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Justice Dept. Raids Homes of File Swappers
Cryofan writes "Reuters is reporting that the Justice Dept. has
raided the homes of 5 people in several states for trading music on p2p networks. The traders were, however, not arrested. 'P2P does not stand for 'permission to pilfer,' Ashcroft said. The Reuters story says that the 5 'were people operating hubs in a file-sharing network based on Direct Connect software,' and who had provided between 'one and 100 gigabytes of material to trade, or up to 250,000 songs.' 'They are clearly directing and operating an enterprise which countenances illegal activity and makes as a condition of membership the willingness to make available material to be stolen,' said Ashcroft."
Wow, actually it sounds like they are starting to target the correct people. Good.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Do you have only one thing on your to do list?
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
This doesn't seem possible - that's what, 100,000 x 300GB hard drives? Are they really providing that much, or is this the total amount available on the entire network?
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
All the easier to cast doubt during whatever trial occurs.
"Initial reports filed by the state claimed that the defendents were each serving 40 pentabytes of pirated content for illegal download. After being raided, seized computers were shown to only have several hundred gigabytes of storage. The capacity of the computers siezed was more than 1 million times less than that claimed by the state. The state used clearly false information to procure the warrents for the search... how can we trust any of the information gathered by the state when such a fundamental error occured in their investigation..."
Starting way back when the record companies were giving grief to the original Napster, many Slashdotters and like-minded folks were questioning the record company's authority to involve themselves in such matters, and said that if Napster was breaking the law, then the feds should get involved.
And then they did.
When harrassment of the P2P companies by both the government and private enterprises became more commonplace, many Slashdotters and like-minded folks said that the P2P companies weren't responsible for the actions of their users, and that the record companies should go after the users themselves.
And then they did.
When the record companies started suing the "whales" of the P2P world (those who were sharing sufficient amount of content to nudge into the territory of criminal, rather than civil law), many Slashdotters and like-minded folks claimed that if it really was criminal territory, then the record companies should stop picking on the pirates, and let the government handle it.
And now the government is doing just that.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
If I have a to do list of:
1. Get heart surgery done.
and 2. Pick up laundry.
I tend to prioritize the first one.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Not just one, but 5 places with 40 PETABYTES, EACH?!?!
Uhm okay math time....
1 Petabyte = 1024 Terabtyes
1 Terabyte = 1024 Gigabytes
So 40 Petabytes = 41,923,040 GB
41,923,040 GB / 300 GB per drive (generous assumption) = 139,744 drives per node!
5 nodes means 558,976 drives in use in total. Half a million 300 GB IDE drives?
I can think of a few places with petabyte arrays, this is not one of them I think.
Some simple math. This is assuming these people paid for the hardware and didn't just hijack a few 18-wheeler shipments from Maxtor.
139,744 300GB HDs * $157.5 (Knock 30% off for a volume discount from lowest price online of $225) = $22,009,680 in sunk capital in drives alone per node!
Or in total this means $110,048,400 spent on just HARD DRIVES ALONE. This doesnt even begin to include costs for enclosures or anything else.
So who the fuck are these "people"? These numbers are ether TOTALLY WRONG AND FASLEIFIED or they busted some kind of massively well funded organization?
(And no, I haven't even read the article yet but if those numbers are wha they said I stand by this)
"This is an extremely disturbing development, seeing as these folks are not guilty of a crime, merely a civil offense."
I'm not sure where you got the idea that this is a civil case. If you'd like to learn more about criminal violations of copyright law, here's the relevant section.
This war will be fought with new ideas, not ignorance. Being the squillionth Slashdotter to parrot the old "civil, not criminal" meme will not help things. If you truly believe that artists have too many rights and it's high time to put them in their place, the first thing to do is to understand how the law works, so you can work to change it.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Ok, so these 5 people each hosted around "40 petabytes of data, the equivalent of 60,000 movies or 10.5 million songs" each, and made them readily available internationally via the Internet. Maybe these records companies and movie studios, with their vast resources, could learn a thing or two about delivering content.
Seriously, a bunch of amateurs can make 10.5 million songs available but the **AA's can't ??? Maybe the RIAA should steal the technology and user base and call it even.
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
makes as a condition of membership the willingness to make available material to be stolen
Material to be "stolen", eh? Nobody's stealing stuff from me if I offer it up online for them to take. Makes as much sense as "Officer, my house was burgled after I swung open the door and yelled 'please burgle my house'". It's only indirect theft from the record companies as well. If I broke into someone's flat and pinched all their CDs, I wouldn't be stealing from the record company, I'd be stealing from whoever I just robbed. I wouldn't be making any money from the action either, so it's not like the record company is watching money that should go to them go somewhere else, all they're watching is money not go anywhere at all, and they don't like that.
Music has to come from somewhere. Currently it's coming out of record companies, who are consistently saying "how the hell do we create an audio track that people can listen to without being able to copy it". This is a pipedream. If you can listen to it and it's on a shiney disc, it MUST go through a DAC at some stage, and that's where your entry point as a copier is. Even with a decent analog system you can make a perfectly fine copy just off the line out.
If you download a copy of something, rest assured that at least someone somewhere must have bought it. Perhaps now the best thing for the record companies to do is auction off one single original copy of an album with bidding starting at six million dollars, wait for a community of fans to get the funds together and buy it, then watch it spread across the net, safe in the knowledge that they got a guaranteed six million dollars from an album before anyone had even heard it.
Look up "Steve Jackson games" on the 'net sometime..
>Each of the five hubs contained 40 petabytes of data, the equivalent of 60,000 movies or 10.5 million songs, Ashcroft said.
Does Ashcroft really expect me to believe there are 60,000 distinct movies on that network? Netflix only has 25,000 movies. I suspect they counted the number of COPIES of movies in the whole network. Ashcroft loves to mislead people, doesn't he? Why does he feel the need to inflate the numbers if his goal were upholding the law? Who signs his paycheck, anyway?
You're missing another important number:
10.5 million songs
Let's see:
10.5 million songs
~40 years of reasonable recorded audio
Some simple math:
10,500,000 / 40 = 262,500 songs every year...
Hmmm:
262,500 / 12 = 21,875 songs every month...
Sounds like a hell of a stretch to me, especially considering that music wasn't as easy to record back in the 60s and 70s as it is today.
The biggest music libraries that I've seen contain less than 1 million songs. I'm not sure where another 9.5 million could come from (unless Al Queida provided them).
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
"Today's enforcement action is the latest step in our ongoing effort to combat piracy occurring on the Internet," said Christopher A. Wray, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. "This is the first federal law enforcement action against criminal copyright infringement using peer-to-peer networks and shows that we are committed to combating piracy, regardless of the medium used to commit these illegal acts."
"Today we are sending a clear message that federal law enforcement takes piracy seriously," said U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Wainstein. "It is illegal to trade in copyright-protected materials on the Internet. This is theft, plain and simple. If you are engaged in this behavior, you are on notice that you are not as anonymous as you may think."
Is copyright 'enforcement' a civil matter or not? I don't get the whole 'arbitrary enforcement' thing the DOJ is doing.
No arrests - just confiscating your stuff.
Vote.
"This doesn't seem possible - that's what, 100,000 x 300GB hard drives? Are they really providing that much, or is this the total amount available on the entire network?"
Any p2p net out there would be really, really proud to have that kind of hardware to share. Obviously, Ashcroft inflated the hell out of the numbers as per usual and things the people are too friggin' dumb to notice.
You have no idea how undemocratic the even "democracies" are. Think. Most people you know oppose things like copyright extensions and the DCMA when it's explained to them, right? Yet how is it these things become law? If it's not the will of the people then it shouldn't be the law of the land, right?
The answer is they become law because companies and organisations with far bigger pockets than the average individual exert undue influence on those that actually legislate within our societies. In effect, through things like campaign contributions and lobbying they buy power.
You don't think that Microsoft's political donations and lobbying played a part in it only getting a slap on the wrist from the DOJ's antitrust lawsuits? You don't think that chemical companies not having to pay for the messes that they make because Newt Gingrich killed the Superfund counts? You don't think the handcuffs placed on the FDA's inspectors when investigating food contamination, which effectively make them powerless to protect consumers from unscrupulous manufacturers, counts either?
It's not in the US's interest to have monopolies abusing their positions in key industries. Or to have no effective safeguards to stop companies from polluting the environment without either effective penalty at the time or having to foot the bill to later clean up the mess. Or to allow contaminated food to reach the plates of average Americans.
Yet these things happen, and they happen even more frequently nowadays because the people who call the shots are effectively in bed with those doing the damage.
The foxes are guarding the coop. That's great if you're a fox, not so great if you're a chicken.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Unfortunately the DOJ doesn't have the option of picking and choosing which laws to enforce--and especially not according to YOUR whims.
Yeah! So there!
That's why when an individual or small company calls the FBI, the FBI always requires damages of at least $5000 before they'll even consider investigating.
Yeah, that's why prosecutors have no discretion about what charges they dismiss and which they prosecute -- and they never decide to "make an example" of a defendant, or give a sweet plea bargain to a connected defendent, or dig up all sorts of unrelated charges in order to get any conviction after their original charges fall through.
Yeah! So there!
So you're saying that when Ashcroft came on board as Attorney General, it wasn't his choice to de-emphasize anti-terrorism enforcement so as to concentrate on cracking down on porn and Tommy Chong? Huh, because he touted those decisions at the time as reasons his Fundamentalist base should be happy about the Bush administration.
Yeah! So there!
Hey, tell me, on Big Rock Candy Mountain where you live, how many licorice dollars did your condo cost, 'cause if Bush wins in November, I gotta move there, ok?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Stealing a milkshake and copying a digital file are not, I repeat not, the same thing.
Perhaps a better example would be the person charging you $10 for the recipe of a milkshake and you took a picture of that recipe and shared it with your friends.
Some 12 year old kid downloading music from the internet is not the same as the 12 year old kid creeping merchandise from Tower Records. There is a potential sale lost in the first case, and actual damages to Tower Recs, the distributor, the manager, etc. in the second.
I repeat, fundamentally not the same. How did this ignorant and blithe comment get modded as insightful? More **AA patsies in the mod system, I guess.
One would hope, on /. of all places, that this fundamental difference would be observed. Call it copyright infringement, but do not call it "theft," "piracy," or any other action which it is unequivocally not. There is a difference, and that difference matters. Both may be illegal, but one is a very fundamentally different beast than the other and they should be referred to and dealt with in different ways. Having the penalty for downloading (or uploading, or providing, whatever) digital files shouldn't have the same penalty (actually, much worse) than jacking merch in the store.
We are talking about copyright infringement. This is clearly bad, but when somebody infringes on your copyright by downloading music, you haven't lost money, you just haven't made it.
When someone walks into a record store and steals a few albums they have actually caused a loss to the record store.
A rather serious difference..
"But you DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO TAKE IT."
Really, says who... you? The law? I'd guess your arguement as to why copyright infrindgement is immoral really should be longer than a single sentence to be compelling.
Let's not forget that copyright property is a state-sponsored temporary monopoly which creates a scarcity which does not correspond to any state in reality. No such scarcity exists or would exist except as created by law. If these idea monopolists get to uppity, as I see they have been doing, it is then time to change the law.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
The downloader has not deprived the copyright owner of his property. It is not stealing, it is copyright infringement.
No, it's not. Stealing is taking something away (ie: so they no longer have it) from another party without right or permission.
It has nothing to do with having something in your posession. By your logic people who receive gifts are stealing and people who steal something and then give it away are not stealing.
Word games like this are going to do nothing but make your average joe look at your side of the argument as bizarre extremism.
It's not a word game at all. It's as simple, clear and obvious a distinction as the difference between manslaughter and murder - and most people don't have any trouble with those. The only people who seem to have difficulty seeing the difference are media company executives, their bought politicians and people who have been too brainwashed by advertising campaigns to actually think about it.
I am still amazed that this even warranted federal attention. Last I checked, I thought the FBI was short on resources and had more terrorist leads to chase then they could shake a stick at...
And did they pay this much attention to Enron and Tyco and obviously other large scale crimes?..
Whats with the political sex appeal and fear mongering of kids swapping stolen entertainment?
Call the local cops and treat it like any other petty crime...
I am not at all surprised that we trust Google more than the U.S. Government. When you ask Google a question, you generally get an accurate, consistent answer.
Albuquerque PC
This is the same old argument that comes up, typically in piracy raid articles, where someone states "with all the $crime1 and $crime2 going on, I really want this happening!" Its faults are as follows:
1.) Laws are meant to be enforced. They were enforcing the law. If a law will not be enforced, why have the law?
2.) The argument assumes organizations are one-track minds that only operate on one task at a time. This is like saying "with all the desktop work that needs to be done, do we really need Linux kernel hackers writing more drivers for arcane hardware?" The illogic in the statement is obvious. Simply because a piracy raid took place does not mean 100% of all money and 100% of all resources were utilized in the execution of this one, single raid. The argument is a convenient dismission meant to distract the issue from the event that took place to some imagined flaw in the process of the organization--thereby shifting the label of wrongdoer from the guilty pirates to the guilty law enforcers.
Note that this flawed argument is also often used against Microsoft. "With all the security flaws out there, it's good to know they were working hard on a new version of Encarta!" The statement ignores that Microsoft is a multi-tiered organization made of several dozens of software groups.
3.) It's a distraction from the fact that what the people were doing was illegal and inethical. The law caught up with them.
"There should be a -1 moral relativist option"
I see nothing morally relativist about asking for an arguement, a justification, as to why someone can morally prohibit another person, via the government, from thinking certain ideas or viewing certain materials (copyrighted materials of course).
Moral relativists do not need or ask for justification since they use their own belief system to self justify their behavior, in case you were ignorant about the term in question.
"As a US citizen, you have the right to disagree with laws and lobby for their repeal. You do not have to right to break them."
And if a law is immoral, you happily continue to obey? All law is are promulgated rules passed by the sovereign. If the sovereign, say a dictator or perhaps even a legislature as the case maybe, passed a law requiring that a group of individuals be inslaved, have their property taken away, and or put into camps you'd obey that law?
"You decided that because everyone in Europe drives on the left side of the street, people in this country should also"
Is the problem of driving on the left or on the right side of the road really an immoral law? If you think so it'll be a laugh for you to come up with that line of reasoning.
On the other hand the fact that governments seem to be jailing and bankrupting people in order to protect idea monopolist's profits and in spite of 300 year old copyright law that does not work in the digital age seems to be the type of law people should be objecting to and resisting.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com