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Australian Federal Police Raid Major ISPs
pflodo writes "The Australian (newspaper) has an article about Telstra the major Australian ISP and other 'declined to name' ISPs that have been raided by Australian Federal Police to 'seek the identity of particular subscribers' in relation to their activity and files stored on the ISP's servers. I imagine they will eventually raid some domestic homes and make a scapegoat of some unfortunate teenagers."
Why would someone committing computer-related illegal activities store anything on their ISP's servers? That's just begging for the systems administrator to find it themselves, and report you for something (assuming it violates their ethics code).
One of the strongest truths in anything that isn't necessarily legal, or could be interpretted as not legal, is that you don't leave any evidence that others can control. If you're really smart, you leave no evidence at all, period, but if you do leave something, make sure that it is in your control, and your control alone.
The other thing that I'm shuddering about is the possible downtime effects that this has on everyone else who uses the equipment for fully legitimate purposes. Suddenly, the possibility of server outages, network outages, and other miscellaneous service problems ensue, especially if a federal entity decides that equipment itself is to be confinscated as evidence, and they don't take care to properly handle what mess they leave behind.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
They definitely wouldn't have dared taking the servers for evidence - not only is it illegal without express permission but it'd disrupt Australian internet. You're talking about the three or four biggest ISPs in Australia holding thousands of websites!
It can happen that way.
I've actually seen this first hand (under slightly diferent circumstances). They don't charge in with guns drawn, but they do appear without notice, in considerable numbers, bearing appropriate warrants and court orders, and secure anything that they might consider evidence. Which may be your mail server.
The idea is to preserve the evidence, but the way they go about it is misguided and unnecessary more often than not.
Although it sounds like a good idea, that would make me even *more* paranoid...after all, which subscribers are you going to target for surveillance (assuming you don't have the resources to monitor everyone), the regular people, or those who opted for a "high-privacy" connection? After all, they *must* have something to hide!
:)
What we really need is a better anonymizing service, or perhaps a distributed proxy system. When I use our university's internet connection, I set up an IPSEC tunnel between my notebook and my home network, as I don't want the IT people logging my browsing and watching for subversive sites (2600.com, etc.). It would be great if a tool was available to do this on a mass scale. Something like Freenet, but for short-term web caching instead. Encrypted communication between hosts with requests spread over a large number of peers, squid-esque caching, 'bogus' packets to defeat traffic analysis...feel free to let me know if such a beast exists
From the Article: FEDERAL police have executed search warrants on Telstra and internet company Eftel in one of Australia's largest investigations into alleged music piracy, which could be worth up to $60 million.
Wow... $60 million!
Assuming the price of a CD is $20, it means that the pirate has an MP3 collection of equivalent to 3,000,000 CDs!
Assuming each CD has 10 songs on it, then the pirate has 30 million MP3s!
Assuming each MP3 is about 5 megs... then the amount of storage required is 150TB!
Did they raid Kazaa's ISP literally... or is this just one journalist's idea of sprucing up what should have been a normal IP-infringement case?
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
I don't think these analogies are really accurate. Of course it's perfectly legal to build your own bicycle, sew your own clothes, and (in some places) brew your own ale. It's also legal to go down to your local music shop, buy a guitar, and make your own music. In all of these cases you're making a creation of your own, using resources you obtained legitimately. You aren't "taking anything away" from anyone or any company.
What it's not legal to do is hop onto someone else's bicycle parked on the sidewalk and ride away, stuff a pair of Levi's up your shirt on the way out of the department store, or walk out of the gas station with a few Colt 45s. And whether we like it or not, it's also generally not legal to share music.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
I've lived in Australia and the States... Australia is a country that teeters on a knife-edge between over-the-top socialism and an over-the-top police state. Pretty much the worst of both world, in my opinion. Australians have no constitutional rights in the sense that Americans do, and the only people willing to actively support civil rights are generally the same people who lean to the left. Libertarianism is not very popular in Australia, neither in name or in theory.
America, on the other hand, benefits from being a larger country, so more people can speak out when rights are being infringed... plus there are constitutional rights to infringe in the first place! That said, the lack of a decent social welfare network really drives a wedge between the rich and the poor - and i don't mean the Very Rich - i mean the people who can afford to go to university (which is probably most people reading Slashdot). And the impression i get is that the poor rarely bother registering to vote, so things are tipped strongly in favor of the rich. Not so in Australia where everyone is forced to vote (by law). But then that has lead to the horrible socialist police state i mentioned above.
In short, we're all fucked. Blame Canada ;-)
"The challenge facing those who would minimise computer-related crime is to seek a balance which would allow a tolerable degree of illegality in return for creative exploitation of the technology. At this early stage of the technological revolution, it may be useful for individuals, interest groups and governments to articulate their preferences and let these serve as signals to the market. Markets may be able to provide more efficient solutions than state interventions."
Would you call the cops if you found out people were stealing from you? I thought so.
/. who decry groups like the MPAA but still line up 6 months in advance for their movies.
I don't agree with IP laws the way they are written and enforced, but as it stands, pirating music is stealing. Don't like it? Write your congressman so you can make yourself feel righteous.
Or, a better idea, listen to and support bands that don't use the RIAA-affiliated recording/publishing houses. In a capitalist country, only changes in the bottom line can bring about change.
Some knees can jerk both ways, see? One direction you have "But its the law" and the other you have "Corporations are taking over all our rights." I'm more inclined to the latter as well, but just being morally outraged is tiresome, I've just stopped buying products or services from companies or organizations whose ethics I do not like. I put my money where my mouth is, unlike the majority of
In other words, come up with some better analogies. (Not so easy...nothing else is quite like our hydrocephalic IP laws)
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My guess is that these dollar figure likely assume that every copy of a song downloaded results in a lost record sale so the record labels can cry "boo-hoo" all the way to the bank.
I download music too.. not from Kazaa but from the less know WinMX. I download - usually the 128kbs or less copy if I can find it - anything that I'm either recomended or has picked up on the radio as sounding interesting. Then I listen, decide weither or not it's worth my money. If it is, I make a note and keep an eye out for the CD... if it isn't, I delete the file
So yes, every downloaded song that I delete cost them a recordsale - but I don't buy records which I havn't checked out yet.Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
So the fact that I buy directly from artists off the internet isn't putting my money where my mouth is?
I worked for the largest music retailer in America, and walked away on my morals. Mine, not yours or anyone else's. They are the real pirates.
The fact that the record industry told us CD's would mean lower prices than what we were once paying for LP's has proven to be untrue. Artists make less than 5% off each CD retail. The record companies steal from us and the artists and it's ok....we steal from them and it's actionable? Sounds like a double standard to me, and I see no reason to feel sorry for anyone that can't see it.
I've know for a long time that the music industry is stealing from me....funny, tho, I don't think the cops would be amused if I called and reported that kind of theft...perhaps if I told them you suggested I make the call, they might listen?
I may be a little bit under read when it comes to the law, but here in australia I was under the impression that ignorance is no excuse. In fact I was under the impression that this was the attitude of courts world wide, can't image a court going "ahhh well you didn't know murder was a crime. Off you go then, and don't do it again.".
And drug dealers aren't criminals everywhere in the world :) hell they are legitimate business people in holland :)
Indeed, and the whole principle of "ignorance is not a defence" was just dreamt up so power-mad authorities could charge people with breaking laws they didn't know existed...
This is not to say it should be a defence accepted quickly and at face value, but in a modern society with multitudes of complex laws (and exceptions) and with no compulsory formal education in those laws, saying "everyone should know the law" is a bit unfair.
What's really ironic about drug raids is that the "street value" they quote is a function of prohibition, not market economics. Government sets the price of illegal drugs, not drug dealers! The higher the level of prohibition, the higher the price of black market items. The more tax money they throw at the "problem", the more money the drug dealers can make. And the more money the drug dealers make, the better their chances of avoiding the law. It's a win-win situation for government, which profits not only in revenue but power over the people, and it's a win-win situation for drug dealers who are clever enough to avoid the law. The only losers here are the tax payers, who pay not only in tax dollars but liberty (including but not limited to ownership of your own body) and security (which decreases proportional to the violent crime stimulated by the black market).
Am I concluding that prohibition is designed specifically to benefit government at the expense of the people? You bet I am.
The record companies/RIAA and the like always equate the profit loss to the number of songs dowloaded. The fact is, people download because they can, and if downloading is stopped, people will just do without the songs. They are not going to buy everything that they would have downloaded otherwise.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
I do have a hard time grasping that, mostly because of its extreme variance from the truth.
I mean, I don't even know how to rebut that. Its so painfully, blatantly obvious that large corporations get preferential treatment in nearly all matters, vs. private citizens (and yes, drug dealers). Tell me, when's the last time you heard about a corporate office tower being raided at 4 a.m. with flashbangs and shotguns?
Sorry, not insightful.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
--I don't download mp3s or movies, so we'll get that out of the way FIRST.
When I was a kid, you had a clear cut choice in the record store, and that's ALL we had really was records. There was some reel to reel tape action, but basically it was records and the am radio. You could get EITHER an album on 33 size OR a 45 that had two tunes on it. I can't tell you how much of the albums were wasted space, so a lot of 45 "singles" got sold, even though the song on the flipside sucked.
Downloading and swapping accomplishes what the customer HAS ALWAYS WANTED but these morons REFUSE to get it. People do NOT want to pay for crap, it's called BUNDLING. They don't want to pay for CRAP they don't want.
If I go to the car dealer and order a new car, I got the choice to decide on my accessories. If I go to get a new bicycle, I got a CHOICE whether or not I want blinking lights on it, electronic turn signals, baskets, whatever, I can GET what I want. No fenders? sure. With mainstream commercial music you got NO choice. You can't easily preview, you can't find anything that isn't on the approved list, and if you get suckered into buying some "disc" you got no idea how much of that disc has anything you want on it or even if it will even play in your player!
Oh, listen to the radio to decide, because the radio will provide you a way to preview? No it won't, they play the same 40 top songs and have since I was a kid in grade school. NOTHING HAS CHANGED IN FACT IT GOT WORSE.
Anyway, I started boycotting paying for music when I had gotten several cassettes and noticed I really only wanted one or two songs off the things. I started even boycotting live music when the price of a ticket got to what was for me ridiculous levels, switched to "local" music at local smaller venues. I was in the mega concert biz a bit, I saw what the waste and greed did to people, it was wasteful and greedy, that's why humans have those words. Those industries are chock full top to bottom of coker and booze addled people who all got this paranoid delusion of grandeur that they are all worth this totally absurd amount of money. top to bottom and sideways. Ridiculous levels of money. The producers, the middleman, the pressers, the pr firms, the "stars" you name it, out to lucn on believing they are really worth these sums. Paranoid Delusions of Grandeur, expectations that they got some "right" to profits at obscene levels. Screw them!
The big names ain't worth it, the big middleman companies that constitute this business ain't worth it. IF they can cut their expectations down on what THEY think they are worth, and ALSO make it dog squat easy and simple for people to be able to preview and buy indivdual songs CHEAPLY AND EASILY, they wouldn't have any problems and would actually make MORE money than what they are making now.
Frankly, those people are just plain STUPID if they can't see this. VCRs haven't "killed" the movie industry, even though this was claimed. Cassettes didn't "kill" the music industry. The xerox machine didn't "kill" the book industry. Web forums where articles are discussed hasn't killed the online news business. What all these things HAVE done is to point out COMPLETELY unreasonable expectations of "profit" that some people get, figures they pick right out of their asses, then they DEMAND to get that profit. People deserve SOME profit from their work, everyone and their cuzzin leroy who is an "artiste" and their middle man skimmers DON'T need to be millionaires from these "efforts". If people really thought this stuff was worth it, they would pay for it happily.
It's the same with writingbooks, software writing,painting pictures, whatever. If people got over this sheer greed, they could see this. The "music industry" as it's run at the top by the corps who use the riaa as their front mouth piece need to buy a MUCH cheaper clue. What they are seeing is a righteous BACKLASH to entire generations of people getting ripped off by being charged way more than what this stuff is really worth, and now that the tech exists to SHOW what it's worth, they just need to deal with it. How their dollar gets divvied up with 'the artistes" is for them to figure out, don't ask the customer to do it! If these 'artistes' think it's ok to sign away their rights for cheap,that's their business.
EVERYONE works hard at their jobs, I don't see it written in stone everywhere that because you are such and such you can just DEMAND to be a millionaire. And by the RIAA controlling the so called "public" airwaves through graft and payola, by conspiring to keep cds artifically inflated in price, by all their other monopolistic practics based on GREED, they finally got the people fighting back and SHOWING them what their products are worth. 10 songs on a cd AREN'T WORTH 15$. They are worth MAYBE 10 cents apiece, something like that. Because they never were content with making a living, and instead conspired to have inflated paychecks, people revolted, used technology, and this is what the market can bear now. It's the RIAA and MPAA and the "artistes" they represent who NEED TO BUY A CLUE, and knock it off with extravagant millionaire lifestyles and false expectations for their "work".
I so DETEST both those industries that I watch very few movies, I stopped going to the movies, I stopped going to expensive live concerts and stopped buying pre-packaged music a long time ago,with the exceptions of already produced and used discs or tapes, and that's it, because the dollar I pay for a used tape or cassette or disk is ALL that "entertainment" is really worth.
And ditto professional sports for that matter.
In the UK, I have seem the cost of hashish fall from about £120 per ounce in the mid-late 80s to about £30-£40 now. Partly that is a result of getting older, and therefore having better contacts, but I also strongly suspect that so much is getting through that the price has fallen through the floor. If it was legal, you can be sure that the tax payable would rise each year, just as they do with tobacco.
The only other market where I have seen prices fall as fast is in computer hardware.
When are the record companies going to figure out that the reason that people so assiduously trade MP3s is that they perceive that the price of the "real thing", i.e. the CD is not worth the value received? The recording industry has no one to blame but themselves for the situation that has been created regarding MP3s, a much lower quality product, from an audio perspective. People know when they're being ripped off and CDs priced at $15 and up is definitely a rip off when you consider what the actual cost of production is.
Even including studio costs, which are generally charged back to the artist, along with promotion costs and virtually any other "cost" associated with the product the recording houses are rolling in money. They're upset about MP3 trading, not because they have any great love for copyright law, except when it benefits them, but because they perceive each MP3 trade as a lost sale. Which is probably not the case in real life.
The recording industry is vainly trying to put the technological genie back in the bottle. The problem is that they are being aided by governments in this attempt. Rather than the government taking the view that the marketplace should be let alone to resolve its own problems of pricing, distribution, etc. they are bowing to the wishes of the wealthy and powerful and passing laws to prevent the marketplace from evolving as it would otherwise.
It is unfortunate that the very technology that has made MP3 trading possible may very well be used to shut down access to anything that isn't paid for up-front. The various DRM recommendations and proposals from folks like our friends at Microsoft are nothing but an attempt to limit the freedom of people to listen to or view what they want when they want after they've purchased a product. The days of pay-per-play are not far off if the entertainment industry has its way.
They do own the rights to the material contained on the CD or DVD that I just bought at Best Buy. But, I own that piece of plastic and if I feel like taking it to a friend's house and playing it or watching it there that is no business of the industry or anyone else. But, the industry would have us live in a world in which they control everything we see or hear, including when and under what conditions we may do so. So keep on trading those MP3s. Civil disobedience is one way of fighting back against those who would limit our freedom simply because they feel entitled to continue to make a living in the same old way. Toss sand in the gears folks, slow things down or ten years from now we may not be able to say what we're saying today because it's "not approved."
just my $.02,
Ron
Impeach Barack Obama for violating the Constitutional requirement to be a "natural born" citizen to hold the office of P