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MPAA Infiltrating Campus Nets with Software
unassimilatible writes "CNet is reporting that the MPAA is starting to infiltrate college campuses with automated anti-piracy software. Known as the Automated Copyright Notice System (ACNS), the technology promises to make copyright enforcement easier on peer-to-peer networks, saving schools and Internet service providers (ISPs) time and money. ACNS allows them to automatically restrict or cut off Internet access for alleged infringers on notice from a record label or movie studio. Though not specifically ACNS, a similar system is set to go live Monday at the University of California at Los Angeles, one of the nation's largest universities with 37,500 students. UCLA's Copyright Policy page makes no reference of this system being implemented."
From the article:
And:
Sounds like a case of buzzworditus... can one even legally install Open Source software on Cisco harware? I mean, besides the Open Source stuff that Cisco has pirated.
Does that paris hilton sex tape count as priated. my friend was wondering, not me. i swear
even a stopped clock gives the right time twice aday...
As a 48 yo grandmother, and a feminist, I am offended that this article considers grandmothers as technically incompentant.
Why are colleges going to let some outside entity install software on their networks?
You want what with that?
Piracy would be so much easier to stop if it wasnt so damn fun. just knowning some corporate fat cat is losing sleep makes most people do it, that and the internet on a platter
Infiltrate? Who's words are those? The posting makes it sound as if the RIAA is covertly sneaking this software onto campus networks. The colleges do have a choice whether to use ACNS or not. Although I am sure that the RIAA will be putting a lot of pressure on those who choose not to.
Because all they have to do is tell the universities "Let us install this and we promise we won't prosecute you if we find any infringers".
Very crafty....
Name a bunch of files as pictured in this graphic:
http://news.com.com/i/ne/p/2004/041604_movie.gi
Just a bunch of garbage data. See as the entire network goes down. End of mpaa software.
Let's say I i bought an MP3 from iTunes or some other les known place, would be nice to have my service cut off !
How long before the *AA starts suing ISP/Unis which don't implement this for lack of due diligence?
Put identity in the browser.
if it gets the people using kazaa off of our network, I see no problem with it. More bandwidth for the rest of us.
Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
The ministry of Plenty released today that production of shoes was up 20% from the same time last year...
Truer acronym; ACopNotSy
ok so there are legal uses of file sharing software, but those who distribute material that isn't legal haven't got a leg to stand on... and deserve everything that gets thrown at them...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
...from a virus? In my mind this is even more invasive than the spyware/adware I have to delete daily from my machine.
The MPAA seems to be targeting titles that are not available on video yet. That in itself is ok in my book. My biggest gripe with the RIAA is how do they know that I don't own the song? I obviously don't own a copy of Starsky and Hutch because it hasn't been released on video yet. I don't like the possibility of violating privacy rights, so I am naturally skeptical of the ACNS system. The article did nothing to relieve those fears.
With every MPAA story like this, you get all kinds of sheep coming out of the woodwork stating things like, "Good, downloading movies is illegal and this is just!" without realizing a lot of your rights are going down the toilet simply because some cry baby organization/company is claiming "copyright infringment" even though it's been going on for YEARS, long before the internet ever made it popular.
These Universities need to tell them to piss off. They're just gonna get it even worse once anonymous P2P hits the masses.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Surely the following has been brought up before...
1. If I'm downloading copies of song which I already own on CD, then I'm not infringing, am I? Maybe I'm just too lazy to rip my own disks. I can think of other reasons why I might do that.
2. So if a high percentage (or even not so high percentage) of P2P users are downloading legitimate files, i.e. things they own or are otherwise allowed to access, doesn't this make it darn near impossible for the MPAA/RIAA/NSA/CIA/FBI to decide whose infringing and who is not ?
So basically we're back to the guilty and proven innocent mindset which is becoming all-too-common in the Corporate States of America (TM)
Absolute statements are never true
From the article:
Several studios and record labels, including Universal Music Group, have begun to standardize the tags at the bottom of their takedown notices into XML, code that allows data to be used seamlessly in various contexts. The digital tags contain the name of the copyrighted material that's been comprised, the copyright holder's name, date and time stamp, and the Internet Protocol address of the infringer. Receipt of this tag triggers the internal notification process at a university or ISP using the system.
So, if there's some college student they don't like, would hackers start creating these "standard" XML tags and sending them to university IT departments?
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
Translation: We have our cash cows ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HFans by the balls, and we're going to build up as much hype about this film until its released as we possibly can.
This is what I received, I've edited some of it sensitive material out. I had to acknoledge that I had stopped sharing this file or my internet connection would be dropped
:
Subject: Unauthorized Distribution of Copyrighted Motion Pictures
(Reference#: xxxxxx)
MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC.
15503 VENTURA BOULEVARD
ENCINO, CALIFORNIA 91436
UNITED STATES
Anti-Piracy Operations
PHONE: (818) 728 - 8127
Email: MPAA@copyright.org
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Name: XXX XXXX
E-mail: xxx@xxx
ISP: xxx University
Via Fax/Email
RE: Unauthorized Distribution of Copyrighted Motion Pictures
MPA Case Name: directconnect://xxx:ipaddr/
Reference#: 2937735
Date of Infringement: 11/12/2003 2:28:05 PM GMT
Dear
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) represents the following motion picture production and distribution companies:
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Paramount Pictures Corporation
TriStar Pictures, Inc.
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
United Artists Pictures, Inc.
United Artists Corporation
Universal City Studios, LLLP
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
We have received information that an individual has utilized the IP address, xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, at the above noted date and time to offer downloads of copyrighted motion picture(s) through a "peer-to-peer" service, including such title(s) as:
Chicago
The distribution of unauthorized copies of copyrighted motion pictures constitutes copyright infringement under the Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3). This conduct may also violate the laws of other countries, international law, and/or treaty obligations.
Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following:
1. Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above, and;
2. Take appropriate action against the account holder under your Abuse Policy/Terms of Service Agreement.
On behalf of the respective owners of the exclusive rights to the copyrighted material at issue in this notice, we hereby state, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 512, that the information in this notification is accurate and that we have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owners, their respective agents, or the law.
Also pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we hereby state, under penalty of perjury, that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owners of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification.
Please contact us at the above listed address or by replying to this email should you have any questions. Kindly include the above noted Reference # in the subject line of all email correspondence.
We thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Your prompt response is requested.
Respectfully,
Thomas Temple
Director
Worldwide Internet Enforcement
"A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age." -Robert Frost
These MPAA narcs will stop at nothing. I had a bad feeling about that dreadlocked hackysack dude after we found him snooping around the dorm router. Also took note of the 3-piece suit under the poncho. Something isn't right here.
Getting network access as a student on a campus usually requires signing a blanket document that acknowledges that that the campus can monitor traffic that you send/receive. On many campuses, a student's choice is likely to be sign the form, or not get any access.
Of course, you could always ssl all of your connections. Hmmm...that could get ugly quickly. I wonder how that would stack up against the DMCA?
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
Now they're alienating an entire new generation of young people.
When the MPAA hits the ground, its going to make a crater THIS BIG.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
I love how the MPAA is evil for trying to protect their IP, but the FSF is almighty good when it does the same. Gotta love the hypocrisy.
It's unfortunate that UCLA fell for this trap. It would seem to me that this system could cause quite an interesting target to people who perhaps want to knock a bunch of people offline. Who's to blame when things go wrong?
In fact, UCLA has even published a letter to their students directly addressing file-sharing which states We are writing to alert the campus community - students, faculty and staff - to the personal risks involved with illegal file-sharing. It is important that you understand these risks, not only because of the possibility of disciplinary action, but also to protect yourself against criminal prosecution and the initiation of civil litigation by copyright holders. We would like you to be very aware that initiation of legal action by copyright holders is becoming more of a reality every day..
With ample notification of monitoring and a termination policy in place, why should UCLA need to explicitly state that they are turning on a new monitoring system any more than they would notify students that their P2P bandwidth was being throttled by something like Packetshaper?
As a copyright holder (for example, I create an independent film that I want to protect), what do you think would happen if I demand access to this system to do my own enforcement? What if every copyright holder in America had access to the system as well? No, we wouldn't have access to this system. Obviously such a system shouldn't be in place, but it's presence represents an unfairness to everyone except the MPAA.
This is why we (used to) have a thing called due-process, to keep private entities from enforcing what they consider the law. But we all know due-process doesn't contribute to election campaigns.
_______
2B1ASK1
the old napster trick of the rot13 of all the file names and or the piglatin changes or even reverse naming...
hell simply rot-13 the entire mp3 file and they cant detect squat.
what will be the best trick is for people to set up garbage throwers to make the damned thing give so many false positives that it is deemed useless...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You may not have appreciated "A Brief History of Rhyme" but there's no denying his impact on the British gangsta rap scene. Truly a degenerate, adulterous limey gimp, he will be missed.
At my college(which shall remain anonymous), we have a pretty crappy network. It isn't the physical lines or routers that cause massive amounts of downtown and lag, its the Computing Center who run hte network. However, one thing I know for sure is that the Computing Center will never implement this type of system. The big reason being: It's more work.
Installing and managing such a system is just more work for them. Lesser reasons, such as added network instability, security issues(who stops the MPAA from going too far), and apathy also play a role. Not to mention that the Computing Center staff is not so incompetent to believe that those who want to will find a way to bypass or utilize the system to their advantage. Think about it, if you could trick the system into thinking someone was sharing music or movies, you can get them disconnected and sent a letter from the MPAA. Personally, I wouldn't feel safe giving an automated system such power in a large network like my campus(12,000 students).
I haven't read the article for this story yet, but if this quote is in there, it brings a whole new dimension to the term "dupe story".
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
actually, i was taking it as a sign that MPAA is developing a sense of humor.
ed
How long until some worm is written that uses the automatic notice/account-disabling feature to systematically cause the disabling of every account in existence?
Not long, I think.
.@.
Do it or we'll see you in court. Yeh, that's some choice alright. As for the covertness, how many staff and students do you think know about it?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
A friend of mine once got an e-mail from a company that was hired (presumably by the MPAA) to search P2P networks for copyrighted material and send a cease and desist e-mail.
/. previously), there is just no way to be sure. Downloading each track would suck up a ton of bandwidth. And other methods might show false positives (Not that the **AA care about the truth, otherwise they wouldn't be on this anti-P2P kick). If my college cut me from the network that I paid to use on a false positive, I'd be seriously pissed.
Basically, my friend had downloaded one of those 2 hour trailer loops thinking it was a movie, then forgot to delete it after he realized it was not the movie. The company sent him and e-mail, having looked at the title and not the content. He wrote them a pretty mean e-mail back.
So, how does the software identify copyrighted music on P2P? Presumably it could do an MD5 hash against a master, but that would vary if, say, some time was cut off the end. They couldn't possibly account for all possible variations on a file. They could check ID5 information that is provided through the P2P metadata, but that can be wrong frequently. Finally, they can check the file name. But what if I took a liking to misnaming some of my own music?
Without downloading the song and making an aural comparison (there is technology available that could discern, as AT&T Wireless is apparently using it, as was reported on
In other news, automated cameras have been installed, issuing tickets to those who run red lights in the middle of the night when there's no other traffic, including police, around.
Vehicles have been equipped with "black box" devices, recording operations without the driver's knowledge or consent.
Eavesdropping equipment has also been installed in new vehicles, giving the ability to listen in on the occupants at any time.
Law enforcement uses special equipment to "see through" walls and observe the occupants inside a building, without a warrant because it's observable from the street.
I started this post attempting to be sarcastic, but every terrifying example of surveillance I could come up with has already been implemented.
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
I am assuming that your access to the network would be cut off without giving you a chance to defend yourself.
Will the RIAA be liable for damages caused to a student/researcher who is harmed by a false accusation?
I realize that the school/riaa will try to hide behind some kind of contract. However, given the fact that the student has no power, a court might decide that the contract is not binding on the student.
All these "programs" only run on M$ [ding!] Windoze [ding!] anyway.
2 points.
If you are luser [ding!] enough to run something as lame as Winblows [ding!] for your P2P trawling, you deserve whatever happens to you.
2 more points.
Me and my linux boxen [ding!] [ding!] will be happily working with no interruption.
Boxen! That's worth double.
Later on, M$ [ding!] suckas!
7 points total. Well done.
As a long term ISP and University network admin, people that let themselves be caught are a pain in my ass to enforce. They cost me money and time in terms of following up on these damn letters from the MPAA/RIAA, and they make me sit in meetings with worried lawyers regarding company or campus policy.
As one who has also run a streaming media server since 2000, has downloaded mp3 since 1996, and ftp'd media around since 1992, all I can say is you people are idiots if you keep getting caught, and you're making my job hard, and I have no problem with laying the smack down.
Figure out how to stay under the radar, AOL'ers and undergrads. That way everybody's happy. Your problem is you've had p2p file sharing handed to you on a platter since Napster and you expect it like a right.
As much as the MPAA might suck, and as much as I'd hate to see this kind of technology employed in commercial networks, this would absolutely kick ass at my school.
Finally, they'd be able to cut off the bandwidth caps and packetshapers. Finally, I'd be able to install Gentoo, download a free SHN-encoded album from archive.org, or grab the next OpenCD without waking up the next morning to a disabled network jack and having to bitch and moan until it's reopenned. Finally, I'd have a solid enough connection to get a decent round of UT2k3 in after class.
Allowing network use policies to be enforced in a content-specific rather than cutting off legitimate uses of big chunks of bandwidth is a terrific idea.
Let's say I own a movie on VHS tape. Here at school, I don't have a VCR, so I can't watch my VHS movies. It is within my fair use rights, however, to format shift those tapes so that I can watch the movies. If i am too lazy, or don't have a VCR, I can simply download the movie. If people are not allowed to share the file, whether or not they actually have a legit license to it, it impedes my fair use right to format shifting under current US copyright law as established in "the betamax case"
Let's see what this means in minus-Internet terms:
Let's say a school receives a complaint from the copyright holders that students are videotaping movies off the screen during routine movie shows in student theaters.
Would it be right for the school to let the copyright holder send goons over to monitor the theaters with "anti-piracy" equipment and haul off offenders and slap him with a huge prison/fine sentence?
Or would it be more prudent for the school to tell the copyright holders to fsck off and let them handle the situation on their own - and suspend the student or dole out a more suitable sentence - according to the school policies?
This move by the MPAA stinks of highhandedness and interference with the school's internal matters - in this case - usage of the school network against Usage Policies.
AFAIK most schools have very formal and complete network (or general campus facilities) usage policies which detail the punishments for misusing them. Why do we need MPAA and other corporate entities to police the campus when the school and campus law enforcement have been doing it very efficiently for the past few decades? Assholes (*)
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The MPAA are all a bunch of monkey fuckers.
"Thomas Temple
Director
Worldwide Internet Enforcement"
Worldwide Internet Enforcement??? Who does this guy think he is??? Next think you know he'll say he works for the organization that wons the internet.
Evolution or ID?
How exactly would this work?
Besides looking for traffic on certain ports, how could a program outside of my computer on a school network tell what I am downloading?
Occasionally I use a program such as "Ares" to download a specific song or songs, because I like to make mix CD's out of music I already own, without having to rip all of my music to mp3 then burning it back to CD so I can listen to it in my car. I was under the impression that this was not illegal, since I already own it.
I also have been using BitTorrent to download some divx rips of DVDs. I already own the movies that I download, I just don't have a very fast computer, and I don't want to take days to rip each movie. I leave my DVDs at home, so I do not have to worry about them being stolen at school, and I can have the rips on my harddrive at college, and not worry about a roommate walking out with hundreds of dollars of movies. This isn't illegal if I already own the movie, its just like downloading a rom image of a game I already own, correct?
Now, lets say I'm downloading a rip of "The Matrix" from bittorrent. I own the DVD, in fact, I own one, and my dad owns a copy. How could the campus's network tell that I am specifically downloading a movie, all they would see is network traffic from a set of IP's to my IP on a certaint TCP or UDP port or ports, correct?
I'm not well versed in network theory or anything, but I'd really like to understand this.
This bullshit right here. Fuck all these companies who think they can just strut their bullshit around the nation with lawsuits and other misc things to violate *my* privacy. Fuck you then, if you're gonna do that, then I won't support you. Gestapo tactics don't work on me, and the sure as fuck don't work on most others. As long as I keep seeing them coerce people into giving them money, I'll continue downloading.
Who gives a fuck if someone downloads a movie? If they don't wanna pay for it, they obviously aren't gonna go to the movies and see it.
I download movies all the time, and I'm not hurting their business. How? Because these are movies I wouldn't have paid to see anyway.. movies that I would've forgotten about even once they were played in rotation on HBO. These are movies that I'd normally get from Netflix and copy. Whether I request a DVD from Netflix or rent it from Blockbuster is moot, because either way, at that point, those movies have already been paid for. Bottom line: they aren't losing money because I wouldn't have paid to see them anyway.
People really need to get their heads out of their asses and start doing the math instead of blindly following the law stating the same boring reponses of "oooh, but IT'S ILLEGAL and you have NO RIGHT viewing if you don't pay!!" and other sheepish reponses.
Actually, commercial services use a format with digital rights managements built in either AAC (iTunes) or WMA (all the others). On the other hand, if you ripped your files to those formats, you might be less susceptible to detection.
In any event, I don't think they're looking at drive contents as much as they're looking for file sharing behavior. My guess is that you could still sneaker-net a CD-R of mp3s to your buddies on campus.
Funny, looking at the logs we see that your message was composed under Win95, running IE 4.
Religion is for people afraid of going to hell.
I could just write something that generates a false positive, perhaps by reverse-engineering the kazaa search mechanism, and spoof it from every IP on campus....I could shut down the entire campus network in 15 minutes. :)
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
The MPAA are justified IMHO in worrying about p2p use on campuses. There is really no argument that movie downloading is a problem for traditional cinema and DVD sales.
But this attitude of "War on P2P" is a failure: it's a failure because framing the discussion in terms of right and wrong misses the point, it's a failure because it will alienate a generation of consumers and artists, and it's a failure because it will get in the way of developing long-term business models based more accurately on what people actually want and are willing to pay for.
It's impossible to force people - through policing, through DRM, through marketing - to pay for something they can get for free. I can't think of any examples where this has worked. It's like the many laws that try to mandate what people can do in private (sex, drugs, rock'n roll). The laws sound fine, but they fail.
The movie industry (like the music industry) must move to models of higher-volume, lower prices, and (most importantly) much lower internal costs. There is no reason why this business should have fatter profit margins than - say - retailing.
The media industries will say that the risk and cost of promoting unknown artists or failed movies means they need fat profits on successful ones. But this is a circular argument: using the new distribution and promotion models that the Internet affords makes it _extremely_ cheap to produce and promote new talent.
Anyhow, the pattern is classic: the industry will scream and kick, blackmail and sue, get government and industry support, and finally collapse as new young rivals (probably from other countries where vested interests form less of a barrier) storm the market with products that the consumer _really_ wants.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Ok, so you got this letter. Were you in fact sharing without permission what they alleged you were sharing? If so, bien fait, you asked for it, you got it. If not, they are in error and you have nothing to be afraid of.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The MPAA gave me aids.
"Drop the weapon.
You have 20 seconds to comply.
19...
18..."
Has anyone tried to Google "Automated Copyright Notice System"?
Not one single result. However ACNS software returns hundreds of results for Cisco's software for traffic management.
Odd....Open source software without one link on the web....
Wouldn't it be far cheaper and easier to train a bastard operator to remove the files and hassle the users?
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
CNS allows them to automatically restrict or cut off Internet access for alleged infringers on notice from a record label or movie studio.
It's nice to see no trial is necessary to make every student guilty. Guess that constitution thing doesn't apply unless your a corporate executive.
Wow, how long do you think it will be before this is abused.
Enter one Melvin P. Thornowsky, CS major, geek with taped glasses and pants a little tight around the armpits. Of course, our hero has a HUGE crush on Miss Bambi Vanderbilt, sophomore member of the local Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Melvin finally gets the nerve up to ask the beautiful, yet not all that smart Bambi out. Of course, he goes down in flames.
As revenge Melvin hacks Bambi's brand new laptop that her Daddy bought her and adds a nice pirated copy of "Flesh Gordon". Next time she hooks up to the campus network to check Cosmopolitan Online the MPAA Storm Troopers show up and take her to Jail. The whole Vanderbilt family is embarrassed, Bambi is disinherited and has to move in with Rocko, her secret boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks.
MPAA - ruining lives one campus at a time.
Find coupons in Greeley
Hollywood films generally suck any way. They'd make more money jamming outgoing SMS messages from theaters during premiere weeks.
One way to defeat this is to create a tool that will flood the peer-to-peer networks with spoofed IP addresses and shares. Once these automated systems start sending out hundreds of letters to people who are innocent, there will be an uproar. Imagine when the president of the college gets one of these letters.
erm, my school, University of Central Florida has 42,000ish and we're only the second largest in the state, right under the University of Florida.
I believe if it is content you are legally entitled to posses you are not breaking the law by downloading it.
That doesn't change the laws that prohibit the person sharing the file from distributing it.
Is this what we're talking about here?
fuck that i'll just switch to rar files with the songs encoded as FLAC
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
And see how they react.
I do have to agree with your observation but I don't agree with what the *AA are doing. Reason being is that I share files but the ones I share are from legitimate local bands that let thier stuff be shared. Many of the mp3s I actually downloaded fromt the bands website. Would they cut me off for that? I am breaking no laws. This is a gray area in their implementation that makes me nervous.
Evolution or ID?
Ok, I suspect you're a troll, but the bait is too tempting. While trading copyrighted files is clearly illegal, I think the MPAA and RIAA have become overzealous in enforcing their IP policy. They claim they lose billions of dollars a year as a result of P2P sharing, but those numbers are based on some faulty assumptions. The main one is that people who illegally download copyrighted material would have otherwise purchased that material. Of course I don't have hard evidence that the assumption is false, but ask yourself, have you deprived anyone of business lately as a result of your illegal file-sharing? The main point here is that IP has gone too far. WE should have more rights than corporations, but unfortunately......
Okay. Where can I download the source code? Coz acns.sourceforge.net and acns.freshmeat.net don't seeem to work.
I've tried but I just can't understand why anyone with even a trace of human conscience left would rather see a brutal tyrant like Saddam stlil in power, but that seems to be exactly what you appeasers would like.
Yes, Iraq is poor and their infrastructure is in shambles, but that's because Saddam and his cronies tortured and robbed an entire nation of her future. We liberated them. They are now free. Given enough support, which you'd like to see them deprived of (no UN support, Spain withdrawing troops), they'd flourish like any nation of free people.
Why do you hate freedom and America so much that you'd rather re-instate Saddam and with him the untold suffering brought on by indiscriminate torture, rape and pillage?
The article is mentioning the loss of billions of dollars to piracy. Again it looks like the assumption is if it wasn't pirated, a legal sale would have taken place. I have a nephew who was in school and is now in the military serving in Kuait. I have seen his MP3 collection. If each track was a $1 sale instead of piracy, the assumption is he would have spent more on music during his stay at college than I spent on my new car. When I was that age and bought LP's and Tapes (Pre CD's by many years) my collection never even aproached the value of the 10 year old beater I drove at the time. I would have liked to buy an albun a week, but price was prohibitive and still is. I bought about 1 record every 2 or 3 months at that age. That's only 4-6 /year. After a decade I had my modest library of about 50 albums (1 boxful). I don't know many people who have invested over $200/year in CD's with or without piracy. Most people I know have a modest CD collection of 100 or less titles for a lifetime collection of $2,000 tops.
College students don't have the money in four years to outright buy new car that I have to get a loan for of many years. Piracy is an opentunistic act of copyright infringement, not theft. A college student with several thousand MP3's is not the theft of several thousand dollars of original recordings. They are cheap copies, not originals taken from rightful owners. Killing piracy of 1,000 tunes does not create the sales of 1,000 tunes at a buck each or create 1000 tunes now on the store shelves that weren't there for sale before. I doubt no matter how many copies iTunes sells of any song, they will have a sellout. Cost of duplication is cheap. The spin folks and the marketing folks both know this but are in denial.
Other than the spin on the financial loss, the article was interesting in the war on piracy.
I personaly buy less CD's now because I'm afraid of getting a non-returnable deliberatly defective disk. I look for the Compact Disk logo for compatibility with my rip-mix-burn setup and portable devices. There are very few CD's anymore with the Compact Disk logo. It makes shopping for a CD like panning for gold. There is lots of shiny stuff out there, but finding the real thing is getting harder as the supply dwindles. I now visit the DVD section instead of the useless CD section. It's money better spent.
I'm currently enjoying Old Time radio which is now in the public domain. It's free.
The truth shall set you free!
I wouldn't be surprised if these letters were copyright (c) 2004, MPAA... :-)
I expect that this isn't going to go away soon.
I expect that the RIAA is going to eventually take things to the point that nobody wants to download, buy, or listen to anything, as prices go up and insanity continues. If nobody is buying anything, where are their precious profits they whine about.
That they're only going to be filtering copyrighted content?
For all we know, their modifications to the code could contain censorware that redirects searches or whatnot.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
The biggest problem of anonymous p2p is that if the *perception* becomes that its 'only used for illegal activities', then it can be cut off totally. This would kill legitimate use as well..
Since they cant monitor who is doing what for verification of 'acceptable content', the ports just get closed at the firewall for everyone.
If you move ports to something thats harder to block ( like port 80 for example ), they just look for above average bandwidth use to 'non official hosts', and cut their MAC address off...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Paul Martin immediately reacted, when he heard the music industry vs. isp ruling, by saying that he would get the copyright act fixed.
Write your mp! We have an election coming and the various political parties are especially attentive right now.
It's been my experience that the MPAA and RIAA aren't going after downloaders. They're going after the uploaders. Unfortunately, you can't use BitTorrent (unmodded) without uploading data.
.torrent you have, and looking at the status of every file and the IP that has it. That's how they got me on a couple Stargate season 7 episodes I downloaded with BT (of course I also BUY the DVD box sets of every season when they come out). The problem wasn't that I downloaded it (I could watch it on TV), but that I was also sharing it at the time (I'm also not allowed to run a TV broadcast station).
They can see what you're sharing by opening the same
I'm sure there's a few programmers out there more than willing to take an open source file sharing system like BT and write a client that simply catalogs IPs and files shared.
doubleplus ungood brother!
Automated Copyright Notice System (ACNS)could have been...
Automated Copyright Notice Enterprise
I'm done with college now and not a moment too soon. Everyone downloaded and shared tens of thousands of MP3s all the time when I attended school. No restrictions, no filters, no threats, no monitoring, no nothing. Great way to build up your music collection, but great way to get viruses too.
All that will happen is that P2P and similar applications will start using SSL, TLS or some other form of encryption. Good luck to the RIAA proving that they were the intended recipient of an encrypted communication {which alone would give them the right to decrypt it} -- the fact that it was not encrypted against their public key might be worth mentioning in court too.
Shameless plug: The file sharing software I currently use already includes SSL.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
If they connect to the torrent file that you're downloading from, they can tell:
What IP's are downloading
How much they've downloaded
So, all they have to do is find the torrent, which is pretty easy. BitTorrent works through a tracker, which your computer connects to regularly. These trackers usually have links to the torrent files they are tracking. They could then find your ISP and send them (or you) letters and lawsuits.
The RIAA isn't going after people for having copies of mp3's. Whether you own a legal copy of the song is not important. The RIAA is looking for people sharing the songs, and if the mp3 is copyrighted, it is infringement. "Fair Use" does not include downloading or sharing "backup copies" of songs that you once owned. They don't care if you own it or not. While the DMCA gives some shelter to the ISP or school, they still have to follow up on complaints to be compliant. Thats why people are getting letters about sharing movies online. For repeated offenses, the ISP in question is under legal obligation to shut you off. Your defense is to dispute the complaint, but be prepared to hire a lawyer and only if you are innocent. This seems like a way to help the school ISP's save time by blocking as much traffic on p2p as they can. I have a feeling they are really caving into pressure from the *AA's. There's tons of legitimate uses for p2p, but we need to get it out of our heads that it's legal to download/share copyrighted material for "backup" purposes...that is clearly copyright infringement. /listening to my que of 4500 "legally obtained" mp3's right now ;)
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Terribly sorry. We were talking about the other grandmother on Slashdot.
Please help metamoderate.
I work at my University's ITS dept., we get emails from the MPAA demanding port shutoff's. Which we do, and don't turn it on until they come in and get a talking to. Paternalistic I guess, but thats how universities seem to be.
This is just some new software to make turning off ports easier I guess... for a smaller university like ours it wouldn't be worth it. We only get a copyright infringement notice a few times a month.
I assumed by the headline it was something that would search people Windows Shares for pirated files. That would be bad news, as there would be plenty to find.
> Yet at the same time they wish to be paid
> for *their* work.
Troll answers Troll. You don't work when somebody makes a copy of a software you wrote or a song you sang. Copyright and Patent law just don't work well with PHYSICS (the thing running reality) and should both be abolished altogether. Anybody see the ignorance and the harm enforced Copyright and Patents do in the grand scheme of things?
If you think things won't work without enforced Copyright and Patents (or "IP"), ask yourself why, what are the assumptions you are not challenging. It is EVIDENT that the world as a whole only gains (ONLY GAINS) when data is duplicated, there is no loss whatsoever.
Between living in a stupid capitalist market with stupid laws that no one understands and living in the real world, I'll take the real world, thanks.
Write all of your mp3 files onto a DVD (or cd) and then have a mp3 share party. Where everyone shares thier songs by swapping 4.7gb dvd's. This way the campus network is not involved with the sharing. Of course not everyone has a dvd writer but they are becoming pretty common with the price falling steadily.
d
Looks like it's time for some bad UCLA garage band to release one of their awful songs with a catchy title as an MP3. You know, a common title that just happens to be the same as some song owned by an RIAA member, but a truly original awful work. When the takedown notice comes, they should go to the law school and find someone willing to counter-sue the RIAA for misrepresenting their copyright!
But let me tell you, I envy the shit out of my friends who started having kids in their early twenties. Both of their kids will be on their own by the time my friends are 45.
The point stands, raising kids takes a whole lot more stamina than drinking, partying, whatever, and you can still do all of that at 50 years old.
I'll be close to 60 by the time my kids are out of the house (hopefully, one of the Bush twins won't be President, so my kids could actually get a job).
I have misplaced my pants.
One place that the MPAA doesn't seems to guard the music is the library. Local library and university library loan out tons of music CD, and DVD. You can check out 10 music CD a day - that's 3650 music CDs that you can borrow a year. Plus the quality is pretty damn good, none of that 128bit MP3 compression stuff.
Support your local libary by checking out a music CD today
Here's the one I got from Cox. It was spammed across all of my cox.net email addresses, none of which I check. My wife does however check one occasionally. It was dated 7 April, but we didn't see it until 17 April, long after I had removed the "infringing material."
/. Lameness filter said it was 'junk'
I'm just glad it wasn't "Lesbian Bondage Queens -- Anal Style". That would have been an embarassing and privacy violating email sent to my wife and kids...
Dear Customer,
We are writing on behalf of Cox Communications to advise you that we have received a notification that you are using your Cox High Speed Internet service to post or transmit material that infringes the copyrights of a complainant's members. We have included a copy of the complaint letter. Pursuant to the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), which is codified at 17 U.S.C. 512, upon receiving such notification, Cox is required to "act expeditiously to remove, or disable access to" the infringing material in order to avoid liability for any alleged copyright infringement. Accordingly, Cox will suspend your account and disable your connection to the Internet within 24 hours of your receipt of this email if the offending material is not removed.
Please be aware that the DMCA also provides procedures by which a subscriber accused of copyright violation can respond to the allegations of infringement and, under certain circumstances, cause his or her account to be reinstated. To do so, however, the response must meet certain criteria. Pursuant to section (g) of the DMCA (17 U.S.C. 512(g)), you have the right to submit to Cox a counter-notification which, to be effective, must include the following elements:
(a) a physical or electronic signature of the subscriber;
(b) identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or disabled;
(c) a statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled;
(d) the subscriber's name, address, and telephone number and a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located.
In the event that you submit to Cox a counter-notification that includes these elements, Cox will forward your counter notification to the complainant and advise them that Cox will cease disabling access to the allegedly infringing material in ten (10) business days. Unless the complainant notifies us that it has filed an action seeking a court order to restrain you from engaging in the allegedly infringing activity prior to the expiration of those ten (10) business days, Cox will reactivate your account.
Sincerely,
The Cox Abuse Team
[MPAA Email attached here] but
"because that's where the money is".
same with colleges. its the easiest way to attack defenseless (little or no income) citizens. you can sue and threaten college kids and usually get away with it. its easy money.
colleges used to stand for freedom. I guess that's long gone, now that 'fear of litigation' is what rules most of american decision-makers' minds.
I guess the entertainment industry has decided its new revenue stream is from lawsuits since not enough people are dumb enough to pay full (inflated) prices for the material.
rather than learn this lesson (the entertainment people), they knee-jerk into suing people.
their business model is being forced to change; and it will change; but clearly, not without a big long drawn-out fight.
well, we were in need of a revolution anyway, right?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Brilliant plan, pollute the network beyond use. That oughta show those greedy **AA bastards!
All
Content
Now
Suspect
Posting anon for obvious reasons.
My company doenst drug test. It never has, and likely never will.
Why? Because our CFO is a deadhead. He has stated "all drug testing does is limit the amount of quality employees you can hire."
The argument is that a fuckup employee is going to be a fuckup employee regardless of drug use. But a quality employee, who does drugs, is still a quality employee.
Its a matter of being a good, smart, hard worker.. not if you like to smoke MJ.
Im not saying that our company is filled with MJ smoke or anything, its just that weve got so many smart, intelligent people with drug histories.
Its remarkable, really.
One of the tricky and devious ways that Slashdotters judge the competence of message posters is whether or not they can use a Spell Checker program.
Since when does "Due Diligence" involve installing somebody else's software/hardware on your network.
If it were my network, I'd ask if they have an open-source version of the software... that'd get 'em.
Once the worm is released that jumps from computer to computer, using the MPAA software to disable it (after spreading of course) the university admins will have to weigh the cost of fixing all the computers against hiring a lawyer to fight the MPAA.
I could see a lawsuit on both privacy and due process grounds to stop this software.
Notice: The above message does not constitute legal advice, not practical, theoretical, or hypothetical. The author is not recommending a course of action or inaction. The author is not your lawyer. If he were your lawyer, you would have signed a "retainer agreement," which you did not, and you would have paid the author a large retainer fee, which you did not. The above message was merely a layman's discussion of general legal concepts of a personal, private nature for the sole purpose of conversation and commentary on current events, real or fictional.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
You won't mind installing this software in your home network - because it's all for the greater good then. How about bringing it to work while you're at it, after all we need to catch those dirty filesharers.
For FSCK, this isn't about "piracy is good" or "piracy is bad," it's about major corporations flexing their legal/financial muscle and enforcing their skewed ideas on everyone else.
I have no idea if my university (Ohio State) uses this software or not, but I did have a chance to get my hands on a log of network policy infringers.
The log was mostly virus reports, but a lot of the computers had entries such as Illegal File Sharing Server, but I also saw a couple of violations labelled "MPAA Violation".
I don't know how a computer can tell whether or not a movie is in violation of the MPAA, but I do know that there are several faculty and stuff in the College of Humanities who are being denied network access because a computer says they are violating the law.
Pathetic. Thirty years ago a university thinking of using this software would be a smouldering heap. Faculty would be walking in fear. But these days Jimmy Kegboy and his girlfriend, Cindy Ohmygod-likethatstotally (of the Boston "thatsliketoally"s no-less) couldn't give a shit. It might take time out of their trainer whitening/hair curling schedule.
"For example, universities using ACNS could instantly send notices of copyright infringement to students by e-mail and restrict their network access until they have removed the file."
Well dang. Without access to the network, how can I check my campus e-mail for the notice!?
.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
And as the product of a set of parents who waited till they were around 30 to procreate, I would say my life is better for it. More fiscal stability, a stronger career foundation for more vacation time.
Compare this to having two parents fresh out of university in their early 20's, both working entry level jobs. No fiscal stability, no time for the kids. Forget either parent being able to take time off of work, let alone the ability to have a stay-at-home parent.
Since when was the point of raising kids getting rid of them early to go back to the age 20 lifestyle you chose to pass up in the first place?
This 'hustler' mentality of the RIAA and their obsession with tracking down and punishing song traders is not in their best interest.
Considering that there are only five or so corporations that 'own' the world's commercial cultural product, it's not like someone else is going to get the money if someone buys record X while someone else downloads record Y. If there were still hundreds of independent record companies, then this mentality would be reasonable. But there's not. And the media executives should grow out of the 'hustler' mentality that was the way the music business used to work when they were coming up through the ranks. Things are different now.
What the RIAA/MPAA doesn't seem to realize is that their biggest long-term problem is not that people will 'steal' their product, it's that people will become so uninterested in their product that they won't be able to give it away even if they tried. Creating an atmosphere where consumers are threatened with prison and property confiscation for listening to RIAA product will go a long way to creating a subliminal distrust of commercial music. Eventually people will go out of their way to avoid exposure to RIAA product simply to avoid the possibility of arbitrary legal harassment.
When the RIAA customers are gone, it will be really difficult to get them back. Because the techniques that they are employing now will destroy any trust that people have in the RIAA. Trust in this case meaning that people believe that what the RIAA say's is legal use, will actually be legal use.
As far as the MPAA product is concerned, it is absurd to harass downloaders. They need to cut their costs for film production and promotion. Then they need to cut the admission prices for going to the films in theatres. Few people will download a 1 gigabyte movie when they can pay $2 to see it in a safe, comfortable theatre with quality projection and large screen.
An example of this is the Valley Theatre in Beaverton Oregon (a suburb of Portland). Built in the 1960s, they now show second-run features on a giant 50 foot screen and have started a 20 admissions for $20 pricing policy with $3 for single standard admission. Who wants to spend 10 hours downloading a DivX of LOTR when you can see it on a big screen for a dollar?
All the RIAA/MPAA problems have reasonable solutions. Their big problem is that they're not reasonable people.
I thought infiltrating anyones network regardless of what's going on is illegal? Wouldn't the campus IT people be able to invoke the Patriot Act or the DMCA and file a lawsuit against the MPAA/RIAA for terrorist activity?
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Ripping is making an electronic copy of something. The software system described doesn't address that at all.
So, how do they expect their software to keep from being hacked? If anything this will probably make their systems LESS secure and require the systems to be open to a third part of the **AA's choosing. Definately something that I would not want as a sysadmin.
Also, it's mentioned that this will keep schools and ISP's from wasting time and money on enforcement. I think a better way to save them time and money on enforcement is for the **AA to do the work themselves. They are basically acting as judge jury and executioner totally throwing out a person's right to due process either through the legal system or through the campus' policies.
Will this system work if I change the spellings on my mp3s/movies to some sort of 1337 sp311ing like "K3lly Cl4rkson does Dallas"?
If I were a betting man, I'd guess that this system will cause more problems and headaches for the campus' that decide to impliment this, than the time and money it will supposedly save them.
The only thing close to legal authorization for copyright self help came in the now doomed UCITA model law (Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act). Only two states (MD and VA) adopted the law, and even then (my understanding is) both of them amended it to not include the self-help provision.
Even under UCITA, it required express consent by both sides. End users would have to agree to this remedy (which I suppose won't be hard in the university situation - because the campus ISP is the only game in town). If that happened, the act would authorize the content owning company to remotely shut you down, to prevent you from infringing. The idea was to let software vendors shut down dead beat software buyers who didn't pay up. Nobody seemed to like it (self help thankfully isn't too popular in general).
Anyway - long story short, since most, if not all states expressly rejected this kind of industry self help - I wouldn't be surprised if a court took that to mean that the legislatures are not exactly on the self-help bandwagon (yet).
That's how I'd fight this.
Ryan Kennedy opposes comm
"I look for the Compact Disk logo for compatibility..." I've started doing this too and it's scary how many CDs just don't have it.
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
If a university has spent the money to build a infrastructure that's worthwhile, and also have people to monitor it, why not save time and money for everyone and just have them use existing software to monitor what sort of traffic and activity is moving on their network? It's likely they have the software already, but simply don't have anyone checking it.
It seems simple to me. Reports indicate that there is Kazaa activity on Port 123, you turn off that LAN port. The user no longer has LAN access, and must call someone to get it fixed. At this point, they're reminded that P2P activity is prohibited by university policy. This is their first warning. The next time they're caught, they'll have their port shut down for a month, and the third offense will have their port turned off permanently.
If universities feel they have to play hardball in this area, doesn't this seem like a more logical, and wise way for them to do it, opposed to allowing someone else into their network, who has an agenda that doesn't match that of the university?
(And on a side note, many universities have grant money for doing military research. I'm certain that the DOD would not apprecaite the *AA having any sort of 'monitoring' going on of potentially sensitive research data that might be travelling on the university network.)
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Who's forcing you to live in a dorm? Parents? Take up your beef with them. If economic neccessity is forcing you to live in the dorms, then boo-fucking-hoo. It's still school property, and school rules. If you don't like it, get a bigger grant or loan and move out. Don't like school bandwidth policies? Transfer to a different school. Most states still declare colleges In Loco Parentis, so you're NEVER going to have the kind of freedom in a dorm that you'll have in your own apartment.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The second that my university decides that the RIAA and the MPAA should be administering the network to decide if any violations are made, is the second I transfer to another university.
I don't pay a huge "technology fee" just to have the wolves guarding the hen house. The MPAA and RIAA are a modern mafia, complete with government support.
Attention Universities: Some of you should realize that there is a market for a bastion of freedom. I'd gladly pay a legal fee in my student fees/tuition if it meant I could be protected from fucking cartels like the RIAA and bullshit legislation like the DMCA.
At last ... We've identified the sector of the Slashdot community that actually reads the articles.
Blah. MPAA. Blah-blah-blah. Seriously, I am not saying it's not news, but there is nothing interesting here. Nothing Stallman hasn't predicted in 1997. It all goes according to his plan^H^H^Hrediction.
People, unless you all do something, it will continue. I don't want the fucking Tycho Uprising, I want this all settled today, while it can be done peacefully. Personally I hope to make sure that two universities I have some influence in will be as open (source, access, etc.) as possible. Once this is built in into the system, adding limitations later should be much more difficult...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I would have to say it is time everyone started using a secure shell to do all their internet browsing and activies. I'm not condoning illegal practices, but I rather have people respect my right to privacy and not have everything filtered and dissected.
"What the RIAA/MPAA doesn't seem to realize is that their biggest long-term problem is not that people will 'steal' their product, it's that people will become so uninterested in their product that they won't be able to give it away even if they tried."
Yes, despite the fact that music and theater have been around as long as recorded history, people are going to suddenly lose interest in both, despite the fact that it's more convenient than ever to get both legally.
Vote for Pedro
UCLA Helpdesk: Sup?
Student: Seems my Internet is down.
UCLA Helpdesk: Room?
Student: 201
UCLA Helpdesk: Hmm, lemme have a look.
UCLA Helpdesk: Ah, yeah, says here that Jack's Car Shop's FAC-U system has detected a copyright infringment on your computer.
Student: What? Jack's Car Shop?
UCLA Helpdesk: Uhuh
Student: So what's this FAC-U thing?
UCLA Helpdesk: Friendly Automated Copyright-infringment Underpants.
Student: Ex-abuse-me?
UCLA Helpdesk: Just an underpants targetting system that checks for copyright infringement.
Student: So what kinda copyright of Jack's Car Shop am I violating?!
UCLA Helpdesk: Uh, I dunno. Don't worry, an expert from Jack's Car Shop will soon be over to have a look at your computer.
Student: What's he gonna do?
UCLA Helpdesk: They usually come with a USB key and need a little time alone with your computer.
UCLA Helpdesk: You probably got nothing to worry about.
Student: WTF? That's crazy. Are there any other companies that have such systems running here?
UCLA Helpdesk: Doh, are you kidding me? Of course! Every company that owns intellectual property has one.
Student: So Jack's Car Shop has intellectual property?
UCLA Helpdesk: That's what he says.
Student: And you just take his word?
UCLA Helpdesk: Listen son, these systems seem to be working quite well, at the moment we have 2,314 infringments pending.
Student: Dude, there's only 2,315 students here.
UCLA Helpdesk: Yeah that's right, the other guy doesn't have a computer.
Here in Tennessee, we've got a theatre that shows two first-run films for $1.00 on weeknights and $3.00 on weekends (I'm probably going to see Kill Bill Vol 2 tonight for $1.00). You just have to put up with the locals (rednecks and food-stamp people or some combination thereof).
Yes, but the music and theater industries, in their current form, are quite recent.
Uh, "Infiltrating?" Yeah, I'm sure that wasn't purposely inserted to be biased.
Isn't this supposed to be a news site? I can't tell where the news stops and the agenda starts.
He never said people will stop listening to music and going to movies. He said that people will go out of their way to stop listening to RIAA owned music and watching MPAA owned movies.
There are tons of independant record labels and movie studios that produce content worth listening to/watching.
Ok, so I read this line:
"Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following:
1. Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above, and..."
Here is my question: What if there was a mistake? Isn't there some kind of recourse for the accused? I certainly don't condone sharing music/movies but what if a mistake is made and the person ISN'T really sharing what the MPAA/RIAA thought they were. According to this "request", that person will have already lost their internet connection. That's like turning off the electricity to someone ACCUSED of growing pot in their basement.
Isn't there somekind of due process here? Yea, I know it's civil and not criminal but still...
WTF?
The whole point of the anti RIAA campaign was to bust the monopoly and force them to start selling music online. (Remember they wouldn't even consider it) We have won -- I have been listening to garageband.com all day. People know that downloaded music is of decent quality, their perceptions have changed. I tunes is kicking, etc. etc.. move on hack your matrix www.asdreams.org
I agree wtih parent. People WILL start revolting against the RIAA / MPAA / MAFIAA controlled content, and buy other things.
Lindows Steals Copyrighted Art and Promotes Porn
This has to be the tenth time I've seen it as a Slashdot comment, upmodded every time.
...why the p2p technology is so weak. It should not be so hard to implement the stuff with those security precautions:
- all direct traffic encrypted
- grant direct connection only to trusted peers
- for non-trusted peer, a connection negotiation with the help of the trusted peer chain only
- random proxying: non trusted peer receives via randomly selected node, who acts as a proxy, effectively hiding IP of the origin
There you are, staring at me again.
"ok so there are legal uses of file sharing software, but those who distribute material that isn't legal haven't got a leg to stand on... and deserve everything that gets thrown at them..." ...it's called nullification.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
...and if I like the movie (which is more often than not), I go out and buy the DVD once it comes out - not because I want to be legal about it (I really don't care if the movies I have are legal or not), but because DVD's offer substance for my dollar (commentary, deleted scenes, out-takes, etc).
The downloaded version gives me a nice taste (ok, a full meal) of the movie and the MPAA (usually) still gets their money. Example - downloaded The Rundown before going to Best Buy to shell out my $. Liked the movie, bought the DVD, MPAA got my money - even though I'm one of those terrible pirates they hate.
I'm guessing most university libraries still don't stock porn mags in the periodicals section.
Playboy was regularly stocked at my college library when I was a student. And that was during the Reagan "anti-porn" years.
Granted, most people don't consider it to be porn (just us old people!).
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
...why public lending libraries exist? Following the same line of reasoning, libraries should only be able to lend out (share) *incomplete works* (fair use partial quotations/references), just enough to whet the appetite, then make you individually purchase a copy of the book if you want to read the entire thing. But they don't, you get the use of it in it's entirety, and the only fee paid is the one time fee paid for the book in question, with no individual fees assessed per user transferred back to the copyright holders. this is true facts, correct? Yes, I know it's not *exactly* the same, but that's only from advances in technology *not being implemented when they could be*, which are almost right there now with publishing on demand, and soon to be even cheaper. Follow the book industry progression from hand scribed to pretty expensive hand printed with hand set type to lithographs to now it's possible for on demand, even to very very cheap to make all digital copies.
The law on copyrights is still back two generations now, and it's getting worse, not better, it's not keeping up and following technology and is keeping buggywhips in business way past the need for everyone to purchase a buggy whip. We don't need buggywhips to make our cars go.
I think that's the major bone of contention here. This music and movie industry insists on using all the latest and best technology to make themselves money,and they do make use of it, technology that society as a collective whole makes avaialable to them to use, yet they *insist* on retaining this monopoly on technology, and absolutely refuse to lower costs appropriately following general technological advances that are available to almost everyone now with an interest in it. You can see the result, millions of people said "that's crazy, heck with that, screw them gougers" and it has happened.
The "law" is not even followed exactly to the letter, and right there is enough common-practice evidence with the libraries to prove it is not harmful to the "book" industry. And libraries certainly doin't harm society, they enhance it. And much cheaper books have enhanced society, and last I looked people who chose to make money off of books aren't insisting that every copy be hand scribed. In essence, the movie and music industry is insisting on this freeze in technology for everyone but themselves! That sucks! Obvious as all get out!
Music and movie industry need to enter the modern age and just stop being such luddites when they complain about something they themselves do, ie, make use of modern technology to enrich their lives. I say they should put up or shutup,one or the other, they should voluntarily(or be forced by the law to, which would serve them right) go back to the way of making movies and recorded music at the technological level where their current pricing modalities and mindset came from, like 50 years ago or even longer back, and be *forced to only use technology that was available back then*. Then it would be "fair" for them to charge what they are charging.
If it's good for the goose it's good for the gander is the old expression that comes to mind here.
"Confederate States of America"
15) I am Canadian. I pay taxes on blank CD's so that I may freely copy music.
...
16)
17) PROFIT!
If it's copyright infringement to download this in the US, even though I own a copy of the book. From some of the other posts on this article, it would be if it were a recording.
If I punch you in the teeth, will that get you to stop saying "coz"? "Coz" that makes you sound like a faggot.
Also, it doesn't have to be on sourceforge or freshmeat to be open source, dipshit.
Someone really should have trademarked the term "Open-Source". It would lend a little bit of weight for going after those who abuse the term.
Open Source Initiative has made available the OSI CERTIFIED mark to refer to programs published under approved licenses, all of which match the Open Source Definition.
Unless it explicitly states otherwise, everything they write is copyrighted - just like you own the copyright to all your /. posts
Do you fear riAA or mpAA in .uk?
The Motion Picture Association is the export arm of the MPAA and defends the government-granted monopolies and other interests of major American movie studios worldwide.
I would like to know how they differentiate between files that are copyrighted and pirated vs. those that are either not copyrighted or are being stored legitimately.
NMPA will argue that almost any recording that is not owned by an RIAA affiliated label is either a cover of an NMPA controlled song or an infringing subconscious copy of an NMPA controlled song.
Darn right. The RIAA, the NMPA, and the MPAA make up the Music And Film Industry Associations of America (MAFIAA).
sig:
Methinks that very few members of AKA will be named Bambi Vanderbilt
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
The thing you and many others seem to be missing is false positives and the effect that will have. People like Stallman grasped the implications long ago. I suggest you read, The Right to Read and shudder at the fact that the MPAA has made the central premise a reality. Students without access to the network are unable to complete assignments and is equivalent to expulsion at most Universities. No reputable university would give that kind of power to any other organization.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So can you point out to where the source is at COZ I sure as hell can't find it. How can it be open source if we can't find the source anywhere???
The solution requires to be implemented on the level of the clients; wrap all the TCP connections to SSL. Passive wiretaps of this kind then become useless.
Signing that document does not mean that you agree to giving control of that network to the pimps who bring you softcore porn on 40 foot high screens.
What a nightmare.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I agree entirely the issue isn't what the mpaa is doing to prevent piracy of it's works. It's if it's illegal at all. Basically laws are created by consensus most people agree that they don't wish to be stolen from... but what constitutes theft... I know of no one whom polices the rights to the oxygen in their house for example. I see that the backlash against the corperations (in the form of p2p) that own most of these copyrights as a correction in the system basicly stating that we want a re write of the copyright laws as they are inherently stifeling.
IIRC until 1965 both English universities (Oxford and Cambridge) had the right to execute their own students. i.e. one gallows for the townsman, another for the gownsman. I'm not sure but that might actually be why Cambridge was founded...
Colleges have a choice, but the students who pay reg fees should know that they are being monitored, especially in a public school environment wherein constitutional principles apply.
The law does not require schools to do this, yet some are. Schools that voluntarily side with the MPAA over the privacy of their students should at least have the light shined on them. We do live - at least ideally - in an open society, here in the US of A.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Universities are made responsible for traffic on their networks. Universities receive public funding and the taxpayers outcry about the extremely extreme expensive bandwith ;) wasted will stop critics in their tracks. Taxpaying filesharers may find it outraging to have a small part their taxes going to bad lazy students for breaking the law, so they may implement countermeasures without real opposition.
And then (to bring up the slippery slope argument again) you have pretty much paved the way to a little bit more control on other campus networks, small ISPs, small town community networks etc. - and then the notion of "the owner of the wires" being responsible for what other people do with these wires may be "acceptable" enough for the general public to not start the revolution when they try this on a large ISP. "After all, it's their own network!" people will say (as they already have here on Slashdot) and nobody will ever question the fact that filesharing may not be illegal at all or that the RIAA may illegally be in control of so much music or that there may not even be such a thing as intellectual property in the age of 0.10$ CD-Rs.
They are relocating the battlefield away from issues of freedom and monopoly to the one of taxpayers and "responsibility". Not really good news for us, because every piece of infrastructure designed to catch intellectual property infringing data transfers can be used to against the freedom of speech or to crack down political dissent. If there is a mechanism that can filter bits and bytes, it is for very technical centralized and could be misused by a very small group of oppressors unlike e.g. the police or even the FBI. (As there are more humans involved that can blow a whistle if forced to do unconstitutional things. A server will have no remorse tracking enemies of the state)
Yeah, bring out the tinfoil jokes, but prove me wrong if you like.
Ah come on, you don't need to rar these files. Would be a huge waste of cpu time as you gain nothing and lose the ability to play them directly via winamp or xmms. Bad idea I say.
That has to be the longest expansion of "IANAL" I've seen to date.
I'm sure someone will go ahead and post a longer one, but nevertheless...
NB: YMMV. IANAL. Take the above with a grain of salt.
People keep saying this. It's not true. He merely wrote a GUI for decss (which I believe was first posted anonymously to some newsgroup on USENET).
rar allows crypto
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
And how long until a user is banned "for pirating movie " because in reality they've made a parody movie insulting the MPAA or are trying to rally against the MPAA? There's a reason why the government (and now days, big business) shouldn't be allowed to just monitor and disable things you pay for at its whim.
ACNS is just a push to work around having to bother providing evidence of wrong doing in a court of law (okay, really, it's just the lawyer fees for intimidating users until they roll over), which costs a lot more time and money. If people are breaking the law, the MPAA should have to find evidence the legal way just like everyone else. I don't see how this is any different than Carnivore. Let the MPAA play by the same rules as every other copyright holder.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
I remmember at least in freshman year, I knew at least 4 people that had recieved notices in their mailboxes about how they had been busted for sharing and to stop immediately, if not their service would be disconnected. This had nothing to do with the RIAA but for violating the campus policy about doing illegal and non-educational activity over the network. I dont know why more UNI's just dont do that. This year, 2 years later, I see opinions all over our campus paper about how students are now recieving automated emails that their service will be cut, and it has. Maybe we have this implemented already and dont know it. In any case, maybe campus's should just police their own network for the sake of keeping their networks clean and to prevent bandwidth sucking from those sharing, thats why it was done here to begin with.
Well, if'n yew were a Redneck, yud no that stampin' on yer food is sometimes the only way to kill it. That way, yew save a doller on dinner and can go see a piture in the the-ay-ter.
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
As a follow up, i forgot to add, a friend at another Uni had also recieved a letter telling him to report to court. When he arrived he realized they were charging him with sharing movies, of which they had a list of which they scanned their network for. They just told him to immediately remove them and all would be well. Then again maybe this was back in the more lenient days of the crackdown. He also added though that after him, a student came up who had been busted with just about every app MS makes and they were actually fining him and he could be facing jail time. It appears many uni's are handling this in their own way, no need to intervene
UCLA: Is this legal?
MPAA: I will make it legal!
What the RIAA/MPAA doesn't seem to realize is that their biggest long-term problem is not that people will 'steal' their product, it's that people will become so uninterested in their product that they won't be able to give it away even if they tried. Creating an atmosphere where consumers are threatened with prison and property confiscation for listening to RIAA product will go a long way to creating a subliminal distrust of commercial music. Eventually people will go out of their way to avoid exposure to RIAA product simply to avoid the possibility of arbitrary legal harassment.
Either that, or people will become so fed up that they remember that it is they, and not the **AA's who elect the Congress that sets the copyright terms. Can't sell your movie in a year? Oh well...public domain.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
That's why I post the disclaimer. ;-)
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
(15) I believe Congress has the power to make the length of copyright protection one year as well as a hundred.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I go to Indiana University, and am one of the MPAA's chosen. Paramount used a company called BayTSP to download my directconnect file list, and they told IU that they found illegal content on my computer. I have logs showing that they did not even download headers to the file(s) in question, but they did get my internet access taken away by the university "indefinitely." With the help of Student Legal Services I filed a "Counter-Notice" in accordance with the DMCA, and after 10 long long long long business days I had my access back. I am the only person in my university's history to file a counter-notice, and Paramount and BayTSP did not even reply. Side note: I was sharing about 90GB of MP3, and about 20GB of movies, but the RIAA didn't touch me. The MPAA has been really annoying, though. One of the reasons they attack universities is because of the massive bandwith we get. Recently a 30kb/s cap was imposed on upload from any dorm room, but before that bandwith was practically unlimited! When trading files with another student Internet2, I was uploading at 10Mbit speeds! Even now, before I stopped sharing my files, I would serve 20G of crap in a day, easy. I'm only one user in a university of tens of thousands.
What MPAA and RIAA should really do is write a virus or worm to work its way across the entire Internet and send them a complete file listing of every infected computer. But then claim that they were victims in this tradgedy. And then sue everyone.
myopia creeps into slashdot, which is avoiding much bigger problems like the RENEWAL OF THE PATRIOT ACT. New polls shows BUSH WINNING this would be the same guy under whose totalitarian police state the constitution has been totally ignored.
The RIAA and MPAA are a microcosm of how this is playing out on a larger field, one that transcends the ephemeral bullshit that spews forth unrelentingly on slashdot every fucking day. I guess news that matters to me includes news that affects how people are ALLOWED TO LIVE THEIR EVERY DAY LIVES.
(note: no one can, if you need proof look at the prison system, god doesn't punish people, people do)
If you go to UCLA or any other spineless corporate whore-stringed puppet that claims to educate people that is instituting these bullshit policies I suggest you organize student groups and educate people about how they're being policed on the public networks their tuitions are paying for by mercenary media armies of misguided self-righteous scum fucks.
This is a symptom not a problem, the problem is the ELECTION WHICH IS COMING UP; you know hte one with the only one candidate that has two different names and is going to create WWIII no matter what.
oh yea i can feel the flamebait coming. "What's that? THOU HAST OFFENDED MY DELICATE SLASHDOT EARS, I DISAGREE SO YOU'RE WRONG."
final tally -42 Truth
that was fun, i guess i'll clean up now
The reason they go after you even if you own the file is simple -- the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. It says nothing about what is on your computer, but if you ever share stuff on your computer that is copyrighted, then you are breaking the law, and the copyright holder can sue you.
The problem is that independant flicks don't make it to the big cinemas that most people go to. I'm lucky enough to live close enough to new york that i can hit indie theaters, but the dozen theaters around me play nothing but mainstream pap (like kill bill. god that was a great movie). Similarly, indie record labels don't get the shelf space or radio play that big labels do, so they're less easily accessed.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
I'll admit, I've started to listen to internet radio streams now. While some do pay royalties others don't stream RIAA-member music. Actually even since Napster first emerged most of the music I was downloading was independant or foreign -- in other words, stuff I wasn't sick of hearing over and over again on the radio. Ya, at first I downloaded a few Metallica tunes, but then I discovered there were bands that were a whole lot better! Today I'm happy to say I get to go to concerts of some extremely talented bands thanks to Napster and a few other pioneers.
There will be no such mark, although a couple competing factions at one time thought they had it sewn up. It was ultimately determined that "Open Source" (with or without the hyphen) is too descriptive to qualify for trademark protection. See this OSI press release and this earlier release from Software in the Public Interest. Google around a bit and you'll see there was much unpleasantness around the issue several years ago.
...that the real issue is who is breaking the law the most. The record swappers (who, under the Copyright Laws do have some limited right to swap songs) or the record companies (and whomever else decides to aid them) for invasion of privacy issues.
Of the two, I would say the RIAA is the worse offender. Granted - people are stealing songs. Granted also that drug dealers sell drugs. But drug dealers seem to have more rights under the law than record swappers. With drug dealers you have to follow certain basic procedures which involve the courts, having to establish a basis for your suspicions, and targeting an individual or group but leaving out everyone else not suspected of the crime. Same with this. Neither the RIAA nor the MPAA are the law. Thus, all it will take is for someone who is innocent to get caught, have a lawsuit thrown at them, and - just like the recently concluded Sex.com case - take it through the courts.
When McCarthism came along - all it took was someone not liking someone else. When the blacklists of Hollywood started up all it took was someone not liking who you were or what you did. This is the same vigilantism in action. They only think someone is doing this and like the mafia or some movie made-up powerful cartel - they think they can just do as they please.
My two cents? If I were going to this college - as soon as the software goes on line I'd get as many people together as I could, pool everyone's money, hire a lawyer, and sue the college. Let the RIAA/MPAA hold a hot poker to the college execs. Hold a bigger one to them from the other side and see which way they jump!
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
MUTE has enough encryption and other fun stuff to effectively dodge this sort of thing, even if it does take a long time to download stuff (in my experience at least. This might just be because there aren't enough users, or my NAT is slowing things down). Or, if you want a more personal network, use WASTE.
Hello. I am from Europe. Thank you for understanding. Yours,
(n/t)
...a copy of the encyclopedia galactica defined the RIAA as "a total sleazebag group that was the first up against the wall when the revolution came"
Hey! My names Beren - what are you trying to say here?
Friendly News Release
ICARUS FAQ (check out question #12)
A news story covering ICARUS
And lastly, The Slashdot story covering it.
But how do I feel about ICARUS? When there's a will there's a way, that's what I say. It's a pain but hey. As an RA I get people continually banging on my door about no internet connection problems. It was HORRIBLE the first two weeks when people were moving in cause NO ONE knows what they have on their computers. Kids would come, plug in their computers and within 30 seconds their port would be killed and they needed to call the Help Desk. Help Desk was overloaded with calls but they'd finally get their ports on again and they know how to clean their machine (or didn't care) and BAM! kicked off again. AND WHO DO YOU THINK THEY COMPLAINED TO!?
ICARUS = devil
You're dismayed that they're putting copy protection on CDs now, so you buy DVDs instead???
Yes you heard me right. DVD's with DRM and all. Now let me explain. In the early days I bought a Laserdisk Player for over $1000. The industry promise was the disks would be cheaper than tapes because they could be mass produced by stamping like LP's. Due to prices that never materialized, that player has less than 8 movies. Instead the videotapes went from about $65 per movie to under $15 per movie. Laserdisks became an elete format and went up in price with some musicals going for over $100 each. The player gets dusted off every couple years to enjoy the few laserdisks I have.
I have a family. Even with DRM, a DVD is much more of a value than movie tickets for a family of 4, plus you get to keep the movie. It's called value.
Right now, the CD's are priced like the old Laserdisks. 40 minutes of material for over $20/hour. DVD's on the other hand are under $10/hour with few exceptions. If DVD's were still over $30 like when they first came out, they would also sit unsold on the shelf.
To top off the whole thing (look for it) there are some DVD's now advertised as playable anywhere (region free)
The truth shall set you free!
> When the RIAA customers are gone, it will be really difficult to get them back.
Gone? Look at the booming online music sales (same or more consumption.)
> They need to cut their costs for film production and promotion.
They have a monopoly and have an interest keeping it. Thus, they need to raise the barrier of entry so high that new comers won't have the cash to start. Sure you have independents, but how many of those make the big money?
> Then they need to cut the admission prices for going to the films in theatres.
Why? They pretty much own theatres world wide. Let's say if your next beloved Star Wars/Tolkien themed movie comes out, the theatre that doesn't play it will lose out. MS "bundling" their OS with hardware anyone? Cheap tickets won't subsidize for flunkers and their high cost productions.
> Their big problem is that they're not reasonable people.
They are a business. Businesses don't need to be reasonable. It's you who think businesses should bend to their customers while you keep paying them to do whatever they want, including being unreasonable.
Don't like their shitty content? Don't like their fraudulent prices? Don't like them? Then, avoid consuming their products in all ways. It doesn't get any simpler than this.
For the price of a movie experience - ticket, snack, and drink - you can gather a few friends and eat out pretty well for the same time it takes to watch the movie.
Have all the p2p applications use a one-byte XOR bitflip at each end... the SAME one byte. Since you've now encrypted your digital information, it's illegal for anyone to break the "encryption," despite the fact that it stops no one from copying or wiretapping anything, because of that wonderful law that all good patriots support, the DMCA!
:)
Thus, if anyone tells you that you've been sharing, tell them that it's illegal for anyone to decrypt your digital transmissions without your permission. If anything, it's a perfect way to demonstrate what a bunch of bulls*it the DMCA is.
If someone with a pair actually does go to court, they can simply point out that the (RI || MP) AA were breaking the law and that their case is therefore null and void. And you say that no good can come of it?
Hateful responses? Death threats? Please direct all of them to my image consultants, the RIAA
How in the fsck is that illegal once that DVD becomes a DiVX AVI? If the P2P system could guarantee a "good faith" mechanism for single-user-at-a-time access to a file, (yes, I realize there will always be a way to break the system), how can the studio claim that the digital file is ANY DIFFERENT than the physical object? You just haven't had to pack the thing up in a mailing envelope and mail it to your friend.
It isn't "rebroadcasting" -- it's the same as handing the physical medium to them. In fact, I don't see why if the P2P software just didn't have an EULA saying "by using this, you swear to delete this file off your system after 3 hours" or something like that. Push the liability on the borrower.
?
I hope this happens at my uni - encouragement will encourage people to start swapping on ad-hoc wireless networks - much faster than using p2p with our current packet shapers! I've had my eyes on the guy down the hall's collection of 17,000+ songs, but haven't had a real good excuse to make him *share*. BTW, he ripped the 17,000 songs all from borrowed library CDs - I wonder if that would be enough to trigger him as a terrorist under the Patriot Act...
My engineering professor mentioned the Icarus system being developed at U.Miami, FL. - That might be considered open source because it's being developed by a university.
that's what your proxy's for!
"...that the MPAA is starting to infiltrate college campuses with automated anti-piracy software..."
I can hardly wait to see what happens when the MPAA infiltrates some net that has ties to the D.O.D...
MPAA: "yes, your honor, we were looking for song swapping in the Pentigon's network. All those copied Marching songs, disgraceful, all of them!"
I completely agree with your opinions. Big companies have forgotten that they were once small and the only reason why they have become so important is because costumers decided to either buy their products or use their services. With those measures they are taking and their terror campaign threatening users with prison and legal harassment the only thing they are achieving is low interest in their new products and to reduce their annual invoicing. Users should unite to ask for respect and good service, since we are the pillar that supports their house