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RIAA Plans Cyberwar Effort

Posted by michael on from the unleash-the-dogs-of-jazz dept.

Richie Z writes "This article at the New York Times talks about new anti-piracy efforts from the music industry, some of questionable legality. One idea simply redirects users to a website with legal downloads. But two other programs freeze the user's system or delete music files determined to be illegal. Another proposed idea is basically a DoS attack against downloaders. I guess the RIAA believes the law only applies to their enemies." They had a solution to illegality planned.

3 of 619 comments (clear)

  1. Counter Counter Measures Already Started by villoks · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well,

    Not so surprisingly the other side is already monitoring the RIAA activities and in this case some of results are already in public. For example, Peer-Guardian tries to protect the P2P-clients from the hostile IP-addresses. There's a quite nice article about the topic in Security Focus.

    V.

  2. Re:Not so by dogfart · · Score: 4, Informative
    NO! A tort is NOT a crime! A tort is an action for which a court may mandate that the compensate another party, e.g., your lack of property maintenance causes damage to my property in a storm, you have to compensate me.

    You cannot be jailed for a tort. Being sued != being arrested. Being sucessfully sued != criminal conviction.

    --

    "dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"

  3. Re:questionable? by Sj0 · · Score: 2, Informative

    First, keep in mind that slashdot, as usual, isn't a collective hive mind. There can be conflicting opinions without being some great paradox.

    Secondly, cyber-terrorism is a crime far more serious than copyright infringement. A man guilty of the former can get life imprisonment. A man guilty of the latter can get some hefty fines and up to 5 years in prison(IIRC). For an organization this big to be willfully taking part in such a crime, especially on the massive scale they seem to indicate, is a major breach, and in my eyes, cause enough to have such a criminal organization, no matter how big, shut down.

    Thirdly, considering the holier than thou attitude the RIAA is taking on copyright infringement, a voluntary mass crime spree isn't really what most would expect. It certainly shows that their halo is made of plastic. If these companies can't even control their own actions, what right do they have to sue college students for 100 billion dollars? None, in my eyes. These companies are playing russian roulette with their PR in the best case scenario, and setting themselves up for international incarceration at worst.

    Meanwhile, personal copyright infringement is still a pitifully minor law, and hacking on a massive scale is a strangely major one. Odd...isn't it?

    --
    It's been a long time.