Slashdot Mirror
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?"
It's called corporatism and was very aptly described and put into context by Mussolini. No troll, no joke.
Who else here read the title at first and thought that?
:)
Perhaps it's Mr. Gates at it again
University - a box of academia nuts.
.. 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?
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.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
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.
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...
-William Brendel
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.
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.
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".
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
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.
Tweet, tweet.
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.
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.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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!
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
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
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
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??
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
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.
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).
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
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.
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).
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!