Slashdot Mirror
SBC Refuses To Name File-Sharing Users
securitas writes "The New York Times reports that Internet provider SBC Communications has refused to identify computer users accused by the RIAA of file-sharing copyrighted material. SBC is the largest high-speed DSL provider with over 3 million subscribers. It continues to refuse a response to the 300 subpoenas served by the RIAA despite a ruling against Verizon earlier this year. 'We are going to challenge every single one of these that they file until we are told that our position is wrong as a matter of law,' said James D. Ellis, general counsel for SBC. He continues, '...We've got a long heritage in which we have always taken a harsh and hard rule on protecting the privacy of our customers' information.' Mirrors in Tuscaloosa and Lakeland."
As usual, the google link thwarting the NYtimes registration:
Click Here
All of you who were *ahem* caught "sharing" MP3s of popular musicians and are subscribed to Time Warner's internet service.. well you all are going to get it up the ass. Time Warner is not only an ISP, but an RIAA member.
Its a good thing user privacy isn't worthless to everyone; just the government and microsoft.
it's nice to know that some major corporations are opposing the actions of the recording industry where the average person is usually powerless. what other internet service providers are chosing to fight the RIAA instead of just giving in?
Definition of irony: a company formed from the dissolution of a monopoly talking about protecting it's customer's rights.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
In a world where the right to privacy is quickly giving way to nosier and nosier laws and regulations, it is quite refreshing to see a company with so much to lose fighting to maintain the privacy of their customers. Say what you will, but SBC is taking quite a risk.
Heh, I don't normally gush like this, but I have to say that I am honestly very impressed by this move. Unless this is just a ploy to gain more customers concerned with their KaZaA, er, habits. In that case, well, I'm still impressed. Brilliant marketing ploy!
Wait, SBC isn't actually OCP or anything is it? No? Okay cool. Power to the peop- er, to the customers!
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Incredible. That's the first time I've heard of an ISP actually caring about their customers.
They'll probably lose in court eventually, but it doesn't matter. More opposition to the RIAA is always good.
Maybe someday they'll realize they're against everyone, including businesses, not only their customers...
I wish these guys served DSL where I live. It would mean I could get rid of the 'emergency Plan B' device I keep in my bedroom, one of those magnets they use to move cars.
I mean, it's great, and it's sure to work, but the switch is so close to my light switch.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Not that it's going to stop the RIAA per se, but it's at least nice to see some ISPs making the RIAA work a little harder and waste a few more resources to sue people.
I'm not against chronic lawbreakers to face the consequences of their actions, but I would think (hope?) that better challengers from ISPs would make the RIAA think twice about being more heavy-handed than they need to be, and encourage them to pick their targets for lawsuits more wisely.
The terrorists have won!
Finally, someone has the balls to try to stop the RIAA. So much for their legal tactic of "let's sue and let them settle for only 10k and their first born son". It only everyone else would challenge their abuse of the legal system, they would have been foiled by now. What we need is an organization for the purpose of hiring lawyers to screw oer the RIAA. Imagine the settlements and awards you would get...
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
So, what if an ISP has a policy of trashing any logs with personal information? Maybe this is a selling point for smaller ISPs. They could track traffic for performance purposes, but once the info's in the DB, trash the data.
I can see the ad now: "Use PrivCorp ISP. We don't care what you do, and the RIAA won't find out either. You just need to pay by the meg."
"It's real and we can touch it, so least we know where we stand." - Jack Burton
I suspect this has more to do with retaining customers already "file sharing" and avoiding bad PR than it does to be protecting customer privacy.
so now the RIAA will sue them, just to sue the ppl downloading songs from kazaa....ugh, how much longer can the RIAA afford to keep suing people. I think they're single handedly keeping half the lawyers in business!
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
The USA was the first country in the world to address Cyberstalking as a serious issue & get laws effectively punishing the same. It is really sad to see the same lawmakers give such sweeping powers to the DMCA, wherein any tom dick & harry can walk in & say "Mr.X stole my copyrighted work, I need to serve him a subpeona" & this can be handed out by a clerk in the court, without any form of checking as to who the person requsting the subpeona actually is & what his/her intentions are... how dumb can you get ?
I sincerely am hoping that this ISP wins the case/the courts wake up & see what the actual picture is.
Somehow, I'm more willing to believe that the whole protection of privacy thing is a PR hoax and that they are really worried about the extra operational overhead necessary to hand the RIAA the information it needs. I mean, figuring out who had which IP and when in an ISP as big as SBC probably isn't a trivial task.
However, I think SBC is doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Painting the RIAA as the evil organization trying to invade your privacy is definitely a good thing, since that's what they're trying to do.
And heck, who doesn't love the irony of using one underhanded business tactic to undermine another underhanded business tactic? RIAA wanted to get lawyers involved, and now they find themselves fighting 800lb gorillas rather than poor students.
I was reading the article and this really struck me
:)
A record industry official pointed to a past print advertisement from SBC's Pacific Bell unit that read, in part: "Download all the music you like. And all the music you sort of, kind of, maybe even a little bit like. Go MP3 crazy. Try new music. Build a song library. Whatever."
"Sure beats going to the record store," the advertisement concluded.
-- snip --
Matthew J. Oppenheim, the trade group's senior vice president for business and legal affairs, said the ad was important because it suggested a strong motive for SBC's position. "SBC believes that free music drives its business,"
Hmmm... I guess they would make quite a bit of money from the excess bandwidth charges from people who download heaps of music. Certainly that would be a strong motive to take this stance, money is a strong motive for a lot of things.
Also.. it may be unrelated but their share price is up $0.35
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
There is a saying in the PR industry that goes something like this: "Every PR is good PR". The attacks that SCO has made against us has been one of the best demonstrations of this saying. Even though they showed a face of humanity that would make most criminals throw up, their stock went up substantialy and the officers made some serious cash.
Now look at what SBC is doing
IANAL, nevertheless I believe SBC doesn't stand a chance in court. They know it. Their General Counsel has huge balls but I think he knows that this is a great publicity. GREAT publicity.
At a time of software patents, monopolies held by incompetents and failing companies trying to kill Open Source, it sure feels good to see someone doing The Right Thing. Or at least it would seem.
After reading this story, I would switch to SBC if they covered my area ...
What about you?
Looking for a great online backup: Green Backup
Hm, and they just called me today to try to sell me LT and LD service.
The article said that Verizon kept its log files indefinitely where as others may have kept logs for 30 days meaning those other companies wouldn't be able to provide any information if legal battles took the courts over that amount of time. I wonder if companies like SBC start gaining customers because of these practices if other companies would jump onboard.
It's a good PR for them since they will gain nothing giving RIAA their customer list w/o a fight (even worse if people know about it). And they also have deep enough pocket to pay for legal fees which are more likly to be even when more ppl switch to SBC for their piece of mind and just to piss RIAA off.
Nice to know some ISP's still have balls. I dont see why ISP's tend to upgrade from FreeInformation 1.0 to Profiteering Bafoon 2.0 and now load the corprate slave modules.
+-+-+-The folowing statement is true. The previous statement is false.-+-+-+
Basically, request an address from DHCP and then use another one. Or spoof packets from my neighbors PC. Maybe some simple things are blocked, but I don't feel cable modem network is especially secure. At least its not using secure IP and everyone gets to see everyone's packets with tcpdump.
Anyway, if there are some known hacks, won't it be very easy to defend against RIAAs lawsuit by saying it wasn't you?
Then how come when I go here I can sign up for SCB dsl?
Bottom line: Publicity stunt aimed at gaining popularity and consumer confidence by pandering to the most prevelant public opinion - regardless of righteousness. This ISp cares about generating profit, not the privacy of their customers. Rest assured that RIAA lawyers are already in talks with the ISP over possible compensation for the release of the names. Once a satisfactory amount is agreed upon, the customer information will be given up.
SBC's general council has obviously had some council! They are not disagreeing with the RIAA; merely conditionaly agreeing with the RIAA upon proof of claim. For those of you sovereignty-type people, perhaps you would piss your pants to discover that while SBC is conditionaly agreeing to the RIAA, that subscribers to SBC are actualy vulnerable by acting in a Public/Body Corporate capacity and that SBC is not Private as it is governed by the FCC. The content of the RIAA's claims is not meritless, yet neither has the RIAA provided oath of office to represent the copyright and patent holders of the allegedly "infringed" data being processed through SBC's securitities (their data network services). Perhaps a lesson in copyright law should warrant that copyrights only apply to commercial actions. Using copyrighted and patented property is not against the law in the realm of non-commercial; be weary of using copyrighted software in a corporation, as corporations are inclusivly commercial in their nature. So, this leaves us whether SBC is liable for their (think commercial) corporation transporting copyrighted and patented tangible property to its subscribers. Be afraid for SBC...non-commercial use, need not apply unless by the RIAA's administration of force and intimidation has taken effect.
Question for slashdotters: are you a secured party?
Secured Party, Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207: Creditor
Holy crap, really? Jesus, who've I been paying $50 a month for the last two years to, then?
And then, just who the HELL IS GIVING ME INTERNET ACCESS?!?!?!?! ARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!
:: crawls into the fetal position and shivers.... ::
OH MY GOD, THEY EVEN HAVE THEIR LOGO ON MY BILL!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!
DRM doesn't prevent file trading. All it takes is one person with a good sound card, a cd(drmed or not), and a little extra time on their hands to give any cd to the whole world on p2p. DRM only makes ripping slightly harder, preventing most normal people from doing what they want with music they paid for. So people who use p2p will have uncrippled versions of the songs people like you pay for. Right now you get a better version of your favorite song if you buy the cd than if you download it for free. DRM reverses that inequality. Just when you think the RIAA have finished digging their own grave, they go find a bigger shovel.
Do me a favor and double it!
Companies of SBC:
Pacific Bell + Nevada Bell = Pacific Telesis
Illinois Bell + Indiana Bell + Michigan Bell + Ohio Bell + Wisconsin Bell = Ameritech
Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET)
Southwestern Bell
Pacific Telesis + Ameritech + SNET + Southwestern Bell = SBC.
Sounds to me like SBC is more like a partial re-assembly of the original monopoly.
Not that I don't respect SBC big-time for this decision.
(Source of data: US FCC, http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/armis/carrier_filing_histor y/COSA_History/sbtr.htm)
In the Chicago area, SBC just took over our phone service a few years back. They screwed everything and jacked up the prices. The people at SBC engage in some of the most underhanded busniess practice this side of the ENRON debacle. I do have to say that I am quite impressed by this move, though. But look for the hidden motives. Publicity is the name of the game here not some sense of loyalty they have to thier customers.
This is the same company that will sell local phone service customers' information unless the customer requests that they don't...even if the number is unlisted and even if the customer has subscribed to SBC's Privacy Manager service whose only function is to keep companies from buying the customer's information and calling them!
And even with your unlisted number...even with your Privacy Manager...even if you got in before the deadline and asked them not to sell your information...SBC'S TELEMARKETING DIVISION CAN STILL GET YOUR NUMBER AND BYPASS PRIVACY MANAGER!
SBC is doing this to get its name in the press. I don't have a problem with a company trying to make money but caring about customers is the last thing on their list.
I'm an SBC DSL subscriber. Tonight I got a letter from a laywer suing SBC for class action lawsuit, claiming the service wasn't all it was claimed to be, and demanding one month free service or $20 for each participant. At first I thought "oh cool" and started filling out the form to be part of the lawsuit. After filling it out completely, and even addressing the letter, I realized I really was pretty satisfied with their service, and that this seems a little bit of a frivolous lawsuit. I tore up the letter and threw it out thinking "i'm not going to support a stupid lawsuit like this that will end up raising DSL prices for consumers".
After reading this story - I'm glad I did. Go SBC!
told the FBI for years they could not do some things with phone calls (reverse trace I think - ie this number was called at time x - where did it come from) for technical reasons when they could just that it was too much work for them. This was in 60's I think. I read this about 15 years ago so please be gentle with if I got the details wrong. And no I don't remember the book.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Doctor David Banner:
file trader, scientist;
searching for a way to download the hidden copyrighted files that all you little liars know you have.
Then an accidental overdose of typical SBC service alters his body chemistry.
And now, when David Banner hears any news about SBC,
whether it has to do with their patent abuse, layoffs and overseas outsourcing, or the general degradation in service quality that occurs whenever SBC takes over an outfit,
a startling metamorphosis occurs.
The Creature is driven by rage,
and wanted for sharing a file he didn't upload.
David Banner is believed to be dead,
and he must let the world think that he is dead because those bastards can sue you for $100,000 per copyright violation,
until he can find a way to control the raging spirit that dwells within him...
But now David's eyebrows are merely raised in suspicion.
What is SBC's motive in acting in the interests of their customers?
What's in it for them? What are they up to?
The Creature does not understand.
Don't know about the law in the states, but can the Isp not ask the RIAAssholes for a reasonable fee for doing the work of identifying their customers? I know your ale to ask for compensation in the UK for copliance with the data protection laws ( such as they are :( ) ...... I suggest a fee to the RIAA of $10,000 per identified customer
If you don't do a lot of file sharing why do you need broadband? To have the convenience of never having to tie up the phone line? Forget it - I can wire this entire rural village with "broadband." We don't get any other form of broadband out here but if no one changed their online habits I could funnel every one of those wireless users through a 128K ISDN line and no one would complain.
File sharing is the only reason to have broadband. Well, actually, buying movie downloads would be a great application, but Hollywood refuses to go there. And legally downloading music would be another great app, but thanks to our antiquated legal system kept fat by dollars from hundreds of lobbyists, we won't have that, either. the thing is...
"Download all the music you like. And all the music you sort of, kind of, maybe even a little bit like. Go MP3 crazy. Try new music. Build a song library. Whatever."
I can point you to a half dozen russian sites where, for $20 a month, you can get on legal on-demand MP3 downloads of just about any popular artist. That includes lots of Russian artists you've prbably never heard of, but it also includes Britney and Madonna and Christina and all the rest. These sites are operated completely legally, paying royalties to the russian licensing agency (ROMS) responsible for copyrighted "multimedia" works. So, technically, the above statement is 100% true and can be done legally and in a very cost effective fashion (how about a dime a song for 256kbps?).
But you're not likely to hear about this from Hollywood. Doesn't anyone wonder why Hollywood isn't throwing giant canninption fits over these sites offering legal downloads (for years now) to anyone with a Franklin in their Paypal account?
Hollywood isn't going to mention these legal services because they would risk further losing control of the market. Imagine if word got around that you could go online and pick any CD you want, select the level of quality you want, and download it from a completely legal website!
It's the elephant in the room. The record industry zoots don't want to talk about it, the lobbyists and lawyers don't want to talk about it, and the only way they know to keep the discussion stifled is to throw around the red paint of piracy. You think the record industry wants this case to actually go to court? And have their entire case mooted when all this becomes a matter of public record?
People who pay the money for bandwidth are a desire for internet providers. The ISPs who give up information at the drop of a hat look like wimps who have no loyalty to their customers. But this ISP might have a good idea hear. Spend some money on the lawyers so the customers think they're behind them. The RIAA will win eventually, but this is cheap and effective advertisment. I know I sound really cynical here, but I think there is some truth to it. But if I'm wrong and these people really want to make the RIAA work for something that morally yet legally isn't there, then right on!
Remember: P2P isn't money lost down the drain, it's shifted to high bandwidth providers.
It's a little long to type up here, but I can give you the jist of the article. Basically it describes a way of getting all the active MAC address (of Windows machines) on your subnet by performing a portscan on Netbios (port 139), and using those (ifconfig in linux or perhaps MAC address cloning on you linksys router) to register an IP thru DHCP.
Since most Cable ISPs require the MAC of the connecting device to be registered, you need a vaild one. Any thing you do with an IP registered under an assumed MAC gets blamed on the person with the MAC you stole.
Thats the theory anyway. Could be traced, but probably enough to get you off the hook.
That must be the most unlikely thing I've heard on Slashdot in weeks. How would they do that? some sort of special deal with Yahoo to watch for their customers and apply special rules? I guess it could be done but why?
I won't be surprised if CDs and DVDs are replaced with media designed around DRM, and you know what? I won't care.
Neither would I. By then, the P2P networks will be full of legally redistributable music from independent artists. And I'll continue to buy home-burned discs from the local scene. Fuck the RIAA! Fuck capitalism! Muahahahaha!
Dude, companies are not evil. Just the lawyers that run them are.
So, in your rejoicing of the possibility of both companies going bankrupt, you forget that lawyers (the greatest evil) are getting rich.
Lawyers get what they want -- always. Everyone else gets screwed.
now supporting:
cmdrTaco for president '04
michael for oval office intern summer '05
from that site's(mp3downloadhq.com) Terms:
Doesn't that sound like it goes against their terms to recieve the stuff from them?
I know that with my ISP, as long as I keep the same MAC I keep the same IP. The couple of times I've changed IPs, all I had to do was take advantage of MAC address cloning.
from the article:
A record industry official pointed to a past print advertisement from SBC's Pacific Bell unit that read, in part: "Download all the music you like. And all the music you sort of, kind of, maybe even a little bit like. Go MP3 crazy. Try new music. Build a song library. Whatever."
"Sure beats going to the record store," the advertisement concluded.
Ouch. That might come back to haunt them.
I don't know what your searches have been returning, but ever since I read about this and tried it for myself, I've had no problem finding the kazaa-lite links from a simple google search. I understand what everyone is talking about, but I have no problem myself. Besides pr0n and illegal mp3s, I very much understand the uses of p2p software like Kazaa. Hats off to SBC for at least trying to make the RIAA prove their case as a point of law. Hope it works.
In the meantime, if you want good, legal, high-quality indy (non-RIAA) mp3s, try http://www.dmusic.com. Nice stuff.
Reading a positive story about SBC on Slashdot is like reading a "SCO does something right" story on Slashdot!
Bravo! I'm not complaining, but wow...
As for SBC: just be careful. First you do one good deed, then another, and pretty soon your customers will trust you again. You don't want that! And always remember the SBC motto "our customers are the enemy!"
Thanks for the link
I would love to see an ISP use Oblivious Transfer when assigning an IP to each on of its customers..
That way, this situtation would never have happened since the information the RIAA wanted could not have been obtained from the ISPs since the ISPs wouldn't know who they assigned IPs too.
Simon
This is cool news... Why do I hear the victory music from Final Fantasy right now. :)
www.samuraidreams.com - My Blog
www.samuraifiles.com - Get Some Videos Here
they only made Baked Beans and Spagetti.. oh wait, thatps SPC.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I realize this isn't the main point of your post by any means, but I'd like to point out that there are LEGAL and legitimate uses \ needs for broadband.
:)
I'm a remote contract artist working in game development. I work fulltime hours from home and have to be on call constantly and able to quickly and reliably send and receive my assignments at a moment's notice. I'm working for two companies right now, one of which is developing a full game in a very tight six-month development cycle, so having constant, fast and reliable connectivity is a must.
Even more importantly than simply sending and receiving assignments from my bosses, I have to log into the SourceSafe (a central repository for all the latest project files) several times daily and download the latest version of however much of the project I need, usually ranging from 1mb to 600mb.
Keeping current with the rest of the team remotely is VITAL in my line of work, and it would be impossible to do on dialup. By the time I downloaded half or even a fourth of the project, it would probably be updated by then and I'd have to download it all again. Without broadband, I'd be shit out of luck and out of a job.
I guess by a very broad definition that this does fall under 'file sharing' but it's almost certainly not in the same sense that you meant it.
beyond just downloading music. I'll list just a few of them, all relivant to me personally:
1) Always on access. I use the Internet as a seemless part of my computer. I just look at it whenever I feel like it or need info. I don't thik about "logging on", I'm ALWAYS on. I like it that wany and don't want it any other way.
2) General fast access. My computer these days is fast. Most programs load in under 5 seconds and everything works quickly. I want the Internet to be responsive like that too. I don't want to wait 20 seconds for a page to load, I want it loaded immediatly.
3) Games. Many online games (first person shooters mainly) function better with lower latency. Also many like to have more bandwidth than a modem can provide. I want to have these games preform as well as possible.
4) User-user file transfers. I frequently need to share data with friends, or to or from my work computer. To do this over a modem would be very slow (we are often talking hundreds of megs here for audio and such). To do so on CD is technically inconvienent (requiring getting in a car) for people locally, and very slow for people out of city/state/country. I want to be able to easily and quickly get data to and from people.
5) General purpose file transfers. I find I download lots of things like patches for applications, product demos, video (like from iFilms) , technical docs, user guides, etc. I don't want to sit and wait 20 minutes to get a little user guide for a product, I want it quickly.
6) Multiple users. I have two roomates, we all use the Internet. If the three of us tried to share a modem it would go from slow to intolerably slow. To get 3 additonal phone lines and 3 ISP accounts is finincally inefficient. However one broadband account costing less than the 3x modem service works just fine.
7) Servers. I want to run my own server. It is of use to me in many ways. Well this requires a static IP, an always-on connection, and a fair bit of bandwidth. A modem connection provides none of these.
Those are just the 7 reasons off the top of my head that are teh most important to me personally for having broadband. #1 and #2 are the biggies for most people. Like my mom, sh'es an art teacher and not very technically adept. She just uses the Internet for shopping and getting information. None the less she has a cable modem and wouldn't have it any other way. She likes having it always on in the background, able to use it on a whim, and she likes things to move quickly, at near realtime speeds.
As with many articles of the like, it only works in certian cases. The cable ISP I used to have didn't care one bit about any MAC address on your network, all they wanted was your CM's MAC. That was registered with your line, no other CM would work on your line unless you caleed to change it. Their DHCP server would then dole out the number of IPs you paid for (default 1) and no more. The router then wouldn't accept traffic from or send traffic to anything but those IPs.
You clearly have never had dealings with SBC. My god. I'm convinced appalling service is part of their business plan.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
Crazy. Who says socialism and capitalism don't mix. I'm certain that all of the US media companies who license their copyrighted material through ROMS (and they almost unanimously do) feel that the royalties they receive from ROMS justify ceding distribution control of that content to ROMS. This appears to be the only practical way to market any sort of music, film, or multimedia content to Russia. Logic tells us that the MPAA and RIAA member companies wanted or needed the Russian market badly enough that they were willing to participate in the ROMS distribution model, unknowing of or despite the fact that US consumers have legal, high speed access to the ROMS distribution network.
I can see why they don't want to talk about it.
It's such a goddamn shame that these same companies own most of the hardcopy media as well. It doesn't take a [Cliched analogies fail me. Please insert one to your liking here.] to see why I haven't seen this in Maxim or Newsweek.
But why not elsewhere? We've got to make a stink about this, and better yet, start using it. People have to know.
Because the US government needs one of these kicking around, or it's going to be severely disadvantaged in the key area of digital media distribution. This is not just about music and movies. This is about IP control. Remember that information is the successor to money. The economics of data flow will be the keys to the kingdom for longer than you or I are likely to live.
Probably not, but a bet anything you like that many of the execs. there have kids with hundreds of mp3's they've downloaded. They are probably worried in case one of their own names appears on a subpoena (or maybe this has already happened, that would explain a lot).
Obviously they are protecting both their image, i.e. future sales, and their current revenue stream.
Seriously, how many people need dsl to check email and browse? Nobody.
P2P is the killer app that drives the internet these days.
Oddly enough, AOL, SBC and other broadband providers may actually do us a great service by protecting our rights (and possibly helping grant a few new ones)
How many other companies have enough money to both successfully fight the RIAA in court and lobby (pay for) changes in law?
These are the companies we need to rally around instead of bashing at every chance.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
Hello. My name is Eric Jacobson. I'm a freelance computer consultant from Houtzdale, PA. And I am a filesharer.
I currently use iMesh, version 4.2, to share files over the Internet, which I get access to through Pennswoods.
Currently, I'm sharing the following eight files:
Songs by the rock band Tempered Edge:
Fade Away
Slip Into Never
Pull The Trigger
Madness Follows Me
I Need You
It's Alright
Picture This
Footsteps.
These songs are copyrighted, and I am offering them up, free of charge, to anyone who wishes to download them. The trick is, I'm the singer for this band. We own our own copyrights. We are not signed by any label, major or independant.
Come and get me...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Amoeba and Rasputin? What do you do, live in Berkeley or other place in the Bay Area?
Trance and Jungle on Telegraph south of both of them, then Primal next to the laundramat, then all of the places in San Francisco from the Haight to Divisidero (and more).
SF has some fucking great stores.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2002/12/13/BU191399.DTL
for a DSL company that I've sometimes questioned their technicial decisions, I for one am proud of their stance. I worked as the network admin for a university student network (aka ResNet) of approximately 1500 users, and I can't tell you how many times I fought decisions destined on further monitoring and tracking individual users. It just seems like SBC is trying to prevent a gorilla from harming rats here - not totally innocent customers, but the customers have far more to lose than the RIAA has to gain.
The ridiculosity of this is getting out of hand. ISPs should not be responsible for this, any more than common carriers should be responsible for listening in on the voice transmissions on their copper or fiber for potential terrorist threats. This country is lost.
The *issue* here is that if litigation is going to be the order of the day, then small ISPs will be SQUASHED. If the burden lies upon the ISP, then it will loosen competition, so that only the largest ISPs (Verizon, the baby Bells, the common carriers) will be able to defend these ridiculous lawsuits. The ISP should NOT have to worry about its customers' activities. They are providing a SERVICE... nothing else.
Let's use an analogy. Imagine the year 2300.
Imagine a cell phone with close to perfect translation (A/D, with a bandwidth and sampling rate greater than CD). I send a song that I like to Joe Blow, for his opinion. Obvious copyright violation, under current laws.
Imagine now, that the common carrier of the phone service is responsible for the mutiny of the masses. The economic model devised by excessive and frivolous litigation raises prices on technology services in GENERAL.
In short, carriers should not be responsible for investigating the deeds of their customers! It's heresy! This seemed VERY clear 10 years ago. To stifle a technology that is so clearly beneficial is LUDICROUS. Copyright laws exist for a reason... to ensure that the owner makes money. Now that the ability to copy almost anything is ubiquitous, and people have demonstrated time and time again that they have no respect for the law, it would seem that copyright law should be REFORMED. If the majority of people don't agree with the law, change it!
I think most people here would agree that once you buy a CD, or a song from the internet, you should be able to listen to it a BILLION times if you want, and PLAY it for any ONE of your friends that you deem fit to hear it! I sometimes wonder... Does it matter whether I invite a friend over to hear a new album, or whether I stream the audio to him by changing the audio properties in Volume Control (in Windows) to stereo mix, so that rather than selecting microphone, you select WAV out?
I'm totally confounded by the greed in this world. Artists deserve to make a living, and I fully support them, but it ain't gonna happen if they're affiliated with the RIAA. The RIAA is a child molester, pure and simple.
Kazaa and other p2p apps are just a convenient, braindead way for mom and dad user to "share stuff" online. Yeah, some of them are too daft to even realize those "shared files" they download are visible to everyone online, but for every one of those braindead souls there's another who actually uses a p2p app to share stuff legally.
It takes a certain amount of know-how to get a "real" server running on a machine. Takes even more know-how to do that without it being owned by the kid down the street, or even the latest robotic virus. But it doesn't take a genius to install kazaa, drag a few files to the "shared" folder and then point your friends to them. You can even do it with zone alarm running and have some warm fuzzy feelings of safety (however misguided). And yes, I do know folks who use p2p apps in just such a setting.
But for most everything else, no one needs broadband. Especially when it may well cost more than twice as much as dialup access. Many folks who have never had broadband don't realize how handy it is to be able to go to a yahoo map, or google a factoid you can't recall in detail, without having to think about all the crap that goes along with "dialing the internet." They have never had the experience of talking with someone on the phone while they figure something out together. Or even just watched tv and surfed while the kid talks to her friends on the phone.
In fact that is the killer app for broadband, and it's the only way that computers and the net are truly going to become ubiquitous. But you can't sell any of that because the people who use dialup to check their email and surf msnbc have never experienced that, and they cannot relate to it. You might as well be trying to sell them tickets to mars, or lightning in a bottle. They can't get past thinking of "going on the internet" because it's still an alien place to them. They have no sense of ownership of the space in the same sense you and I might think of google as an extension of our own intellect.
So you gotta market what people can understand to get the asses in the seats. And they understand free shit, so you market that. Tell someone who chats with buddies, reads a few emails and surfs ebay an hour a night that they can get pages to load twice as fast with broadband and most every one will tell you "it's already fast enough." I've had broadband in my home, and regularly use very fast academic connections, but even I would not pay forty or fifty bucks a month in addition to a phone bill just to be able to see the pages of slashdot render faster. For most of that stuff dialup is plenty adequate, and with a dedicated phone/fax line the time constraint ("gotta get offline before someome tries to call") goes away as well.
The only reason left is file sharing. Not sharing web pages, not running a fucking web server in your living room - to get broadband sold to 99% of the people who don't have it and have never used it, the only "killer app" available to market right now is music and movie trading.
... buy you know you have to pay for it, don't you?
If you wnat your cake for free you DIY, steal it or wait to be invited to a nice afternoon tea.
Offering the possibility to "download all the music you like" is in now way encouraging you to do it illegally, since the above mentioned downloads can be of music for which you have paid for or which is unecumbered by copyright hurdles.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to rule that you don't know what the fuck you are talking about. My mom doesn't use Kaazaa, has no reason to. Neither do I. Mom likes broadband because it makes her Internet faster and always on. Period. Does she need it? Of course not, she doesn't need Internet access at all, she also doesn't need an Audi, a health club membership and a lot of other, more expensive things. Need has nothing to do with it, it is want. The U.S. is a rich country, we, by and large, have money to spend on non essentials like cable TV, nerf guns, and video games. So people don't NEED broadband, that doesn't mean they can't LIKE it. I don't NEED my $40/month cellphone either. It's convienent , but it isn't critical. I could get away with a $13/month land line. Guess what? I like my cell and I'm keeping it (and I'm keeping the land line too).
/. and whine about P2P, but the Internet is a useful tool for work and also different kinds of recreation. There are many of us who like to use it for that purpose. For example, (since you didn't like my earilier ones): One of the biggest users of bandwidth on campus is.... NOAO. They do tons of transfers to other universities, and tons of transfers to their researchers when they are off campus. Do you think they want to transfer all that on dialup? They don't use boradband on campus (it's ethernet to them [baseband] and Packet-Over-Sonet off campus [also baseband]) but their researchers do at home.
Now if you want to be a tight-ass and save $10-20/month by not having broadband, be my guest. Before you shoot back think: what does your ISP cost you ($15-20/month unless you use a crappy one like NetZero or Juno) and what does that second line cost you (cheapest I've ever seen is $10/month, not counting tax and $15+ is more normal). So you end up paing $25-40/month instead of paying $40-50/month for broadband. Great, many people would rather pay the extra $10-20 and have a REAL always on connection and much more bandwidth.
Then there are those of us that do other shit than just surf the web. I know it may be hard for you to believe, if all you do is read
Get off it. Many people do like P2P and it is a major reason for them owning broadband. Doesn't mean it is the main reason, doesn't mean it is the only reason, and doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people with other reasons.
Myself, my friends, and my family are a falsification of your theory. Come up with a better one.
That is just about the wrongest thing I have ever seen in 5 years of reading slashdot, and that is SAYING SOMETHING!!!
I have a 512k cable line, and I love it. I download absolutely no music or video whatsoever (ok, maybe once a month or something). I mainly use the connection for things like downloading open source software, including linux isos; carrying out Windows Update (have you ever tried doing that over a slow connection? and how are you supposed to keep your machine secure if you can't patch it? eh?); general web browsing (eg. slashdot, news sites, checking train times, buying things), for which a fast, always on connection is like driving a brand new Golf GTi instead of an A-reg lada; email and newsgroups(download the list of newsgroups over a phone line takes forever); gnome-/net-meeting; and a whole bunch of other stuff which I just can't do without nowadays.
I used a telephone line for the internet for years, and it was utter crap. Now, if I don't have broadband access I feel like I'm blind!
Don't get me wrong, I agree with most of what you said. But file-sharing as the only reason for using broadband? Where did that come from?
"The Milliard Gargantubrain? A mere abacus - mention it not."
Did you even look at the topic? There's a link straight to here, which was the ruling against Verizon when they (an ISP) tried to stand up to the RIAA against 'subpoenaing' customers' info from IPs. They did lose in court.
Nevertheless, it's good that SBC is also backing down, the ruling against Verizon wasn't necessarily precedent-setting, but by companies not standing up, a de facto one would form for years and industries to come.
--- What
or check out http://www.furthernet.org/
legal, (usually) high-quality recordings from BIG NAME artists who are nice enough to allow recordings of their live shows
besides live recordings are always more fun to listen to than choreographed studio recordings
Seriously, if the only "legal" use we can scare up is work from home, we're all in trouble.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
i have sbc yahoo and it fukin rocks - both for legal and "illegal" music
i am an artist myselfe, and i share all of my music for free
Nathan Friedly
The article said that Verizon kept its log files indefinitely where as others may have kept logs for 30 days meaning those other companies wouldn't be able to provide any information if legal battles took the courts over that amount of time.
Presumably the RIAA would obtain a court order requiring the ISP to hold the relevant records until the user was located. Even if not, deleting the logs after receiving the subpoena would probably be considered contempt of court, destruction of evidence, or something along those lines.
i've done the "share an isdn line" thing in the past. it worked fairly well, but the incremental cost of having my own dsl line now is very small. sure i could get two phone lines for $40 a month, and use one for dialup. alternatively, i could get one phone line and dsl for $45.
if someone offered me a chunk of a broadband connection for $5 a month, i'd probably take it. this would of course violate the terms of service.
-- john
I wrote and queried my ISP about log retention schedules, what information they keep and log, and what kind of ISP "safeharbor" rules they have to follow.
I think is good to let your ISP know you are interested in such things (sadly, mine will now likely cancel my service after asking!)
The first response was "oh, we don't keep any logs or records". I thought that was too good to be true, so I asked again, pointedly, and was told by someone higher that they were actually kept for 3 months or so; they could match an IP with username.
I told them that that ZERO was best for me.
The main culprit is:
Charlie Root
127 Localhost Drive
Localhost, LocalDomain 127001
e-mail address: root@localhost.localdomain
You can view his file collection at:
here
about your privacy. they want to keep selling you dsl. most people have few actual uses for broadband. if most of sbc's dsl customers were suddenly too scared to download music or were forced to actually purchase music, they would most likely go back to hit'n the malls with their friends and go back to a 56k modem. it seems like basic economics here: you always want your complimentary products cheap (or in this case free). E.g. hardware people are always pushing to keep the software cheap and software people are pushing to keep hardware cheap.
I am an SBC customer an Customer Privacy is NOT something they care about. I get more telemarketing calls then ever on my brand new phone number.
SBC is upset that the RIAA is try trying to get the info via a subpeona.
RIAA should do like the telemarketers already do, buy ALL the IP to Personal Info at once and then run a query to get the people your after.
What about the Yahoo! part of the SBC Yahoo partnership? Reading Yahoo's EULA's, Yahoo doesn't seem nearly as concerned about privacy as SBC claims to be.
I do have SBC here in California. I pay $49.99 a month. Prior to this, I had Cox cable ($52.57/mo which went up to $60) who limited bandwidth (I believe it's 30 Gigs per month), blocked ports 80 and 25 and would terminate your subscription if they knew you were running a Linux IPMasq server with other computers behind it. The charge was $10 per extra computer limit 2 or three.
Pacbell or SBC (whichever you want to call it) told me they don't care what services you run as long as you take into consideration you might throttle your bandwidth running anything high-end (like a 20 user ftp site). I have 7 computers behind my IPMasq firewall, run a web and mail server with no problems. They don't seem to care what you do with it and the speeds are very comparable with cable modem.
Cable was faster when I first signed up, but within 6 months the speeds have slowed down to a crawl about 5pm. SBC is a little slower, but it's consistent. Same speed all the time about 150k downloads from most everywhere. SBC does NOT charge extra for downloading (I've spend weeks on the IRC downloading music from several people at once never recceived an extra bill).
They will of course loose in the end since our conutry is going to hell when it comes to rights/freedoms, but its good to see they are trying to protect their customers privacy.
I am NOT supporting illegal practices and hiding behind the 4th amendment, but using just the DMCA to demand records is wrong, you should be getting a court order to do the request...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I get so fed up with RIAA FUD that "trading music == illegal activity, no matter what". There's a pretty pointed bit in the linked story, above, about an SBC advert that said, in part, "Download all the music you like. And all the music you sort of, kind of, maybe even a little bit like."
l e?AID=/20030916/ZNYT01/309160363
...
That doesn't mean the users are being told to do anything illegal (admittedlty nor does the ad educate users in how to trade legally, but anyhow...). Here's my letter to SBC (disclosure -- I do own SBC stock):
===
Mr. Bingol:
I wanted to comment quickly on a quote I read in an article on SBC and the RIAA today.
From: http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic
> A record industry official pointed to a past print advertisement from SBC's Pacific Bell unit that read, in part: "Download all the music you like. And all the music you sort of, kind of, maybe even a little bit like. Go MP3 crazy. Try new music. Build a song library. Whatever."
> An SBC spokesman, Selim Bingol, said the advertisement was irrelevant. "It's ludicrous to suggest that an ad that has not appeared for many months has anything to do with today's debate," he said. "We are opposing these subpoenas because under the R.I.A.A.'s interpretation, they are a threat to consumer privacy and safety."
Though I agree with your statement, I'd like to point out that the ad says nothing that explicitly insinuates anything but a legal venture on the part of your customers. Services such as Furthurnet (http://www.furthurnet.net) offer legally downloadable music files from bands that allow taping and trading of their shows -- everywhere from The Black Crowes and The Grateful Dead and Phish to some much more fringe bands (like "The Screaming Cheetah Wheelies") that people might be interested in downloading.
There *are* gigabytes of free, high-quality, and legal music out there. Putting together a song library over the Internet is certainly a great use of the services you provide your customers, and doesn't "cost" the RIAA a dime in "lost revenue".
Thanks for your time, and best of luck with your work.
Ruffin Bailey, SBC stockholder
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
...exactly this IS my plan B; opening my hard drives and embedding thermite into the unused space between the circle-shaped discs and rectangle-shaped outer cover. There's usually space at the far end from the read/write heads.
As for making thermite, it's not very hard grinding common iron rust and aluminum dust together, is it? Based on the atomic weight of Fe2O3 + 2 Al => 2 Fe + Al2O3? The trick is to ignite the stuff, you need something like burning magnesium. And, in the case of hard drives, you need to press it to a solid form from the dust to embed in the casings.
(As for anybody stupid enough to try this from this post -- DON'T. Thermite burns at over 2,500 degrees C; droplets of melted IRON is usually fretting about violently when thermite burns. This is the only time ever I've seen iron melt. Thermite is so violent it fits right into the saying "Death is what happens to stupid people who try dangerous things.")
Then again, that is why I want to encase it in my hard drives: out of harm for me, but certainly not for the data I might want to destroy. Anybody have pointers to how to solve these problems?
Let's look at "file sharing", shall we? "File", I think we can all agree, refers in this context to a collection of 1's and 0's on a computer's hard drive, CD, or other digital storage media of some sort. "Sharing" is the sort of thing you did as a child when Mary Jane Snotnose wanted to borrow your bike and you let her. Now, we all know that in cyberspace, you're able to retain a copy of files that you want to lend to other people as well, which is what makes this internet thing so neat sometimes. The concept of "file sharing", however, does not mean specifically audio or video files, copyrighted or not, as far as I've been able to tell. Sure, the evil empires of the world want us to believe that it's all bad because one of the (apparently) primary uses of P2P applications (supposedly) hurts their business, but if you want to read a poem I wrote in the third grade that I just happen to have in electronic format and have made accessible to the world, that's file sharing. So is your working remotely on a computer game for work (it's Doom 3 or Duke Nukem, isn't it? Hurry up, dammit!), though that's probably a lot more restricted in terms of who you're supposed to share those files with than, say, my freely available list of favorite drink mixes.
By equating "file sharing" with "copyright infringement", "theft", and "communism", the bad guys are trying to subtly convince ISPs and PHBs the world over that the entire concept and anything associated with it is illegal, immoral, and fattening. How many people have thought about hearing (or have already heard) something like "oh, file sharing? You get 5 to 30 in a federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison for that, right?"
I haven't heard it much either, but just tell me with a straight face that the suits aren't trying to guide the public's perception in that direction.
Another thing I've got to get off my chest: One of the biggest complaints I've heard from the RIAA is that file-sharing programs make it "easy to search for and distribute files". I can think of some pre-P2P stuff that they should be going after, if the "ease of use" complaint is the biggest problem they have: the web, newsgroups, e-mail (well, for ease of distribution, not so much searching for new files to share).
Mod me, spank me, make me write bad checks. That's all I have to say about that.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
I think it would be cool if SBC was to copyright the user logon data, burn it to CD (adding DRM that wastes 95% of the space), price each one at $100,000 each. After all, this is valuable marketing data, and royalties should be paid to the "artists" who created it, right?
When RIAA tries to invoke their subpoena power, SBC responds with DMCA protection -- accusing RIAA of using a subpoena as a "circumvention method" to avoid paying the true market value for SBC's "intellectual property". The fact that it's mostly junk and wildly overpriced is a mere coincidence. After all, it's worth whatever SBC says it is, right? SBC could reasonably claim that they are doing precisely what RIAA does.
I can foresee a Tobaco-like lawsuit being formed against ISP providers by its customers, (college kids) because there was no warning that their service caused detrimental financial harm to end users...
Seriously, there may be something to this thought due to the gain a politician/lawyer could get for going afte big business with a class action type of lawsuit against ISPs. Maybe SBC is the only one seeing this.
...but it's a good example of Ayn Rand's philosophy, which is that selfishness leads to practical efficiency and maximal outcomes. My hat's off to SBC for doing the right thing, whether it's for the right or wrong reasons.
[ home ]
Yeah... Locally I cannot remember if it was Qwest DSL or AT&T Broadband (bought out by Comcast by now here), but one of them advertised extensively with the line "I want to download the top 40 - before I turn 40." I doubt the top 40 has much non-RIAA music in it. ;)
>>We've got a long heritage in which we have always taken a harsh and hard rule on protecting the privacy of our customers' information.'
OK. Assuming the above statement is a lie, since these companies will sell your information in a heartbeat to telemarketers, the question to ask is: What is the REAL reason SBC is holding out?
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Business Intelligence isn't an oxymoron.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Looks like SBC is probably set to lose this one, if the Verizon case is any precedent. However, maybe the big ISPs could learn a valuable lesson from all the RIAA lawsuits -- since I'm sure they don't like having to dole out information to RIAA subpoenas or DMCA notices, why not just destroy logs after a short period, say one day? Better yet, compress just the basic pertinent information and hire a corporation in, say, Madagascar to store the logs. Make the claim that you don't have the storage space or whatever. Then, if the RIAA wants the logs, they'll have to deal with an out of country entity... GOOD LUCK! Plus, the logs would still be available in case it was a serious case, such as child pornography or something. Just a thought.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
Am I the only one who thinks it should be the other way around? I should only be downloading music that I have the right to listen to (ie: I bought the CD). I believe that I should be able to host all the music that I want. It's the responsibility of the downloader to make sure he is allowed to download a song, not mine. A clickthrough license may make this concept smoother, like messaging everyone who downloads off of you with "Please cancel your download from me unless you are allowed to download this... yadda yadda yadda". I'd be mad if I got sued because someone else got a song off of me. Wouldn't they be violating the copyright laws and not me?
They've appealed the ruling mentioned above.
It's nice to have big business on the people's side every once in a while (even if they're doing it for business reasons, it's still nice). Especially when it's my company (thus the Anonymous...).
...File sharing is the only reason to have broadband. Well, actually, buying movie downloads would be a...
It's possible to justify this...if your definition of file sharing is sufficiently broad. But that's a pretty wide stretch beyond the way that most people mean it. If I download a bunch of *.debs, it could be construed as the ftp site sharing files with me. But that's not exactly what most people mean.
FWIW, I have a DSL connection, and I have never intentionally downloaded a piece of music or a video. (Ads have foisted them on me occasionally..but though you may consider ads file shareing, I sure don't. Ads are a reason not to have file sharing, not *to* have it.) Despite this I believe that I have ample reason for a DSL connection. True, I wouldn't want to go for a cable connection, because then I'd need to pay for a TV cable ask well as an internet connection, and that would raise the price substantially.
For me GPL software is sufficient reason for a broadband connection. (Well, that and the increased speed of normal connections.) But with a sufficiently broad definition, downloading web pages could be considered file sharing.
For your argument to make sense requires that all people have the same reasons that you have, but I don't even *like* most of what is called music these days. I would pay to skip attendance at most concerts. I would pay not to hear them. (And I do. The resturants that I eat in are more expensive, because the cheap one's tend to play background music that I find offensive.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Here's what I've always wondered: What is the real motive?
Does Verizon and SBC actually care about people's rights and fair use? Or are they just in it for money, looking out for number 1?
Their logic might be that defending their customers' identity in the public eye is good PR, it says that the ISP cares about your privacy which will garner more subscribers. If Verizon had just handed over the suspects in question, don't you think that people would switch or consider a different ISP?
You could even say that SBC was making money indirectly by advertising the power to infringe the RIAA's copyrights. That is a great streatch by the way.
You are all giving examples of people who already have had broadband and telling us why they like it and would keep it. and most of your examples would be utter gibberish to people who don't work on computers already (ie people who already know why they want broadband). You're not going to build a market selling to people who already know they want your product, kids.
Yes we have! You can buy a used iMac on e-bay for $200. Of course, if you're too cheap to do that then you're probably too cheap to pay for internet access anyway.
I don't know how they do it, but the only users on Yahoo who use email addresses as nicks are "foo@sbcwhatever.com".
I don't know where the "offtopic" mods come from. Must be SBC employees.
say one million dollors, muhhhha muhhhha muhhha
if it meant real anonymity for the rest of us
your comment is much like the logic of gun control and fails for the same reason; people who use their connections for illegal things and are smart about it wll continue to not get caught while all the legit people suffer...
Most definitely. One legal and legitimate use of broadband, for example, is file sharing. Don't let anyone imply otherwise.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Not quite. The fact that copyright empowers creators to make money is incidental. The fundamental reason copyright was created was to increase the access of the public to creative works.
If granting limited time monopolies were to run counter to this goal then it'd be time to abolish copyright. Given how the RIAA has squashed originality and how networks have made distribution a zero cost proposition, that time may have come.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Dialup + dedicated phone line: $40 [...]
Last internet bill: $46
DSL setup fee: $200,000
Will I retire or break 10K?
A percentage of broadband users actually do WORK using broadband.
And violate the "no commercial use or we'll bump you to business-priced service" clause of the typical residential broadband contract.
Will I retire or break 10K?
whenever MP3 or downloading music comes up, people instantly assume you are talking about copyright infringement, and not about the MILLIONS upon millions of freely and legally downloadable MP3s available.
A songwriter has the right to distribute digital phonorecords[1] of his songs only if the songs are in fact original. How can he prove the originality of his musical works in court, given what happened to George Harrison?
[1] "Digital phonorecords" is legalese for "audio files".
Will I retire or break 10K?
These songs are copyrighted, and I am offering them up, free of charge, to anyone who wishes to download them. The trick is, I'm the singer for this band. We own our own copyrights.
In order for you to own your own copyrights, you have to be able to prove in court that the songs you have written are in fact original and not accidentally plagiarized from some other song that has been played on commercial radio. Good luck.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Are the /. mods smoking crack again?
What's with the recent mod nukes on anything that IS in fact informative and related to the article?
"Oh my god! He must be karma whoring! QUICK ARM THE GUNS!"
Thats just so retarded. Who cares what the "purpose" behind the post is as long as it IS informative?
NYT drives me nuts with the registartation and it's absurd that anyone mods a post that shows a way around that as "offtopic".
Oh and if you want to rank something "overated", you're just "warmodding". Idiots.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
For me, bad spelling comes with using shorthand too often. Please forgive me. To destroy what legible words that remain, let it be known that I typed the previous post on a laptop. That's not an excuse and only announces that my spelling ability has corroded from using too much shorthand. I still have a good vocabulary, just slippery spelling; you pointed too much, and I'll dive back into my literature books. I'll do anything to prevent my posts from looking like I was taught by an Engrish Teacher. Thanks!
." The previous information reveals that United States is a Federal corporation, and any person registered in the United States corporation is an agent. If you think that is outstanding, perhaps you should read above (10). According to Title 28 Section 3002 Element 10, defines as "Person" as, "(10)
Now to explain some of my points. Legal defenitions are not always what we would expect them to be when they are utilized daily by alleged "officials". As most of us know from past case law, the hidden meanings of these contruments surface and often expose their instrumentality and premise. Arriving at my point, "Crime," As defined in 27 CFR 72.11, means "Commercial crimes. Any of the following types of crimes (Federal or
State): Offenses against the revenue laws; burglary; counterfeiting;
forgery; kidnapping; larceny; robbery; illegal sale or possession of
deadly weapons; prostitution (including soliciting, procuring,
pandering, white slaving, keeping house of ill fame, and like offenses);
extortion; swindling and confidence games; and attempting to commit,
conspiring to commit, or compounding any of the foregoing crimes.
Addiction to narcotic drugs and use of marihuana will be treated as if
such were commercial crime.." Please check that previous URL on what else is in Section 72.11 as it is verry gut wrenching in its applicability and is an outright violation of private property and contract law. According to FCR, and as well the alleged "United States", they created the criminals (ie defined criminals). As well, they create the "Prison" to hold the criminals they created. What may seem like fishing on a beach with your pet doggy one day may later be found as a misdemeanor for fishing without their permission and stealing their(?) fish and having a dog in area where they are not allowed(?). They come in the name of the "United States" or the "State of *" vessels, and true it is evident of another entity that is both foreign and not registered in the County Clerk.
As defined in (United States Code) Title 28 Section 3002 (15), as defined "(15)
''United States'' means -
(A)
a Federal corporation;
(B)
an agency, department, commission, board, or other entity of the United States; or
(C)
an instrumentality of the United States.
''Person'' includes a natural person (including an individual Indian), a corporation, a partnership, an unincorporated association, a trust, or an estate, or any other public or private entity, including a State or local government or an Indian tribe." This provides that the alleged "United States" is a person. Ponder on that for a while because as many people suspected in the alleged "14th Amendment" of a "Constitution for the united States of America", there was declared a "citizen of the United States" and we have been seeing more "Constitution of the United States" nowdays instead of "Constitution for the united States of America." Keep in mind, United States Code is derived from the "Constitution of the United States" and not the "united States of America." And according to the Act of 1871,.
Moving back to "Persons," and "Crime," let me reveal to you that there are "Persons" created by law and there is "Crime" c
Secured Party, Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207: Creditor
I used to use SBC/Southwestern Bell for my phone service, and their customer service was consistently the most rude I had ever encountered. They'd disconnect me if I was a day late on my bill, refuse to answer questions about certain parts of my service, and call me EVERY DAY to ask if I will switch back.
Maybe it is different on the DSL side of the company, I don't know, but the phone company was just a nightmare to work with.
Anyone who has dealt with SBC DSL support should realize that the reason they are refusing to release the information is because they don't have it. Not wanting to appear stupid, they refuse to turn it over. When they are forced to, they'll have to admit they are in total IS chaos.
It's a "win-win" for them.
Here's what I don't get...
Why doesn't some independent music folks, or geeks, or whomever, put some files on KaZaA.. (maybe named 'HowToTrickTheRIAA') wait until that file is d/l by one of the known-evil-IP's and then serve them with a subpeona to look at their harddrives.
(BTW, bittorrent would be perfect because the IP tracking/correlation is good and the file would be positively uploaded to other folks, thereby infringing on my intellectual-property)
How legal would it be to stick up posters near major music retail outlets outlining these cases pressed by the RIAA. Make sure it's obvious that it's the same company selling the CD's. A picture of a 12-year-old filesharer and the poor mother-of-four should do well to grab people's attention?
Could this be setup to be construed as protest, and thus legal?
How interesting ... They dont carry binary usenet groups ...
...
Seems like deja vu
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
I would definitely think about SBC.
It is not because I am file-sharing or not, it is because they have a great effort on customer privacy.
Aren't they the company that publishes your telephone number and address unless you pay them extra not to?
Yeah, these guys are all about privacy... as long as there's a buck to be made off it.
Bain and Co. are consulting with SBC and the guys involved all hate the RIAA...it's part strategy, part because they're good guys that they're doing this.
Personally, I permanently boycott companies like DirectTV and RIAA who pull this crap, and will give business to those who stand up to them.
SCOX stock is down from a high of $19.80 to about $19.20.
We should have some more shrill and funny comments spewing from Darl's mouth any minute now to pump the stock price back up.
However, I do not think his words will have much affect on the stock price in the short term future.
Regards,
Fredrick