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New California Law Bans Anonymous Media File Sharing
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like California will soon be requiring emails to share files. The story from SF Gate has a few details as Ahnold goes on his signing spree in Sacramento. 'Aiding the industry that helped him gain worldwide fame, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation Tuesday aimed at discouraging online piracy by requiring anyone disseminating movies or music on the Internet to disclose their e-mail address.' Also he signed a bill to limit the sale of video games."
I mean, I really really don't it. It's already illegal share movies. Now in order for them to allow me to commit an illegal act I have to share my email address?
What's next: "Before you rob a store you must inform the local police of your intentions"?
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
Governor and video game star Arnold Schwarzenegger
Video game star? What video game was he in besides T2: Arcade?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
So now to distribute movies, you simply have to create a hotmail account, even though you never have to actually log in and check your mail? Just wait 30 days, Microsoft automatically deletes any Cease and Desist letters, and you're home free! I'm not quite clear on what this law accomplishes...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If everybody on peer to peer networks was required to give out their real email address freely, the spammers would be able to go to town with e-mail lists that they would *know* to be real.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
But hotmail would have your IP address for when you first created the account. Oh duh! You'd use an Internet cafe.
So, if I want to distribute documents critical of the government I must give the government my email address making it possible to track me down and hurt me? I smell a constitutional issue.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Since when does freedom of speach extend to the illigal distribution of copywritten movies over the internet?
Since when does this law have ANYTHING to do with copyright infringment?
And if it did, it would be the stupidest law I've ever heard of. It would have to say you are free to share non-infringing files however you like, but if you are already commiting a FELONY sharing infringing files then we are also going to tack on a petty misdemeanor unless you post your e-mail address. I've seen some stupid laws, but that would be colossally stupid.
No, it sounds like this law is only modestly stupid and requires ANYONE who shares any music or video file to supply an e-mail address. And yes, it quite likely can get struck down on constitutional grounds as it would apply to someone distributing POLITICAL COMMENTARY music and video, such as Jib-Jab's My-Land parody. You do indeed have a highly protected right to ANONYMOUS political speech.
Just because a law is uintended to (indirectly) target copyright infringment does not give it a free pass on the First Amendment when the law infringes the right to anonymous political speech.
Jeez, we already have insane levels of criminality for copyright infringment itself (you can go to prison for 5 years for non-commercial copyright infringment/trade of a single song). What the hell is up with umpteen other laws all making PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE AND NON-INFRINGING ACTIVITIES AND PRODUCTS INTO CRIMES?!?! The DMCA, the AHRA, the broadcast flag, and now this law. All of which also smack down innocent and non-infringing people.
I have a question, do you support the DMCRA and/or BALANCE act? All they do is fix the DMCA by de-criminalizing INNOCENT and NON-INFRINGING use. If you do not support the DMCRA and/or BALANCE act then I ask how you justify the DMCA stating that innocent and non-infringing people are liable to 5 or 10 years in prision?
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You can't necessarily leave your newspaper on the seat when you're done. At least not if the newspaper companies have a say.
Metro-North railroad (the commuter lines into NYC) now consider leaving a paper on your seat as "littering" and are talking about fines and revocation of the monthly passes of violators. When you get to Grand Central station there are specially designed bins to throw your used paper into. They are locked and were supplied by the New York Times so you cannot reach in and get a used paper. And if you somehow do, the transit police are instructed to treat it as theft and arrest you.
Of course you can *hand* the paper to someone, they don't seem to have that one covered (yet).
but you COULD sign up for one of the temporary email addresses, you know the one's that expire after so many hours... how they gonna track that?
Does Californica not realize that the Internet will treat this as damage, and route around it?
Considering the fact that until recently the majority of packets on the internet either originated or terminated in California, I sincerly invite you to try routing around CA.
The benefit of running the state that contains Silicon Valley (and the tech centers in LA and San Diego) is that you get to exert a significant impact on the internet, whether the rest of the internet likes it or not.
Maybe it will make them feel like they got something accomplished and they won't try as hard to buy a law that has a truly chilling effect. Wishful thinking, I know.
Actually, I think the purpose in having this law is more subtle than you may realize. This is directly aimed at networks that are DESIGNED to permit anonymous, non-traceable filesharing, which is the next coming thing.
Bad laws are bad laws, because of their potential consequences, and because we don't need them cluttering up our already vast legal codes
There's also this:
Guess that means no more networked windows boxes for california employees, since Windows can share files with a right-click. And no more Outlook, because THAT can share files too, even when you don't want to.Come to think of it, a ban on file-sharing software pretty much kills all email, all cd-burning programs, etc.
I guess this is why people consider Arnie to be funniest when he's trying to be serious.
it doesn't say "true name and address" in a form accessible to other people. So therefore you can encrypt your name and address :)
but what about the legality of identifying someone using an email address? A signature is a legally accepted way of stating acceptance of exchange of something (such as contracts). So how can a law demand you provide your name and email be upheld unless the email is considered an appropriate form of digital signature. So I spoof my IP address, use someone elses name and email and then what? My email address is NOT a valid identification of myself in ANY internet transaction. It only identifies someone who has access to an email account of some sort. I agree, this may be some sort of salami tactic for getting in a law for later ammendment, but the mistake was using bad meat the salami in the first place.
Not sure about the fifth ammendment ramifications. It seems that the counter argument is that this is simply requiring people who presumably have permission to identify themselves so that they can better go after those who do not have permission.
:-)
:-)
Now, the first ammendment aspect may be more interesting. I propose that we all create political speaches as media files and in them explicitly state that we only give permission for them to be distributed, publically exhibited, etc. anonymously, and that no one is allowed to *both* distribute the content and comply with this law. Then we should send them around P2P networks with catchy titles like "California Dreaming--- RIAA Dream On" etc. Note only the copyright holder would have permission to email them to political figures, or we could make an exception for that in the license
Such speech would have clear political value and would not contain the unprotected practical elements which cause problems for DeCSS cases. In the end one might have a case regarding whether one can legally curtail political discourse using such laws. Also if such laws cannot curtail political discourse, then they might not be able to curtail other things as well.
As an aside, we could also set the text ofthe law to music and then forbid anyone to distribute it in such a way that complies with the law
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Freenet inserts splitfiles with 50% redundant error-correcting (FEC) data. So if IllegalFile.avi is split into 1000 data blocks then an additional 500 "check blocks" will be inserted as well. All 1500 blocks have CHK keys listed in the splitfile. So to "prove" that someone probably downloaded a file, you just need to find 1000 of those 1500 blocks in the users' datastore.
Complicating the legal question is that recent Freenet builds (in the last month or two) now effectively make all nodes non-transient. Connections between nodes are now also "bi-directional". So whereas before your transient node only stored content you downloaded, it is now being sent content (and requests for content) from the non-transient nodes that it connects to. The only difference from a permanent node is that they don't announce themselves. I think the idea is to offload some of the storage from the non-transient nodes as well as distribute the data more. I've often found when I leave my node on for several days that a splifile will start downloading and a few (or a lot!) of the blocks are already in my datastore.
In the end I think it depends on the laws in your part of the world. Even if the authorites can find all/most of a file (warez/movie/music/CP/etc) in your freenet datastore, is that enough to convict? i.e does that qualify as "posession"? Or do they have to show (within reasonable doubt) that you purposefully requested that content? Has the EFF or someone compiled information about this sort of thing?