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Cyber Sleuths vs. Secret Networks
amnfinch writes "I saw this article on BBC news and frankly, I was blown away. Just another example of the relentless campaign to treat file swappers as criminals when their 'crime' is murky at best." Sir Haxalot provides an article on the flip-side: "CNN has a story on 'exclusive' Peer to Peer networks, that require 'knowing the right people and having a wealth of content on your hard disk to get into the clique.'"
quote:
"Recently, Republican Senator Sam Brownback offered an amendment to an FTC reauthorization bill that would force "owners of digital media products to file an actual case in a court of law in order to obtain the identifying information of an ISP subscriber" rather than the current standard where the subpoena power is virtually unchecked."
Sounds like Sam Brownback has the right idea, and I want to give him some encouragement...
It seems that money is the only thing these people seem to care about, so I think I will take what I would have spent on a music CD (about 20 bucks) and send a money order to this guys campaign fund instead. I think I will add a nice little note on why I did that. Too bad I can't vote for him directly...
I think I'll send a note to my senator as well, along with a copy of the Brownback note, explaining why I'm not sending HIM any money.
Twenty bucks isn't much.... but what happens if just one percent of the people who read this do the same thing? Hell I might make this an ongoing project, and send twenty bucks a month to whatever congress-critter seems to deserve it the most at the moment.
Look, I file swap, but it is still illegal to trade copyrighted material. Everyone that trades files knows this, it is just that they don't care. It's just like speeding, it's illegal, but it doesn't matter until you get caught.
Especially if they have dynamically allocated IP addresses.
"Matching Technology"? Oh no! They've learned to use regular expressions to parse an unencrypted text stream! Good lord! Now no one will be safe swapping files online! However will the file sharers bypass the modern technological marvel of grep?
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Of course, that might or might not happen, as we know the public to be easily scared and all. On the other hand, it is very possible that it will not work, like things do not work for, say, marijuana. Of course, the penalties the RIAA wants to impose on file-sharers are orders of magnitude worst than the penalty for simple possession of marijuana, but it is my opinion that these penalties will not hold for long once they start applying it to too many people.
As for the smaller, encrypted P2P networks, I don't think the RIAA is after them for now, as they don't really cause them that much trouble. Just as music-sharing before the era of P2P, a P2P network of 30 people does not make as much noise as one of millions of users, and arguably, in the eyes of the RIAA at least, not as many missed sales.
In the end, the first people who get caught in RIAA scare tactics and decide to fight back(there shouldn't be too many of them) will be the ones who will decide of big P2P network's future. If they manage to win their case, or even bring the penalty to something affordable and acceptable for a 'normal' person, there will no longer be any way for the RIAA to scare people. On the other hand, if they end up having to pay 1000$ a month or worse for the rest of their lives, you can expect that a lot of users will shy away from the network, making them less and less efficient...
True, but maybe he meant 'crime' as opposed to 'misdemeanor'. Swapping songs is wrong, but the punishment should fit the crime. Sharing a few songs does not warrant being served with multi-million dollar lawsuits, being treated worse than a drunk driver, or being bullied into handing over your live savings to the RIAA. It's the RIAA's tactics and the way file swappers are treated, that has people up in arms, not the fact that they're going after the swappers in itself.
The RIAA is clearly trying a scare tactic, by making examples out of a few individuals. It's a bit like the old days, when they would cut off the hands of shoplifters (though not quite as bad). Respectable people like you and me may shrug about that, but just you wait until you are singled out for being made into an example... and you don't have to have committed any actual crime; if the RIAA dislikes what you do, you're a viable target. Look at that student with the search engine.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The twist would be that the system would allow relaying of searches and of actual files. In other words, if I request a file that is on my friend's friend's computer, then the file has to come through the computer of our mutual friend. The whole idea is to keep things as encapsulated as possible... kinda like how terrorist cells work.
Now, I know that this increases network traffic... adds a lot of opportunities for a "weaker link" in the chain (imagine if one of the people in the relay chain is using a 56k modem)... decreases the "connectedness" of the whole sharing network, etc. However, I think this is the only real way to keep the RIAA from just being able to download a song and, *pow*, have the IP of someone to sue.
Also, some of these problems mentioned might be assuaged by the fact that people might feel more comfortable leaving their stuff shared. I, for one, have gobs and gobs of stuff that I could share, but I don't... because I have way too much to lose. However, if I knew that the only people who could connect to me would be people that I know... I'd have tons of stuff up and shared... 24/7.
The strange thing is that it seems to me that this was Aimster's plan, but they got shut down for some reason. But I don't know why.
The RIAA doesn't want to prosecute everyone who shares files, they want more people to stop sharing files. The idea is that if for everyone they do go after 10 (or whatever) other people will stop.
... i.e. none whatsoever.
The idea is wrong, both ethically and practically. Ethically it is absolutely heinous to make some people pay an exaggerated price in order to frighten others. Indeed it could be argued that it is unconstitutional (14th amendment) to go around destroying some lives in order to 'communicate' a point to others (some are getting very, very harsh treatment, while others are being left alone). Practically, deterrence has been shown not to work, as we see every day with speeding and the woefully ineffectual and counterproductive War on Drugs(tm, Reagan & Daddy Bush). Indeed, deterrence of such crimes is only marginally effective at best, and more often ineffective altogether, particularly with teens, whose notorious "it will never happen to me" attitude is more or less hardwired into their biology and often remains intact well into adulthood. The entire youthful 'immortality syndrome' conspires against any such efforts at deterrence at several levels, something the RIAA and other cartels seem to be unable to grasp (talk about not knowing your market, or your customers).
A teenager sees a few thousand people get busted, out of several million, and (virtually every one) rightly concludes that they'll never be prosecuted. Indeed, any one filesharer is far more likely to be killed in a car accident than to be brought to trial by the cartels, and we've seen what a deterrence death by physical mutiliation resulting from a high speed automobile impact has on teen driving
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Copyrights exist to provide an incentive to push works into the public domain, by providing a means for the publisher to make money off the published work. Sharing files with friends deprives him of that income. I don't see how sharing files with friends is 'clearly not immoral' (though one could argue that it isn't).
One could argue that since copyright is effectively broken (ie: it doesn't push anything into the public domain due to the fact that its been constantly extended every few years for the last hundred years) that there is no obligation for the populus to obey copyright laws as they gain no benefit.
Social contracts only work if both sides hold up their end of the bargain, and in this case, the RIAA and associated industries have failed to do so. Once they start releasing material into the public domain after a relatively short amount of time, I (and I imagine many others) will start rewarding them by paying for some of the material they have copyright on.
Quote from the BBC article:
Two of the industry's top seven movie studios have engaged the sleuthing services of BayTSP, but because of contractual arrangements they can't be named.
A snapshot of illegal movie downloads by BayTSP's chief technology officer Evelyn Espinosa was revealing.
"This is just over a few hours and I have almost 14,000 records with a variety of different titles ranging from Daddy Day Care to Anger Management and Charlie's Angels."
Well, since Daddy Day Care, Anger Management and Charlie's Angels are all Sony films, Sony must be one of their customers.