Bill Would Let FBI Police File-Sharing

vnguyen6 writes "According to an article on MSNBC, a bill introduced in the Senate gives the FBI power to police file sharing. As if the FBI didn't have their own messes to clean up such as the handling of pre-911 intelligence, FBI agents turned spy (Robert Hanssen), the Los Alamos lab debacle, double agent Mrs. Katrina Leung, need I say more?"

Comments

Corporatism

[Ricin]

It's called corporatism and was very aptly described and put into context by Mussolini. No troll, no joke.

Re:Corporatism

[Diskore]

or as it's more commonly known as: fascism

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Coward]

"...don't pimp the ideas of a tyrant."
Which is exactly what you are doing.

Re:Corporatism

[rkz]

Im am implying that by agreeing with Mussolini's ideas on (or "hate of" if you wish) Corporatism/Capitalism that you are pimping the ideas of a tyrant.

On the otherhand I am pimping the ideas of a philosophy based on property and ones right to pass his wealth to his children.

Re:Corporatism

[Ricin]

Apparently you are assuming or accusing me of things? Could you specify or put up?

I don't see what your comment has to do with mine.

Re:Corporatism

[t_allardyce]

I've come to expect my music for free and like squatters rights ive earned that right from years of not buying music. Denying me my free music is denying me my lifestyle.

Re:Corporatism

[rkz]

I am assuming that you give credit to Mussolini's ideas, that you believe he was correct is saying that Fascism = (State + Corprations). Mussolini was an idoiot. Justify your arguement... how does Mussolini sum this situation up nicely?

The FBI persuing the LAW, which coincendintly equates to persuing the interests of RIAA does not mean the government is Fascist!

Re:Corporatism

[John Biggabooty]

Copyright is a anachronism. File trading will soon put it in the dustbin of history where it belongs. An Idea, once expressed, belongs to us all. Those wishing to posess "intellectual property" need only to keep their thoughts in their heads.

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Coward]

You're really thick.

Re:Corporatism

[rking]

Im am implying that by agreeing with Mussolini's ideas on (or "hate of" if you wish) Corporatism/Capitalism that you are pimping the ideas of a tyrant.

You need to re-read his comment. Mussolini was obviously in favor of corporatism. He certainly didn't hate it.

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get my kiddy porn off kazaa....

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an amazing number of spelling mistakes. I'm convinced!

Re:Corporatism

[visualight]

The discussion is not about whether copyrights are justified nor is it about whether or not it's okay to download music from FastTrack.

The discussion is about the FBI enforcing the *CIVIL* offense of copyright violation.

When corporations can buy enough influence to make their desires law, it's called "corporatism", or "facism".

Please try to stay on topic

Re:Corporatism

[visualight]

The FBI persuing the LAW, which coincendintly equates to persuing the interests of RIAA does not mean the government is Fascist!

Yes it does. You have to know this. I'm certain you're posting comments that you yourself don't agree with just to get a response. Is that called trolling?

Re:Corporatism

[Jad LaFields]

Alright, this isn't exactly a reply, more of a question to the anti-copyright faction of /.

Why, exactly do you think that copyrights are *wrong*? I don't mean the specifics -- "xx years is too many, xx would be better", "xxx company abuses it" -- but why is the actual concept the use of an idea being controlled by the person who thought up the idea (and if anybody has a better def of copyright, feel free to tell me) not good?

In other words, if I, say, write a novel and publish it (which I hope to do some day), why shouldn't have some control of how it is sold, what is done with the story, and how profits are made off it?

I have my own thoughts about the matter, and my beliefs on the matter are not set in stone, I'm still unsure of my position, but those who argue about tossing away the entire idea of copyrights have yet to make a really convincing argument to me.

Re:Corporatism

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Watch it boys and girls...

These posts are being archived for later reference, by your favourite TLA.

Re:Corporatism

[Ricin]

Actually Mussolini was very much liked in the US until they had no other choice but to drop him upon the plate called "enemy". Well known, and most familiar.

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the most important thing is to punish the people that break the law. Forgetting that causes things to go astray -- the whole stupid WWII could have been avoided if people had been paying attention -- Hitler wasn't doing anything illegal.

Re:Corporatism

[debrain]

I was under the impression that Mussolini called if Fascism.

Ditto - no troll, no joke.

Re:Corporatism

[Ricin]

Correct *shakes hand and buys virtual beer*

Re:Corporatism

[ghjm]

Corporatism yes, fascism no. Fascism, essentially, is a name for what happens when a democratic system of government chooses to allow the ruling party to use all control and authority to propagate their rule, thus ending (or fictionalizing) democratic control over the government. It is usually also associated with fierce nationalism and racism, though I don't think these are required by definition.

Corporatism is fascism in the service of corporate interests. It happens when corporations gain so much power that they can use that power to propagate the rule of a puppet government under their own control.

The U.S. is not yet fascist. You can determine this by asking the following question: If the Democrats win a majority of Electoral College votes in the 2004 Presidential election, will it be possible for George W. Bush to hang on to power anyway? If not, then the U.S. is not fascist.

-Graham

Re:Corporatism

[I(rispee_I(reme]

The FBI persuing the LAW, which coincendintly equates to persuing the interests of RIAA...
'tis no coincidence, my friend. Those laws were paid for by RIAA.

Re:Corporatism

[vTalon]

Why, exactly do you think that copyrights are *wrong*? I don't mean the specifics -- "xx years is too many, xx would be better", "xxx company abuses it" -- but why is the actual concept the use of an idea being controlled by the person who thought up the idea (and if anybody has a better def of copyright, feel free to tell me) not good?

I don't think they're wrong per se...

But. Think of it this way:

Say you have some land. I round up a posse and kick you off your land. Now you no longer have a place to live. I've taken something away from you.

Now say you sing a song. Then I round up a band and we sing the song. You still have the song. I have the song, too. I've taken nothing away from you.

See the difference?

There is a catch. Songwriting takes a certain amount of effort, and it is useful to me to encourage you to write more songs by giving you some sort of compensation for that effort. In fact, it's useful to society at large to encourage creative people to create. It enhances our lives and our culture when we are surrounded by songs and stories. And other forms of "intellectual property" -- medical and scientific ideas, specifically -- are more concretely useful.

Thus copyright. So that you can be compensated for your ideas, and thus be encouraged to come up with more of them. However...

It's important not to forget that all of this is little more than a gentleman's agreement: I give you control of your ideas so that you can make money, and this will supposedly encourage you to create more ideas to entertain and enlighten me. It's a matter of sheer practicality -- copyright is not a moral principle.

The problem of is that some people involved in the agreement have gotten greedy. Instead of requesting reasonable compensation, artists desire to be millionaires. Instead of running a reasonably sized business, the record companies, movie studios, and book publishers want to rake in billions each year.

That's nice for them. But I simply can't afford to contribute much to their fortunes. I have a couple of hundred of dollars of spare budget every month after paying the necessary bills. Part of this needs to go into a rainy day fund. Part of it is earmarked for nights out on the town with friends. I can buy a couple of DVDs and/or CDs and/or books per month with the remaining amount.

Or I can buy high-speed Internet access and download as much stuff as I want.

Which to choose? I'm afraid it's not that hard: High speed access, all the way. If the studios and artists want my money, they can offer their songs and stories at a more reasonable price. Otherwise, well, BitTorrent is my friend.

(Note: I've also purchased a subscription to emusic, because that is one of the few reasonably priced IP distributors out there, and downloading from them saves me from wasting time hunting stuff up on p2p software -- we need more services like it.)

~ PeteVG

Re:Corporatism

[perdelucena]

I thought it was named corporativism . Nevermind, I am not a native speaker...

--
you should have signed a NDA to read my sig

Re:Corporatism

[2short]

OK, but define a "reasonable price" for anything without reference to a market in which one party can set prices and others can decide whether to buy or not. You can't. The only "reasonable price" is the price at which one party is willing to buy and the other is willing to sell. If the record companies could say "This is the price, and you HAVE to buy" that would not be reasonable. But you want to say, "This is the price, and you have to sell, because otherwise I'm going to take it anyway". Why should the price you set under those conditions be considered reasonable?

I think the ease of perfect replication in the digital age means the entertainment/information market is certainly going to change. But if you say, "I could buy, or I could just take it for free, which do you think I'll chose?", I don't think you should be all that surprised if the response is "We could just let you take it for free, but since doing so is against the law, we could push to prosecute you, which do you think we'll choose?"

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Coward]

If you publish a novel, most people will want your genuine article, not all the knock-offs which happen anyway, copyright laws or not. Copyright is difficult to enforce, and every time it is successfully enforced, it stifles the progress of science and the useful arts, it doesn't promote them. Thanks to file trading, copyright laws are becoming an exercise in futility. They will soon be irrelevant.

As for wanting to have control, control is an illusion. Once we express an idea, what other people do with it is out of our hands. For example, right here on slashdot, you can make a statement you really feel, and mean seriously. The mods just call it troll or flamebait. You can make as statement that you think adds a lot to a conversation, and it can be ignored. Once an idea is out of our heads, it is out of our hands. We are fooling ourselves to think otherwise.

Also, not being able to say something that has been said before because it is copyrighted, and you would be infringing violated the basic human right of free speech.

Re:Corporatism

[John Biggabooty]

I meant to claim this comment, but I tried to to it from within hotmail, instead of opening another browser window Somehow that didn't work..... If you publish a novel, most people will want your genuine article, not all the knock-offs which happen anyway, copyright laws or not. Copyright is difficult to enforce, and every time it is successfully enforced, it stifles the progress of science and the useful arts, it doesn't promote them. Thanks to file trading, copyright laws are becoming an exercise in futility. They will soon be irrelevant. As for wanting to have control, control is an illusion. Once we express an idea, what other people do with it is out of our hands. For example, right here on slashdot, you can make a statement you really feel, and mean seriously. The mods just call it troll or flamebait. You can make as statement that you think adds a lot to a conversation, and it can be ignored. Once an idea is out of our heads, it is out of our hands. We are fooling ourselves to think otherwise. Also, not being able to say something that has been said before because it is copyrighted, and you would be infringing violated the basic human right of free speech.

Re:Corporatism

[fucksl4shd0t]

Why, exactly do you think that copyrights are *wrong*? I don't mean the specifics -- "xx years is too many, xx would be better", "xxx company abuses it" -- but why is the actual concept the use of an idea being controlled by the person who thought up the idea (and if anybody has a better def of copyright, feel free to tell me) not good?

As a member of the faction of /. that thinks that IP as a government-sponsored institution should be abolished, I feel obligated to respond.

Copyright isn't wrong, per se. It's flawed. It is based on the idea that any idea that can be had will only ever be had by one person, and then grants control of that idea to the one person that dreams it up for a limited period of time. While I don't think ideas should be controlled, let's take a look at whether or not the base idea is correct.

First, the chances that someone will think up an idea never change. (Base assumption, the chances might actually change, depending on whether or not new ideas inspire the thought to be had or suppress the thought)

More and more people in the world everyday means that there are more opportunities for someone to have a certain idea. Laws of statistics are built upon the foundation that coincidences can and do happen, every day in fact.

Now, the longer a work is, the less likely someone else is to create that identical work. However, when we're talking about music, there's just not that many new ideas coming into play in music. There's your regular 4 chords in rock and roll, and there's hundreds of thousands of songs that all sound the same because they use the same progressions. There's a finite number of permutations of those chords, and a finite number of rhythms and phrases in which you can work those chords. It's no surprise, then, that people create songs that are infringing works. No, I can't substantiate this, other than with the George Harrison suit, and George Harrison wasn't particularly creative so it's likely he did rip off the song. :)

Novels are a different story, simply because of what is actually copyrighted in a novel. It's the entire text of the book. It doesn't take very long before it becomes highly unlikely that someone else will write a duplicate of the work.

In any case, there's more people on this planet every year, and more opportunities for a copyright to be infringed by a totally independent creative effort. How do you address this problem?

Now, patents are different than copyrights, and I'm more opposed to patents than to copyright, because a patent really is giving complete control of an idea to one person for a period of time.

In other words, if I, say, write a novel and publish it (which I hope to do some day), why shouldn't have some control of how it is sold, what is done with the story, and how profits are made off it?

Several things, here. First, is the story the part of the book that's copyrighted? Or is it the entire work? Do you want complete control over the story? What happens when you write a book with a story that matches someone else's real life experiences, and they also write a book about it? What part of the work are you seeking control over? Is it the characters? Or is it the work as a whole?

Nobody's trying to take away your right to try to make money any way you can, we're just trying to make it a more competitive market. That's all. :) Here's a question: if I go down to the bookstore and buy a copy of your book, what right do you have to tell me I can't make copies and pass them around to my friends and family? What right do you have to tell me what I can and can't do with the book I purchased? I say none at all, and if you want that right, don't sell it to me. What right do you have to tell me that I can't quote parts or all of the book in any fashion without your permission? I say that the only responsibility I have in that case is to cite the author and t

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Coward]

Joke or not, it's most certainly a troll.

Re:Corporatism

[bill_kress]

Just a question regarding your last line:

>>The U.S. is not yet fascist. You can determine this by asking the following question: If the Democrats win a majority of Electoral College votes in the 2004 Presidential election, will it be possible for George W. Bush to hang on to power anyway? If not, then the U.S. is not fascist.

Suppose a corporate interest wanted to control the government, would this government be called "fascist" if, say, they allowed two parties with different social agendas but very similar agendas towards your company?

Another party "Could" get into office, so you spread some concepts like "A vote for a third party by is throwing your vote away".

If this virtually gaurentees that the nation will be governed by one of your two "owned" parties, is this fascist yet?

Not that I'm saying such a country exists, this is just a theoritical question.

Re:Corporatism

[mrscorpio]

Announcer: Ladies and Gentlemen, 73-year-old candidate, Bob Dole.
Kang: Abortions for all.
[crowd boos]
Very well, no abortions for anyone.
[crowd boos]
Hmm... Abortions for some, miniature American flags for
others.
[crowd cheers and waves miniature flags]

and...

Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're
nothing but hideous space reptiles. [unmasks them]
[audience gasps in terror]
Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about
it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.
[murmurs]
Man1: He's right, this is a two-party system.
Man2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away.

Chris

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong question friend.

The correct question: If the Democrats win a majority of Electoral College votes in the 2004 Presidential election, will it be possible for [Corporate Interests] to hang on to power anyway?

Answer: Yes, the U.S. is under the control of a fascist corporate-welfare and special interest regime. This is not a democracy.

Re:Corporatism

[benzapp]

Fascism is also not purely economic in its goals. While communism focuses purely on economic/materialistic matters, fascism was focused much more on combatting the modern condition of nihilism which resulted from the industrial revolution. Promoting relative equality was more secondary to that cause. Fascism seeks to promote a national culture, whereas Communism seeks to destroy it in the name of egalitarianism.

Fascism is also not radically different from a monarchy, in fact in some ways its better as there is usually some other ruling body which has some say (or can at least organize to depose the leader). This is in fact what happened to Mussolini. In 1944, when Germany's defeat was becoming clear to the military, many officers of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS organized a coup, but it failed. Of course, the Senate served a similar role up until the last century or two of the Roman Empire.

An important argument FOR fascism which will probably start occurring here is that democracy is inherently unreliable in the modern age as it is so easy to sway the votes of the people. This was Hitler's main reason for pursuing a dictatorship, as the world press was owned by Jews. Rather than having a government based on an ideal (right or wrong) you have a government based on whoever can purchase enough media representation.

Btw, Arab countries use Hitler's exact same argument.

In the end, fascism does work at least as it was intended to work. Look at Spain and Argentina. Spain is perhaps the only truly European nation left in terms of national values and traditions. It was also the only country where fascism ruled for longer than 12 years. Argentina also had a unique cultural identity for a long time.

I prefer liberalism, but I agree nihilism is a problem in modern society. It is a shame the only people who have tried to address the problem on a large scale are fascist dictators. But I think it is also a shame that most non-fascists deny the problem exists...

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Here's a question: if I go down to the bookstore and buy a copy of your book, what right do you have to tell me I can't make copies and pass them around to my friends and family? What right do you have to tell me what I can and can't do with the book I purchased?

When you bought the book, you agreed not to do that. At the moment, that agreement is implicit in our intellectual property laws, but it's no difference to my explicitly saying "You can buy this book from me if you wish, at this price, as long as you agree not to copy it" and you agreeing to those terms. Morally speaking, you are now bound to honour your side of the deal, and the current legal position reflects that.

Now, you are perfectly entitled to make me a counter offer: "I will offer you $xxx for your work, on the understanding that I may make copies of it to give to others if I wish." (In fact, this is often precisely what happens in the publishing business.) We can negotiate until we reach a fair deal with which we're both happy. It is simply likely that I would ask a higher price of you for the book if I knew that you would be allowed to copy it and give it to others, since obviously you would then be able to reduce the number of others who would pay me for my work.

There's really nothing very special about this situation compared to any other fair deal in a business transaction. We agree what you're paying for and a fair price, you pay that price, you get the goods/rights/whatever. Copyright laws simply define a known set of agreements that are commonly useful, such that if you want to do something unusual you have to say so explicitly.

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Coward]

There's really nothing very special about this situation compared to any other fair deal in a business transaction. We agree what you're paying for and a fair price, you pay that price, you get the goods/rights/whatever. Copyright laws simply define a known set of agreements that are commonly useful, such that if you want to do something unusual you have to say so explicitly.

That isn't really a plausible way of looking at copyrights. You can get away with it in a very limited scenario where you only have two players but copyright isn't limited to that at all.

I buy a book. "You enter into an agreement with the shopkeeper that you won't copy the book"

I give the book to my nephew as a Christmas present "your nephew enters into an agreement with you that he won't copy any presents you give him, unless they're out of copyright"

He leaves the book in his bedroom where his sister sees it "His sister enters into an agreement with him... you... the shopkeeper... publisher... ah author I guess...."

A few years later he throws out in the garbage. Someone finds it at the tip. "Whoever finds it enters into an agreement with... uh... one or more of the people he has had no dealings with to... ermm..."

Sorry, but implying agreements between everyone on the planet is silly. It isn't anything like what's going on.

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Sorry, but implying agreements between everyone on the planet is silly. It isn't anything like what's going on.

On the contrary, that is exactly what copyright is, though obviously it's not quite worldwide.

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary, that is exactly what copyright is, though obviously it's not quite worldwide.

No. It isn't.

In the absence of copyright laws it would be possible for a seller to impose a condition that I not copy the contents of something I buy from him. It would not be possible for him to impose a condition on someone with whom he has no dealings e.g. the guy who finds it on the tip. This is basic privity of contract. Copyright law is doing something that could not be achieved through contracts and agreements. You were wrong to suggest that it was (which doesn't in any way imply that copyright is therefore bad (or good)).

Re:Corporatism

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Copyright law is doing something that could not be achieved through contracts and agreements. You were wrong to suggest that it was (which doesn't in any way imply that copyright is therefore bad (or good)).

I didn't say copyright could be achieved through contracts. I said it did represent an agreement between everyone (just as, effectively, all laws do). The fact that contract law is too limited to express that agreement explicitly is probably the reason separate intellectual property laws have evolved.

Can't they do this already?

[RedOregon]

Seems like everything already has that FBI warning on it at the beginning anyway... what's the diff?

Bill Who?

[ViXX0r]

Who else here read the title at first and thought that?

Perhaps it's Mr. Gates at it again :)

Re:Bill Who?

[Firestorm_Rising]

Yes, that is exactly what I thought. "Warez my Windows, meet my SWAT team!"

Re:Bill Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny headline that was once printed in a newspaper:

"Farmer Bill Dies in House"

Re:Bill Who?

[hdparm]

Actually, to me it sounded like Bill approves of file sharing between FBI and police. I thought, so what? The FBI and police should be much more concerned about what Sen. Hatch has to say about it.

I definitely need a break from /. at least over weekends.

A thought...

[c0dedude]

Yeah, if this passes, the era of Kazaa et al. will end perminantly, as everyone will be too scared to get caught to share or download as the FBI WILL catch people for copyright violations. Fair use? Hah.

Re:A thought...

[Uber Banker]

I doubt the FBI have much of the resources - now. They could be conviently funded by the RIAA though and get resources directed to this.

So it comes down to a secretive police force investigating people on behalf of corporate funding rather than allowing these funds to be spent on murder, terrorism, rape or theft charges.

Shame on you.

Re:A thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but instead of the RIAA or other industry thugs contacting you, they'll send in Lon Horiuchi to shoot you or just burn your place down. Welcome to Police State, USA. If you don't believe it, you're blind.

Re:A thought...

[doktor-hladnjak]

The first problem is that this A LOT to police. To start with there are LOTS of people involved in P2P. Next, the FBI would need to determine to reasonable extent that the material is infringing. While a lot of things on Kazaa are illegal, not everything is.

As far as I know, the FBI already investigates software piracy claims (at least in the sense of people making illegal copies available). However, they obviously have not completely stopped that (far from it really). They didn't even have a handle on it before the big P2P apps came along. Sure, it was probably never so easy as typing in "free microsoft windows" in a web search engine, but you could always find things if you knew where to look (IRC comes to mind in the days before more automated P2P). I'm skeptical that P2P enforcement would be any different. If anything, it would be harder to deal with, because of the distributed nature of lots of networks. This isn't just a matter of shutting down a warez FTP site.

Also important is that the FBI's enforcement capabilities end at US borders. Of course other governments could follow the US example and take similar steps with their law enforcement agencies. However, I just don't see countries like China or Russia really cracking down on P2P users, judging from their responses to software copyright infringement.

Maybe at first, a lot of people would get scared enough, stop using P2P, and things would go more underground. However, the available content would not drop off as dramatically, because there would still be lots of overseas nodes to draw files from.

Re:A thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Except for those people in Britain, Japan, Australia, The Netherlands, Korea, France, Germany, Brazil, New Zealand, South Africa ...

Re:A thought...

[Spetiam]

on the contrary, it will not end, probably evolve into something like freenet

i'm thinking the only way they'll be able to prevent file-sharing is if they take down the internet or implement a hellishly restrictive Palladium/DRM

Re:A thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the FBI won't bother going after someone who has just hijacked charter.com's DNS server entries and is running their own online bank password and credit card number sniffing web proxies, why would they spend a New York minute on a Kazaa user?

Re:A thought...

[t_allardyce]

So it comes down to a secretive police force investigating people on behalf of corporate funding

I thought thats exactly what America was about? You mean its not? Well i dont live there, but i just got the impression that politicians and government agencies were all "sponsored" by various corporations with their own agendas.

rather than allowing these funds to be spent on murder, terrorism, rape or theft charges.

Q: Who says music piracy is less important than murder? A: Well the RIAA ofcourse! - when your funded by sponsors, you do what they say.

why do i always confuse IRA with RIAA??

Re:A thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.. kind of like the insurance companies funding radar guns for the local cops... they hide behind a bush and issue tickets, the insurance company gets to raise rates on speeders (based on suspicious risk algorithms), meanwhile more serious crimes go unenforced.

Re:A thought...

[Tackhead]

> If the FBI won't bother going after someone who has just hijacked charter.com's DNS server entries and is running their own online bank password and credit card number sniffing web proxies, why would they spend a New York minute on a Kazaa user?

Because the RIAA pays them to.

Hijack a million open proxies to fill your kids' inboxes with h0t w3t 5lutz wh0 w4nt 2 suk ur c0ck? No problem! (Hell, not even charter.com gives a fuck, and it's charter's clueless fuckwit customers whose open proxies are being abused to tell your kids about incest goat pr0n.)

But listen to Britney Spears without paying RIAA their cut? Yo, dude, that's a crime. FBI'll be on your ass like Hilary Rosen on a box of Krispy Kremes.

All I want is to live in a world where comments like this could be moderated (-1, Troll) instead of (+1, Informative).

Re:A thought...

[seichert]

So it comes down to a secretive police force investigating people on behalf of corporate funding rather than allowing these funds to be spent on murder, terrorism, rape or theft charges.

Actually the FBI should not be investigating murder, rape, or theft unless they are an interstate crime. The FBI does not have the power to investigate common crimes. That power rests with state and local authorities. If there is a multi-state serial killer, you will see the FBI involved. If there is a multi-state theft ring you will see the FBI involved. Most murder, rape, and theft is local.

Re:A thought...

[BrianDeacon]

Not looking to denigrate Mr. Uber Banker in any way... but what is the deal with the mods that this post is getting a 4/Insightful... it's just the usual /. "I hate the man" paranoia.

Hmph... guess I'm getting frustrated with the one-sided crankiness that the moderation system always seems to promote.

Now please mod this down as OT... cuz it is. :)

Re:A thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoah Tackhead, it wasn't a troll. Part of my post was to point out that the FBI's priorities are screwed up, and part was to float a reminder about Charter's interesting security issue. The proxies I spoke of aren't open SMTP relays being run by clueless subscribers (though that's a problem too) but rather hijacked DNS servers. See yesterday's story about that.

Re:A thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

FBI'll be on your ass like Hilary Rosen on a box of Krispy Kremes

Or Oprah on a baked ham.

Re:A thought...

[Fulkkari]

I'm sure filesharing will not end to this. First of all there are many users outside the US, which FBI can't do very much about. Secondly if all the Internet traffic WAS monitored in all the countries, and all the countries would hunt for copyright violators, someone would simply encrypt the traffic and send it trough random ports. You see this is a constant war that will not end.

Anyway it's kinda stupid to hunt after people who fileshare when there are real criminals and terrorists out there.

(Sorry I'm late)

Re:A thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

"why do i always confuse IRA with RIAA??"

probably cause one is a terrorist organistation and the other is a.... oh wait

Re:A thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is being a bitch funny?

Re:A thought...

[Fallen_Knight]

I think they just don't want the amsses to have access to this, i mean look at IRC, tis always been there, and always will. They dont' seem to even give adamn abotu the copying going on there...

Re:A thought...

[Tackhead]

Whoah Tackhead, it wasn't a troll. > Part of my post was to point out that the FBI's priorities are screwed up, and part was to float a reminder about Charter's interesting security issue. The proxies I spoke of aren't open SMTP relays being run by clueless subscribers (though that's a problem too) but rather hijacked DNS servers.

Grok. On both points - Charter's negligence on the DNS-hijacking is even worse than their open proxy negligence.

My point wasn't to accuse you of trolling; it was that it would be wonderful to live in a world where the FBI's priorities weren't so screwed up, and the price of us both being modded as Trolls is one I'd be happy to bear :)

Sadly, the FBI's priorities (and residential broadband service providers' security practices) are indeed that screwed up, and as such, no matter how hard anybody flames them for being a bunch of mindless jerks who deserve to be first against the router racks when the DDOS attack comes, said flames are more likely to be moderated (+1, Informative) than (-1, OK, they suck, but not that hard, man! You must be trolling).

Kinda like the old joke - how can you tell your sysadmin has a real Verisign rep on the phone? You can hear your sysadmin screaming "you bunch of useless cocksuckers!" from ten cubicles away, not the usual five.

Bill?

[tomstdenis]

Who the fuck is bill?

Hahahahaha... I made a funny.

Re:Bill?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, no you didn't. not by a long shot.

Of course

[sielwolf]

As if the FBI didn't have their own messes to clean up such as the handling of pre-911 intelligence, FBI agents turned spy (Robert Hanssen), the Los Alamos lab debacle, double agent Mrs. Katrina Leung, need I say more?"

What does this have to do with anything? It's nothing but an attack instead of dealing with the issue at hand. I'm sorry but a billion dollar government organization can do two things at once. Not well but well enough.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

then why did they fail completely at that one task.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

straw man fallacy

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is valid.

The FBI only has 11,000 agents. After September 11th, 7,000 of them were dealing with counterterrorism. The FBI needs more agents. They DO NOT have unlimited manpower.

The FBI has enough problems. We are seeing increases in drug and sex trafficking. The DEA and local enforcement has been largely abandoned by the FBI in terms of aid in fighting drug cartels. Counterterrorism is the priority. With stuff like this, it only takes away more resources from fighting the real stuff.

This is very, very relevant.

Re:Of course

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

C'mon!

I'd rather have these 11K agents working for Disney and Sonny&Cher, than say, stopping the trafficking of child prostitutes.

Who do those kids think they are, anyway?

As long as they do it legally

[porkface]

If P2P threatens our economy as much as some people think, why shouldn't the FBI go after pirates and the like?

Sure that's all debatable, but local law enforcement isn't up to the task. It's a decentralized problem geographically, but from another perspective it's centralized on the net and attacking it might best be handled by a central, and technologically capable command. The FBI seems like the most logical choice.

Sure they have other fish to fry, but considering that most people I know, including those who can barely use a computer, are sharing software movies and music, perhaps government has to grow a little to keep this from becoming even worse as in some places like China and Russia.

Re:As long as they do it legally

[poptones]

Sure they have other fish to fry, but considering that most people I know, including those who can barely use a computer, are sharing software movies and music, perhaps government has to grow a little to keep this from becoming even worse as in some places like China and Russia.

Context:

Now that anyone I know can afford a book how will the church control information? Now that anyone I know can afford to copy a page from a book, how will publishers and printers stay in business?

Shit happens. It's not our government's job to protect us from knowledge and information... unlike in those "free" countries you mentioned.

Re:As long as they do it legally

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck you!

Re:As long as they do it legally

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously though, I agree with you. P2P may be making a dent in sales in America...but it's creating real problem in other countries. Something is needed to keep us from reaching Chinese piracy status.

China has a number of problems, but none resulting from piracy so far as I can see. What 'real problem' are you talking about?

Re:As long as they do it legally

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a music artist in China. You write a song. It becomes wildly popular. Everyone in China copies it onto millions of CD's. You still haven't made a penny yet.

Re:As long as they do it legally

[porkface]

Hey, I'm just saying there is no room for any kind of sustainable commercial software industry in those countries because piracy goes unchecked. I'm not advocating the FBI stepping in and changing any rules about what you can or can't say or read.

Sending the 0101010's of Microsoft Windows XP + serial to your buddy for him to use without paying is not covered by the first ammendment or any other law.

Sure industries need to adapt, and the ones most under fire from piracy have shown a strong will against adapting to give consumers what they want. But a strong attempt at a boycott should have been tried before we turned to looting.

Re:As long as they do it legally

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a music artist in China. You write a song. It becomes wildly popular. Everyone in China copies it onto millions of CD's. You still haven't made a penny yet.

So try getting a job that actually is profitable in the culture you live in? I know, radical idea.

Re:As long as they do it legally

[Anonymous Coward]

So try getting a job that actually is profitable in the culture you live in? I know, radical idea.

But everywhere should have to be exactly like the USA. If you can make a living as a songwriter here you should be able to everywhere. How can you say being different from us isn't a problem? Other cultures scare me. The FBI should protect me from having to think about them :(

Re:As long as they do it legally

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya, you're right. Stealing should be relative to the culture. Stealing in America is bad...but it should be ok in China.

Re:As long as they do it legally

[RyanFenton]

Sending the 0101010's of Microsoft Windows XP + serial to your buddy for him to use without paying is not covered by the first ammendment or any other law.

Actually, that IS protected speech. However, Microsoft,etc. are also entitled to use the court system to sue you for damages, and have you punished. Laws are made to restrict freedoms, not create them. The law does not know, just in the transmission of data, whether your action is licensed, sanctioned, or anything else - it's the interpretation afterward that decides whether it was infringing on an other entity's rights. That means, to me at least, that speech in general should not be restricted, just so infringing speech can be restricted.

In this particular topic, I don't think it should be the government's responsibility to minitor all communications, or the individual's responsibility to have to actively justify their actions - RIAA, etc. should on some level have to prove specific infringement before the general public has to defend itself against their whims. We shouldn't have to pay for thier logical responsibilities.

Ryan Fenton

Re:As long as they do it legally

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya, you're right. Stealing should be relative to the culture. Stealing in America is bad...but it should be ok in China.

Whether copying a piece of music is illegal is a matter for the local legal system, yes. I would have thought that was pretty obvious. Where does stealing even come into it?

Re:As long as they do it legally

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... and because the US can bomb any country on (unproven) suspicion of terrorism or holding weapons of mass destruction, so should any country be able to bomb the US for possibly being aggressive and possibly pointing missiles against it.

Hell, most country's evidence against the US is better than US evidence against them and they have no FBI, CIA, etc.

So... Sudan is perfectly able to bomb the US and kill 10,000 civilians.

Re:As long as they do it legally

[Anonymous Coward]

And the best way for that to happen is the US government becoming more like China or Russia? All for the sake of entertainment middle men? Perhaps instead it's time to re-examine the concept of intellectual property.

Re:As long as they do it legally

[poptones]

Me giving you a copy of windows is "speech" - if I give you a copy of windows I am supporting windows because I have helped make it just a tiny bit more pervasive. Who is harmed? Microsoft? The software industry as a whole that relies windows? If I give you a copy of windows you're that much more likely to go out and buy some more software that runs under windows. You may instead (also) get that software for free, but it's inarguable that you are infinitely more likely to buy windows software if you have a PC that runs windows than if you have no PC at all running windows.

If I give you a copy of my favorite CD from my recording artist, you are more likely to look for more work form that artist - again, infinitely more likely than if you never heard of the artist at all.

Similarly, if I share with you all my notes and workbooks from college the professor may not care for it, the school may not care for it, but on the whole society has benefitted because you now have knowledge of a subject you didn't have before.

Ergo, it is all "speech." All the court can determine is whether someone has been harmed by the speech, and whether they are entitled to compensation for that harm.

Honestly, this is nothing remarkably new or insightful. I'm just reminding you because it seems to have slipped from your mind.

About that "unsustainable" software industry in russia: do you know how many hired guns are working in russia and ukraine? As I understand it India also has a rather large "piracy" market and yet it also employs thousands of people working tech support, programming, even system administration. Similarly, some companies have their entire network support staff in russia, india or china. When the network is pervasive you don't need the guy who configures the server sitting in the next room.

Hell, one of the very few shareware programs I ever bought - Reget deluxe - is Windows software written, supported and sold internationally by a small Russian company!

Piracy is just another (valid) mechanism of a free market. If software companies want to sell more software and music companies want to sell more music, they need to set the prices such that more people can afford them. They need to offer something that people will find of value and want to support. And they need to foster a more egalitarian society that affords more people the opportunity to attain enough dispoable income that they can afford to support such frivolties. Copyright doesn't mean jack when it's a choice between paying for information or paying for food - and for most of the people in those countries you mention, that's the choice they often must make. But fortunately, with modern technology, it's also a choice fewer of us all are forced to make. Freedom is a wonderful thing... especially for creative people with something of value to share.

Re:As long as they do it legally

[Mjec]

Shit happens. It's not our government's job to protect us from knowledge and information... unlike in those "free" countries you mentioned.

<rant>
Propaganda alert! Perhaps you should note that freedoms in Russia and China are not as bad as they have been. While you aren't free to sue your microwave manufacturer when you put a dog in the microwave, you can still do pretty much anything, especially online. Besides, this is not talking about limitation of freedom.

Now, I'm just as guilty as the next guy, but what I download is mostly because it is difficult to get elsewhere. I mean, where they hell am i going to get the latest Claire's Birthday album? (CB is an Estonian band).

It is in fact the job of the government to regulate laws which were put into place, including copyright laws. Yes, anyone can afford to copy a page from a book, but it is illegal. If you are caught copying a whole book (by your analogy the whole song/movie, rather than just one second) then you are arrested, fined etc. It is much more difficult to copy an entire book than it is to copy digitised anything. And one copy is still only one copy. It is probably more expensive to copy a whole book than buy one. $0.05 per page, 400 A4 pages, $20. The latest Harry Potter from Amazon (896 pages) - $17.99. That is why the publishers stay in business. It is cheaper to buy the actual book, and better quality, binding etc. However, when the cost of pirating an entire CD is less than $1 more people do it. So the RIAA has a point.

Yes, I pirate music. I don't do enough to make it very bad (maybe two hours worth in the last 12 months), but I recognize it for what it is. A crime. And IIRC it is a crime which often crosses state boundries, and hence should be enforced by the FBI.

IANAL, plus I'm in Australia. But I think I know what I'm talking about.

Mjec
</rant>

Re:As long as they do it legally

[24-bit Voxel]

I would counter that the current state of the econonmy effects the **IA's bottom line far more than P2P effects the economy. But thats just my opinion.

It think you summed it up rather well in your first statement. The FBI should be out there protecting the people of this country, not used as a corporate guerilla squad. If it wasn't raining airplanes and we weren't overthr---- liberating peoples' asses, then perhaps it could be a higher priority. But I just don't see the need right now.

Ironically, 9-11 is a major factor as to why the economy is all fscked up right now. Whose fault was that security breach? Who had the info months before it happened? Three letters... they escape me...

Now believe me, I support the right of the FBI to crack down on these things, don't get me wrong. I just don't have any understanding of why this would be a priority right now given our current security color scheme.

signed, vox

Re:As long as they do it legally

[cyber0ne]

Sending the 0101010's of Microsoft Windows XP + serial to your buddy for him to use without paying is not covered by the first ammendment or any other law

Maybe my legal interpretations are a little rusty, but I believe that the "sending the 0101010's" part is free speech. If, after the fact, a private party (Microsoft) feels that another private party (the sender) has infringed on their copyright, they have the option to slap a civil suit on that individual.

Now, when you drag in the FBI, you're no longer dealing with private parties. You're now treating civil court matters with public law enforcement agencies. Does anyone else see a problem here? The first court decisions on cases in which a rich private party hires the FBI to strong-arm their less-rich opponent(s) could set some pretty disturbing legal precendents.

I'd really rather not live in a country where corporations can employ law enforcement agencies to arrest and detain me for a civil court case any time they wanted to. I was under the impression that the US Constitution was designed to prevent just such an action and to empower individuals with certain rights and liberties. But, as previous posts mentioning facism point out, that is becoming less and less the reality of this particular society.

Re:As long as they do it legally

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just saying there is no room for any kind of sustainable commercial software industry in those countries because piracy goes unchecked

Silly me, I thought there was no room for commercial industry in China because it was communist.

Re:As long as they do it legally

[poptones]

"Better than it was" is not exactly a shining example of liberty.

Pravda.ru is online... you really should try reading it form time to time. And surely you read the BBC? they have a whole section on the FSU... it's quite fascinating. Pravda and ukrainenews even have english language versions so you don't have to use babelfish. The difference between the US and Russia (and Ukraine, and other FSU states) is that the "government" may have the "enforcement" of organized crime behind it as well. So instead of having to worry about being jailed without representation under terrorism laws, you have to worry, when criticising the government, you may simply turn up bloated and blue on a riverbank come spring. Or perhaps not at all.

And that, of course, is only if you are a man. If you are a woman or young girl (or father of one) you also get to worry about being abducted and sold to a brothel in israel or turkey.

If you think China is so free, I heartily invite you to visit that nation and openly criticise the government. If you don't end up deported or worse, perhaps you'll just be "quarrantined" by the local constabulatory for a week or two under the recently enacted SARS containment laws.

Besides, this is not talking about limitation of freedom.

It is exactly that. How on earth can you attempt the argument it is anything else?

Now, I'm just as guilty as the next guy, but what I download is mostly because it is difficult to get elsewhere. I mean, where they hell am i going to get the latest Claire's Birthday album? (CB is an Estonian band).

More elitist bullshit. It is either ethical or it is not. If you cannot figure out how to get that album without "stealing" it then perhaps it is not your "right" to enjoy it. Or perhaps you could just try applying some logical consistency to your argument and see how none of it really matters.

It is in fact the job of the government to regulate laws which were put into place, including copyright laws.

That's what courts are for. That's why we draw a line between criminal enforcement, where it is the job of the government to defend, against infringment of their civil liberties, those who cannot defend themselves and civil enforcement, where the government is not expected, nor warranted, to police.

And in either case, when the people have decided the law is no longer just (as they essentially have in the case of file sharing) then it is time for we, the people to abridge or abolish those laws as we see fit.

Yes, anyone can afford to copy a page from a book, but it is illegal.

Not in the US. Sorry for you if this is the case in Australia. Wouldn't surprise me one bit, however, given all the other nonsense that government has been trying to lock down the internet.

If you are caught copying a whole book (by your analogy the whole song/movie, rather than just one second) then you are arrested, fined etc.

Again, I'm sorry for you all if that's the way things are where you live. Maybe you really should consider emigrating to Russia or China?

Re:As long as they do it legally

[unclebulgaria]

Propaganda alert! Perhaps you should note that freedoms in Russia and China are not as bad as they have been. While you aren't free to sue your microwave manufacturer when you put a dog in the microwave, you can still do pretty much anything, especially online. Besides, this is not talking about limitation of freedom.

People in china have freedoms, especially online? Seems you have never read about "The Great Firewall of China" Link Many, many sites are not allowed visits you live in China, including many western news sources ect, they even once blocked google.

Re:As long as they do it legally

[Mjec]

"Better than it was" is not exactly a shining example of liberty....
<snip rant about freedoms or lack thereof>

Ok, so maybe i was wrong about that. But that was not the point of my comment

Besides, this is not talking about limitation of freedom.

It is exactly that. How on earth can you attempt the argument it is anything else?

Consider: something is illegal. Hence you do not have a right to do it. Simple. It is limitation of freedom, but it isn't unfair limitation of freedom. The US system of democracy elected people who made the decision to allow the continuation of and to support copyright law. You say further on that

when the people have decided the law is no longer just (as they essentially have in the case of file sharing) then it is time for we, the people to abridge or abolish those laws as we see fit.

Well, then write to your congressmen (note the use of a prepositon). Do something about it. However it is my conjecture (MHO, nothing else) that if someone stood for congress (parliament here) with the platform of abolishing copyright laws not only would they not be elected, even if they were they are one voice in however many are in congress.

Yes, anyone can afford to copy a page from a book, but it is illegal...

Not in the US. Sorry for you if this is the case in Australia. Wouldn't surprise me one bit, however, given all the other nonsense that government has been trying to lock down the internet.

Really? Here we have signs in all libraries - state, local, national, school, university - which say "Note that under the copyright act 1968 it is illeal to take more than a 'reasonable portion' of a work without the express permission of the author" etc. I have since discovered that a "reasonable portion" refers to 10 pages. Oops. But it still isn't a whole book.

...what I download is mostly because it is difficult to get elsewhere...

More elitist bullshit. It is either ethical or it is not. If you cannot figure out how to get that album without "stealing" it then perhaps it is not your "right" to enjoy it. Or perhaps you could just try applying some logical consistency to your argument and see how none of it really matters.

Actually, I agree. That is what I'm saying. What I'm doing is illegal, and I recognize that. However, most people don't. What I do is legally wrong, I recognize and accept it. By trying to justify it, I am simply doing further wrong.

Please note: IANAL, #include "disclaimer.h", all that jazz. This is just my opinion. I am probably wrong. I should have stated that in the first post... and I sort-of did with the whole <rant> thing... but not explicitly enough.

Also please note that I am dealing with what I know; Australian law, and what I know of US law from brief studies.

Certainly some of your links and information has enlightened me. Thanks.

Mjec

Knee-jerk policing?

[Mr Smidge]

.. And I wonder what sophisticated monitoring techniques the FBI would use to filter out those individuals who grossly leech tons of files, and those who just happen to be sharing within their fair use rights among friends, and those who just happen to have a library of legally-obtained copyrighted files.

Oh wait, that's not on their checklist now is it?

Re:Knee-jerk policing?

[stubear]

"...and those who just happen to be sharing within their fair use rights among friends."

Fair use does not make it legal to distribute copyrighted material to friends. Edcational institutions can distribute limited quantities of copyrighted material for learning purposes but this is the only distribution exemption I can think of.

Don't they have something better to do?

[TyrranzzX]

And I agree, this is corperatism and it's absolute bullshit. I'm getting sick and tired of hearing about how goverment agency X attempts to enfoce the unenforcable with new and buggier technology, then proceeds to hange some poor guy or gal on the highest pole they can fine. Pretty soon time will be copyrighted and so will words.

This is a complete waste of our goverment which can be doing useful things such as tracking down pedophiles or hanging rapists assholes. Hell, if corperates had their way police would be giving out nothing but tickets, letting the real criminals go (becuase it costs money to put em' in jail)...I don't think most polcemen signed onto the force to go after the average joe who's sick of a media monopoly, I think they'd rather be cracking the skull a real criminal.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[halo8]

"Pretty soon time will be copyrighted and so will words"

its called newspeak from 1984 try and keep up please.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Telastyn]

This of course assumes that pedophiles don't use file-sharing...

I wouldn't be suprised if tracking pedophiles was the first excuse the government uses to validate this. After all *nobody* could possibly be against keeping our children safe!...

And unfortunately it seems as though most police[wo]men these days signed on to get immunity from being harrassed from other police[wo]men...

(ps- my appologies to any law enforcement officers reading; I recently was fined $30 for wearing my seatbelt, and am thus slightly bitter; law enforcement is not to blame for lawmakers' idiocy.)

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Surak]

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini. (from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor).

Yup. you hit the nail right on the head.

And this is justified by saying that downloading music and movies online hurts the economy.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The amount of people who only download music and movies and don't buy them can't be very high. First off, only 50% of the households in the U.S. have computers in the first place. Secondly, it's hard to believe that all of those 50% use a file sharing system. After all, only, what? 10% or of those have broadband connections? I mean downloading the stuff over a 56K modem connection takes an excruciating amount of time. And what percentage of those don't buy music or movies and exclusively use stuff they got off the net? Personally, my purchase of movies and music has *increased*, not decreased since I got broadband and started using file sharing services.

And, why would the FBI investigate this stuff? Last I checked, copyright violation was a civil, not a criminal matter. Violation of copyright is not theft anyway. Check with the U.S. copyright office. They do not consider it theft.

Why do we need this government interference in our lives? Why should the RIAA and the MPAA dictate our lives? What happened to our constitutionally limited republic?

I'm sick of this. I'm about ready to move to some country that has smaller government and less governmental interference in my life. Anybody got any suggestions?

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...hanging rapists assholes."

I don't know I'd rather they concentrate on P2P than that, it sounds pretty gross.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

"fined $30 for wearing my seatbelt"

Forgot a "not"? If not, then I'd contest the ticket!

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Telastyn]

No no, actually it was for wearing my seatbelt...

I wear my seatbelt under my arm, as I find over the shoulder terribly irritating. This is in violation of the seatbelt code which requires the seatbelt of a driver to be worn 'across the chest'.

So I got cited [on May 31st no less! tell me cops don't have quotas] because god knows I cannot protect myself, the state must do it for me!

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[thisissilly]

Last I checked, copyright violation was a civil, not a criminal matter.

Check again. Among other things, the DMCA made copyright violation into a criminal matter. One of the really nasty bits, imo.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[SunPin]

Cops don't care... a couple years ago, I got a ticket for parking in a disabled spot. I am in a wheelchair. I drive a conversion van with equipment that makes absolute no mistake about the kind of person that drives the vehicle. It was a hot day. I went with some friends to the mall. I had to move from driver's seat to my wheelchair quickly because of the sun shining down. Anyway, I dropped the disabled placard. It landed on the passengers seat in plain view. I decided, incorrectly, that was sufficient. Came back to a $100 ticket. As a columnist in the local paper, I didn't help myself by starting a political war instead of negotiating my way out. Bottom line: it shouldn't have happened in the first place. Go check my bio link here at /. so you know I'm not kidding about how stupid this situation was.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Surak]

I thought this was only for content that's worth more than $5,000? Of course, I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're stupid. First, it defeats the whole purpose of wearing a seatbelt if you don't put it over your shoulder. They're called shoulder straps for a reason. Putting it under your arm just creates an easy way for your ribcage to get crushed. Second, one incident on the last day of the month does not a trend make. There's a 1 in 30ish chance that you'll get pulled over on the last day of any given month. It's as if you discovered that 100% of all lottery winners were pregnant. Third, why are you baiting perfect strangers into asking you why you got pulled over for wearing your seatbelt? Fourth, nobody cares about your stupid story, as you may be able to ascertain from the score, so shut the fuck up and think the next time you feel inclined to post.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, we are trying to bitch about the RIAA, DMCA, and MS here. Don't spoil our buzz with your shitty traffic ticket story.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Mjec]

Pretty soon time will be copyrighted and so will words.
Are you implying that people copyrighting music they write and play is going against the general idea of copyright?

People copyrighting music is precisly what copyright is about. It is their intellectual property, they crafted it with their very hands^H^H^H^H^Hminds.

I see a lot of (IMHO unnecessary) anti-communism on this site (by commenters mainly) which is in the same post as statements which seem to advocate the total abolition of copyright. Make up your mind people... with the aboloition of copyright (as implicitly suggested by TyrranzzX) would be a very communisitic thing to do. It is up to you.

This is my second pro-copyright post for today, but let me make it clear; I do download music illegally. I do watch DivX versions of movies. But I also buy CDs, listen to (commercial) radio, rent videos, go to the movies... I download things not because I don't want to pay for them, but because I've already paid for them, and am now obtaining a more permenent copy, more easily transportable etc.

The RIAA and US government have gone too far in attempting to keep copyright sacred; but most posters on /. have gone too far in the other direction. Look at what you are advocating, read what you are saying. Preview, and then post.

Mjec

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Ah, the standard Slashbot response. Let's analyze.

Yup. you hit the nail right on the head.

Groupthink reinforcement.

And this is justified by saying that downloading music and movies online hurts the economy.

Any logical person would agree with this. If a teenager downloads and burns a CD of music, why would he spend $20 on the real thing?

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

You have absolutely no proof to back this. In fact, it flies completely in the face of basic logic.

The amount of people who only download music and movies and don't buy them can't be very high.

Well, can't argue with that kind of research!

First off, only 50% of the households in the U.S. have computers in the first place. Secondly, it's hard to believe that all of those 50% use a file sharing system. After all, only, what? 10% or of those have broadband connections? I mean downloading the stuff over a 56K modem connection takes an excruciating amount of time. And what percentage of those don't buy music or movies and exclusively use stuff they got off the net?

Let's ignore colleges, libraries, and more! Yes, even dialup users freely download music. In a single night, one can grab an entire album.

Personally, my purchase of movies and music has *increased*, not decreased since I got broadband and started using file sharing services.

Ah, you're one of those rare types who feels their personal anecdote somehow invalidates the entire process of logic that says people who get something for free won't feel inclined pay for it.

Why do we need this government interference in our lives? Why should the RIAA and the MPAA dictate our lives? What happened to our constitutionally limited republic?

Since when has the RIAA and MPAA dictated your life just by combating illegal downloading of their legally protected works? You mean you don't have control over your life unless you can break the law and steal--yes, steal--valuable music?

I'm sick of this. I'm about ready to move to some country that has smaller government and less governmental interference in my life. Anybody got any suggestions?

And, finally, the capper to every Slashbot post involving the government, which is the claim to considering moving to another country, which will of course never pan out.

Next.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[efuseekay]

>I'm sick of this. I'm about ready to move to some country that has smaller government and less governmental interference in my life. Anybody got any suggestions?

Canada?

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Surak]

Blame Canada! Blame Canada!

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

a) The meter maid who gave you the tickets probably wasn't about to make an extra effort to look in your car for a placard. The walk past your car, don't see anything hanging from the mirror, write a ticket, and slap it under the wiper.

b) All you had to do was check the box on the back of the ticket that said "not guilty" and send it in with proof of your handicap eligibility.

Seems like you were angry at yourself and decided that Mr. small town columnist had to make a big stink.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Surak]

Any logical person would agree with this. If a teenager downloads and burns a CD of music, why would he spend $20 on the real thing?

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that you'll just call me a Slashbot again!

Let's ignore colleges, libraries, and more! Yes, even dialup users freely download music. In a single night, one can grab an entire album.

Most libraries don't allow the installation of peer to peer file sharing clients and in fact have software installed to prevent the saving of downloaded files to disk. Ditto on some college lab computers, although some college lab computers undoubtedly let you save stuff. But realistically they have no mass storage media to facilitate transfer to a different computer other than the LAN they sit on and floppy disk. And colleges have really been cracking down on filesharing on student-owned (and campus-owned) equipment by blocking the ports that P2P clients use.

An entire album on a 56 dialup connection in a night? This I gotta see.


Since when has the RIAA and MPAA dictated your life just by combating illegal downloading of their legally protected works? You mean you don't have control over your life unless you can break the law and steal--yes, steal--valuable music?


Go ahead couch your words with 'legal' and 'illegal'. You know what? Too many people are caught up with the terms 'legal' and 'illegal'. They should more concerned with 'right' and 'wrong.' It's totally LEGAL for me, a 30-year-old man, to sleep with a consenting 16-year-old female in the state of Michigan. Does that make it right? No.

That's the problem with our society. You can stick to doing what's legal, I'll do what's RIGHT.

And, finally, the capper to every Slashbot post involving the government, which is the claim to considering moving to another country, which will of course never pan out.

What do you know about personal motivations? Nothing.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[SunPin]

I admitted as much in my post. College, young, arrogant. Bad combination for dealing with cops.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Overly Critical Guy]

An entire album on a 56 dialup connection in a night? This I gotta see.

In my modem days, I did it all the time. Even then, individual songs are but 5MB on average. Next.

Go ahead couch your words with 'legal' and 'illegal'. You know what? Too many people are caught up with the terms 'legal' and 'illegal'. They should more concerned with 'right' and 'wrong.' It's totally LEGAL for me, a 30-year-old man, to sleep with a consenting 16-year-old female in the state of Michigan. Does that make it right? No.

And it is not morally right to acquire music you have not paid for. You have proven my argument. Next.

That's the problem with our society. You can stick to doing what's legal, I'll do what's RIGHT.

Another typical Slashbot move. Declaring what is wrong with society.

What do you know about personal motivations? Nothing.

Your little inclination to leave the country will never be followed through. It was just an emotion-charged rally cry due to your being used to the convenience of illegally and imorally downloading music by artists that you haven't paid for.

Next.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

"they crafted it with their very hands^H^H^H^H^Hminds."

"read what you are saying. Preview, and then post."

riiiiiight.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[drsmithy]

Any logical person would agree with this. If a teenager downloads and burns a CD of music, why would he spend $20 on the real thing?

A five year old might think this "logically". Someone capable of applying thought in more than one direction might ask "how does it hurt the economy if the person downloading would never have bought the album in the first place ?"

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[2short]

Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't. We'll never know. And thus we'll gut the markets ability to set prices. If the only people who buy albums are those willing to pay $20, what price do you expect album sellers will charge? Duh. If you want legal albums to cost less than $20, listen to music you can legally buy for less. (Hint: used CD store) If you get your music illegaly for free, why should anyone assume you'll pay anything? You take yourself out of the pricing equation. If most people didn't buy $20 CDs, but did buy $10 CDs, what do you think would happen?

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

I admitted as much in my post. College, young, arrogant. Bad combination for dealing with cops.

None of the above gives a sworn law enforcement officer the right to treat you any differently from someone not "college, young, arrogant" unless you actually become physically threatening. I am sick to fucking death of all the humble behavior we are expected to assume in the presence of your average blue-clad Nazi to keep him from turning a simple "WTF?" into a charge of resisting. Who the shit turned my first ammendment right of expression over to their care? They can give you all the smartlip they want (and they routinely do so), but if you dish it back, you're fucked.

And don't give me the "Their life is on the line every day" line of shit. I've seen them turn their head on a simple illegal left turn, so why should I assume they'd do any better if they were confronting real danger? I've even been in traffic school where one of them was asked why they don't pull over the fastest of a group caught speeding. The answer -- "Which one do you think is easiest?"

By the way, is there anyone who hasn't seen the video of the vicious bastard (caught on his own camera) trying to rip some woman out of her car when she couldn't get out fast enough because he didn't give her a chance to release her seat belt?

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't help myself by starting a political war instead of negotiating my way out.

Bullshit -- you shouldn't have had to negotiate. The ticket shouldn't have been issued in the first place and your subsequent failure to just knuckle under should not have been a problem.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

a) The meter maid who gave you the tickets probably wasn't about to make an extra effort to look in your car for a placard. The walk past your car, don't see anything hanging from the mirror, write a ticket, and slap it under the wiper.

Fucking lazy bastard -- they have to walk past the car in one direction or the other to apply the ticket. You can be fucking sure, if it were a couple of pot leaves on the seat, they'd have seen it real clearly.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fourth, nobody cares about your stupid story, as you may be able to ascertain from the score, so shut the fuck up and think the next time you feel inclined to post.

My dick to your mouth, you fucking arrogant asshole.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[fucksl4shd0t]

It's totally LEGAL for me, a 30-year-old man, to sleep with a consenting 16-year-old female in the state of Michigan. Does that make it right? No.

At the risk of going offtopic, why isn't it right for two consenting people to sleep together? I'll agree that typically it may not be the best thing for either of you, but there are exceptions to that, even. Why is it wrong? She's got boobs? She bleeds? It's not like you'd be sleeping with a girl that hadn't even achieved the onset of menses or anything. We're talking about a girl that could fuck your brains out with the best of 'em, and you're saying that this is wrong? Why?

While I will agree with you that legal != right and illegal != wrong, but it is the intent of lawmakers (or more specifically, the people who voted for them) to make law reflect morality, so I would strongly recommend putting some thought into your reply.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[fucksl4shd0t]

A five year old might think this "logically". Someone capable of applying thought in more than one direction might ask "how does it hurt the economy if the person downloading would never have bought the album in the first place ?"

Not to mention things like whether or not he's more likely to go out and buy a new release, live album, convert dvd, video dvd, and/or attend one or more concerts from that band. It's been many years, but at one time you could tell what the first album I acquired from a band was because it was "pirated", even if you saw 3-6 CDs that were purchased from a store in my collection. I just didn't get around to buying the stuff I'd pirated because I was more interested in buying what I hadn't heard. These days you can't tell the difference, because everything's stored in mp3 on my computer, and the CDs are locked up to keep them from my kids' destructive influence. (Not to mention the fact that 90% of my music collection was actually pirated, and I don't give a shit about it because I have paid for 95% of that in the past, even if I don't have a current copy to show for it)

I work on a rule, actually. If I don't buy something I have pirated, I try to spread it to other people who are likely to buy it. Then I tag them with a guilt lecture about buying music endorsed by the fascists at the RIAA.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! Canada was recently named as the shittiest country to try emmigrate to. The backlog of applicants is years long, and most immigrants end up living below the poverty line. I'm one of them. And if you think that Government stays out of your business here, read the Canadian news first and decide. Decriminalised pot and legalised same sex marriages does not a free country make :-)

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Surak]

Actually, I tend to agree with you However, in the United States there are definite taboos against older men sleeping with females who are younger especially if they are under the age of 18.

I was using the example, even if I don't necessarily agree with it, because it makes my point. Most Americans would automatically say if ((a_female->age age > 21)) then a_male.fucking(a_female) == morally_wrong.

Since you're the only one who seemed to notice that point at all, I'd say my argument was pretty effective. ;)

That being said, there is something to be said for taking advantage of young, naive and impressionable girls, which is morally wrong. Not every 16 year old is very naive and not every case of a 30 year old man fucking a 16-year-old female would necessarily be morally wrong, but in many situations it can be and it all depends on the situation.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Surak]

ahhhh...stupid slashdot...mangled my post.

Take the manged mess of code above to mean If the guy is older than 21 and the girl younger than 18...

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[annewinston]

Actually "average joe" is not quite the right term. People who are to some degree engaged in file sharing are generally young and well educated (to first order and certainly in in the media fed mindset it is college kids). There seems to be a lot of backlash against these kinds of people these days. The Bush administration is carefully cultivating an image of down home American common sense which is willfully blind to the subtlties of just about every situation. This, I think, resonates with the real "average joe" who gets their news from fox and wears American flag t-shirts.
Anyway, those who believe in fair use rights and rights in general need to make their case stronger to the center of the political spectrum and realize that in many circles they are easily, if not consciously branded as Birkenstock wearing hippies just because they know a few 4 syllable words and have a passing knowledge of the law.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[SunPin]

Jesus... people don't have to be AC with me. Nobody buckled. Not me, not them. It was as much of a war of words as you can get. I lined up politicians through letter writing, they further entrenched their position. Ultimately, they tried to get the DA involved because I refused to even defend it in court. I could finish this great story but you are AC. Just go click my bio and find the article in the portfolio on my resume.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

That wasn't the DMCA, that was the NET (No Electronic Theft) Act, signed by Bill Clinton. It hasn't been used much, but it's there all ready for the bastards.

Not their job...

[wbren]

As the article pointed out, this isn't the FBI's job, and âoe[i]t gives them a chance to scare a lot of users into thinking the government is after them.â This should be handled through the courts, not the RIAABI--err--FBI... I can just imagine 100 million people being arrested by the FBI due to copyright infringements...

Re:Not their job...

[Anonymous Coward]

RIAABI? don't call it that, the skinheads will cry "ZOG ZOG ZOG! Zionist Conspiracy!"

Re:Not their job...

[RPI Geek]

I can just imagine 100 million people being arrested by the FBI due to copyright infringements...

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure copyright infringement is a civil crime and hence is not an arrestable offense. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:Not their job...

[wbren]

IANAL either, but you're probably right. I just enjoy making posts without thinking about whether they are accurate or not. And just to clarify the point of my post, I am concerned about personal privacy. It sounds like the FBI will force ISPs to give information about users' Internet usage to groups like the RIAA, MPAA, etc. on demand; that worries me.

Re:Not their job...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you never seen the FBI notice at the beginning of practically any video tape or DVD? It makes reference to both civil and criminal punishments.

You can also find some kind of warning on CD cases.

I think you can get something like 5 years in jail and a huge fine.

Re:Not their job...

[RPI Geek]

Actually I think you may be right. I think it depends on the "damages" though.

Re:Not their job...

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure copyright infringement is a civil crime and hence is not an arrestable offense. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

In certain instances, copyright infringement can be a criminal offense, with jail time. I guess that qualifies as a correction.

Re:Not their job...

[Idarubicin]

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure copyright infringement is a civil crime and hence is not an arrestable offense. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

If we limit our discussion to the United States, then usually copyright infringement is a civil matter. Criminal proceedings can take place under 17 USC 506. (A fellow /.er filled me in during a previous discussion.)

The bit governing criminal offenses:

Sec. 506. - Criminal offenses

(a) Criminal Infringement. -

Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either -

(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,

shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement...

The applicability of this section to all to be the most profligate of file traders is questionable--I figure a reasonable retail value of ~$1 per track for music lets you download about 1000 tracks every six months before you hit criminal prosecution. Then again, IANAL, and yerricide raised some excellent points about alternate interpretation of 506(a)(1).

Here is the thread. Enjoy!

You need not say any more

[Anonymous Coward]

"...As if the FBI didn't have their own messes to clean up such as the handling of pre-911 intelligence, FBI agents turned spy (Robert Hanssen), the Los Alamos lab debacle, double agent Mrs. Katrina Leung, need I say more?"

No, because if everything isn't perfect in the FBI (you know, like it is here in Linuxland) they can't do anything else until that's fixed. Cops can't enforce the law until every single dirty cop is removed from the force, and legislators can all just go home until big money influence disappears from politics.

I'm not wild about the FBI snooping around file sharing myself, but it has nothing to do with their current other problems.

What about other contries?

[rehabdoll]

I dont have the energy to read the article but how would FBI, The US Goverment and the US public feel about non-us goverments policing p2p-nets? Would they be outraged or welcome the "help"? The Internet is public domain, not US property.

Re:What about other contries?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't have the energy to read the article" and its modded up? HELLO?

Re:What about other contries?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet is neither public domain nor US property, it's an amalgam of public and private property -- but mostly U.S. private property.

Re:What about other contries?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, where have you been? America is the only country now. The other countries are only for stamping under foot and exploiting. We are only interested in our interests, so the rest of the world can go where the sun don't shine for all we care, as long as we get their money, and their impoverished workers who work for $0.01 per hour. The world is now the businessman's oyster, and they have every tool to get at the pearl.... The world as it is, is every businessman's wet dream.

In fact it's nothing new, this was the spirit in which our country was founded, by Christopher Columbus et. all and our government in the exploitation of the Native Americans (Whatever you want to call them).

Wonder if this applies to the lawmakers family?

[Anonymous Coward]

...or even the family members of the FBI and law enforcement ... God knows most other laws don't.

I'm as "guilty" as most...

[SmirkingRevenge]

I've bought maybe 3 CDs in the past few years and only directly from the artists (usually independantly made) here in Austin. I download music I'm interested in off of Kazaa/eMule and refuse to ever buy the CD if it's an RIAA company.

That said, we _are_ guilty of copyright infringement, and the sharing networks could pretty easily lock out that material. As a software engineer I very much dislike seeing software pirated online and it'd be pretty hypocritical of me to support downloading music but wanting to punish/prevent software piracy.

The point is, we're commiting a federal crime, which falls under FBI jurasdiction, it's pretty hard to contest this. Contest the laws, fine, but give me a good reason this doesn't fall under the FBI's umbrella.

Re:I'm as "guilty" as most...

[wbren]

I'm not questioning their right to prosecute people that distribute copyrighted material. My main problem with this law is: "That would probably authorize them to tell ISPs, âYou also need to give information on users to the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) whenever they ask.â(TM)â I just think there's a lot of room for abuse here...maybe I'm just paranoid.

Re:I'm as "guilty" as most...

[Anonymous Coward]

Back when america wasn't trying to become the most powerful fascist state in the world, copyright violation was only a civil offense, not criminal.

Re:I'm as "guilty" as most...

[Anonymous Coward]

If America really wanted to become the most powerful fascist state in the world chances are you and whatever shithole of a country you currently dwell in would be drifting about in the stratosphere as small, radioactively contaminated particles.

International enforcement?

[Spytap]

What does the F.B.I. plan on doing about those international users of said p2p programs who violate copyright, or is this yet another act of the U.S. government pretending that people don't live outside the U.S.?

Re:International enforcement?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll get Bush to declare them part of the Axis of Evil ... bomb said country ... then award contracts to Haliburton to rebuild that country

Re:International enforcement?

[wbren]

...and then assign the chairperson of the RIAA to write their copyright laws...

Re:International enforcement?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does the F.B.I. plan on doing about those international users of said p2p programs who violate copyright, or is this yet another act of the U.S. government pretending that people don't live outside the U.S.?

Ignore them. Just like they do for overseas rapists, bank robbers, shoplifters and speeding motorists. It's none of the FBI's business what happens in other jurisdictions, why would it be?

Re:International enforcement?

[Anonymous Coward]

america doesnt control the rest of the world. glad u realized it so soon. you seem intelligent.

New Business Opportunity

[bedouin]

Coming soon: Off shore shell accounts with pre-installed CLI p2p clients.

Re:New Business Opportunity

[Funksaw]

If you're serious, I'm in for $2000.

Re:New Business Opportunity

[bedouin]

I would if I had any money myself . . .

Next Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot'ers whine as police officers enforce traffic laws.

Re:Next Article

[psykocrime]

Slashdot'ers whine as police officers enforce traffic laws.

And this is a problem why?

Anybody with a lick of common sense realizes that most traffic laws exist to generate a revenue stream for the government and have almost nothing to do with public safety.

Did you realize that posted speed limits aren't needed, because traffic is pretty much self-regulating? Do you HOW the determine what the speed limit for a given stretch of road is? They monitor speeds over that stretch, and set the actual speed limit to the 85th percentile speed.

Now, you've got the cops aiming cameras at red lights, to catch people who run the red light. Talk about a blatant violation of civil liberties. The government doesn't have any right to watch me at every intersection I travel though, just because I happen to be driving a car. "driving a car" is hardly "probably cause" for anything. Likewise, those "Operation Eagle" checkpoints they do in NC to catch drunk drivers, are so fucking unconstitutional it makes me want to vomit.

Re:Next Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Preach ON!

Re:Next Article

[freeweed]

Do you HOW the determine what the speed limit for a given stretch of road is? They monitor speeds over that stretch, and set the actual speed limit to the 85th percentile speed.

Oh dear god, and this got modded up. I've never heard such a stupid comment on Slashdot (and that's saying a lot).

Look into road safety sometime, and talk to some engineers. They don't just say 'hey, people drive this fast, that's the new limit'. There are many, MANY regulations about what speed is safe, on what type of road, how many lanes, how curvy, how much traffic it gets, is it residential, etc. Engineers test these things, add in weather conditions (ever notice signs that mandate a slower speed when it's icy?), and take some actual vehicles to see just what is safe considering the average person's response time.

Just because you think your civil liberties involve the right to be drunk on the road, and think it's ok to drive 100mph next to a schoolyard, does NOT mean these sorts of laws are all about a 'cash grab'. Don't believe me? Check out highway death statistics after the Feds brought in the national speed limit. The only reason they're not right up there again is the incredible amount of safety equipment we have in our cars these days (mandatory belts - no, this is not a 'cash grab' either, air bags, side impact beams, crumple zones).

I'm about as rabid a civil rights advocate as there is, but sorry, I don't think you have the right to endanger my life by driving far faster than what is considered safe by people that have actually performed crash studies.

Re:Next Article

[Anonymous Coward]

the trouble is the fucks that want to run on someone's ass but as soon as they turn off, they loss the ablety to drive more than ten mph.

Re:Next Article

[delong]

You're wrong, man, wrong! It's THE MAN! They really secretly clock my driving speed wherever I go, and set the speed limits to the 85th percentile. THEY'RE OUT TO GET ME!! There are cameras everywhere, dude, I SEE EM!

The level of paranoia and disinformation I read on this freakin site just blows my mind.

Derek

Re:Next Article

[mrscorpio]

Um, excuse me, but putting cameras on stoplights has EVERYTHING to do with public safety. You had me with the "most traffic laws" because I was thinking to myself that most traffic laws and tickets issued are in regards to speed driven.

Also, your assertion that they don't have the right to put a camera on traffic lights is wrong...the roads and traffic lights are owned by the government, correct? They can't put a device on your car that determines whether you stopped at a traffic signal or not (yet), but it is perfectly reasonable to put a camera on a traffic light.

Also, I tried to find more info on Operation Eagle, but could not find anything in regards to drunk driving. Can you provide a reputable link with more information on this so-called infringing activity? If there is any kind of probable cause (i.e. swerving, etc.) for them pulling you over, then I fail to see the problem with it?

Chris

Re:Next Article

[psykocrime]

Just because you think your civil liberties involve the right to be drunk on the road, and think it's ok to drive 100mph next to a schoolyard, does NOT mean these sorts of laws are all about a 'cash grab'.

I'd argue with you, but since I never said anything about driving drunk or going 100mph near a school zone, I guess I'll leave the honor to whoever said those things.

FBI no, anarchy yes

[spazoid12]

"As if the FBI didn't have their own messes to clean up such as the handling of pre-911 intelligence, FBI agents turned spy (Robert Hanssen), the Los Alamos lab debacle, double agent Mrs. Katrina Leung, need I say more?"

If McDonald's announced it were going to start selling BBQ pork chops, would you say "as if they didn't have their own messes...one time an employee spit in a burger...need I say more?"

Or, maybe you saw a small bug in notepad.exe...quick! Condem all of Microsoft! (ok, maybe)

But, aside from this file-sharing issue, it seems you have an FBI axe you'd like ground to the hilt. I'm sure the FBI is far from perfect. How do you propose it be fixed?

Service Announcement: The text of this post that you've just read is copyright, me, and I have not given you permission to read it. You are in violation of my copyright and the FBI will be raiding you soon. Thank you.

Re:FBI no, anarchy yes

[Anonymous Coward]

So 911 was spit in a burger?

Re:FBI no, anarchy yes

[Anonymous Coward]

If McDonald's announced it were going to start selling BBQ pork chops, would you say "as if they didn't have their own messes...one time an employee spit in a burger...need I say more?"

If this was following a spate of food poisoning incidents from McDonalds' products on a serious scale then I think a lot of people would see a problem with them putting resources into a new product launch instead of sorting out their problems.

Re:FBI no, anarchy yes

[spazoid12]

no, certainly not.

but, i haven't been convinced that there's much the FBI could have done to prevent 911. actually, of course, they could have. with the combination of some obvious mistakes not happening, some insightful connections of seemingly unrelated events by a sharp agent, and some luck.

the FBI doesn't want to believe that they have any insightful bright agents, though, but does believe that these connections of seemingly unrelated events are critical...thus the end of the Bill of Rights with Total Information Awareness and scourges like it.

what surprises me, though, is that terrorism doesn't plague our society on a massive scale...that of a massive unleashing of tiny acts. little things that are relatively easy to get away with, require almost no planning, are cheap to implement. arson, vandalism, etc. The gas meter at the highschool might be blown up with a pipe bomb...what are the chances of anyone witnessing? Things like that would be tough to stop. I don't see why terrorism is only considered terrorism if it's a large scale attack that truly incites a feeling of terror. wouldn't you also feel a sense of terror if there was some small incident in neighborhood all across America on a daily basis?

I'm super glad terrorists don't seem to be very bright. Let them try for the bigger attacks, and let's hope that those are easier to anticipate and prevent!

Never!

[SharpFang]

Bill wouldn't let anyone to share their files! Bill keeps his monopoly with a strong hand and no matter what, FBI, government, hackers, competition - nobody's allowed to share their files, at least using Bill's OS!

Encrypted P2P?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know about this?

Re:Encrypted P2P?

[cryptor3]

That's probably not sufficient. Ideally, you also want to couple that with an anonymizing layer, such as AnonNet describes.

I can already picture it

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people have acquaintances in the FBI (family members, friends-since-6th-grade, in-laws, ex-colleagues, etc...). I can see them asking for what is, basically, near-harmless P2P services.

FBI and File-Sharing

[Orne]

Don't you think the FBI has already proved that they are the last organization you want policing sharing? Lest we forget, it was not too long ago that they their own problems with sharing their files as it is...

"After an internal FBI probe also released today sharply criticized the manner in which the Clinton White House obtained more than 400 such files from the FBI. The internal inquiry by the FBI's general counsel found that the White House's request between December of 1993 and February of 1994 were without justification and amounted to "egregious violations of privacy." "

Re:Once again I feel compelled to ask...

[arbitrary nickname]

Mod parent up! The Internet does also exist outside the 'land of the not-so-free-anymore'...

Bill Let File Sharing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope Bill speaks better english than that title!

WTF is slashdot talking about here?

Los Alamos lab debacle?

[mlush]

"the Los Alamos lab debacle, "

Was that when some twit wrote a story about breaking into a Los Alamos outhouse

or is it something more serious?

Sweet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the FBI can use this as a lever to finally nab all those people out there who violate the warning at the beginning of a movie by making a copy for themselves.

You know their failure on that front has been nagging at them since the advent of home movies

Well, a reason...

[SharpFang]

I guess they won't touch average Joe Geek for file sharing, but if they see you are suspect, they may arrest you, just for this bogus reason that you shared your files and start some more serious investigation with you legally in jail.

In darkest times of communist terror in Poland, there was a common saying "Don't worry, they can find a paragraph for everyone". Seems this law is just one more of such paragraphs to "match everyone".

Re:Well, a reason...

[lpret]

Yeah, I'm waiting for there to be a link drawn between P2P and terrorism. Then every user would be considered "supporting terrorism" and under the PATRIOT Act we could be tried in a military tribunal without access to the "evidence" against us and be tried as an enemy of the state.

I'm not the paranoid type, but it really isn't that far of a jump.

Robert Hanssen's posts on usenet

[mr.henry]

This one is my favorite. Grab your clean up rags, gentlemen.

USA RULES

[neoform]

hey, shame the FBI has no right to tell me what to do, what with me not living in the US..

Re:USA RULES

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame that other countries are starting to crack down on copyright infringements as hard if not harder than the US. Pretty soon it won't matter where you live.

And I'll only give you one guess who's driving that train.

Re:USA RULES

[Ricin]

More and more countries, like mine (the Netherlands) are allowing the FBI and/or NDA to do undercover operations inside their country without any review of evidence or wheter or not it was provoked, and they happily let their citizens be shipped to the USA for trial while assuming that US trial fairness and defendant's rights are automatically being taken care of properly by the US.

Mostly drugs (XTC) related so far but the stick can hit any dog and also, or perhaps even most likely, the bystander.

Very very bad and I loathe my clueless or moralless or backboneless govt for it.

Re:USA RULES

[Ricin]

I meant DEA not NDA all these acronyms...

Re:USA RULES

[Anonymous Coward]

Been reading a little bit too much SCO news lately, eh?

Don't they already have this power?

[weston]

This seems like it's already in their domain. Don't they already have the authority to intercept and monitor electronic communications? Have jurisdiction over interstate transfers/transactions/deliveries? Can prosecute cases with more than $5,000 damage (which, thanks to inflated estimates, copyright infringement cases are)? And hey, it's a feature of most p2p apps that they essentially open up your computer for inspection for the potentially offending material, so it's not like they need to legislate around unreasonable search/seizure laws.

I really don't see what extra powers the FBI needs here.

Re:Don't they already have this power?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't see what extra powers the FBI needs here.

At the moment they're not permitted to actually execute the suspects.

Re:Don't they already have this power?

[Mesozoic44]

I really don't see what extra powers the FBI needs here.

I think that the 'extra' is political legitimacy. Most people think that existing laws are for catching criminals and they don't see themselves as criminal. Once the FBI gets the 'extra' they will prosecute a few cases with a lot of publicity. It's just a tactic for moving the privacy/criminality boundary one step at a time.

College students watch out

[interiot]

Will search engines on college campuses be policed by the FBI as well?

Bad FBI things only ever get publicised

[Richard_at_work]

right? Whatever happened to the millions of cases the FBI solved, or prevented crimes, or caught murderers? You never hear about them, so you only get this picture of a bumbling group of people wearing FBI coats.

Re:Bad FBI things only ever get publicised

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but they spent millions so Scully and Mulder could search for extraterrestrials and they never found shit.

Re:Bad FBI things only ever get publicised

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the FBI hasn't solved millions of cases, hasn't prevented much crime, hasn't caught many murderers.

We have more unsolved crimes than ever before, more drugs, more crime, more people in prison, more criminals on the street, etc., than ever before.

When it comes to the war on terror, the FBI bungled all the warnings they were supposed to deliver to Bush and have imprisoned over a hundred times as many innocent people as they have caught 'terrorists'. The FBI has pushed for the dissolution of more and more civil liberties for no reason other than to increase their own power.

The FBI has on its list of achievements:

- put kids in federal prison for copying programs
- put kids in federal prison for sharing music
- used your tax dollars to help Microsoft
- installed their 'Magic Lantern' spyware on every Windows XP box now sold
- gotten all major virus scanners to turn a blind eye when it comes to detecting FBI spyware

All in all, the FBI is not a government agency that serves the people. Rather, the FBI is the police force that corporations and the government use to crack down on the populace. Funded by your tax dollars, of course.

Re:Bad FBI things only ever get publicised

[moncyb]

Maybe because your site gives a 403 Forbidden error! ;-)

Re:Bad FBI things only ever get publicised

[Richard_at_work]

My security is so tight, even my webpage is restricted to me only :P (damn, better fix that !)

Please to be writing clearly

[ehintz]

Bill Would Let FBI Police File-Sharing

This is what happens when you let Mahir write the headlines...

I know what they mean, but I still have mental images of the "FBI Police" sitting around eating donuts and p2p-ing porn...

Re:Please to be writing clearly

[Dr Reducto]

Way to go, I was this close to making it my job to download porn!

What, you'd wanna live under Il Duce?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember facism? I don't see you moving to Cuba or China, eh? Nah, you know damn well you enjoy living under the blanket of capitalism and everything it's built up. You may decry capitalism, but your actions dictate otherwise.

Re:What, you'd wanna live under Il Duce?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, your claim doesn't make sense. Capitalism is an economic system. Facism/Corporatism is a political system. They are different. You can have a capitalist economic system and a Fascist political system. Indeed, you could have a capitalist economic system with a socialist political system. Let me guess-- you're an engineer or scientist who never took a single course outside of your discipline above the 200 level in college, right? Don't go making claims and criticising people on subjects about which you know little. This is not a discussion about computer architecture.

Moreover, one can easily criticise the system under one which lives. I can very easily claim that I enjoy living somewhere even if I disagree with the changes in the political system under which I live. There is no conflict, and in order for my criticism to be insightful and important I need not leave the country.

Re:What, you'd wanna live under Il Duce?!?

[riko_at_anubics]

Sure, but one who likes fascism is called a fascist. Still, since you have read many books, you should know that what the fascist declared in their S Sepolcro Manifesto, they did never do it. Just because they ruled with the mony of the capitalists. And in the beginning (before they went to power) Fascism was anti-capitalist (also anti-communist, but that's another story). Moreover I can tell you corporatism is a slightly different thing. And a part from this, I can tell you it does not work. How I can? I'm Italian. I know people who lived in those times, and everibody who was not a member of the Fascist Party had to buy food at the black market, since there was no food for them. The Fascist didn't gave them enough. Still the Fascists themselves could eat. How? They gave the population almoist anything so they could have almost everything.

Re:What, you'd wanna live under Il Duce?!?

[delong]

That's because these firebrands don't understand the meaning of Mussolini's "corporatism." It didn't mean corporations running the State, it meant the subjugation of the economy through government "Corporations" or trade boards. Central planning, in other words. This is why the ordinary Italian had trouble getting bread: the mechanics of the economy had been distorted by government controls.

German fascism illustrates this quite well. Corporate officers served at the whim of the State; working hours, wages, pensions, and other benefits were government mandated; there were extensive price controls; production was planned by central party committee; the monetary system was centralized - interest was abolished and private bankers imprisoned. Industry and labor were directly regulated by the State through industry and labor boards modeled after Mussolini's fascist "corporations."

Derek

The Corporation's....

[g00z]

The Corporation's interests must be protected above the people's. After all, where else are you going to get campaign contributions and "gifts" from?

Nuff Said.

Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

The feds are trying to uphold the law!
Whatever will we do?

Re:Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fuck 'em and their law!"

In case you haven't heard...laws are meant to be broken.

Next generation P2P

[headkase]

What the next generation of P2P needs is the ability for it's users to be anonymous. This could be acomplished by routing all P2P packets through at least one third party node. The third party node is the only node that knows the IP addresses of the two sides and it does not keep any logs. In addition, why not encrypt all network traffic as well.
Of course as soon as a viable solution exists that makes people anonymous on the internet, no doubt the congress-critters will pass legislation to make it illegal.

Re:Next generation P2P

[vegetablespork]

This is sort of what freedom.net was like, before they viscerated their product a suspiciously short time after 9/11. (They claim it was lack of a market, and not pressure. I think that's bullshit.)

Every connection went through one to three anonymizing servers, which encrypted the traffic and passed it along to the next server (if applicable) or to the destination. Using one server provided mere obfuscation--using three provided "terrorist grade" anonymity, especially if you constructed the chain so that they were all in different countries.

The source to the node software was made available by ZKS (there was even a /. article about it). Perhaps it could be modified to support P2P protocols and put into action (albeit slowly). Of course, as with Freenet, the last server in the chain from which contraband content comes will be toast if it's on shore.

Re:Next generation P2P

[Anonymous Coward]

Freenet already does something better than that, as does Peek-a-Booty, Mixmaster, etc.

Third party node must not *know* that it knows the IP addresses of the source and destination. You need for the relays not to know that the endpoints they are communicating with are *not* relays.

That, also, is only group-anonymous like Freenet - it's easy to get a list of IP addresses of people running Freenet all the time (of course, it's really hard to find out what, if anything, they do with it). Make the network itself illegal, demonize it by pointing to (possibly fictional) criminals-paedophiles-and-terrorists (it's the new "communists"!), persecute everyone who runs it.

So research into the p2p system that assumes that the internet is REALLY hostile is ongoing - assume hostile ISPs, hostile transparent proxies, bad guys running Judas nodes trying every feasible attack against the network, legal DoS of bootstrap nodes...

The best system at the moment doesn't need any centralised host discovery process. It's difficult to scan a machine and find out that it runs it, and it's very difficult to run a honeypot node - especially for very long. Furthermore, the network is completely group-anonymous even with 40% of the entire network as undiscovered Judas nodes, and possibly more. Releases swarm, are mirrored, and are digitally signed, making publishers strongly psuedonymous. Psuedonyms can pass private communications between each other with neither really knowing who the other is (to protect against mitm attacks, a web of trust is used). It's like freenet, but smarter. Latency is roughly controllable, traffic and timing analysis is insanely difficult - and the protocol isn't even finished.

And there's a lot of academic interest in such systems. There's a lot of hard problems to solve, some with very creative solutions, some with very very creative avoidance.

Don't give me none of that juris-my-diction crap

[Jenolen]

Hmm... So now we are going to attempt to give the FBI the power to enforce something on a medium that has no physical boundries, between parties that may or may not be in the same state, country, or continent...

All we really have to do is find a friend in a foreign country to run a linux box and route our packets through his box while downloading muzak. Just make sure his government isn't watching everything that goes by... (Or they do but don't give a shit.)

Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[reallocate]

Wholesale copying of the entirety of hundred or thousands of titles and making those copies available to an audience of strangers across the entire globe is not, and never has been, considered fair use.

If you copy your entire CD collection and serve it up to the world, that's infringement, not fair use.

The only thing that the great crowd of filesharing whiners is going to get for the rest of us is a bunch of costly and annoying technical copy prohibition schemes.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing that the great crowd of filesharing whiners is going to get for the rest of us is a bunch of costly and annoying technical copy prohibition schemes.

All of which will fail :)

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[Snaller]

Wholesale copying of the entirety of hundred or thousands of titles and making those copies available to an audience of strangers across the entire globe is not, and never has been, considered fair use.

Given that the copyright law is unfair (and amoral but that's a different matter) it may very well be fair for people to do this.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[Jad LaFields]

Given that the copyright law is unfair (and amoral but that's a different matter) it may very well be fair for people to do this.

So you think that copyright law is "unfair" and "amoral" (I disagree, but that's a different post), and you suggest that instead of hurting the people who made copyright law unfair -- the legistators -- you advocate we all do something that will hurt people such as the studio sound boys, the CD factory foreman, the artists, etc., as well as -- as the parent pointed out -- us, because we'll have to put with more and more draconian copy protection schemes. Riiiiiggghhhht.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

If you copy your entire CD collection and serve it up to the world, that's infringement, not fair use

If I 'rip' a CD into mp3's that's fair use.

If I 'rip' a CD into mp3's for a friend, that's also fair use.

WHat if I don't know the person, but rip a cd for them? THat is (or should be) fair use. That's also basically what P2P is.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[jedidiah]

Sure it has. Radio broadcasters do it all the time.

Copyright is meant to enrich authors, artists, and inventors: not cartel middle men. Even with an ASCAP protection payment, the original authors never get their cut.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[Zigg]

WHat if I don't know the person, but rip a cd for them? THat is (or should be) fair use. That's also basically what P2P is.

I keep seeing this (I assume you're the same AC repeatedly posting it), but it makes zero sense to me. Please enumerate the steps you are taking to make sure you are not duplicating the MP3s you ripped in your P2P environment to someone who is not a legitimate owner of the copyrighted material.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[reallocate]

No, they won't necessarily fail. The weakness of copy protection schems of the past was the need to make them work on a solo, un-networked machine. Today's networked environments mean it is possible to keep would-be copiers at bay. For example, by coding into an original file the intelligence to remember the identity of the machine onto which it was first copied. If an attempt is subsequently made to duplicate that original copy onto another networked machine, the file sends an alert to the copyright holder and then deletes itself. Code that performs these tasks code be embedded with the data that comprised the music in such a fashion that any attempt to disassemble or remove it would result in damage to the music.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[reallocate]

Bogus and lame. Broadcasters pay royalties on the music they play. (And they broadcast it. They don't put copies on a server and invite the world to make as many copies as it wants.) Fair use doesn't come into it.

If "cartel middle men" are getting rich, it's because musicians sign over their rights because they, too, want to be rich. If greed and ambition mean they don't bother to read contracts before they sign them, blame that on their stupidity, not on copyright.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[reallocate]

Fair use is a legal concept that has well-defined parameters. Do a little Googling on "copyright" and "Fair Use" and you'll quickly find what you need to know.

What you may or may not think fair use "ought" to be is irrelevant. In most cases, duplicating the entirety of a work and distributing it is not considered fair use. Nor does the alw apply different standards depending on the techology in question. In other words, using p2p to distribute your CD's is the equivalent to making copies of every book you own and then trying to sell them.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

If you copy your entire CD collection and serve it up to the world, that's infringement, not fair use.

Well, at least you didn't call it "stealing".

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

... hurt people such as the studio sound boys, the CD factory foreman, the artists, etc., ....

Except for the artists, the rest of the people you cite in effect are part of the oppressive industry. So, by your logic, we should leave organized crime alone because of all the employment they cause. Fucking bullshit -- the guys at the top are just using the people on the line as human shields.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[fucksl4shd0t]

For example, by coding into an original file the intelligence to remember the identity of the machine onto which it was first copied. If an attempt is subsequently made to duplicate that original copy onto another networked machine, the file sends an alert to the copyright holder and then deletes itself. Code that performs these tasks code be embedded with the data that comprised the music in such a fashion that any attempt to disassemble or remove it would result in damage to the music.

You're overlooking fair use, though. Simply speaking, fair use says that I have a right to make as many copies for personal use as I want. I have no less than 3 computers that are MINE MINE MINE hooked up to the network most of the time, and they're not always on the same network (one's a laptop). Fair use says that I have a right to copy the music I legally purchased onto all three of those computers. Your scheme prevents that. That is the main weakness, and the main complaint. While I don't necessarily think that P2P is right or wrong, I do think that the wrong place to stop it is at the point where someone rips a CD onto their machine. I don't know that there is a right place to stop it, because I don't know that P2P is wrong, even if it's main purpose is to pirate music/movies/software/etc. Pandora's box has been opened, and it won't be closed. It's time to redefine morality and just deal with it.

DISCLAIMER: I don't think there's anything wrong with P2P being used for copyright infringement. Copyright is a two-way street, and one part of the deal isn't being upheld by the corporations responsible, therefore there is nothing wrong if we decide not to honor our part of the deal.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[Alsee]

Copyright is meant to enrich authors, artists, and inventors

100% false. You know it's bad when the copyright lobby's opponent's arguments are based on the copyright lobby's own propaganda.

Copyright is intened to enrich the public and the public domain.

Copyright was created for the sole purpose of motivating people to create and motivating them to share their creations and for those creations to fall into the public domain enriching us all. The fact that anyone makes any money off of copyights is incidental.

-

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[Snaller]

So you think that copyright law is "unfair" and "amoral" (I disagree, but that's a different post),

It is. Its sick for a group of people to expect to be paid over and over and over for work they have done but once. With what right would be plumber expect to get paid each time i use the faucet he fixed once? With what right does Madonna expect to get paid each time they play a song of hers? Take a movie like the Matrix, a great deal of people worked on that. Almost all of them were paid once, as is fair - but a tiny group expect to get paid again and again add infinitum. It seems that even Keanu Reeves feels a bit bad about this amoral system, and has decided to give some of his loot to other who worked on the film â" others who only get paid once. If one doesnâ(TM)t think this is an amoral system its probably because one is getting money from the system by not working. ...and you suggest...

No. ...you advocate...

No.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[reallocate]

>> ... fair use says that I have a right to make as many copies for personal use as I want.

I've had recourse to copyright lawyers over fiar use issues on more than one occasion and not one of them has ever indicated that fair use encompasses unlimited copies made available for global access. Copies for personal use is one thing; serving those copies up to the world is another thing altogeter.

>> Copyright is a two-way street...

No, it isn't. It's a right that the Constitution guarantees to the creators of a work. You aren't part of the "deal". There is no deal. There is no agreement. Anyone -- individual or business -- who creates something owns it and controls its use until they decide to sell/license/give away all or some of their rights to it. The only possible way for you to come into the picture is to acquire some of those rights.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[swv3752]

Wrong. We come into the picture when you copyright something in the United States of America. By we, I mean Citizens of the United States of America. The deal is you get to have control over a particular peice of work for a limited time to encourage you to come up with new ideas.

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[reallocate]

Yeah, I know what copyright is for. How does knowing what it's for justify behavior that has more n common with selling counterfeit watches than honest sharing?

Re:Wholesale FileSharing Isn't Fair Use

[swv3752]

I would put it closer to dumping a bunch of tea myself.

If Kazaa & Gnutella go away....

[kramer2718]

Does anyone know of any good anonymizing P2P file-sharing software out there? I remember hearing something about it once, but I can't quite remember...

Re:If Kazaa & Gnutella go away....

[prepp]

that would ofcourse be "WASTE" i got a mirror of it up at signal.fearmuffs.net

runs just dandy under wine.

but you have to take into consideration that if you encrypt the traffic, sure they cant see what you are mangling through the routers BUT they will see that you are still mangling a shitload of traffic.

Re:If Kazaa & Gnutella go away....

[Dr Reducto]

but you have to take into consideration that if you encrypt the traffic, sure they cant see what you are mangling through the routers BUT they will see that you are still mangling a shitload of traffic.
Thank god for the American legal system. You actually need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone commited a crime before you can declare them guilty. And remember: Innocent until proven guilty? They cannot use hearsay and conjecture to fine you 4+ billion dollars worth of files.
Even though hearsay and conjecture are kinds of evidence, they cannot by themselves be used to convict you.

double agent Mrs. Katrina Leung

[Anonymous Coward]

chickety china the chinese chicken

News!! 2 more planes hit 2 more towers in New York

[Captain Kirk]

Al Quaida have carried another attack. 3000 dead. FBI agents plan to carry out a full investigation shortly after they jail 14 year old Tommy who is suspected of piracy and crimes against public decency. "Sicko baby" said Officer Pat "He was redistibuting filth, including a full Madonna CD. Makes me want to vomit." Asked to comment on the new Al Quaida atrocity, Pat said "Its just another couple of planes. Been there and seen that before. First, we gotta take down Suzy in Queens first - word on the street is that she's sharing hard-core Justin Timberlake! We gotta protect the kids from that threat."

Welome to the land of the free and home of the brave.

A thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the *first* problem (as I see it) is that this A LOT to police. To start with there are LOTS of people involved in P2P. Next, the FBI would need to determine to reasonable extent that the material is infringing. While a lot of things on Kazaa are illegal, not everything is.

As far as I know, the FBI already investigates software piracy claims (at least in the sense of people making illegal copies available). However, they obviously have not completely stopped that (far from it really). They didn't even have a handle on it before the big P2P apps came along. Sure, it was probably never so easy as typing in "free microsoft windows" in a web search engine, but you could always find things if you knew where to look (IRC comes to mind in the days before more automated P2P). I'm skeptical that P2P enforcement would be any different. If anything, it would be harder to deal with, because of the distributed nature of lots of networks. This isn't just a matter of shutting down a warez FTP site.

Also important is that the FBI's enforcement capabilities end at US borders. Of course other governments could follow the US example and take similar steps with their law enforcement agencies. However, I just don't see countries like China or Russia really cracking down on P2P users, judging from their responses to software copyright infringement.

Maybe at first, a lot of people would get scared enough, stop using P2P, and things would go more underground. However, the available content would not drop off as dramatically, because there would still be lots of overseas nodes to draw files from

For/against?

[Anonymous Coward]

"As if the FBI didn't have their own messes to clean up such as the handling of pre-911 intelligence, FBI agents turned spy (Robert Hanssen), the Los Alamos lab debacle, double agent Mrs. Katrina Leung, need I say more?"

So, you're for or against this? I think federal oversight could be good because these guys aren't so competent. Plus, they refuse to hire geeks unless they have field experience, so they'll look like the proverbial monkey fucking a football trying to watch file trading.

So, why *don't* we want them to do this?

Great....

[Greyfox]

Taunt the FBI just before they get sweeping new powers to police file sharing. They'll be shipping you to Cuba in no time.

We should overturn copyright law.

[Thinkit3]

Then there would be no crime for the FBI to investigate.

Let Them!

[argoff]

To be honest, I don't think technology is on their side. Other than the occasional string up someone and make an example out of them, or the occasional beat someone down who admits it publicly, I think that 99.99% of the population could share information freely and never be touched.

In a way that is the point. The purpose of politics (and less directly government) is that it's better to fight wars with words rather than with blood. But to copy things does not require coercion at all, the rules are not the same, we are not dealing with limited resources where when one person gains another looses. They will not get disenfranchised help, they will not get public support, and they will not get personal fufillment helping a bunch of hollywood brats act like the gestapo.

Re:Let Them!

[GigsVT]

To be honest, I don't think the situation is on their side. Other than the occasional string up someone and make an example out of them, or the occasional beat someone down who admits it publicly, I think that 99.99% of the population could use drugs freely and never be touched.

In a way that is the point. The purpose of politics (and less directly government) is that it's better to fight wars with words rather than with blood. But to buy drugs does not require coercion at all, the rules are not the same, we are not dealing with real crime where when one person gains another loses. They will not get disenfranchised help, they will not get public support, and they will not get personal fufillment throwing a bunch of addicts in jail.

Don't get too worried

[Ars-Fartsica]

The FBI is not the "elite" agency they claim. In three years they couldn't find Eric Rudolph, supposedly (at one time) "enemy number one". It took a local beat cop to do the job.

Its telling that the most auspicious factoid regarding the FBI is that their former leader used to wear dresses.

Re:Don't get too worried

[Anthony Boyd]

Its telling that the most auspicious factoid regarding the FBI is that their former leader used to wear dresses.

My God. Who put a woman in charge of the FBI?!?

;)

Re:Don't get too worried

[JimmytheGeek]

J. Edgar was blackmailed by the Mob by photos of indiscretions with other men. But he had a mania for enforcing straight-laced sex lives for his employees.

What a piece of work.

You are wrong

[Captain Kirk]

The whole idea of a bill in congress is to change the law. That is the point o fthe story.

The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI.

Proud to serve Corporate America.

When profit is God, where is morality?

Re:The Third Way

[LBArrettAnderson]

i'm sorry, i have to put in my 2 cents here...

since when does everyone think they have the "RIGHT" to download software that doesn't belong to them? i do it, but i don't blame the government for trying to stop me. corporations have the RIGHT to charge me for software THEY made. I'll try to get around it any way i possibly can, but the government is only doing its job here. it's not fascism, it's law.

Re:The Third Way

[Ricin]

I don't say anyone has the right to illegally download copyrighted material. In fact I try to discourage people from doing that as it hurts both legitimate file sharing and artists who want to cheaply publish to anyone interested, as well as open source software.

Those people will be targeted as well. Shooting a cannon against a mosquito. Or, if you like, from the POV of the offenders, mobilising the whole city police squad for getting someone who stole an apple .

All the while real big crime, human abuse and terrorism (don't confuse that with proclaimed vision or opinion, people who steep so low are either desperate or for sale for anything or both) can flourish because the FBI has Stasi ambitions.

Now think about how money flows in spending and revenue. Upwards when, downwards when? Someone must benifit. Someone runs the show. There you have corporatism.

Re:The Third Way

[Jad LaFields]

Hear hear!

I download plenty of things that I did not pay for, but I don't try to rationalize my actions with bullshit arguments about 'rights'. What I'm doing is illegal, and possibly immoral. When I speed, I don't get angry at the cop for pulling me over, I knew I was doing something illegal, did it anyway, and got caught.

I may feel that some of the specifics of the speeding laws are off-base, I may feel that some streets have the wrong minimum speeds, but that doesn't mean that I feel that we should tear the whole concept of speeding violations down. Just as I feel that lengths of copyrights, and who can own them and what can be done with them might be wrong, but I still see the good in them (protecting people who make their living by their ideas).

Re:The Third Way

[LBArrettAnderson]

sorry, the metaphor is more like shooting a cannon ball at a basketball in which a mosquito happens to be sitting there.... the mosquito being legit file sharing, the basketball being illegal.

besides, the article says that the FBI is going to MONITOR file sharing, meaning they're not gonna do anything to anyone doing legit sharing.

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Well since when does software BELONG to anyone?

Re:The Third Way

[LBArrettAnderson]

ever since whoever built the software built it. in other words, ALWAYS.

Re:The Third Way

[LBArrettAnderson]

another way you can acquire the right to say software belongs to you is buy PAYING for it.

Re:The Third Way

[Ricin]

QUOTE: sorry, the metaphor is more like shooting a cannon ball at a basketball in which a mosquito happens to be sitting there.... the mosquito being legit file sharing, the basketball being illegal. besides, the article says that the FBI is going to MONITOR file sharing, meaning they're not gonna do anything to anyone doing legit sharing. END QUOTE

OK fair enough but is that a good use of resources and is it the FBIs function in the first place. I think both are nos. National security? Nah. Corportate rule enforcement? Yes. Perhaps their business plans should be modernised instead.

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

since when does everyone think they have the "RIGHT" to download software that doesn't belong to them

Do you send a check to RIAA every time you hear a song on the radio? Every time you see a music video on TV?

Then shut the fuck up.

Re:The Third Way

[jedidiah]

This bill has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the legality or morality of music sharing. It is already well within the jurisdiction of the FBI to go after P2P pirates. The FBI simply doesn't need any civilian micromanagers to authorize them to go after Napterites.

The egregious part of this bill is influence peddlers getting to tell the FBI what it's priorities should be.

If you are only a smalltime briber, the FBI will infact persecute you for the same crap that RIAA and MPAA are perpetrating at this very moment.

Re:The Third Way

[Zigg]

Nice try. Perhaps you've heard of something called "broadcast rights"?

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they will bother to check the individual files on a share, or if they will just autolog anyone who uses a file sharing service, whether it be legimately used or not.

But I still don't like the idea of giving the FBI more power. I mean, if they are supposed to be stopping terrorists, and doing X-file crap, why do we need them to police intangible "property"?

Maybe they should use the good ol' pirate tax for blank media to pay for an agency that stops filesharing or whatnot. Doesn't seem to make much sense to continue widening and widening the scope or organizations such as the FBI or Dept. of Homeland Security until they really are beyond anyone's grasp. Given that they no longer have to verify data, this is just about what I expected to have happen.

It just didn't take as long as I thought it would. Seems to happen more and more as of late.

just my 2 cents.

Re:The Third Way

[saden1]

<>

Are you serious? Legitimate file sharing is not done over P2P services. It is done in shared intranet folders or secure web-based systems. Those kids who setup a some kind of scouring program a while ago in their college had some legitimacy until the whole system was basically being used for sharing mp3 player.

P2P is a front for piracy and theft. I'll admit that I use them but you know what? I'm not delusional about the fact that I'm stealing. If I like something, particularly music, I'll buy it. Truth is though most of the music out there is garbage but here an there you'll have a gem of a song. Once the Apple store becomes universal I'll start buying songs, until then fu RIAA.

Re:The Third Way

[Ricin]

Blatantly said, you'll start worrying when they take away your neighbors.

Re:The Third Way

[Feztaa]

I'm not delusional about the fact that I'm stealing.

Jesus Christ! It is NOT theft! It is copyright infringement! They are two very different things!

Re:The Third Way

[RLiegh]

ftp is p2p
Does that mean that the FBI will be monitoring
ftp://ftp.slackware.com
ftp://ftp.ker nel.org
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org
ftp://ftp.gnu.org
eh?
As far as 'pirating' goes: read here. They're an underground band who actively encourage p2p sharing of their mp3s. If I was in touch w/ any kind of modern music, I'm sure I could find more.

You have to look beyond what the corporate media tells you, instead of buying it lock, stock and barrel.

Re:The Third Way

[Gherald]

...is buy PAYING for it.

No pun intended?

Re:The Third Way

[LBArrettAnderson]

you may be right about it not being the FBI's responsibility, but what other government organization will do it? corporations can't do anything about it... data is data.. and it can be transferred by megabytes every second.. no matter what anyone does you'll be able to get someone else's version of software installed on your computer. they're just gonna screw anyone who does that successfully.

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

It's my "right" because I can do it. Millions of morons buy software and music because they are too stupid to get it for free. Once you pass into the realm of knowledge.... the world is yours for the taking.

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Have fun paying a dollar per song. I'll get mine for free thanks....

Everyone talks about how great iTunes is. But, I think it sucks ass. Why would you pay for something that you can get for free. Once they get you used to paying for it -- they'll raise the prices.

Re:The Third Way

[Zebbers]

ummm
its not a bullshit argument. no, there may be no inherent RIGHT to the product. Likewise there is no inherent RIGHT to protection. The current protection system is corporateserving and corrupt. Illegal != immoral, as you alluded to.

When a cop pulls me over, I understand why they did. But I may not necessarily think what they did is moral. Insofar as it is their job, yes. But there are towns in my state who use traffic tickets as a sole source of profit. Roads are zoned for tickettaking. Roads that arent profitable are not enforced as much. I find this immoral and a waste of my tax money.

The system is fucked. Do you get uneccesarily mad at the messenger? No. But do you take it up the ass like you really deserved it? No. The line needs to be drawn somewhere.

Im curious though...how DO you rationalize your theft?

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

"When I speed, I don't get angry at the cop for pulling me over, I knew I was doing something illegal, did it anyway, and got caught."

When you get caught speeding, you don't have your car confiscated and auctioned off with the money going directly to the police department. You don't face prison sentences, especially not in political concentration camps in Cuba. (Cuba? How come I don't hear any outrage that the US has a concentration camp in Cuba, or ANY business there, inside the borders of our sworn enemy?)

No, when you get caught speeding, you get a ticket. You pay the ticket. Maybe your insurance goes up. That's all.

What we're looking at now is the War on Drugs strategy applied to the entertainment industry.

America's last export...

Re:The Third Way

[2short]

"is it the FBIs function in the first place"

Enforcing Federal laws governing interstate commerce? Uh, yeah, that's pretty much right up the FBIs alley. Good use of resources? I guess you could argue they should have other fish to fry, but if widespread, multi state violation of Federal law isn't handled by the FBI, then who do you sugest? There are several other agencies that deal with National security, and whose charters are more directly to protect it. The FBI gets involved, certainly, but mainly because most National security threats involve some sort of federal law breaking, and becasue they've got some rather stupifying investigative manpower. If you're trying to break in to a government computer system for example, the FBI cares that you're breaking the law, but the NSAs job is to make sure you fail.

If you don't think the laws in question should be enforced, that's a different discussion, but if someone is going to enforce them, seems like the FBI is it.

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

P2P is a front for piracy and theft.

Abuse does not take away use.

-- Thomas Aquinas

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

besides, the article says that the FBI is going to MONITOR file sharing, meaning they're not gonna do anything to anyone doing legit sharing.

Uh huh. Just like they "monitored" selected people in the 60s and didn't do anything to anyone making legit use of their first amendment rights.

Did you have to be lobotomized to get that naive?

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

ftp is p2p
Does that mean that the FBI will be monitoring
ftp://ftp.slackware.com
ftp://ftp.ker nel.org
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org
ftp://ftp.gnu.org
eh?

If so, then I am so fucked -- I just went to ftp.irs.gov to download a copy of the 1040 form. I'll bet when I print it out, it will direct me to turn myself in at the nearest regional office. Those file-sharing, entrapping bastards.

Re:The Third Way

[2short]

"Cuba? How come I don't hear any outrage that the US has a concentration camp in Cuba, or ANY business there, inside the borders of our sworn enemy?"

OT, for what it's worth: We have a perfectly legal lease for the land that base is on. OK, the terms of the lease are stupidly generous, and we negotiated it with a puppet we installed. Despite that, I'm no fan of Castro, don't think our government should be, and see no problem retaining this particular thorn in his side.

I think calling it a concentration camp is to strong, and a disservice to those who have been intered in actual concentration camps. As far as why we have a military prison there: It's convieninetly nearby, yet avoids various pesky legal implications of having the prisoners in the US proper, as well as being nicely isolated from protester/media types. I, for one, am outraged.

Re:The Third Way

[saden1]

Since when is FTP considered P2P? FTP has a server serving up files and whose owner is known. P2P is a spares network of users sharing files among themselves anonymously (so far any ways).

Sorry but FTP doesn't qualify as P2P.

Re:The Third Way

[saden1]

I went to a Target today and was caught shoplifting. I told them I wasn't stealing, just borrowing. I told them that they are two different things.

I have to go back to my cell now, hopefully Bubba won't try to make love to me.

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

"This bill has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the legality or morality of music sharing. It is already well within the jurisdiction of the FBI to go after P2P pirates. The FBI simply doesn't need any civilian micromanagers to authorize them to go after Napterites."

Holy Sh*t! An actual valid analysis! Acnowledgement that music piracy is illegal (morality aside), and that the FBI is the apropriate agency to handle it, but questioning whether they should be forced to prioritize it. Where's your knee jerking man? Don't you realize this is slashdot?

Someone mod this guy up.

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

It really doesn't take much to understand this stuff. Perhaps if you learned to think for yourself it would come to you easier.

1. It is not a concentration camp, calling it that only shows that your argument is emotional and not rational.

2. The US leased the land far before Castro came to power. Given the circumstances of Castros rise to power why would the US give it back?

3. Why would there be outrage the US has a base in Cuba? Who would be outraged? Americans? The rest of the world? The only person that it might bother is Castro himself, and knowbody really cares what third rate dictators think.

4. If a cop thinks that your speeding excessivly he can charge you with some form of dangerous driving, usually a criminal charge with real consequences.

Re:The Third Way

[miu]

besides, the article says that the FBI is going to MONITOR file sharing, meaning they're not gonna do anything to anyone doing legit sharing.

From the article:

The bureau would also develop a warning, with the FBI seal, that copyright holders could issue to suspected violators.

This would result in the FBI giving RIAA (and other industry groups) a nice shiny badge to flash at ISPs. They could also give copyright holders the ability to do proxy calea requests. The excuse for giving RIAA faux law enforcement powers could be that the massive piracy on p2p networks will overwhelm the resources of the FBI, who should be spending their time waging the war on terror.

Check out www.askclea.net for details of what calea entails. Industry groups will certainly abuse this kind of access. Plus, do you really want the FBI to become the enforcement arm of the BSA or RIAA? Don't they have better ways to spend tax money?

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

since when does everyone think they have the "RIGHT" to download software that doesn't belong to them?
Since when does Congress think it has the right to make "intellectual property" rights virtually perpetual? We've been talking about fucked up political systems, but maybe we're just missing the forest for the trees. I can only hope that someday people will look back at this time and rightly deride the politicians of the last century for what they have done to our intellectual property system.

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

another way you can acquire the right to say software belongs to you is buy PAYING for it.

Do you genuinely believe this? If you pay for Microsoft Office do you think it belongs to you?

You're fighting for the wrong side.

Re:The Third Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Supply and demand 101:
The demand for something is always finite.
The potential supply of something that anyone can replicate indefinitely is infinite.
When you divide the finite demand by the infinite supply, you get zero, which would be the reasonable price for software, music, and all other infinitely replicatable materials.
Given that there's an initial non-zero cost to making software you are left with two choices:
A) Impose draconian, fascist controls on the people's freedom to do that which is natural, that is, to replicate that which is inherently and inevitably replicatable.
B) Give up spending that initial cost and make free software, music, movies, as a hobby, for the sheer love of doing it.

We're at a crossroads where we have corporate america corrupting the government in order to make this a fascist country where everyone's under their control with DRM and Palladium and other assorted bouts of idiocy, and on the other side we have the Free Software movement that has shown the world we don't need no stinking corporations since every 14 yr old can learn how to code, or play an instrument, and stuff like that.
Personally I would prefer a B-type world. Which side are you on?

Re:The Third Way

[LBArrettAnderson]

if they don't sell their software, why would they make it in the first place? corporation's goal is to make money. without money this world dies.

Re:The Third Way

[I start fires]

Jesus Christ! It is NOT theft! It is copyright infringement! They are two very different things!

You're right. copyright infringement is WAY more serious than theft.

Re:The Third Way

[nagora]

They are two very different things!

They are different, but not "very". Depriving someone of something they have (property) and something they should have obtained in the future (payment) are nothing like as far apart as you seem to think.

TWW

Re:The Third Way

[Master of Transhuman]

I have news for you - fascism IS law - and vice versa...

Re:The Third Way

[Master of Transhuman]

The Secret Service is already the enforcement arm of the Telcos, as many hackers have discovered and as has been commented on many times before in the literature.

So it is no surprise that the FBI will become the enforcement arm of the RIAA...

Just like a recent post here about how the FBI responds quickly to kiddie porn cases, but ignores cases of ISP hacking unless the loss is in the tens of thousands of dollars...

Not to mention overlooking Al Qaeda pilot training and requesting other agencies to pull out their undercover agents from radical groups plotting the destruction of the Murrah building...

Re:The Third Way

[LBArrettAnderson]

oh that's weird.... so all governments are fascist? what are you complaining about then?

Re:The Third Way

[intermodal]

actually, FTP is just as P2P as kazaa, as is HTTP. Just because it's coming from beathomey2003 instead of microsoft.com doesn't make it any more anonymous. Run ethereal while you run kazaa and prove to me that it won't reveal your IP and theirs, and that you can't find out who is on the other end. The only difference between Kazaa and FTP is that the FTP server is up more consistently and less likely to kill your download.

Re:The Third Way

[Lt Razak]

Pay per play is the industry's goal. Believe me. As soon as DRM is in every component (speakers, etc) then fork over a penny each time you hear/see it.

Re:The Third Way

[jedidiah]

Obviously, the FBI doesn't view Napster style piracy as any real concern. Otherwise, there would be no need for this legislation.

Thus, this calls into question the whole rationale behind making non-commercial piracy a crime to begin with.

It's only a rather recent change.

I don't have the energy to wipe my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

would you do it?

Don't you dare comment!

[GrouchoMarx]

If you're taking the time to write a comment on this story, DON'T. Instead, take that same amount of time to write a one page, reasoned, intelligent letter to your Senators (you have two, you know that?) telling them that you disapprove of this bill, telling them WHY (privacy violation, overextension of copyright, and so forth are good places to start), and encouraging them to work against it. Not tomorrow morning, RIGHT NOW. Get away from that Submit button and go write a letter to someone who could actually do something. Then send it snail mail to their LOCAL office (not DC office), or fax it. (Not email. Many offices don't pay attention to email, although some do.)

I don't want to see any replies to this post. Get away from Slashdot and do something other than whine, or you'll have no one to blame but yourself.

Are you still here? Stop reading and start acting!

Re:Don't you dare comment!

[nomadicGeek]

It would probably help to include a check for their campaign with the letter.

Re:Don't you dare comment!

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has worked for a senator (state, mind you, not federal) I can assure you that letters are read by, and responded to by, interns. How do I know? I worked as an intern, and that's what I did.

The senator never read any of the letters. Not any. Not one. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Zip.

He read the paper. He met with and spoke to only people who could create jobs. (Not a bad thing, mind you, but rather one-track-minded.) If you couldn't increase the business in his little zone, you didn't get any attention.

This senator was one of the nicer ones that I have met, too, but the sheer volume of mail was overwhelming for even five interns. It took five file tall cabinets to store a year's worth of letters and their replies. There were a lot of file cabinets.

I can't imagine that writing letters to federal senators (who must get thousands more than state senators) could ever be effective. I sure hope someone can prove me wrong someday, but I haven't met that person yet.

Re:Don't you dare comment!

[Anonymous Coward]

Post-date the check until after election day, and stop payment if they've taken no action. Isn't that how the system works?

Re:Don't you dare comment!

[mdielmann]

I don't have to write my senators - I don't have any, American ones anyway (and the ones I do have aren't elected, so wouldn't listen to me anyway...). I just get to laugh at the escapades the Americans get to go through. After all, most industrialized nations have gone through this in the last 6 years, or will in the next 6. Hmmm, when I put it that way, it doesn't seem so funny...

Real CD trade

[t_allardyce]

No i think they should start at the home - FBI stakeouts should raid teens who lend cd's to their friends. These crack-houses of teen music sharing need to be shut down. This sort of crime has been going on way longer than modern internet file sharing. Infact ever since consumer availiable music and video recordings were availiable people have been illigally "lending" eachother copies. This sort of crime has got to stop. Theres no easy way to police file trading without getting caught up in all sorts of messy 1st amendment, freedom of this and that laws so i think the FBI should concentraite on the more tangable, phyisical and "real" cd swapping going on. Thats just my opinion

Re:Real CD trade

[Uber Banker]

Why do teens lend certificates of deposit?

Re:Real CD trade

[Anonymous Coward]

whoever moderated this parody Insightful must be hooked on a very strong ANTI-crack.

Re:Don't give me none of that juris-my-diction cra

[IdleLay]

In case you missed the news, America is now an empire and there is no such thing as sovereign countries anymore as far as a Federal Agency is concerned. The physical boundaries that the FBI now worked by is no longer defined by borders, but rather it is defined by the ozone.

I use P2P only for legal stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah!

More RIAA cost-shifting

[Oloryn]

This strikes me as a continuation of the cost-shifting that began when sufficient levels of copyright violation were made 'criminal'. The cost of prosecuting a civil case is borne by the plaintiff (i.e. the RIAA). The cost of prosecuting a criminal case is borne by the taxpayer. Hence the criminalisation of copyright violation caused the costs of prosecuting those violations to be shifted from the RIAA et al to the taxpayer.

This is the same type of thing. The RIAA et al faces fairly high costs in trying to deal with P2P networks. Putting the FBI in charge of policing P2P networks means the taxpayer will be funding those investigations instead of the RIAA.

Re:More RIAA cost-shifting

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

With all the money the RIAA is bringing in from settlements involving college students and other people who can't afford to fight their shaky accusations, they should have plenty to keep their lawsuit machine running.

Monstermedia owns the world

[Pacer]

Freenet is coming along nicely ...

It won't help when the police state, at the behest of the corporate feudalists, obtains broad and sweeping authority to censor and tap every access point to every node on the information superhighway ... but at that point I will have taken up arms and won't much care about expanding my music library.

When diligent-but-not-superior FBI agents -- lacking anything even as important a private marijuana bust to attend -- grab IPs and bully ISPs into divulging addresses, thence to send FBI-letterhead warnings, etc. etc., Freenet (or any other anonymous encrypted data-storage system) may prove an awkward nut to crack.

Eh, we'll see. No sympathy on my part for MonsterMedia, and I don't want to hear any bullshit about "the artists." Talented and creative people have been successful since the dawn of civilization and certainly since before the recording industry showed up.

But it's been about six years since MP3 came along and I am getting tired of having this argument with the self-righteous and well-behaved.

Pacer

"Not until the workers control the means of production will social equity be achieved!"

$10,000 rule

[fliplap]

While not an "offical" rule, it is generally regarded that the FBI will not pursue a case unless at _LEAST_ $10k in damages was done. For you normal people and small businesses, this means $10k in _actual_ damages. For example, I believe credit card numbers are given a weight and it takes so many of them to get the FBI to investigate a case of a cracker stealing them. For you little people this does not include the time you wasted dealing with this. However, if you were a big business then it of course does.

As for this case, the $10k rule doesn't apply since this insane value (up to $250,000? iirc) has been placed on copyright violations. Perhaps if the FBI valued a "stolen" song on what it is actually worth we wouldn't have this problem.

On top of the insane overvaluing of copyright violations there is the fact that the law doesn't state copyright violation as theft, they didn't actually lose anything. So lets assume that a 15 song CD costs $15 (not that this is accurate). Then a stolen song from the CD should be worth $1, oh for fun we'll say it was the one good song on the album and give it a $2 value. So it would take 5000 of the best songs on 5000 cds to make the FBI even look at the case under normal circumstances.

Then one would think, wait, $10k worth of damages wasn't actually done. No one was actually deprived of anything besides what they thought they were due. So then we end up with another problem, how much are they actually worth? It gets very complicated and basiclly comes down to what we all knew all along, some is getting bought off.

Re:$10,000 rule

[The Tyro]

Love your sig... one of the funniest I've ever seen on Slashdot.

Re:$10,000 rule

[zakezuke]

I think the biggest problem wouldn't nessicarly be the dollar value established for tracks, but rather the fact that I'm sure the FBI if given the mandate would do a good job, a damn good job. Being an organization of justice and following guidelines of due process, the FBI would be most maticlious regarding fingering online pirates. This would include

1. Scanning the P2P networks for titles
2. Downloading tracks [speed limited to the target user's upstreem]
3. Verifying the tracks being authentic
a) Listening to the track
b) digital fingerprinting establishing the specific release the track is from
c) verifying that the copyright holder had indeed not intended this track

4. Storage of this information per american, when value hits pre-determined amount issue warning

5. If threthold of warnings have been issued, forward all pertentant data to enforcement departments.

Assuming we are talking exclusivly music, which it makes it much easier for conversation, the value of the manpower will exceed the value of the track, which presently is rated at .99cents per unit based on apple itunes rates.

While I'm sure this process could be automated to a large degree, we're talking huge amounts of bandwidth consumed, huge databases, a need for a bigger staff.

---

I do not believe it's in the best intrest of the US federal goverment to fund such a venture. I do believe the cost to persue this would be in excess of any dollar value claimed as a loss.

I honestly believe that the FBI has better things to do with it's time.

Re:$10,000 rule

[kcbrown]

As for this case, the $10k rule doesn't apply since this insane value (up to $250,000? iirc) has been placed on copyright violations. Perhaps if the FBI valued a "stolen" song on what it is actually worth we wouldn't have this problem.

What the $10K rule really means is that either the damaged party can prove they actually lost more than that as a result of the crime, or the damaged party has decided to pay the FBI (or, more precisely, the appropriate people within the FBI, and all under the table, of course) more than $10K to get the case taken care of.

And now suddenly things like the Sklyarov case make much more sense, don't they?

Tax Payers

[Ender77]

Is this where our Tax Paying money is going? Is this why we have the FBI? Funny, I thought it was to keep murderers and rapists off the street, you know...DANGEROUS CRIMINALS. I didn't know that they were going to go after the millions of TEENAGERS who are downloading the latest song off the net.

I must give the RIAA credit though, they finally realized that they could not afford the bill to keep suing people with no money so they bri...er gave campaign contributions to some congressman to make the tax payers pay the bill. Something about the sleaziness of all this that you have to admire.

What will the FBI do though? The FBI likes to go after people with MONEY or is a high profile person. The majority of users donâ(TM)t fit either of those categories. The FBI will make a big show of going after people at first but one they find out the joys of WHACK-A-MOLE P2P they will only go after the big fish like the riaa is doing anyway.

I hope this bill donâ(TM)t pass but I am too pessimistic to believe otherwise

Bill Would Let FBI Police File-Sharing

[borl]

Who's this Bill then?

Read the whole page before moderating.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just a cut and paste of someone else's comment much further up the page.

How the hell can you moderate if you don't bother to read everything?

Re:Read the whole page before moderating.

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw one of these the other day when I was moderating. It's a new tactic by some joker who finds a post that has already been modded up. He just copies and pastes it as an AC and it gets modded up again. He almost got me too. But, I saw the other post and marked him as "Redundant" instead.

Moderators should be on the lookout for this new scam!

Correction:

[Pacer]

I should have said

"Not until the workers control the means of distribution will social equity be achieved".

Cheers.

FBI failures

[autopr0n]

I really fail to see the point in attacking the FBI. Obviously they have problems, but if we removed all authority from all law enforcement agencies that problems, there would be no cops at all.

The price of Freedom ...

[bizitch]

is eternal vigilance ...

The problem with Freedom is - you never know what people will actually do with it ... like invent a decentrallized p2p network and then trade files with each other.

Stay tuned - the war continues ....

give me a break!

[pair-a-noyd]

Those stupid bastards can't stop dumb ass crack monkeys from selling crack, most of these fat doughnut gobbling morons can't even spell "compooter"..

Like they are going to know what to do....
Right...
Hey! Was that a monkey that just flew out of my ass??!!

This is probably what they were talking about...

[DesScorp]

They're almost certainly refering to the Wen Ho Lee case, which is still very controversial. Apparently, Chinese intelligence had penetrated the Los Alamos lab an obtained secrets pertaining to our nuclear weapons program (the Chinese had made a quantum leap in only ten years or so, and much of the work in this period appeared to be very similar to ours in some respects). The investigation focused on Lee, who is ethnic Chinese, a logtime employee at the Los Alamos labs, and who had made at least one trip to mainland China previously. His arrest and treatment seemed to be bungled, and the FBI got a black eye over it. Some people adamantly maintain that Lee was indeed a spy, but there was insuffcient evidence, and detractors held this as an example of incompetence and racism in the FBI.

Details can be found here.

Sade

[executebusiness.com]

I went and saw Sade in concert only after hearing an mp3 of hers. My wife and I would NEVER have done that without first hearing her latest music. She's come very far since the eighties.

The corporate machine is not fascist, or totalitarian. It's greedy, is all. The dummies who want to kill p2p are just shooting themselves in the foot because they aren't smart enought to realize that it BOOSTS the ecconomy. Come on Harvard, where are the papers to back this up!?!

The RIAA/MPAA won't be happy until...

[QCompson]

they have driven all of the CD-R manufacturers out of business (not to mention the sale of 120 gig HDs...)

Here's a technique:

[roystgnr]

If a random stranger off the internet can download an entire copyrighted song from you, you're hardly within your fair use rights, are you? All the FBI has to do is connect to file sharing networks themselves and download+save the copyrighted data as evidence. The only hard part is then tying an IP address to a prosecutable person.

If they enforced this in the right way: at least 10% of the largest violators caught and subjected to a few hundreds of dollars of fines, like speeding tickets, then I'd be in favor of it. Note that for this to be reasonable a "violator" is someone who is actually uploading and downloading large amounts of copyrighted data, and NOT someone like Napster that maintains filename indices or someone like the RPI student who just wrote a freaking search engine.

Of course, I don't expect them to police things that way: judging by events so far we'll see random identification of just a few violators, but with life-destroying punishments ranging from multi thousand dollar fines to jail time.

Re:Here's a technique:

[Anonymous Coward]

If a random stranger off the internet can download an entire copyrighted song from you, you're hardly within your fair use rights, are you?

If a friend comes to me with a CD and says "Hey, ANon, I can't figure out how to rip this CD onto mp3's. Can you help?" and I rip it for him, that's fair use.

Same situation, but he forgets his CD. Luckily, I have another copy of the same CD. I rip the mp3s for him. That fair use.

Same situation, but it's a stranger, not a friend. Isn't that fair use?

Re:Here's a technique:

[kenthorvath]

The only hard part is then tying an IP address to a prosecutable person.

Exactly, how can you prove that the subscriber of the internet account was the one who was sharing the file, and not his 12 year old son or neighbor who tapped into his wireless router? Kind of like giving somebody a parking ticket when their car was stolen and then forcing them to show up in court to prove they weren't driving.

Re:Here's a technique:

[Anonymous Coward]

not if your hellery rosen

Re:Here's a technique:

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like giving somebody a parking ticket when their car was stolen and then forcing them to show up in court to prove they weren't driving.

Parm'me, but are you under the impression this doesn't happen?

Years ago I was in traffic court and almost exactly that happened to the guy in front of me. His car was legally parked and someone later sideswiped his car in such a way as to leave the driver-side door open into a traffic lane. The dick-for-brains cop, instead of understanding what had happened, left a fucking ticket on the door. (No idea if he at least closed the door.) The judge threw out the ticket. He should also have had the cop's ass branded "I AM AN IDIOT".

And they won't do anything about cybercrime

[JimmytheGeek]

The article yesterday about how to get the police involved in a massive hack was instructive. Many posts indicated that even when the threshold $5K provable monetary loss was reached, and the sysadmins had located the suspects - the fbi would do nothing.

It's amazing. And every description of the FBI resources in the context of fighting terrorism uses the word "thin".

Wonderful...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you just love how the RIAA has paid off our elected officials? I mean why would the FBI want to track god knows how many millions of people whom utilize the P2P software? Oh, and doesn't this "bill" violate the 4th amendment? The way I read it, it Definatly does. The problem with this is that it doesn't only violate the rights of those whom use P2P software, but could potentially expand to cover a lot more.

For example, I donâ(TM)t do the file sharing thing online (yes, I buy my music and videos, but I donâ(TM)t have a problem with people whom do not, because not everyone can afford to), but I use IRC, and thatâ(TM)s another potential target for such things. I donâ(TM)t want my records on IRC being analyzed by someone at the FBI. Or if I send an essay or something I wrote to a friend or something along those lines, being analyzed by a paper pusher at the FBI.

I personally am insulted that Berman would even CONSIDER wasting millions (Yes millions, maybe billionsâ¦is the RIAA gonna pay for it?) of tax dollars on this! It's preposterous, and as a Californian, and I hope every other Californian is with me on this, send a clear and concise message to Howard Berman: You're NOT getting re-elected . I really hope that the RIAA paid you well for submitting such a preposterous bill! I really hope I'm not alone on this one guys, let me know if my logic is correct.

US 'paragraphs'

[SuperBanana]

In darkest times of communist terror in Poland, there was a common saying "Don't worry, they can find a paragraph for everyone". Seems this law is just one more of such paragraphs to "match everyone".

Ah, like the MA state law which makes it illegal to "misuse" the equipment in your vehicle, which cops use to stop you when there's something hanging from your rear-view mirror, if they don't like the looks of you? Then there's the popular-in-movies "[smack] Gee, your taillight is out..."

How about an even better one- speed limits. Everyone exceeds them at least a little bit, and the cops pretty much don't care except in two cases: a)when they don't like the looks of you and need an excuse to stop you and b)when they've got a quota of sorts to fill on tickets.

Too Busy

[heli0]

The FBI will be too busy for this sort of thing anyway, with Harassing people around Area51

Re:SHUT UP YOU GOD DAMNED HOMOSEXUAL

[tomstdenis]

Oooooh, you funny! Funny long time!

Police versus vigilantism

[hpa]

Despite the obvious flaws of the FBI, including the Hooverite legacy, let's keep in mind why the police (including the FBI) exist -- to enforce laws, instead of having a bunch of vigilantes enforce the laws in the particular manner they want. Quite frankly the FBI is much more appropriate in this way than all the various "let's deputize copyright holders and let them go out and enforce", including stuff like Palladium and the recent Hollings proposal. Far too many proposals lately have been effectively about creating a corporate police force.

Re:Police versus vigilantism

[chazzf]

Bingo. Besides, shoving this into the gaping maw of the FBI, which has better things to do, might help guarantee that less is done about the matter. So long as this doesn't become part of the War on Terror (TM), of course...

Re:Police versus vigilantism

[shadowbearer]

"So long as this doesn't become part of the War on Terror (TM), of course..."

Like the little matter of the RIAA trying to shove copyright infringement into the Patriot Act and get it labeled "terrorism"?

SB

Abuse of copyright laws

[moncyb]

There is no guarantee this law will stop criminal activity. However, "copyright holders" have a track record of using these types of laws to silence detractors and competitors. Just think of all the abuses of the DMCA. A guy was going to give a speech about how crappy ebook encription was, so the company had him arrested under the DMCA. Printer manufacturers use it to shut down competing ink cartridge manufacturers. Various cults and companies routinely use it to shut down naysayer websites. The list goes on and on.

In these cases, States + Corporations do equal fascism! More and more these days, the US Government together with large Corporations (not nessesarily US based) are acting like the old Soviet Union. Censorship (DMCA). Banning of devices which may override censorship (mandated DRM). Taking away individual's property rights (Selling something to a customer, then, after they pay, saying it's really leased, and you have to follow a very absurd and restrictive license agreement). In Soviet Russia, the government owns you. In Soviet US, the corporations own you.

Re:Abuse of copyright laws

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia YOU oppresses FACISM!

Re:Abuse of copyright laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen!

Been to soviet russia, my parents had lived through it, and I believe this what you have described to be absolutely true, unfortunately.

By the way, if any one of you wanting to post, for all means don't go on saying "Yeah, I'm using this and that P2P software..." (as some of you already did!) as I'm pretty darn sure the FBI have an active system in place to search through numerous newsgroups/forums, analyze the collected data, and finally use it to link up to 'violators'.

How right you are.

[The Tyro]

Most cops DO have better things to do than nail some PFY serving up copies of Warcraft III on his cable connection. However, this is the FBI we're talking about, not local cops... the FBI is beholden only to the FedGov. If you think your local PD can be unresponsive, try dealing with the FBI.

Thing is, the FBI is not feeling too good lately. They hunted for Eric Rudolph for years, and spent tens of millions of dollars and who busts him? A rookie local cop with less than a year on the force, who catches him dumpster diving and puts bracelets on him... beautiful.

Then there's Eric Luster... some bounty hunter nails him in Mexico, and all the FBI can do is say what a terrible, vigilante action this was, instead of helping get the bounty hunter out of a mexican jail (you really don't want to be in a mexican jail).

The FBI already has their hands full with the anti-terrorist mission... no way they've got the manpower or resources to even dent P2P.

Hey! Look! It's the owner of the ezboard trolltalk

[Anonymous Coward]

Hows' that ez board working out for you trolls there?

MODS! Read this link and then re-evaluate rkz's posts in the context that he is, most likely, trolling. ...and then move on to a post worth MODDING UP. Increasing the QUALITY of the conversation is the SUREST WAY to defeat trolls such as him. THANK YOU!

Yeah.....

[acidrain69]

Because there isn't ENOUGH out there for the FBI to worry about.

Atleast the FBI must follow due process

[zakezuke]

The FBI at the very least has to follow due process. They can assume you are guilty based on evidence, but because they are not a civil agency, innocent until proven guilty is the rule. This in it self is great!

But on the other hand, I really think the FBI has much better things to do then pursue audio piracy. It's hard enough getting them to investigate forms of cybercrime unless you're a business and can demonstrate a dollar amount lost (believe it's $5000 for FBI). While we may get annoyed by this at times.... it is indeed reasonable. I don't see why music / video piracy should be given special treatment. Assuming a $20 cd was downloaded 250 from a single user, that would be the threathold required based on this $5000 rule.

If I had a vote in the matter, i'd say their time would be better spent with bootlegers rather then pirates. It's much easier to establish a dollar amount less based on the sale of goods, and it's only fair the copyright holders get money from profit of their goods. I know of stores localy where you can buy pirate DVDs for $10.00 a pop. This isn't fair use, this is bootleging.

Death of the Internet, News at 5

[nurb432]

Things like this are going to destroy what is left of the Internet. And piss off even more of their 'consumer base'.

After the commercialization pretty much destroyed what it stood for.

On a related note, when did it become the problem of the FBI to investigate CIVIL issues?

Oh wait, its all part of total control of information... nevermind. The whole thing just pisses me off.

Re:Death of the Internet, News at 5

[Zigg]

Stopping copyright violation is going to "destroy what is left of the Internet"?

I've never fired up any of those file "sharing" programs, and I use the Internet just fine, daily.

Re:Don't give me none of that juris-my-diction cra

[Dr Reducto]

The physical boundaries that the FBI now worked by is no longer defined by borders, but rather it is defined by the ozone.
In related news, the FBI can never enter Los Angeles.

Done both, they don't give a damn

[tjstork]

I gave $1000 to Republicans, they still sell you out. Unless your checks are for $100,000, you have no vote.

Re:Done both, they don't give a damn

[Anonymous Coward]

At least you are smart enough to realize this. That is the thing that always puzzled me about people who vote Republican. Most of these people aren't exactly rich -- they are just regular blue-collar Americans. They vote for Republicans. As soon as they get in office they start offering kick-backs and freebies to all their rich friends. If you make over $200,000 a year it makes sense for you to vote Republican because they really WILL be looking out for your interests (ie: keeping all your money). But, if you don't make that much money you are only getting fucked over by the very party you voted for. Makes no sense to me. The Democrats will take more of your money in taxes... but, at least they look out for the working class man. The Republicans are making the world a safer place for rich people.

Re:Done both, they don't give a damn

[DMDx86]

Oh yeah, the democrats would never get in with big business.

I'm not denying republicans aren't guilty either, but dont give me some BS that democrats have their hands clean in that realm of politics.

If you still dont belive me, then perhaps you should take a trip to Opensecrects.org

Re:Done both, they don't give a damn

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct link for opensecrets.org is http://www.opensecrets.org. Obviously not an intentional mistake by parent.

Re:Done both, they don't give a damn

[Anonymous Coward]

Democrats = taking money from people who earned it and giving it to people who DIDNT EARN IT. Just look at the recent "tax cut" (aka "Lets give taxpayers a measly break, and give people who didnt pay taxes some too!")

short memory

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget Dr. Frederick Whitehurst, director of an FBI crime lab. He saw evidence being fabricated, routinely, to obtain convictions. He blew the whistle, got fired, sued, won big time. But this happened during the Era of the Clintons, so it's OK with you.

The FBI will have fun with this, since the agents commonly lie under oath. No wonder the agency can't keep criminals from crashing airliners into skyscrapers.

Far reaching consequences.

[chris_7d0h]

This paves the way for some serious contemplation.

Consider an earlier article published last week, where Sweden was about to enforce draconian IP laws and rights to enforce them. Those laws would lead to their police (and probably other obscure agencies) starting to patrol(1) a lot of Internet services such as p2p networks for example. How would this be received by other nations as there is not simple way of distinguishing a user's nationality from some IP address?
Let's face it, going down the current path, the US isn't going to be the only country doing massive interception and analysis of communication on the Internet and when the politicians wake up and smell the coffee, this kind of mess will have spiraled far out of their control.

Ponder this. Does anyone imagine a government capable of intercepting and filtering most communication to be standing on some kind of high moral and ethical ground where a reasoning like "The correct thing for us to do is to only police our own waters for domestic criminal activity" is going be the current agenda?

No friggin way is my assessment.

This is paving the way for a situation where espionage(2) is the trade of the day. In a few years when most states have caught up with any current technological forerunners there are, in my view, going to be only two choices. Either you encrypt all traffic(3), allowing you some kind of domestic protection, or you will have no protection at all.

The future in my view looks rather bleak if certain politicians and their fellow lobbyists are going to have their way. As I see it, the first ones to realize this problem has been the same type of people making the technological measures allowing such potential abuse, tech-savy folks such as some members of this blog. Mr. and Mrs. Clueless will be the first ones lined up against the wall as they will be caught off guard, unaware of how technology works and how it can be abused and thus unable to protect themselves from the private agendas of those with monetary and political power.

As a final Note. Most know that the last 9 in 99.999% availability figure is extremely expensive to obtain. Likewise, getting the last 9 when it comes to making people law-abiding(4) is going to be infinitely more expensive both from a monetary cost and most importantly, the cost of lost freedom...
As many of us know, the only information system totally secure is a system without external interfaces. The only secure(5) or safe society is a society without a mind of it's own, without free thought.

Which society do you wish the future to hold?


1. Meaning intercepting and scanning.
2. Of foreign power, corporate and any entity which the people with the means might be interested in for one reason or another.
3. Since modules in a computer system co-exist and make use of each other more and more for various tasks, it's getting harder and harder to know what component is transmitting what information and thus the only way to feel some kind of security is to only allow encrypted traffic.
4. Be it a valid law supported by the majority of the citizen or not.
5. Also known as "safe" or "convenient" in some corporate lingo.

Re:Far reaching consequences.

[chris_7d0h]

All mentioning of encryption in the parent post had the implied notion of open source encryption technologies, as a security scheme which can not be validated by anyone who so chooses is not to be considered trusted and should be avoided at all cost. What good is a lock to your safe if there are duplicate keys floating around or built in vulnerabilities (which can not be revealed without the blue prints of it's design)?

Re:Far reaching consequences.

[Tackhead]

> Likewise, getting the last 9 when it comes to making people law-abiding(4) is going to be infinitely more expensive both from a monetary cost and most importantly, the cost of lost freedom...

Given that both the dollar cost and the "freedom cost" of the last "9" in 99.999% compliance are borne by the taxpayers, and not the enforcers, I'd say the cost of the last "9" is dirt cheap - for those doing the spending - and those doing the spending are the only ones whose opinions count.

THEY'LL NEVER CATCH ME ALIVE!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject.

Re:THEY'LL NEVER CATCH ME ALIVE!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

That will suit them just fine.... they don't care if you are alive or dead.

A time saving idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up the names of all the people who bought a 30 gig iPod. There is no way 99% of people could afford all that music.

hurray for great justice on the American Internet!

[Saeger]

Oh, you mean the Net's global? And the FBI would be getting a lot of that juris-my-dick-tion crap from other countries? What are they gonna do? "Hey you, axis of evil, hand over the p2p terrorist on 194.225.70.96 or we'll embargo your netblock!"? :)

--

File sharing? What about finding stolen cars?

[aquarian]

Everyone knows finding stolen cars is the FBI's main mission...

This is (sort-of) a good thing...

[evilviper]

What people forget, is that legal pressure leads to increased technical innovation. That means, the FBI begin to waste hundreds of millions of dollars in your tax money (*sigh*) and a few programmers are simply going to add encryption and some basic anonymization on top of Gnutella. I've got a few ideas how to do this myself, as a matter of fact.

So what's the end result? The FBI wastes more tax money on a pointless endeavor. I'm definately not happy about this. Maybe if everyone works on adding encryption and the like right away, people will see how completely pointless this is before the RIAA even starts trying to push the bill.

You hear that? Get working!

Also, sending mail to your reps is a VERY good thing as well if you aren't up to the task of programming.

I know I'm gonna sound like a troll...

[Kjella]

"Its just another couple of planes. Been there and seen that before. First, we gotta take down Suzy in Queens first - word on the street is that she's sharing hard-core Justin Timberlake! We gotta protect the kids from that threat." ...but am I the only one feeling that is the right policy. In my defense, I'm half across the world from New York, but I'm still plagued by Justin Timberlake....

Kjella

Re:News!! 2 more planes hit 2 more towers in New Y

[numark]

Actually, considering the kind of music that Justin Timberlake's been coming out with lately, I can see as to how we need to protect people from that ;)

The Real Reason

[starman71taylor]

The real reason will begin to emerge.......

People need to understand a few principles before rationally contemplating what is
happening to the transformation of the internet.

First, the U.S. Government is a corporate entity that is no different than the
corporations it protects. The government protects it's interest, which also happens to be
the commerce of the nation, which in turn happens to be the multi-facted head of the
corporate machine in the United States.

With that said it will give you a better view of what is GOING to happen to the internet
over the next couple of years in the wake of the âoefalse-flagâ operation called 9-11
(Yes, as shocking as it may be to some, 9-11 was a staged event. Do your homework
and the truth will hit you like a ten-pound sledgehammer in the head.).

Second, since the U.S. Government is directly tied to the big media machine's interest
it should come as no surprise that members of Congress are going to press for a
huge policing of the net. It will hinge upon the peer-to-peer networks and directly target
âoefile swappingâ. The RIAA and the MPAA will just love this type of enforcement because they cite these networks as the prime reason that their respective revenues have dropped over the past few years. They however, will ignore the fact that music content just plain sucks or that the ECONOMY is terrible and maybe people aren't buying their souless content because they need to eat and buy shoes. The main problem with this is that the onus of making the R and D necessary to protect the music and video industries
products as âoedigitialy safeâ, is NOT the public's concern and nor should it be. I simply
don't care how much it costs a multi-billion dollar media megahouse to develop a
system of preventing piracy. However, what I do take offense at is when these
same multi-billion dollar behemoths lobby Congress to write laws that WILL someday
affect your freedoms. This is not the same as understanding copyright law. That would
be a very welcome thing indeed. If the American public understood what the Constitution
laid out about copyright law and how it's been abused by the corporate machine, then
the laws would all be repealed in a heartbeat and new FAIR laws would replace them.
However, that would take throwing out the scam-artist politicians out of both
Houses of Congress first, which won't happen anytime soon.

Thirdly, the laws that are coming down the pike won't be limited to just MP3's and the
occasional MPEG movie. Eventually these rapers of free speech and dissemination
of information want to be able to target people being able to relay information that flies
in the face of the national policy. Any content that can be seen as copyrighted will be
âoeprotectedâ and thus be policed by the some federal agency. That means that eventually the system will be able to hold individuals accountable for trading important pieces of any copyrighted and written material. You see the point will be to halt the few exchange of ideas. The system wants total ignorance and a cover for the invisible veil of the inner
mechanisms in the corporate structure.

Unless the people who have helped to create the wonders of the internet and the freedoms
that it represents get onboard to protect it against abuse, then the last hope for a free vocal and democratic society in America is about to fall further down the rabbithole of fascism.

I don't understand why people don't phone, fax or write the people in Congress. They do hear us. However, they are often reluctant to do anything because they know that the populace rarely holds their feet to the fire over any issue. Only when the professional politicians are threatened, as in the case of re-election do they ask for your input. The ONLY remedy to our current problems threatening the very fabric of the democratic form of government in the United States, is a major third party presence in the Congress and White House, that can clean up the problems. That's the bottom line. More people active in politics and caring just a little bit more about who is in office than what J-Lo wears to the Oscars and things might change....until then we are sooooo
screwed.

No, not stopping p2p is not the issue

[nurb432]

Its the beginning of the end of freedom online. P2P is just one of the current battles.

This is just another step towards absolute control of all content. ALL content.

If you don't stand up now, who will be left to stand up when they come for you?

Re:No, not stopping p2p is not the issue

[Zigg]

No. You act as if "online" is some new country where you have the right to spread copyright materials around without regard for a license from the copyright holder. This is simply not true. The laws have always applied; it is the enforcement that has been lacking. You now complain of the enforcement.

DRM is a step towards mandatory control of content. Legally mandated DRM is the logical extension of that. I will stand up when that rears it ugly head. I will not stand up when already illegal behavior is noticed by the police.

Yes - HOWEVER:

[ghjm]

1. If the FBI started pulling over speeders and making them serve 5 year jail terms, you would presumably have to protest.

2. Speeding is a criminal act. File sharing is not. Copyright violation is a CIVIL matter.

-Graham

Re:Yes - HOWEVER:

[TruenoSuave]

Actually, until you exceed the speed limit by 20 MPH (in most states), speeding is a civil offense.

Re:Yes - HOWEVER:

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual, under traditional ideas of justice, speeding isn't a criminal act.

Crimes are things that actually hurt people, like stealing and murder, and exist as God's law and by nature. Speeding is a statue created by men, and liable to change by jurisdition, place, and (dare I say) whim of men.

Statury law should consist of civil fines, not punishments. In socieities that begin to lose their freedom, some people discover they can bully and do harm to others through the government that they couldn't directly do themselves. But just because you do something through a government, doesn't mean that it ceases to be wrong.

Re:Yes - HOWEVER:

[Fallen_Knight]

here (BC canada) speeding is a civil matter to unless your are driveing with excessive speed (really really fast) in witch case they can do a whoal lot more.

Everyone speeds to some degree, its a fact of life.

Bullshit cop out

[poptones]

"Not that many people do it so it's not so bad" is a complete and utter BULLSHIT argument. It is every bit as much based on ELITISM as are the (equally) outdated views espoused by so many in the entertainment industry.

The rate we are going it soon won't be "only a few" - the capability will either be within the grasp of everyone or no one. As a whole what will benefit society most?

Either you are for the technology, or you ain't. You can't make the exception that it's OK so long as only the elite can do it, because sooner or later someone is going to be more "elite" than you and then what are you gonna do?

Re:Bullshit cop out

[MisterMook]

How about: It doesn't matter how much people do it, because ideas have suddenly lost a large portion of their intrinsic value over the past few years thanks to access to technology, saturation, and societal acceptance. It hurts the economy, make money doing something else. It's illegal, change the law. You're stealing from artists, not as much as the artist's representatives have been stealing from me by inflating the value of art.

Look, I'm an artist. Nice as it is to get a check for what I do, I wouldn't stop doing it because I didn't. Getting a job flipping burgers wouldn't be the end of the world, but not being able to create would. If the money is the most important thing, I have simply no sympathy whatsoever.

Re:Corporatism sha

[I(rispee_I(reme]

Try this question: Is it possible to win a presidential election without corporate sponsorship? I think Bill Hicks said it best when he compared the Democrats and Republicans to a pair of puppets, sharing a puppeteer.

Fascist

[nattt]

So they finally admit that they're a fascist police state - I won't hear any more talk of democracy or freedom until it is again embraced.

Shareware: The other way

[MrNerdHair]

IMHO, Copying Windows or any other peice of software is free speech. What if M$ wrote books? If you read the book to a friend over the phone, he will be less likely to buy the book. If you give a friend a copy of Windows, he is less likely to buy it, too; is reducing a company's potential income a crime? If M$ really wants to prevent piracy, "Activation" is the answer, but act like AOL and distribute the software free. I would not mind if all proprietary software was Shareware. Charge your $199 or whatever after installation. And if somebody breaks the activation scheme, write a better one, don't sue them. Have it automatically update before the first bootup or something. But don't sue us because your product is bad or we can break something we already own.

VHS and DVD

[freeweed]

Yeah, if this passes, the era of Kazaa et al. will end perminantly, as everyone will be too scared to get caught to share or download as the FBI WILL catch people for copyright violations.

Yeah, because we all know how effective the FBI warnings are on video tapes and DVDs. And hardly anyone holds public showings of their movies.

The FBI's new priorities

[alizard]

Nice to see that digital file-sharing, i.e. the digital version of analog tape-swapping which *is* legal is just as important as kidnapping, bank robbery, and terrorism.

Will not paying parking tickets also become a Federal crime next?

Do politicians have a clue as to why they don't have the public's respect anymore?

Perhaps they've proven they don't deserve it.

Just think. If anyone had come forward last year to put up the startup money for a professionally run high-tech PAC to represent us to Congress, we'd be talking this year about getting the votes together to get rid of the DMCA and any politician stupid enough to refuse to cooperate with us.

"People always get the local government they deserve."
E.E. "Doc" Smith

This is as a grim a comment about US geeks (and the ones who aren't doing anything about anti-tech political action in the EU) as can be made.

Overly Critical Guy is an asshole....

[Anonymous Coward]

There should be a system of annoying-points (APs) that we can assign to people. You get enough APs and your Slashdot account gets revoked.

Everyone add this guy to your "Foes" list. He's an annoying, arrogant prick. Slashdot was a much better place before dickheads like Overly_Critical_Guy started hanging out here. He has a username in the 650,000+ range. Probably some yuppy, Republican who heard about Slashdot on some news site and signed up for an account.

In my book if your userID isn't less than 200,000 you're a fucking poser. Hey, Overly_Critical_Guy, why don't you go back to reading CNN news and leave us alone?

Re:Overly Critical Guy is an asshole....

[Overly Critical Guy]

My other account was created over five years ago. Do you really want to play the "old is better" game? I'd win.

Next.

Re:Overly Critical Guy is an asshole....

[Anonymous Coward]

i'd add OCG to my 'friends' list if i wasnt AC now. his criticism is right on the money.

nice troll though!

Re:Overly Critical Guy is an asshole....

[Anonymous Coward]

Your writting is logical.

But you are indeed an asshole. Not because you don't agree with the shashdot ideology. But because you represent the state logic (you are an american i presume) in such a clear and logical way.
You have been brainwashed beyond repair. The pitty here is that you seem to have a brain. Which you only use to assure yourself of your beliefs (that somebody else put there).
I think i can give a pretty good shot about your other beliefs:
-The poor's are poor because of WRONG choises
-Corporations have the legal right to pass whatever laws suit them (they have the legal and moral obligation to make money afterall).
-When corporations prosper everyone prospers
-The law of the strongest
-The unclefuckers that trade music deserve jail time.

You are very close to being a fascist (maybe you already are).

If you are one i sincerelly wish you a short life.

anonymos

Re:Overly Critical Guy is an asshole....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Your writting is logical...But you are indeed an asshole"
-typical leftist..can't argue the facts,so they resort to name-calling...you lose it...

"The poor's are poor because of WRONG choises"
-no,of course not...personal choice, drive, self respect has NOTHING to do with being poor...it's those BIG corporate BIG rich BIG whiteys...BIG...

"Corporations have the legal right to pass whatever laws suit them (they have the legal and moral obligation to make money afterall)."
-last time i checked corps didn't pass laws...the govt did...now you my want to ask govt why they're taking bribes...

"When corporations prosper everyone prospers"
-well, DUH...who do you think made the computer you're using...corps...that's who...

"The law of the strongest"
-Yes, much better to hold weakness and failure up as an ideal...alturism=death, dumbass...darwin would kick you ass

"The unclefuckers that trade music deserve jail time."
-Personally i don't think so...but as long as govt is taking bribes from the industry, they probably will...

"You are very close to being a fascist (maybe you already are)."
-you are OBVIOUSLY a standard socialist/commie...

"If you are one i sincerelly wish you a short life."
-Who do you think will live longer, someone with a strong ideal of personal responsibility, drive, etc...or some mush-headed commie holding up the sores of others and trying to live off the guilt of people who have made something of themselves

You sir, are a leech...and if your host dies,you die...

Re:Overly Critical Guy is an asshole....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not because you don't agree with the shashdot ideology.

Woah.. there's a Slashdot idealogy now? Unless of course you really meant "shashdot"

Re:Overly Critical Guy is an asshole....

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

i'd add OCG to my 'friends' list if i wasnt AC now. his criticism is right on the money.

I'd probably do it too, if I used the friends list. His comments on subjects like this are far more rational and well argued than most of his critics. I particularly enjoy the replies that argue that no-one's backing him up because his posts are so stupid. They miss the plausible alternative that we agree with him entirely and have nothing to add.

Sometimes the truth hurts, and if you're a slashbot who really wants everything to be free because then it wouldn't cost you anything, but tries to justify that on the basis of some moral high ground, I guess the truth hurts you more than most.

Oh, and the one about having IDs less than 200,000 posted by an AC was priceless. :-)

Keep it up OCG. It's hard to beat an honest man in an argument. There are serious problems with the music industry at the moment, but the typical slashbot response isn't the way to fix them.

Re:Overly Critical Guy is an asshole....

[Overly Critical Guy]

Congratulations, you were trolled.

Please say more

[X-Nc]

> ...double agent Mrs. Katrina Leung, need I say more?

Uhm... Yes, actually. Who is Mrs. Katrina Leung? What would be significent about her as a "double agent?" I'm asking because I honestly don't know what you mean (nor do I know who Mrs. Leung is).

This post is copyrighted.

[MrNerdHair]

The rain in Spain is mainly on the plain. The right to read the above sentence is granted to you only by this License Agreement. By reading the sentence, you agree to only read it once and prevent anyone else from reading it. Violation of this license agreement will result in immediate arrest by the FBI and an unfair trial controlled entirely by our squadrons of overpaid lawyers.

I guess...

[The Master Control P]

Go ahead and try. It's called FREENET.

At any rate, it will take a multi-faceted movement to stop the accelerating downward spiral disgracefully called "our government."

FIRST, we need to get rid of apathy. Guess how the American Revolution happened? Lots of ordinary people cared about a cause, and defeated one of the greatest armies on earth at the time. Imagine, for a moment, that we shifted all our current attitudes forward 250 years or so. Imagine if the colonists were like people in America today. Except for a handful, they would have happily bent over for convenience. Oh, fuck... When Paul Revere rode through, they'd just have said "We're watching Tee-Vee! Shut up!" As much as I hate to say it, mass-emailing might be some way to smack people and make them wake the hell up. Not spam, just letters explaining what they need to do to stop the downward spiral toward 1984. (*Crushed by 1000 foot wall of flame*)

SECOND, go out there and DO SOMETHING. Don't just sit here and preach to the choir on Slashdot. Write your congressional representatives; Stage a protest; E-Mail all your contacts; SOMETHING, anything. Get the word out about what they are doing to your freedom.

THIRD, take preliminary steps to protect yourself if this fails. On the technological front, install Freenet, encrypt your entire hard drive, use long passwords (Most of mine are => 20 chars long), etc. Contribute to the ACLU and the EFF.

In short, nothing will get done unless you do it (No sex jokes or Goatse links, please). Sitting here and explaining to the choir how bad things are going will not help. Be evangelistic, reach out to the masses. Install Linux for your friends.

comment for our american friends.....

[the-build-chicken]

1984....by George Orwell....if you haven't read it...I suggest you do so...if you have read it...read it again....read it, look at your society...then be afraid....very afraid.

yay

[SQLz]

yay! Free music for everyone!!

Ok how come I read that as Bill Gates

[Scorpio Blake]

Ok how come I read that as Bill Gates will allow the FBI to monitor file sharing. FBI: Mr. Gates would you please allow us to watch these file sharers? Bill Gates: *waves hand in dismissive manor* Of course you can my friends, you just need to purchase my software to do it with. FBI: *hands Bill Gates a signed blank check* Thank you M'Lord.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

[pongo000]

...but since this was introduced in the House, wouldn't it be more timely to contact your representatives than your senators? There was no indication of a parallel bill being introduced in the Senate, which means IIRC that this bill would need to pass the House before it was voted on by the Senate.

I know, a minor nit...but I was all ready to take Groucho's advice and start hammering out a letter when this little discrepancy (I know, a rarity on /.) came to my attention.

I notice that netgear...

[mrmeval]

Now has code to allow secure (des3) ipsec VPNs over the internet in it's new beta code. BTW, what is the CPU and code for this? It's very easy to use and is quite inexpensive.

Is there a P2P system that would allow privacy, encryption and ease of use?

Power Expansion 101

[rhizome]

I'm getting sick and tired of hearing about how goverment agency X attempts to enfoce the unenforcable with new and buggier technology, then proceeds to hange some poor guy or gal on the highest pole they can fine.

Consider it this way: Why would the government allow anything unpoliceable to live? In this sense we all have some kind of limited P2P and chat future ahead of us, because why? Because everybody uses them. Never doubt that it is always illegal to exist outside of the system, in some way. Look at how much P2P is going on, the RIAA/MPAA and the government (backing the 'AA's up) all want to make them pay, get some cheddar on the go, and here we have the FBI part of the recipe dropping into place. Gotta have a way to bust people for not paying their tolls, right? Apparently the way to do this is to put law enforcement in place before the tolls themselves.

'double agent'

[Dogun]

My understanding is that a double agent is someone who is acting as an agent for one country while secretly being an operative for another country.

In this case, the accusation is not that she is a double agent, but that she acted as a spy, or something on that order.

Please Shut Up

[N8F8]

Educate yourself aboutt he CIA, FBI and other agencies who produce and use Intel first. You do little credit to the rest of the crowd by sounding so ignorant.

block them

[FathomIT]

sounds like a good time for Peer Guardian

Re:block them

[vegetablespork]

I'd be pretty amazed if all the scum doing this kind of monitoring (who are, no doubt, employing hypocrites who learned their way around the networks grabbing some choice warez and music themselves) haven't caught on to this and started sourcing the same consumer bandwidth the other file sharers are using--even to the extent of getting subcontractors offshore. Imagine how cheap it would be to have humans searching all the file sharing networks for Britney's latest title in India for 1 rupee a hit.

For file sharing and other communication the government deems illegal, it will be necessary to break into smaller, informal networks (think Rendevous in a coffee shop) or to switch to samizdat with CDRs. Freenet and similar networks will be banned, or at least the use of them will be sufficient probable cause for a no-knock warrant. They won't get much use after that makes the front page a few times.

Bill? Bill Gates?

[tundog]

Am I the only one who read the title and thought that Bill Gates was in an interview where he suggested that the FBI have more powers to cruise P2P?

Taking the FBI private: the RIAA's own cops

[Zhe Mappel]

Sure, arguably the bulk of US law enforcement already serves the propertied classes, ever scurrying on missions to keep the privileged from the clutches of the unprivileged. Rarely is the reverse ever true. Just witness the Enron scandal: not even Fox-TV watching Americans are brainwashed enough to escape realizing what a swindle occurred there, but just watch as our corporate media report how "difficult" it is to police corporate crime because the issues are so "complicated" - true only insomuch as the criminal laws have been skewed to make such prosecutions unlikely, this for the benefit of so-called free enterprise.

The current legislation proposes something very old-fashioned: the privatization, in a sense, of our law enforcement. Oh, the FBI would still be publicly funded, but essentially their mission would be reconstituted to make them the private police force of immensely wealthy copyright holders. We'd have a situation analogous in substance to 19th century America, with its strike-breaking private cops doing the bidding of their factory masters. Not only would the FBI be the servant of the music, movie and software companies, flattening any and all freedoms that thwart the perfect and unfettered progress of business (while also forging the kinds of interconnectedness that would make it politically and legally hard ever to police those industries).

But more drastically, the FBI would become a tool used to correct a failure of the marketplace: it would become the bludgeon that stops the consumer revolt that is embodied in online file trading - expunging, through intrusion and harassment, any impulse but that of proper obedience. Is a generation of future American debtors missing the lesson of arbeit macht frei? Then the FBI will be called in to teach them the fundamentals!

Mind, this is of a piece with Hatch's outburst last week about destroying downloaders' computers. Such is Washington's obsequiousness before the power it serves, and so deep runs its contempt for the freedoms of average citizens. (It's all fine and good to trot out your defense secretary to call freedom "messy" when it's overseas; but here, of course, here we send in the G-Men.) The Net has allowed the little person a measure of freedom not dreamt of in the corridors of our oligarchy. I don't expect our rulers to rest until they've brought this democratic, not to say anarchical, spirit to heel.

Who does Bill think he is?!?!?!?!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit, that Bill Gates has big balls if he's going to let the FBI Police, whoever that is, share MY files! Where will he stop next?! I'm too pissed off to even read the article!

I'll take you on.

[abulafia]

And it is not morally right to acquire music you have not paid for. You have proven my argument. Next.

You've a little problem here. If I flash a flashlight at someone else, maybe quickly, that's me communicating with them. Please prove how this has anything to do with you, the copyright holder of some material that may or may not have anything to do with what is on the wire. By the way, did I mention that I hold copyright on this post? I will enforce all rights available to me.

Another typical Slashbot move. Declaring what is wrong with society.

Have a great time protesting things. There's a quote: "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

It was just an emotion-charged rally cry due to your being used to the convenience of illegally and imorally downloading music by artists that you haven't paid for.

No, this is about your illegal and immoral use of classics knowledge. You know that knowing greek infringes on those who currently know greek. You must pay.

Lemme know when you've paid, OK? That's money in my pocket.

Before you criticize, please do a good job of describing how bits on my drive are somehow your property, and how someone 5000 years ago should express a difference of opinion on current use of their thoughts.

Sounds are code. Code is thought. Thought is code, if people publicize it. Just fucking deal. I have, and I'm making money doing so, with my "IP" not something that becomes the subject of lawsuits or slashdot postings. Both via coding, and via generating noise.

Re:I'll take you on.

[Overly Critical Guy]

You've a little problem here. If I flash a flashlight at someone else, maybe quickly, that's me communicating with them. Please prove how this has anything to do with you, the copyright holder of some material that may or may not have anything to do with what is on the wire.

What does a flashlight have to do with downloading mp3s? Are you that dense that you have to make wild analogies?

By the way, did I mention that I hold copyright on this post? I will enforce all rights available to me.

No you don't, Slashdot does.

No, this is about your illegal and immoral use of classics knowledge. You know that knowing greek infringes on those who currently know greek. You must pay.

What on earth are you smoking?

Before you criticize, please do a good job of describing how bits on my drive are somehow your property, and how someone 5000 years ago should express a difference of opinion on current use of their thoughts.

Bits on your hard drive aren't my property. The music those bits make together when played through an mp3 player, however, might belong to someone who made the music that they sell to make money and have a living.

Sounds are code. Code is thought. Thought is code, if people publicize it. Just fucking deal.

You need to "fucking deal" with the absolute fact that taking music without paying for it is immoral, not to mention illegal. Why do you dance around the issue? Every single thing can be traced back to "thought." It doesn't change a single thing except increase your image as a loon.

I have, and I'm making money doing so, with my "IP" not something that becomes the subject of lawsuits or slashdot postings. Both via coding, and via generating noise.

Well, I can't argue with that kind of research.

Next.

Listen up dork

[Anonymous Coward]

You WERE stealing, because by your actions you deprived the store of property. This distinguishes stealing from copyright violation. If you think you're clever, keep in mind that what you're saying is as insightful as claiming that murder and calling after 10pm are both annoying and so should be processed by the legal system in the same way.

Here's some free advice: don't go to law school, you ain't got it.

Re:Listen up dork

[saden1]

If you are not paying for it, it is stealing.

<<Here's some free advice: don't go to law school, you ain't got it.>>

I was debating whether or not to go to law school. Thanks to you, I've decided not to go.

Re:Listen up dork

[Fallen_Knight]

my god, its people like you who just DON"T GET IT! And piss me off. Why oh Why are so many poeple so stupid and ignorent!

Go read a fuckign law book. Or any one of the other hundereds of posts who state the truth, its a copyright violation bceause your are listening to XXX's work without their permission, You didn't steal, take or deprive anyone of any physical object, they didn't LOSE anything(lost POTENTIAL revenue doesn't count here). You are just vireing/listening to music without permission. its TOATALY DIFFRENT.

What your saying is that if i download a song for a CD that i own i'm stealing, witch is not true, or even fair for that matter.

Go look up steal, wait i'll do that for you:
steal: 1: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice.

when you download a song you take nothing. You get a digital COPY. man i wish you poeple would learn. I'm not going to even bother spell checking or proof reading this, it'll be on your level then.

Re:Listen up dork

[saden1]

Jesus Christ dude, you have totally immersed yourself in your little twisted world haven't you?

Fuckwad, people (namely artist) spends time and money in the studios to make a product they can sell. If everyone is getting, and no one is buying an original, how the fuck are they supposed to make money? Artists are getting screwed as it is by the studios, they donâ(TM)t need consumers telling them to bend over. You think everyone in Kazaa or any other P2P network is entitled download music under the fair use clause?

Digital or no digital, if you havenâ(TM)t paid for it you are breaking the law. Copyright infringement of something you donâ(TM)t own amount to stealing dickhead and if it gets you off thinking that it is not then that is your proactive.

Re:Listen up dork

[Fallen_Knight]

For fucks sake. I'm not arguing the morality of it(thou i'll get to that later since you mentioned it up), I'm trying to get it into your thick little head that ITS NOT STEALING! The law, the dictionary, judges, AND ALOT OF OTHER PEOPLE all agree on this fact. its NOT saying its good, moral or anything, just that STEALING ISN"T THE PROPER TEARM BECAUSE ITS NOT. Stealing is depriving somebody of something. Digital copying isn't!! Copyright infringement is using a artists work in a way they don't want it to be contrary to their choices, witch includes LISTENING TO MUSIC WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT!

If you write a paper, and i copy the text and hand that in did a STEAL you paper? NO!
If you write a song and i make my own version of it did i STEAL it NO!
If i put on a show with movies, and music in a "public performance" did my audience just STEAL the music because they don't own it?!? NO! That would just be silly, kind of like saying downloading it is! Its breaking copyright law (and probably some other ones to)
If i take a CD, money or SOMETHING PHYSICAL from SOMEBODY, did i STEAL? YES!

And about the morality of it:
People still buy CDs, people who download music still buy CDs. I buy CDS (although few because P2P allows me to find out witch ones SUCK, as i won't buy a CD for only 1 or 2 bloody songs). And in the end sales go up as more people find out about more bands. (indy bands who donâ(TM)t have the RIAA spending $$$$$ on advertising!) ON THE WHOAL PEOPLE DO WHAT IS RIGHT! Sure there are people that download everything and never buy, but so what?? its free advertising! they tell their friends, maybe even go see a concert! Witch makes the artist MORE money in the end. And then you have people who just buy tons of CDs, so it evens out.

P2P is GOOD for artists! BAD for the RIAA! The RIAA hates it because they can no longer control the dist, or whoâ(TM)s popular and who makes it big and who doesn't. P2P and the internet are allowing MORE artists to share their work and dist it. Many artists aren't even in it for the money!! And their music is usually the best. The ones who SUCK and the artists use computers to fix up their music and advertise the hell outta them DON"T DESERVE THE MONEY! Its people like them that suck up the money, good music DOESN"T NEED 1000000000s of dollars and time to record! A good band whose GOOD an play because they love to get it done fast and easy. Its the hard ones that take forever, and have to work at it because THEY SUCK. Want an example? go read the mixerman's diaries.

P2P and the internet are the best things for artists, EVER! it means eventually making millions because you are lucky enough to get into the biz won't happen anymore, and many more artists will be out there due to the low cost of producing music (YOU yes YOU can make your own music with 10,000$ of equipment!), all making a comfortable living like everyone else.

Sure P2P is beraking the law, but so what? much MUCH more money is lost to the pirates who press legit looking DVDs and CDs and sell them as the real thing. THAT is what should be stopped. Not people downloading stuff that in the end only benifits true aritsts, if not the huge corp that owns them.

And if even NO ONE PAID FOR A SINGLE CD THEY STILL OWULD MAKE MONEY, The would make their liveing off of concerts (i'd like to see someone download that experiance, not now but maybe someday!), sponserships, apperances, and the like. I mean COME ON, P2P isn't killing music. FAR FAR FROM IT.

and ps:
that is your proactive makes NO sense, learn English if your goanna try and argue a stupid point.

The word is PREROGATIVE! you fool. ie "Its your PREROGATIVE!"

Re:Listen up dork

[saden1]

<
The word is PREROGATIVE! you fool. ie "Its your PREROGATIVE!">>

Hahahah. Lets see how many miss-spelled words you have.

1. beraking

2. benifits

3. aritsts

4. liveing

5. experiance

6. sponserships

7. apperances

Re:Listen up dork

[Fallen_Knight]

wow 7 misspelled(thereâ(TM)s no hyphen) words in 690, I must be a REALLY bad speller, (and the first is a obvious typo) At least i used the right words. If your going to nitpick on spelling, why didn't you go after my punctuation!? i had missing periods, caps, and all sorts of other bad abbreviations (indy, corp).

See i wasn't pointing out your bad spelling, i was pointing how you just didn't know the proper word. unless you mean to tell me somehow you spelled prerogative, proactive witch i highly doubt. Learn English, spelling is secondary to actually knowing what word means what and how to form cohesive sentences that make sense.

And because you just ignored everything else i said, and dropped to the level you did, you just don't have anything else to say on this topic because your only argument was "Well the RIAA says its theft and bad so it must be! Its not the right/moral thing to do so it MUST be bad!" and just didn't take the time to think about whatâ(TM)s actual happening and just looked at the surface of the issue and don't want to admit it. Its people like you who don't take the time to look at the facts, and just take things at face value, that cause many of this worlds problems.

Since you showed no signs of thinking, just regurgitating stuff you read/heard (no surprise there, thatâ(TM)s whatâ(TM)s taught in high schools these days) Iâ(TM)m not going to respond to you anymore, I have a job and I attend university, so no time for responding to you regurgitated babble.

Let's clear up the record a bit here...

[Anonymous Cowdog]

This post from DesScorp has a few serious inaccuracies.

It was not the case that "apparently Chinese intelligence had penetrated the Los Alamos lab". On the contrary, it was apparently the case that Chinese intelligence had obtained secrets about nuclear warheads that could only have come from a contractor OUTSIDE of the lab, someone further downstream in the weapons production process. Although the discovery of this leak led investigators to look initially at Los Alamos, Los Alamos was eventually ruled out as the source of the information.

Interest in Wen Ho Lee continued, for a variety of reasons, but mostly, in my opinion, because he was a convenient scapegoat for perceived problems at the time.

Later, after an inspection of his lab computer, he was discovered to have backed up some of his data on to magnetic tapes. This led to an entirely separate and different legal case, the case that ended up being brought against him.

But that case was a crock. The data he backed up, or "downloaded" as the prosecutors liked to say, was the code he was working with along with supporting libraries and other parts of the build environment. He had had experience with computers at the Lab crashing and losing data. Also he knew there was a RIF (Reduction In Force) coming up, and the way those work at the Lab is sometimes someone is RIF'ed and then almost immediately re-hired, only to have to rebuild their work environment (computing environment) from scratch. Defenders of Lee have pointed out that wanting to avoid having to rebuild his work environment from scratch was a perfectly innocent motivation for having made tapes.

I own a security brochure from Los Alamos Lab which urges workers to "_Always_ Back Up Your Data On Cartridges or Tapes." It does not say "tell the backup department to back up your data." It basically says do it yourself. The brochure is not classified, but refers to both classified and unclassified data.

Back to DesCorp's post. "The investigation focused on Lee..." again, there were two investigations, two different cases, the first was found to be ridiculous (the data couldn't have come from Los Alamos); the second was ginned up to help the prosecuting entities avoid embarassment.

By the way, contrary to what is often implied in the media, Lee did not take the tapes home. They remained in the secure area of the lab, behind a tall fence with gates that have iris scanners, palm print scanners, metal man cages, 24 hour armed guards, etc. etc.

At the end of Lee's final hearing, at which he was released, the judge in the case apologized to Lee and pointed out that Lee was also owed an apology from the other branches of government.

Which leads to the final and most serious inaccuracy in DesCorp's post, about the historical view of the case now, after the fact. Washington insiders (other than a few paranoid diehards) do not think the botching of the case involved letting a spy get away. Rather, they think the botching of the case was in fingering the wrong man. Vernon Loeb, the intelligence reporter for the Washington Post, has affirmed in writing that this is his understanding of what people in Washington think. It's probably not neccessary to point out that he is someone who has his finger pretty well on the pulse of the Washington intelligence community.

America, land of the Imprisoned!

[ixxologic]

I guess this will be the new slogan for the most paranoid and hypocratic nation on the planet.. who needs freedom eh? ixxo

If the U.S. was a REAL democracy...

[C.Su]

...then the 100 million citizens (or whatever the number is) using P2P would have some impact on the laws of the land.

100 million people vs. a single industry association, and who is in charge? Who are the "representatives of the people" listening too? Certainly not the people.

But, the people^H^H^H^H^H^Hdrones have no one to blame but themselves, they who are to busy buying what they are told and patting themselves on the back for being good little radical activists and tuning into NPR twice a day.

Welcome to United States of Corporate Fascist Amerika! Consumerists muster! Submit your $4 for that latte and move the fuck along.

Potential problems with subcontracting

[bastion]

What if this was subcontracted?

Really, not enforcement of course but monitoring. Imagine the ultrasecretive group the RIAA uses getting their hands on this one. In a post-911 world the only abundance we have is that of resource shortfalls. If the F.B.I. is forced to take on yet another infrastructure duty wouldn't it be simpler to subcontract a facet or two, after all IP addresses are anonymous till you get court orders to track them to people (generalization.... exceptions do exist).

Bill Hicks quote.

[Grendel Drago]

"I'll show you politics in America: 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking' hey, wait a minute there's one guy holding up both puppets... 'Shut up!' go back to bed America, your government is in control. Here's Love Connection, watch this and get fat and stupid. By the way, keep drinking beer you fucking morons."

--Bill Hicks.

Re:Haring is not selling!

[pinka4242]

Err?! "trying to sell" ? excuse me but wheres my mony from all this selling thing trying im doing ?

corporatism and all that...

[TygerFish]

Determining what is and is not âbusiness-as-usualâ(TM) is difficult with nothing more than a blurb-length report to go on.

There have been a lot of threads here, some philosophically/politically loaded with arguments of varying quality: the first thread talked about control of the economy under Mussoliniâ(TM)s Fascism. Another attacked that one, praising raw capitalism while yet another early note gave what might or might not be an informed view of how the Naziâ(TM)s handled capitalism under the third Reich. Somehow, the subject became very dramatic and youâ(TM)ve got to ask if high drama is justifiable when you look at the core of the thing.

Without drama, there are good reasons to say that there is nothing new in the FBI being made to favor the interests of American businessâ"even businesses whose actions are as loathsome as the music industryâ(TM)s with regard to file-sharing. The proposition of the bill can be looked at as a (sad) comment on the nature of our government: people and organizations with vast sums have influence which often overrides the interests of the massesâ"thatâ(TM)s, âyou and me,â(TM) bud.

We live in a representative democracy and the systemâ(TM)s oddest and ugliest flaw is that wealthy people and organizations direct the actions of government more directly, and more immediately than the slower processes of ordinary governance: this is the âno surpriseâ(TM) factor. The FBI is directed by the federal government, the federal government is run by societyâ(TM)s loudest voices and money is an amplifier that drowns out other voices (If you think this is untrue, you probably like the âBig-Mac-for-you/your salary-x-ten for them,â(TM) tax-cuts).

In the final analysis, it really is a matter of voices. Many of us want to say, âthe music industry has been at the trough for too long and the net has changed everything.â(TM) For their part, maybe a dozen multibillion-dollar corporations with the money to make a politicianâ(TM)s re-election campaigns with their contributions alone want the government to wage a campaign to frighten nameless, faceless people who are costing them money.

This raises two key questions: âWhy is this surprising news?â(TM) and âWhom do you expect to win?â(TM)

In India it was the salt, in the US it was tea

[phoenix123]

Now it will be digital media content. Insignificant little commodities expose a serious flaw in the system and after some pressure, the "consumer" freak out and begin to fight for their individual rights. Where's the difference? Hope it happens sooner than later. Will we have a CD-Party lately?

No, it's not

[Exiler]

As others have pointed out it's NOT a crime, it's a tort. A civil offense.

That is the FBI job description...

[El Camino SS]

Whatever happened to the millions of cases the FBI solved, or prevented crimes, or caught murderers?

I deal with them all the time as a newsman. That is their friggin' job. They are the federal police and they catch criminals. They work on high profile cases. That is what they do. Slapping them on the back for a job well done? Then you really are going to wear your arm out slapping everyone else in America on the back as well for doing their job right, and keeping society running. I love those guys, but sucking up to their good points just slows down the process... besides it is a special person that can be in the FBI, they choose them for loyalty and determination.

If you want to thank anyone in law enforcement, thank the beat cops in major cities, they are the ones that have to shake the tree daily and find the street punks that are the most dangerous to the public at large. FBI can be patient and call in all the people they want, due to the nature of the criminals they are pursuing. Beat cops are the ones that most likely get shot. Some FBI agents I know have their gun in their desk. That is a big difference in law enforcement style.

Look, the FBI are good guys. But allowing them jurisdiction on a corporate and civil matter is preposterous. It is corporatism. It is where this country is going. Copyright infringement is not outright theft, but it is not allowable either. It is prosecutable, but the FBI sure as hell does not need to be involved in it. They have much bigger fish to fry these days than worrying about file sharing on the internet.

Bill.... Gates?!

[seanthenerd]

I don't think anybody would read this since I posted it so late, but anyways...

I just read the title and skipped to the next story (business and politics don't interest me much) but then I suddenly went back and read it again:

Bill Would Let FBI Police File-Sharing

I was shocked and horrified that he had the authority to decide that until I realized you weren't talking about Bill Gates! :-)

Your Are Correct...

[f0rt0r]

The FBI should keep out of this, this is a job for Inspector Gadget!

To the gadget-copter, robo-pal! We have dastardly downloaders to apprehend!

What's More Dangerous...

[Anonymous Coward]

While we sit here and complain about the DMCA and the onslaught of copyright stupidity that seems to be getting worse and worse, we also need to think of the long-term implications of this...

Simply stated, copyright enforcement is the tool the corporation is trying to hone and refine in legal venues to protect revenue from failed buisness models rather than innovate.

What's more important than even the geekdom we love, is to watch our country turn into a downward spiral where we lose our supremacy in the world market, because our economy turns into one of US-based litigation over ownership and expansionism of derivative rights.

I'd really *love* to see the Chinese sue every American manufacturer of computing equipment because the modern computer is derived from the abacus. Or perhaps Babbage's relatives could sue because the modern computer is related to the Difference Engine Charles Babbage created.

This gets increasingly more disgusting in the gene research space - after you've been treated with a patented gene therapy, and the cells in your body positively respond, can Acme Gene Company prevent you from procreating or charge you a fee for procreating because you're going to replicate their intellectual property or create a derivative work? This sounds insane, but like Stallman, I think we're inches away from disaster.

I think the first move we need to make is to seriously abolish and curtail law-for-sale by totally criminalizing peddling anything but the smallest amounts of money before legislators @ any level. The Corporation, as a US concept, is supposed to be a sub-person without voting rights under US law - not an UberPerson purchasing legislation.

We need to make lobbying with money very costly legally for the lobbyist and abolish the specialty lobbying system.

No idiot moderator - its not a troll

[Snaller]

Its just the truth.

Some forums,etc... have it covered

[Sabalon]

When you go on most dc++ forums, you get a disclaimer that you can't use the hub if you ware a member of a law enforcement agency.

So what's the deal? Some 13 year-old puts up a sentence like that and it's all covered.

Right? :)

H.R. 2517 is the bill

[jeh0bu]

Lamar Smith (R-TX-21), John Conyers (D-MI-14) and Howard Berman (D-CA-28) are behind this bill, H.R. 2517. It has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee where Conyers and Berman are the top democrats and Smith is the number three republican. If you are a constituent of any of them, please let them know you are not happy about this bill.