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Senate Takes Aim At P2P Providers
thejoelpatrol writes "The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by everybody's favorite senator, Orrin Hatch, is moving to outlaw P2P entirely by making it illegal to produce such applications. Hatch says such firms 'think that they can legally profit by inducing children to steal. Some think they can legally lure children into breaking the law with false promises of "free music."' So, when was the last time that Kazaa told kids to steal music? Shouldn't the parents be the ones looking out for their kids? The RIAA is (surprise!) in favor of this, while P2P groups are (surprise!) opposed."
So P2P applications will only be written by people outside the US. If he wants to stop P2P, he should try outlawing possession of a P2P app.
This is just ridiculous. Compensating failed business models through rigorous legislation. Did anyone ask for more proof the US is run by big business? If so, you've just been served.
So are they going to pass a law that prevents the labels from illegally enticing people to buy CD's that have built in copyright protection?
Their argument is that DL'ing copyrighted works is violating the rights of the artist and copyright holders.
I say they are violating the rights of the people by placing undue restrictions on our property!
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
It will be interesting to hear these people come up with a definition of "P2P" or "software that encourages children and teenagers to infringe copyrights". Any definition I can think of would include most Internet software and, for that matter, Microsoft Windows.
Gun manufacturers are not responsible for the actions of the people that use their products, but P2P vendors are?
Both products, of course, can be used without breaking the law.
Why, Sen. Hatch, I can download illegal MP3s through my web browser! GASP! Better shut down the WWW.
Oh, no! Now there's this FTP program people are using! Better shut that down, too.
Zounds! Someone just e-mailed me a song! Bye-bye, e-mail...
There's no way this will happen. They'd essentially have to make the internet illegal since every application written for the internet is about transferring data in one form or another. This is just stupid. Even if congress passes a law, I have no doubt the Supreme Court would strike it down, even THIS Supreme Court. I doubt Scalia or Thomas would help, but most of the rest have some basic sense of law and the bill of rights.
And as we saw in the Slashdot post yesterday, file sharing is clearly destroying the movie industry. Not! The only thing hurting the music industry is the music industry. They're putting out crap music and they're suing their customers. If they changed these two things, they'd probably be back to record (pun not intended) profits.
Not only am I not buying today's music, I'm not downloading today's music. Because it sucks. Britney, please don't do it again! Quit. Go home. Please!
Repeat after me: "Illegal copying is not theft, it is illegal copying".
The equating of illegal copying with property theft is now so widespread that it doesn't attract comment: this is bad. Those who misuse the language in this way should always be corrected.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
it is freedom wall, but on which side are you standing?
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Or even better, we could start eliminating kids that are likely to code such appliations in the future!
That isn't a new idea. Frighteningly, it used to even be one that was explicitly stated. When a bill was proposed to introduce public libraries, there was massive opposition from the Tories (closest equivalent in the US being the Republicans). Favourite quote from one being: "the people have too much knowledge already: it was much easier to manage them twenty years ago; the more education people get the more difficult they are to manage."
Education equates to being difficult to control. Always has, but it's necessary for the health of society - the eternal dilemma of the ruling classes.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Let me get this straight:
... Can't you smell that smell ... Ooooh that smell ... The smell of hypocrisy
surrounds you ...
For years, the music industry has claimed, in Congressional hearing after Congressional hearing, that the creators and distributors of music that encourages its listeners to behave in an anti-social fashion bear no responsibility when those listeners follow along. (I agree with them, by the way, but that's not the point at the moment) They have gone to court over and over again to prove that they have no liability when they tell children to kill, to rape, to use drugs, etc., and those children do so.
Now they want to criminalize the act of writing computer programs which could be used for copyright infringement because that is "inducing" children to break the law.
Now, wait just one cotton-pickin' minute here. If selling music that glorifies committing crimes, and in some cases has a clear and direct call to commit such crimes, is not "inducement" to commit such crimes, then how is writing computer programs which may be used to violate copyrights, among many other legal uses, "inducement" to violate those copyrights? They want to have it both ways.
Ooooh that smell
And let's not even get into the gun industry. By Orrin Hatch's logic, since guns are used in crimes, the gun industry is "inducing" children to hold up liquor stores. Handguns in particular should be banned, since their overwhelming use is to either kill human beings or practice killing human beings. It follows the same logic. So how come Hatch is so worked up about copyright infringement but he doesn't care about murder?
Ranting on Slashdot is fun, but it doesn't change anything. We need to be active. We need to vote. We need to get our friends and relatives to vote. And we need to do it now, before "inducing" people to vote against the party in power becomes a crime, too.
The thing is when they start coming after people, it won't be two hundered thousand nerds, it will be tens of millions of file sharers.
There are orders of magnitude more file sharers then there are drug users violating the drug laws. Just put it this way about 50 million people elected the president in the last election. It has been estimated that that many people have used p2p for file sharing. The politicians schilling for the RIAA are playing with fire. A voter backlash on this issue could be enourmous.
I know that even though I am a conservative, I have very strong libertarian leanings. There is no way in hell that Hatch would ever get my vote. The Republicans have to be very careful with this, there are a lot of closet libertarians in their midst who do not like this kind of legislation.
And since when does a private company get to use the government's resources for its own civil suits? No citizen would be allowed to do that. It is so costitutionally wrong it makes me sick to think that some scumbag senator actually though it up. Do those idiots even read the constitution?
It's enlightening to think that this entire mess is related to the failure of campaign finance reform to adequately accomplish its goals; reason #1 why geeks should care about politics.
Actually that's much more correct than what you meant.
The origin of the word "Firewall" isn't a wall made of fire, but rather a wall that can block fire. Like "blast door" isn't a door that blasts everyone that tries to pass it, but rather a door that can withstand blasts.
Therefore a "freedom wall" is a wall that blocks freedom.
^_^