Slashdot Mirror
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.
You know, client/server apps can distribute stuff illegally too! Heck, why not outlaw stores and banks, because people can steal things from them! They're effectively encouraging you to take the money from the vault!
ARGH!
stuff |
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...
Well, if you are not allowed to develop P2P in the US, then only foreign P2P apps will be available. Then we will hear about legislation to ban these evil foreign pirate apps... ...or sever the US from the rest of the internet. After all, the world is full of shady characters just waiting to pollute the minds of the young.
Oh boy, I am on a soapbox today.
So UNLESS a P2P app blocks all not-authorised (by the *IAA) file transfers, it will be considered illegal. The implications are amazing, and could easily be applied to hardware (any file copy, burn to CDR, upload to MP3 player, etc...)
Actually, here it is:. 2560:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S
You may treat all information submitted above as wild speculation.
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!
Kazaa doesn't steal music, people do...
You can take my limewire from my cold dead hands...
Not to mention awesome statistics like... More music gets stolen every day by bootlegging operations than by p2p users.
Fun Stuff!
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
While it is not at all clear that Kazaa has ever told people to use it's software to steal, it is clear that some corporations now seem to think that they can legally profit by bribing senators with campaign donations.
Open Secrets
Note that he recieves a generous bonus from "lobbyists" and "TV/Movie/Music".
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Mr. LEAHY - D VT
Mr. FRIST - R TN
Mr. DASCHLE - D SD
Mr. GRAHAM R- SC
Mrs. BOXER -D CA
Bi-partisanship at its best!
I'm sending this at:= Offic es.Contact
t ory&cid=77 &e=1&u=/mc/20040706/tc_mc/billtargetsfirmsthatindu cecopyrightviolations
http://hatch.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction
Dear Senator Hatch,
This is the third letter I have sent you over the last three years. I am a Ph.D. student at Brigham Young University and I have lived in Utah County for almost ten years. For my education, and my employment, I have worked in cutting-edge technology and multimedia. I have authored DVDs for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as several other commercial DVDs. I have also traveled to Europe and Africa to collect audio and video materials for use in online language instruction, so I understand the time, effort, and money that is required to produce high quality content.
However, your current assailing of fair-use rights has once again reached the point of being absurd. Your bill outlined in this article:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s
seems to follow the attitude of legislating broadly, intending to enforce narrowly. Senator Hatch, we have seen "from sad experience" that this does not work.
When I wrote you before, concerning Dmitry Sklyarov, you responded that the DMCA, as currently instituted, struck the proper balance between content provided rights and the rights of consumers. My question is this: What has changed in the last two years that the DMCA suddenly does not go far enough in impeding citizens' rights.
You might believe that peer-to-peer technologies have no legitimate purpose. I know this is wrong. I have used P2P applications to quickly move huge amounts of data across heterogeneous networks, saving me hours. I also attended a subcommittee hearing you held at Brigham Young University where four local firms, including Novell, demonstrated how they were using P2P applications.
I sincerely hope that you will reconsider the present INDUCE legislation, and realize that the scales are already tipped in favor of copy-right holders.
Regards,
Jeremy Browne
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
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.
How many times will people get raped by the party of state power before they realize that there is not a lick of difference between those two faces?
Neither face of the party of state power wants you to have any control over your own lives. One side puts a nice shine on further controlling your private life, the other face shines the increasing control of your business life. Both vote for each others programs knowing that quid pro quo, one hand washes the other. Or face licks.
D's and R's both want whatever they can get from you. They will push and only back off to keep the general population from riding in armed revolt. Remember that the "assault weapon ban" passed a REPUBLICAN congress, who were trying to make sure they could push even harder.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
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.
it does not stand for that, quit talking out of your ass and trying to score karma. It's POINT to POINT protocol.
see here
-lk