File-sharing and AOL
Andrew Leonard writes "Farhad Manjoo's cover story in Salon today, on AOL's refusal to take a stand on the RIAA's (so far) successful attempt to get subscriber information from Verizon, is a detailed look at the most important battle in the file-sharing world right now."
Very true, deviant activity such as file-sharing is just like marijuana smoking, it supports terrorism.
Sorry about the spelling, too much free beer.;)
=If life was easy, i would be out of a job=
Bleh!
If you want to see where we will be in 5 years as a general, having a look at the solutions adopted in these situations would seem to be a damn good guide.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
From the article:
...and a nasty case of trying to count without taking their socks off... :)
It takes, like, five hours to download an MP3 on AOL.
~D:
Warner music is one of the most imortant members of the RIAA
AOL is a part of the AOL-Time-Warner corporation; so is Warner music. Is there therefore a conflict between divisions of the company? Hmmmm... me thinks it's time to sell my ATW stock.... wait, I don't have any anyway.
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
The article even points out that MSN and others have refused to comment. Why then is AOL so suspicious just because of their TW relationship?
/.ers have pointed out many times on the media/hardware manufacturer copy protection debates.
If _I_ had an ISP, I wouldn't comment either (I'd just go for another swim in my money....)
These big companies rarely have a unified front, as
Not only are all the tech jobs going overseas, but now the US is going to lose it's warez site superiority too.
I just downloaded Metallica's "Enter Sandman" from the following P2P network:
Kazaa
My IP is 204.39.65.157, a proxy
My information is:
Home Address:
John Abshire
14387 SeeYouInCourt
Whatareyougonnadoaboutit, MI, 48hahaha
You may also contact me at my work address:
John Abshire
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA USA 98052-8300
Dialing..... Connecting... Loading... WELCOME! YOU GOT LAWSUIT!
Why are industry people there in the first place, to draw up the law? Are they balanced by ten representatives of the public?
All that the record industry had on the alleged thief was an eight-digit Internet protocol address, 141.158.104.94
Of course, it would have been 8 digits if it was written in Hex. maybe the author was just a hard-core nerd? And thought, digit = 4bits?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
-kgj
wait a minute ... people still use aol?? now that's what i call a news story!
from the article:
The RIAA analyst who logged in to Kazaa last July 15 discovered that the Verizon subscriber had 666 music files available for others to download
and, imagine: he or she had even set the file permissions to 0666!!
All that the record industry had on the alleged thief was an eight-digit Internet protocol address, 141.158.104.94
so, lets see... 1+4+1=6... 1+5=6... 8 ("eight-digit internet protocol address") is the 6th digit... 104+94=66+66+66...
bring on the californian inquisition!
My next comment will be ready soon, but moderators can beat the rush and mod it up early.
This will get interesting when the RIAA comes crashing into a dorm room that is NATted behind a proxy/firewall.
They have a warrant to search...
IP WW.XX.YY.ZZ, but THAT is the IP of the NAT proxy/firewall. Oops, no music THERE! No warrant for any OTHER IP, such as the PC which is 192.168.0.100...
User "Joe Schmoe", who, by the way, HAS no MP3s. THOSE are all stored on his friend's PC -- who isn't named in the warrant.
OR, "Joe Schmoe" doesn't OWN the PC, he only is paying for the service. The PCs actually belong to someone else -- who is not named in the warrant.
OR, the PC with the goods belongs to a minor, who just happened to be the purchaser of all the CDs that he ripped and shared. A minor who CAN'T ENTER INTO A LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT such as a music licensing agreement...
OR... take your pick. The costs for the RIAA to start tracking down and legally pursuing individuals would be astronomical.
Good luck proving successful downloads of songs for copyright infringement. Not to mention proving the downloads were of the SONGS claimed, and not some other file with the same name. Even if the file "baby_one_more_time.mp3" exists on the subject's machine, and the RIAA downloaded it and tracked back to to the subject that is only ONE violation. There is no way they can legally prove other infringements -- maybe the person was sharing a copy of bible reading masquerading as Brittany Who's-Dumping-Me-Today Spears? Maybe the RIAA was the only one that got the real thing?
The sheer expense will deal with this issue.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
if the subpoena of IP addresses based on pure suspicion as supported by the DMCA holds, then media and/or ISPs will be powerless when p2p networks provide authenticated, encrypted services. freenet is already making strides in this area but i think it can be even better.
as much as they fight it, AOL/RIAA/whatever are only shooting themselves in the foot. embrace digital content as a viable content delivery mechanism or die....
smd4985
You've Got Warez!
Trolling is a art,
Wait...if they're going to try to sue to get IP addys why not just go for the gusto: Sue Microsoft for allowing it's operating system to run Kazaa and other "piracy" software. Don't forget about harddrive makers, after all without them we wouldn't have enough space to store those MP3s for very long. Oh hell, why not just go after the makers of computers in general? Without those damn computers the software to pirate music is useless.
Here's a better idea, dont charge goddamn $20 for a CD with 2 good songs on it and maybe we'd be willing to buy them a bit more often. Dont get me wrong support the artist, go see a concert or something. But $20 for a half hour of music? Thats insane. I'd be willing to pay about $12 for a CD, you can't tell me that you can't make a profit on $12 a CD. Maybe if the record companies fired a few lawyers they would realize that the problem comes from within.
Salon is having major financial troubles. They make their money by having people view their ads when reading their content. There is no registration required to view their content. If you have a problem with viewing an ad as a requisite for accessing their content, why not try to find a print substitute of Salon's quality that costs money.
Welcome to: w4r3z_w4ld0
40L_h4x0r: g1bb0r m3 j00r ju4r3zzzz!
h4x0r_g0d: gn0, j00 g1bb0r m3 j0000r ju4r3zzz!!!
40L_h4x0r: J00 f4gg0rzzz!! G1BB0R M3 J002930mczxcfsdf lsd3 0 013
###CARRIER LOST
***40L_h4x0r has joined w4r3z-w4ld0
40L_h4x0r: where was I.. oh ya.. G1BBOT M3 J00R JU4R333ZZZZ F4GG000RRRRZZZZ!!!!
Now I see why the RIAA is so worried. Crime as organized as this is a threat to everything that keeps democracy flowing.
Trolling is a art,
1. AOL doesn't want other agencies snooping into its network, because it'd make it easier to find out the other illegal stuff going on in there. Nice, wholesome kiddie pr0n, for example. The fewer eyes that aren't theirs, the better.
2. Yes, TW is in the music business. They don't have a good way, however, of preventing filesharing from happening. As others have poined out, the slow speeds within AOL itself are enough of a deterrant there -- where they ought to be concerned is in the TW broadband area.
So they're gonna cool their jets and see what happnes. Makes sense to me.
What p2p software needs is a login procedure where a message is displayed that expressly forbids certain classes of individuals from using the network. The classes should be carefully defined so that no mention is made of protected groups (of course) and so that absolutely everyone is covered. Something like "You may not access this network unless your bodyweight is either more than 1000 pounds or less than 10 pounds" would do. Anyone who logs on would be violating the law by gaining unauthorized access to a network.
At this point the proposal probably doesn't seem very promising, but here is the advantage:
Presumably people who were planning to break the law by trading copyrighted material wouldn't be scared of by the warning, but on the other hand, if the RIAA came along with evidence that someone on this network had violated copyright then that alone would be evidence that the RIAA had violated the law, or encouraged someone else to do so.
Ideally the *AA's would also want to make p2p expensive to condone/tolerate on their networks. Pestering ISPs with subpoenas is one avenue of doing this. Hopefully p2p customers bring in more revenue than it costs to service the RIAA.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
See what happens.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Personally, I think the burden of proof for the subpoena is the whole bananna. Note that once the RIAA has your name, is still must make its case you broke the rules. They'll maybe get part of that by suckering you into downloading directly from decoy computers. The hard part will be getting you for nickle-and-dime offenses. More likely, they'll look for the folks who host thousands of titles on P2P. And perhaps they should.
I don't really have a problem with copyright in the abstract, unlike many here, but do with the basic privacy issue in careless attempts at enforcement. Can weirdoes (e.g., Capitol Records
Perhaps the simplest fix is a method of IP obfuscation. But anonymizing makes legitimate enforcement of far more compelling laws (kiddie porn, stalking, etc.) will become more difficult -- yet another side-effect of this whole enterprise.
Nice to see some positive mention of Salon, though. They did some interesting journalism a while ago, and I wonder if those days are long gone.
This is very silly of them. I see a couple of problems if they do start attempting mass-enforcement
Try and subpeona someone outside the US.
Try and explain to average, white upper-middle-class parents that their "little angel" is a "criminal" and NOT have a bad publicity stink about it when parents complain of "needless harrassment".
Try and keep the egg off your face as people start to use proxies outside the US to reroute the download to their computer.
Am I missing something here?? I feel like we're being scared by the big, ominous shadow on the wall and missing the little dork casting the shadow with his hand.
blue
People will demand legal change because if there really are more than a handful of prosecutions little Johny or little Suzy is now potentially in the DoJ's legal crosshair. I've met more than a few people who were self-righteous about it until they found out how absurd it was and that their kids and kids they thought were really great kids could sit in a federal prison for 3 years and be literally bankrupt before the age of 18. You see, most people think you're directly ripping off the artists when they hear piracy. They're not thinking their kid with his small mp3 and divx collection.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
So in version 11 of AOL's software, after a few downloads can we expect to hear, "You've got busted" ?
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.