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WiFi Hotspots Elude RIAA Dragnet
mblase writes "A CNET News article discusses a problem the RIAA is having with its copyright enforcement strategy: public wireless hot spots. Normally, the RIAA notifies the ISP when a user is found to be violating their copyrights, but in this case, the ISP is powerless to do anything. Key quote: '...unless the administrator keeps detailed logs of everybody's account use - which is not required by law - she may well not know who was swapping files.' I wonder how long it will be before those detailed logs ARE required by law?"
The ISP's should be billing the RIAA $40 or so per hour (or whatever it costs) to sift through their logs. THere is no way this should be paid for by the ISP. If I try to access records through my local courthouse I pay fees. It is not free for me to get information that I have a right to access. I don't think it should be free in this circumstance either.
Stop copying other people's stuff.
Take the moral highground.
Then, when the RIAA doesn't have a leg to stand on, push the balance of copyright law back to normal.
Until people stop publishing and redistributing material which they have no claim to (or rights to), the people who produce that material will gang up against them. And that gang typically has bigger pocketbooks.
They didn't care about it before now, because it's only with the rise of fast connections to the Internet that people have had enough bandwidth to make it a real problem. The losses were a blip on the radar.
Self regulate, learn the rules, or the fairness police will come down on you. If you think it's fair to copy someone else's material willy-nilly, then I'm willing to bet that you've never produced anything of any worth.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
...are people not smart enough to secure their systems. And the more people they bust, the more people will be enticed to secure their systems, thus causing the RIAA's overhead to rise. Frankly, the RIAA is trying to shovel back the ocean with a fork. The only question is how much money they're willing to spend trying. I myself serve almost 500 gigs of stuff (most of it anime, jpop, and the like), and if the RIAA wants to track me they can sure try. I knew the risks when I got into this, and accept them as a cost of doing business. That being said, if the RIAA breaks down the door to get the HDs I keep the stuff on, I have no problems whatsoever with activating the electromagnets sitting on top of 'em and scrambling the whole mess into indecipherable gobbledygook. I got a nice stack of back-up CDs in a safe place ;)
Oh, and for those of you who use Kazaa Lite: The latest ver blocks the IP ranges that the RIAA and their minions/co-conspirators use.
Who says resistance is futile?
Berrik
Current karma: Terrible (due to mods without a sense of humor)
The IP Log Circle Jerk: .winnuke me"
1) ISP's will be required to keep logs, for legal purposes
2) the common folk, with their (insert firewall here) logs will say "hey, if ISP logs are kept for legal purposes, why not track this sonuvabitch down who tried to
3) The Department of Justice will get involved when they hear of rumors that such and such a ISP has been tampering with their logs, thus costing us more money in them doing their shit.
4) Some random group of people who like to complain will picket the government some more claiming "they are tracking how long i'm on the internet and what i'm doing, invasion of privacy" and that will cost us even more money as they send out the swat teams and the rubber bullets because we all know protesting in any form is pretty much ILLEGAL now.
5) Some Congressman will present a bill to overthrow the IP log law because it's causing conflicts in society (he doesn't want them to catch onto his warez/kiddie porn ring)
6) the law will be discontinued, we'll be right back were we started, a couple billion dollars further in the hole, with nothing more accomplished.
your sins into me, oh my beautiful one.