for justice unless we have a few billion to throw at them.
Oh and regarding the file swapping, sure I've downloaded plenty of songs from kazaa but guess what... I own the cd media which has that song. I believe the free use laws apply in that case. I'm not selling the damn thing. I'm making another cd most likely because the original was damaged in some way (most recently my "Unforgettable" cd was damaged). Kids..
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
hey guys, let me tell you something, I installed this program called Kazaa that one of my cousins told me about - he said it was really cool. Well you know that thing had macross episodes on it when I typed "macross" in the search box! I didn't find a website, but a big file that was in fact an episode! You know what? I clicked on it, left for a day's shopping in town, and when I came back home, kazaa told me a lot of people visited and copied it! My upload area was so full, how could that be? And what does all this mean?
The vastness of the United States, in terms of both area and population, does suggest that a pure democracy would not work on a national level.
But would it work at the state level? The populations of states are (relatively) small enough that the people can take a direct and active role...
Oh, that's right, time and again when issues are put to a direct referendum, the public chooses what's in their individual best interests (low taxes) over what's best for the community at large (funding for education).
The System Just Doesn't Work(tm).
Dudes,
You're not limited in America to semi-auto weapons, unless you live in a few "select" places (pun intended,) like Kalifornia, DC, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, NYC... Anywhere else, pay your transfer tax & meet other ATF requirements & take your full-auto home.
Educate yourself on the laws. You can still have anything you want, in most of the country, FOR NOW.
IANAL but:
1) Since a P2P network can and will be used for legitimate purposes it would seem to me that this narrow restriction would hardly hold up in court without running afoul of various rights of the individual.
2) A fine of 250,000 is obviously not commensurate with the crime. Even with the blantant number manipulation of the RIAA, it would be exceedingly difficult to show that simply running a P2P node would result in losses of that magnitude.
3) A number of P2P nodes are run by minors, I'd love to see what happens when they try to prosecute a 10 year old for this one. Especially if it is run without the knowledge of the parents (as so many are).
4) Good luck trying to apply this to folks outside the US.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
"As usual, watch your mouth when travelling abroad as your government's opinions may very well be extremely unpopular where you're going, even if you're not at war with us."
When I travel abroad I make sure to carry a couple of canadian flags with me. I pretend to be a Canadian. I know it's lame but it's better then trying to explain the insanity of our president, the pure evilness that is our defense dept, and the madness that passes for our foreign policy. Hanging out here in slashdot also probably lets you know that it's not any better inside the country right now.
Yes I am ashamed to be an american.
War is necrophilia.
www.filetopia.org, no publicly released server though so you'll have to trust them...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I never said it was hard to corupt, I just said that it is far less corupt today than it was in the early days.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I thought till now that if there was a draft I would move to Canada...now I've changed my mind. Switzerland it is.
Canada doesn't want draft-dodgers. After the Vietnam war, Canada and the US signed extradition treaties which allow the US to investigate draft-dodgers and bring them back here.
Switzerland doesn't want you either. They have an overpopulation problem, and are really, really nationalistic (Think Texas, but more). As such, they make it really difficult to become a citizen.
Several times in the past, they kicked out a percentage of their popluation: Citizens got a number, the government ran a lottery, citizens who's number were picked had to leave the country. Vicious. I think the last time this happened was in the 80s.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Serendipitously, Gary Younge's article America is a class act was published yesterday, discussing how meritocracy has decreased in the US in the last 30 years.
I am reminded of something I once read : We do not live in a meritocracy - both shit and cream float
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
When I travel abroad I make sure to carry a couple of canadian flags with me. I pretend to be a Canadian.
I don't think that you are the only American to do that, but I respect that you have the nads to admit it.
Unfortunately, many Europeans are not so easily fooled.The maple leaf won't matter if you have a noticable American accent and behave in an un-Canadian manner or in a manner consistent with the stereotype of the typical American tourist.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Republic is not a synomym for oligarchy.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
She did have the receipt/proof of purchase, and they STILL didn't pay for it.
Also read the post i was replying to and maybe you'll see why the fuck i'm taking about insurance, maybe your should read the parent of a post before you reply to a post.
Promote the general Welfare is part of the constitution. The government and anyone with enlightened self-interest should want to get involved. In your little diatribe you have to go to the first time they use drugs before you've invoked. After you've jumped off the bridge, you are deprived of a choice for those 10 seconds before your death. With drugs, the deprivation of choice lasts much longer giving the opportunity of intervention. The force of addiction is just as real as any mandate from any government or person, and potentially more compelling. Addiction is the force in and of itself.