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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."
I hereby declare a new unit, the adamscottphotoson, which will be the S.I. unit for mental retardation.
More like an idiot slashdot poster who even wonders what kind of unit a petabyte is.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Most people don't consider stealing cable as wrong, or speeding as wrong, or rolling stops, or any number of "nuisance" laws which could be ignored and most people wouldn't be harmed.
/. should be applauding the fact that the DoJ is going after some of the biggest traders around, instead of bitching that corporations are owning the Government.
However, in all those instances, including P2P piracy, there's a harm to someone indeed. Even if you're not physically taking something away, or you weren't going to buy the thing anyways, you still are taking away the right of the distributor to choose how its work can be disseminated through public channels.
Rolling stops cause problems if you don't really check for that cop car speeding toward the intersection, or the speed law if a dog darts across the road, or stealing cable when your bootleg cable scrambler causes problems on the lines.
Some laws are necessary, and just because most people don't want them around, is not a reason for them to be abolished. Copyright infringement is a necessary law, and for once
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Terrorists
Pedophiles
and identity thieves
all of whom are known, reported and ready for the DOJ to grab, but are running wild and unchecked.
Why is that?
(I know why, but I'll let someone else say it.)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Could you give us some citations? While you're heart-wrenching stories do bring a tear to the eye, they sound -- for the most part -- like bleeding-heart bullshit, designed to make us think that our government is an evil force (rolls eyes.)
Pasting one or two stories doesn't count. With all of that well-written rhetoric, surely there must be some meat to this main-course of pain.
evil adrian
SAN storage is at $2,500 a TB? Please show me a SAN storage system for that price.
Or are you just talking about the hard drives?
If that's the case, then you should increase your cost estimate.
Wow, what a dark and insightful post. You must be very popular at the gothic coffehouse with ideas like that.
Riddle me this: what other political system is there that is as stable, prosperous and as helpful to the general populace as the democratic republic? And second, why aren't we using it?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Thank the Lawaaaard for John Ashcroft
John Ashcroft - Lost an election to a dead democrat...
[who died in a "single engine plane crash due to poor visibility" (poor visibility - i.e. he couldn't see clearly that he would get clipped for going up against the Bush family machine)]
...and he's been taking revenge on everyone of the couple of billion people on the planet ever since.
Whether it's 40PB or 200TB is fairly irrelevent at this point. These people are commiting atrocious amounts of piracy and should be locked up in prison for the rest of their lives for their crimes against humanity.