Slashdot Mirror
New P2P Battle is Heating Up
Digital Dharma writes "News.com has an article about a new P2P war just getting underway in congress. With Senator Hollings retiring, the RIAA and MPAA have found suitable replacement hosts in three key members of the House of Representatives. Lamar Smith, R-Texas; Howard Berman, D-Calif; and John Conyers, D-Mich are taking up arms against P2P networks with a bizarre new bill that would require companies that create certain types of software such as web browsers, instant messaging clients and e-mail utilities to add a warning that it 'could create a security and privacy risk.' How this would deter P2P activity is a bit of a mystery. The article also talks about putting software company executives in jail for failing to correctly label said software, empowering the FBI to release anti-P2P propaganda and other typical RIAA/MPAA sponsored oddities." A network application can create a security risk? Best firewall off every port!
I believe p2p is the future. Copyright issues aside, I doubt I'm the only one that's noticed that there are some downloads that are getting extremely large. Maybe it's a game demo, a movie trailer, or a software upgrade. How often has it happened that some thing comes out like, say, a Matrix trailer or a new game mod and people swamp the main server and mirrors alike to download it? Why else would recent Slashdot articles on popular downloads be linking .torrent files?
The problem is further escalated by the fact that the ranks of broadband users are growning every day. I hear that Verizon is wanting to dump somewhere around 11 billion dollars into their network to ensure that all of their customers are able to get DSL, and they have lowered their prices across the board...You can now get 1.5 down/128 up for a flat $30/mo, similar to what SBC's been offering. With all this broadband around, popular web sites will not be able to keep up, expecially if they have downloadable goodies. The answer is distributed computing. p2p represents the infancy of the inevitibility of distributed storage, processing, and bandwidth.
I Am Currently Broadcasting An Internet IP Address!
/me shoots computer
"People are violating copyright on the internet?"
"Pass a law banning Collies and Yorkshire Terriers from public areas!"
Stupid gits.
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Web browsers, instant messengers, and basically every other thing you use to do anything on the internet is going to give you one of those warnings. So pretty much everyone is going to be constantly assaulted by these messages and therefore get used to them and start to ignore every message like that they see. Not only will this NOT deter people from using P2P programs (since they'll just ignore the message anyways), it's DANGEROUS since they'll ignore warning messages that actually have some meaning behind them.
Yeah, this sounds like a great idea.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
...firewall off the entire United States, like they've done with Red China? I live outside the US and the odds of my complying with this asinine request are about...zero!
America we hardly new ye!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Wow! Stop the presses, this is a big shock. In 2004 here's the synopsis on how much milk each of these candidates sucked from the Entertainment titty. (They open in a new window).
Lamar Smith received a little over $21,000 from the TV/Music/Music lobbies in 2004
In 2002 he received almost $25,000
Howard Berman received a little over $4,000 from the TV/Music/Music lobbies in 2004
In 2002 he received almost (can you believe this?) $223,000!
John Conyers received almost $5,000 from the TV/Music/Music lobbies in 2004
In 2002 he received almost $50,000!
The ROI on congressional payoffs is insanely high..
Don't laugh -- many incompetent managers think this way. I am sitting behind a firewall that blocks all outbound traffic, with the exception of ports 80 and 21. This, I am told, will help prevent viruses from entering the network. Moreso, I might add, than any kind of coherent patching strategy.
============
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
maybe the congress should fine Darpa for funding the creation of TCP/IP too.
These kind of laws are showing how the government has always treated citizens, with mistrust. They are doing more for copyright protection then they are for things like healthcare, it really shows their prorities.
-Seriv
Now, give people free content without restrictions and you have something that everyone wants. Why are search engines the most popular websites? because the user types in what they want and gets it. From a users point of view, kazaa is the same as google except you can get everything that you cant get on google - its like the too hot for google channel. Are you seriously telling me that people dont want to be able to download all the music, films, porn, software, games, books and southpark they want for free!?!?! get real!
The only things that might kill p2p filesharing as we know it are:
Governments (well in the UK anyway) are pushing broadband for all sorts of PHB reasons like "education" and obviously the ISPs - AOL etc are gonna try and sell it. Sen. Hollings is even for it. The absolute irony here is that the very same people who are pushing broadband so they can sell content are the same ones who will be fucked out of their money by filesharing! its brilliant, serves them right for their evil DRM plans.
And what else floats on water ?
A Duck..."A DUCK!"
"Exactly! Soooo . . . "
" . . . If she weighs . . . as much as . . . a duck . . . "
"Yes?"
"Then she's made out of wood . . . "
"And therefore . . . ?"
" . . . . A WITCH!"
"A WITCH!"
"BURN THE WITCH!"
"BURN HER!"
"To the scales!"
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Most software already comes with various warnings attached, so I don't see the fundamental problem of showing them more prominently. Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that a web browser (or any network-related software for consumers) exists for which this warning is unjustified.
(Obviously, there is no P2P connection at all. That is just Slashdot spinning.)
Since this measure would apply to all developer-provided software dealing with network traffic, I'd be less likely to write my own network-enabled (read: internet-enabled) software.
Perhaps this is the point of the bill: to keep software writing in the hands of those rich enough to hire a group of lawyers who can keep away other lawyers.
Please, do keep in mind that this IS America. You know, that place that has safety labels on laundry detergent that say "Not for oral consumption."
Of course, then again, we all know that thousands of people still die every year from a nice warm class of bleach. Don't quite see how Internet Explorer can cause people to die. Well, on second thought...
Trent Polack
www.polycat.net
It would set 1,000-year mandatory jail sentences for members of congress who become pawns for multi-national mega-corps, spouting out ignorant and inflamatory propaganda to please their campaign-financing Masters.
Anyone care to sponsor?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Your post immediately conjured, in my brain, the image of a world ruled by slashdotters. Suffice it to say I was scared to hell.
You shall be hearing from my lawyers soon.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Not a mystery to me!
By saying that this product that you're willfully installing has a "privacy risk", you're saying you don't mind if the product compromises your privacy.
It's a legal loophole that could allow the RIAA/MPAA to install plugins that will monitor you at your machine. After all - you agreed to it when you installed the software. You said you didn't mind if your privacy was compromised.
This one is very sneaky. I'd never install anything that told me it might compromise my privacy.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
How this would deter P2P activity is a bit of a mystery.
Is it any more of a mystery than the belief that spying on every American citizen will deter terrorism?
Reefer Madness! Stop the P2P insanity before your children become godless open source socialists! FIrst free music, then free love. Then, before you know it, they will be rejecting the corporate values that make our society great! The values of profit and greed! Anything for a buck, reality is what I say it is and to hell with the rest of the world! Just like God intended!
(for those of you a little slow today and before I get accused of being flame bait, this is sort of a 'toungue in cheek' rant).
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Let's post a similar warning in front of Capitol Hill.
The key word here is not "security", it's "privacy". Here's what this bill really means:
In the current 9 year-old suing world of the RIAA, victims are found by firing up Kazaa (or Grokster or [insert your favorite gnutella-like p2p client here]) and seeing who is sharing and who is downloading. The "who" is given by the IP address of the P2P client computer. Now.. that doesn't really do the RIAA any good because they cannot sue an IP address. So they bully smaller, weaker ISP's into giving out their private customer information. Thus an IP address leads to a name.
Here comes the problem. Some ISP's aren't buying it. Some are saying "our customer privacy is more important than your rampage". This bill makes it so that the clients have "agreed" that they are not annonymous, and that the federal government has the right to grab your personal information and hand it over to the RIAA as they see fit (or just allow the RIAA to grab the now-non-private personal information directly from the ISP). What's more, you cannot counter-sue for privacy infringment because you've agreed to this (since you're using this software that has these statements embedded, and it's all part of the EULA).
a bizarre new bill that would require companies that create certain types of software such as web browsers, instant messaging clients and e-mail utilities to add a warning that it 'could create a security and privacy risk.' How this would deter P2P activity is a bit of a mystery.
It is possible that this is meant in part to help RIAA attack users' machines through the P2P medium... if everyone accepts the risk, the RIAA could claim that this is a sort of consent to allow projected electronic damage by those running the software, or at least an acknowledgement that it may happen. I know it is a stretch, but why else would the RIAA push for this?
Let me see if we're talking about the same thing. At the top you have your standard menu bar "File / Edit / View / etc.". Below that you usually have some of the navigation buttons (Back, Forward, Reload) and the address area where you can type in an URL.
In the space below that you can put folders such that when you click on each folder you get a drop-down list of bookmarks? Or are you talking about clicking on "Favorites" all the way at the top and then selecting a folder from that drop-down which gives you yet another drop-down with the bookmarks you want?
What I have below my "Back / Forward / Reload / Stop" buttons is a single bookmark bar... A quick link to Google (I don't use the browser search function even though it goes to Google, too), Local (a folder of bookmarks of local files), Tech Reference (a folder of bookmarks to tech information of the net), Resources (non-tech resources on the net), and News/Weather. I can get to any of my bookmarks in two clicks--one click to get the appropriate drop-down menu, then click on the bookmark.
When I first got XP I tried to use the IE that came with it, but I simply could not get the above functionality to happen. All I could seem to get was either the "favorites" that pop-up on the left side of the browser window taking up space, or adding them to the "Favorites" drop-down menu option which then required 3 clicks to get to the page I wanted. So I just installed Netscape.
It doesn't really matter to me now since I'm on Linux and I'll never use IE again. But I'd be interested in knowing if what I wanted to achieve with IE the last time I tried is now possible (or perhaps was possible then and I just couldn't figure it out).
but since there won't be any new versions under this engine, I'll have to wait for Longhorn.
Must be a bummer to have to wait for a new OS to get a new version of your browser. :) Meanwhile, Mozilla development keeps on truckin'.
Isn't it funny how whenever Microsoft builds something in, people complain about bundling or lack of modular design (and usually point out how the Unix way of having separate components for each part of a job is better), but when Microsoft does something the Unix way (e.g., the browser browses, and if you want pop-up blocking, get a pop-up blocker component), and the major Unix browsers do it the Microsoft way (incorporate the pop-up blocker into the browser), suddenly that is the right approach?
GAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!
Somebody above pointed this out, and I know you're just a parody, but I can't let this slip by:
PORT 443 IS NOT MAGICALLY ENCRYPTED JUST BECAUSE OF THE NUMBER 443!!!!
A port is an integer, nothing more. It's just a number that a client and a server agree to associate with a given connection so that they can keep track (ok, it's not quite that simple since most clients and servers have multiple connections running that are notionally but not actually using the same port).
Associating the number "443" does not magically cause your data to be sent encrypted. Similarly, port 80 (or 21, or 110, or what have you) does not magically prevent you from sending encrypted data: if I set my server to receive https connections over port 80, and you set your client to send https connections over port 80, we will have a secure connection over port 80. If I set my server to listen for a plaintext connection over port 443, and you set your client to send a plaintext connection over port 443, we will have an unsecure connection over port 443. (This is importante because your IM client is almost certainly not encrypting your chats).
OK, like I said above, it's impossible that you actually run a business (and kudos on a brilliant late-90's "do-nothing" firm parody), I just couldn't leave any lurkers with the mistaken belief that something about the number 443 mysteriously encrypts communications.
IHBT IHL IWHAND
All's true that is mistrusted
First off, slashdot is not one big person. Some of us want our software bundled, and speak up at the appropriate time. Some of us want our software modular, and speak up at the appropriate time. Some of us (Like me) want some stuff modular, some stuff bundled. Secondly, popup blockers being bundled into the browser isn't "The Microsoft way" of throwing everything and the kitchen sink into one application. You get popups when (and only when) using a web browser. Period. So it should be a feature of the browser. And it is in Mozilla (So I use it). What is "The Microsoft Way" is bundling a chat program, web browser, email, news reader, spreadsheet, word processor, and OS into the same application. Sadly, Mozilla does most of this too, which I think is a bit too much (Though I do use their email program. It R0x0rZ).
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