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IsoNews Ostensibly Shut Down By The DOJ
According to Yahoo News and also Cyber Crime The longest running news site for Piracy has been turned over to the Department of Justice. Stating David Rocci AKA krazy8, has recently plead guilty to selling modchips via his website http://www.isonews.com with profit of $48,000. Now the domain has been linked to the Cybercrime Site warning all pirates all there that modchipping is not a game. [chrisd] In case you needed a reminder...you don't own your hardware. Eff? That said, this is not 100% positive, and there are rumors of the old site floating around on other ip addresses out there.
In related DOJ web hijinks..joemite writes "Cannabis News released this article about how the DEA is seeking to redirect indicted businesses that sell glass bongs and pipes to the DEA's website. "If the court orders the sites to be redirected, Ashcroft said, they will point to a DEA.gov Web page that says: "By application of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, the Web site you are attempting to visit has been restrained by the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania pursuant to Title 21, United States Code, Section 853 (e)(1)(a)."" Also check out an analysis of the entire situation by Richard Cowan"
Let's change this law. I think I DO own my hardware, no matter how many lobbyists some corp, or the entertainment industry has.
I thought you guys (people living in the USA) could buy radar detectors to scan for speed traps, but some guy sells mod-chips for Xbox and he's done for it?! (I'm not familiar with this aspect of US law)
Seems to me that this is quite unfair - in what way does the mod chip help pirates? I thought it:
A) Allowed Linux to boot and run
or
B) Allowed to machine to play games from another region.
I see no piracy on either count here. Have I got this wrong? (Help me out - I don't own an Xbox so I'm a little lost)
"Cannabis News released this article about how the DEA is seeking to redirect indicted businesses that sell glass bongs and pipes to the DEA's website."
At first, I thought this was sarcastic. Doesn't sound like it is. Is it illegal to have a bong? Can they really do that?
This comment really bothered me:
"In effect, the defunct Web sites become electronic flypaper for those looking for illegal drug paraphernalia, reporters covering the story, and people who have trouble spelling in Google."
There's absolutely no way that they know anybody's intentions when they go to a site like that. The internet is a source of INFORMATION. At some point, information's going to be accessed. It's not like you can call me a pirate just for visiting a site about piracy. Heck, you can't even call me a pirate if I download an ISO. How do they know I'm not replacing a scratched disk?
Blah blah blah I know, it's all been said before by lots of people. The difference for me today is that I now understand why privacy nuts are so fanatical about it. Out of context, data can be used in horrible ways.
>I mean, poor american taxpayers, how much are
>you paying a year now to try and keep those
>dangerous stoners from running amok?
Eleven Billion Dollars.
I've decided that no "legalization" or "decriminialization" effort will ever work.
So I am seeking support for an effort to have Alcohol classified as a Schedule II narcotic, and Tobacco as Schedule I (tobacco has no known medical uses), and placed under DEA authority as Federally controlled substances.
Our society does not tolerate the use of dangerous drugs. Federal enforcement of drug control regulations is a success. Alcohol is a dangerous drug, and the people have consistently shown an inability to use it without causing death and destruction. If you have a medical reason for using alcohol, then you should be able to get a prescription for it. Otherwise, possession and sale should be treated exactly like the other dangerous drugs.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I never voted on the DMCA. Why can't I vote with my votes?
The DMCA is a good example of representative democracy at its worst: the public should be voting on things like this, not a group of old, white, men who are told by their party to vote a certain way. That isn't democracy, that's two parties vying for campaign dollars from special interests.
I hope that you are joking. Please tell me when, in the history of the United States (or any other nation), has prohibition served it's intended purpose (if it's true intended purpose is to dramatically reduce or elliminate the trade and use of the given subject of prohibition)?a guardi .htm
Fiorella H. LaGuardia begs to differ with you:
http://prohibition.history.ohio-state.edu/l
People didn't start sticking needles in their arms until Heroin became illegal in 1914 thanks to The Harrison Narcotic Act. Once it was hard to get, and therefore much more expensive, people who were addicted to heroin needed to make the most of what they could get.
Prohibition only makes a bad situation worse. I don't think that any good comes out of the abuse of 'drugs/alcohol', however I think we should take heed of the lessons of history, instead of continually repeating them (at the expense of billions of dollars, not to mention the untold human suffering).
The addicts and their families aren't the only one's who suffer. The misery generated by the illegal drug traffic business touches all of our lives in some way. That doesn't begin to address the incredible horrors instigated in the countries of origin and trade of the prohibited materials. (Seen Columbia in the headlines lately?)
However noble your intentions might be, you ignore the element of greed (a sad element of human nature) at everyone's peril. If there is a demand for something, someone will find a way to supply it, priced according to the risks involved and the availabilty of the material in question.
I really can't believe anyone would advocate prohibition. You really must be joking. Right?
I agree with your analysis about the motivations behind this move. I also mostly agree on the subscription model for games. I am still mulling over the movie and music thing mostly because I believe that subscriptions lessen the incentive to produce quality content instead of just new content, but that is another discussion.
The problem I have with the whole thing is simple.
I don't like being treated like a 5 year old kid. It is totally ok to know how to pick locks, copy media and modify hardware. What one does with that information has consequences of course, but the sharing of this type of knowledge is not the source of the problems.
As a kid, I was shown how locks worked and was given some old locks to open for a challenge. The intent at the time was to keep an eager brain busy and learn some basic mechanical skills at the same time, plus it was fun!
Later I took apart almost everything I have ever owned. Why? To understand how it worked and to learn how it could work better for me. The good karma I have earned from this is hard not to notice. Opening locked cars, fixing broken electronics, building creative solutions to solve problems all have earned me many favors in return. Who have I harmed exactly? Maybe a few local locksmiths have lost some revenue along with the electronics shops, but the people I helped sure found something to do with their money. Maybe they purchased a coupla more movies and music titles. heh heh...
The technology I sell and service today benefits those who produce it. Maybe a few schools lost some revenue because I actually bothered to pick up a book and learn something without having someone hold my hand. Isn't this what we are supposed to be doing anyway? Helping ourselves as much as possible?
80 percent of what I know today comes from this sort of learning. Those that mentored me early on were also teaching right from wrong. It also happens to be how I continue to make my living.
Today, my very nature is being slowly criminalized for no good reason and I resent it! This is wrong no matter what the motivation and everyone here knows it. It is also not good for society in general. Don't you want to see what the upcoming talent will create in their garage when you get old. Wouldn't it be nice to say, "Wow! Nobody saw that coming!" The way things are now, you can plot your future on the corporate roadmaps.
What we don't know is what to do about it (yet).
IsoNews is a source of a lot of hard to find information that can be put to as many good uses as bad. There are many other sites that provide the same forum. Will Asscroft shut them all down? Why?
I can understand the legal reason why some mod chips are illegal along with distributing pirated media, but I cannot understand the action against this site in general because it does not address the problem.
The problem is behaviour, not knowing how or why one would bother to use or construct modchips or copy media. These things are legal and ethical no matter what anyone says. If you cannot learn how, who does that really benefit?
The problem, as I see it, is the combination of education and maturity being modeled by many technically inclined people today. I can't say I blame them. It sucks to know you are being wronged.
Understanding this is a part of the big picture that also needs to be considered if we are ever to come to any sort of humane solutions.
Back to when I was young for a moment. Hacking things was encouraged! You could go to the supermarket and get magazines that actually documented this process in some detail. Teachers encouraged the activity as well. I remember a group of us changing one of the instructional disks to tell jokes. We learned a lot and harmed nobody because THE SCHOOL COULD EASILY MAKE BACKUPS! Know what the teacher did? He had us pick something we wanted to do and helped us do it. Guess what? WE LEARNED A LOT MORE!
Having an opinion was valued and encouraged. Many a teacher challenged me as to why I believed something instead of just telling me it was not politically correct. Some of these same teachers had the freedom to nurture and channel this into good constructive growth.
I might add that the schools had more flexibility in how they dealt with problem kids and a lot fewer lawyers. Maybe this was not as bad as we make it out to be today.
I had considerable freedom in school provided that I towed the line on the basics; namely, maturity, ethics and citizenship.
Today, things are very different. We are encouraged to know what to buy to solve our problems. I know that is a very general statement, but look around. You will see it in just about everything. In my state (oregon) education is being standardized and achievment is valued over creativity. Schools are sharply limited in what they can do to correct and control kids. They also exert far more subtle control than they used to because of this.
At the same time, that standardized education does not include strong citizenship and ethics material probably because of the additional lawyers on staff today combined with their strain on the budget and the stiff education requirements leave little room. Of course the lawyers will say this material just might offend somebody as well. (Too f-ing bad I say.) Could the state find a generation of task oriented citizens easier to control as well? Hmmm...
A lot of the technical education I see my kids getting is focused on performing tasks within the technology. Big mistake because understanding the ideas behind the tech is where the better tech comes from.
Kids today have less freedom and higher demands all at the same time while teachers have less room to do what they should be doing; namely, building society one kid at a time.
The level of control our society is experiencing is at an all time high. Is it any wonder that people are acting out?
Consider our precious Xbox. (Other products have similar problems, I just want to use the Xbox as an example.) The money god says make as much as you can. That means keeping people paying which means control and limited device function designed to facillitate payment. Instead of paying a ton of lawyers, who consume a fair chunk of the profit themselves, why not actually understand what people want to do and encourage it?
They could try marketing the Xbox Plus pack. Bundle it with a free game and code book! Sell the imports at a premium to those that want them. Funny, the 'Imports' are actually made here in Microsofts case so they just get to make more money.
Go ahead and run Linux, but pay 50.00 first and remember that you still can play all the online games with no worries.
Seems to me lots of kids would enjoy a home computer that could also play hot games. Why not let them do it? You just might find your next game developer that way.
Dump some of those legal dollars into some marketing designed to distinguish and reward the right kinds of creativity from blatent self-serving piracy.
Use the law to bust those doing real damage.
Sure the hardcore crowd will see all of that for what it is and will continue to go against the business model, but lots of people will just buy the thing because it does what they want. Price it right and mix in a couple of nice features and you can make money off the whole thing and look reasonably cool at the same time.
The rest of them will be numbered too small to worry about. Besides, you can spend what you want and the hardcore crowd will still do what they want. You just make less that way.
As it stands now, the stigma of the Xbox is so great for me, I will never ever own one and I make sure and tell others why. Wonder how much annuity revenue that will end up costing?
The core of the problem here is control. Here in the land of the free, we are increasingly under the thumb of large corporations driven by shareholder demand to make money every single quarter or cease to exist. Our free market has taught us the fewer options people have, the easier it is to make money. This same market makes it hard for companies to actually try new things. Invest in a new business model, but lose money for a quarter or two? Watch your stock become worthless. Better to not even try it, it is cheaper to pay the lawyers to beat away your potential competition while limiting your customers options in ways that maximize revenue.
Is this really American? Is this sort of power what our founders intended? Will these actions and others like them really benefit society, or will they benefit governments and corporations who seek control?
I for one see this for what it is. A lame attempt to drive information underground because it does not align well with some business model and that sucks and is wrong.
For anyone that actually gets to the bottom of this comment, take note this year and next of who does what and why. Remember that when it comes time to buy something, or vote. Be sure and tell them why and tell them often.
It matters.
Blogging because I can...