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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)?
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
Did you put "loose" in quotes because you couldn't spell it, or you weren't sure what it meant? Kiddo, you need to spend less time on Kazaa, and more with a good book.
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!
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:
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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!!!!!
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.
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.
-
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.
Well if you're going to be that pushy about it, we're also a theocracy. :P
"One nation, under God..."
This particular law doesn't have anything to do with you moving your music from one place to another, but giving access to a completely different person. So cool it. Sharing commercial products with others is illegal, and it's vfery easy to assertain guilt.
You've got a file sharing program running with shared commerial files on it? You are guilty, end of story.
-BrentStrategically, 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.)
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!
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.
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.
`(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 $1000? Does the retail price take into account inflation or is the "original" retail price of the "phonorecord"? I just called Wal*Mart and tried to get the price of my "Buck Owens, Under Your Spell Again" phonorecord, but didn't have any luck.
If they can apply this law to P2P sharing, I will be amazed. I still can't believe that the US Congress, (the government of the most technologically advanced society in the world), used the word "Phonorecords" in 1997. How embarassing. France and Germany are probably still snickering.
As far as I am concerned, anything that came out only on "Phonorecord" should be in the public domain already. Looks like the geeks are going to have to organize a political party if we want this nonsense to stop. I vote for TUX as the party mascott.
Price of a empty CD: 1.5$
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.
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!
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 .
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
(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain
:)
Perhaps you're right. But consider the following: By downloading an MP3, you are saving yourself $17 by not buying the CD. It may not be much, but it's still a private financial gain. 17 bucks is 17 bucks. Multiply by the number of MP3's you might have (currently a little over 4,000 in my collection, though I ripped the huge majority of that myself), and it comes out to a *lot* of money you might have saved.
All I can say is thank heavens the US has no jurisdiction in my neck of the woods.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
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
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.
Yes, except for three issues:
A) You couldn't stop people from making those digital copies if they were listening to it. (Even if they have to feed their "line out" back into the "line in" on their sound card")
B) There is no proof that you aren't listening to it at the same time you are sending it out to the media library.
C) The government would find that illegal too.
Volunteer Mozilla developer, RPI Student.
The No Electronic Theft law and the supposed "Internet Privacy Act" are two separate laws. Moreover, one was referenced in an article submission quoted from a reputable (subjective, I know) news source, and the other was an off-hand comment by one of the half-million or so Slashdot subscribers.
Trolling about trolling. Yeesh.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
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
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.
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.
Actually the NET act has a clause stating that it does nothing to effect prior fair use laws. Anything you could do before you can do now.
Then again, to hear some people tell it, watching a TV show without watching commercials is theft too, so I think fair use was obsoleted long before this thing happened.
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?
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.
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.
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
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
I'm curious how it works in other countries
in our red china, they lift your hands, and say: "Hey, this guy vote yes!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh, yes we do.
The owls are not what they seem
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