Slashdot Mirror
Iceland and USA Feel the Copyright Industry's Wrath
spellraiser writes "Iceland's Internet traffic saw a substantial decrease this week as police raided the homes of 12 individuals suspected of sharing massive amounts of copyrighted material over a private, local DC++ hub that was infiltrated by SMAIS, the Association of film right holders in Iceland. The people who were raided were questioned by the police, and had computer equipment confiscated. It is unclear at this point what their fate is, but there is a distinct possibility might face charges." And in the U.S., an anonymous reader writes "The Recording Industry Association of America strikes again with yet another round of lawsuits. Jon Newston over at P2Pnet.net doesn't hold back anything in his great commentary on it today. Best quote 'It's almost as if having lost its bitterly fought case against the p2p application owners and failed in its many obvious (and expensive) attempts to disrupt the p2p networks, the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on helpless men, women and children who can't hope to stand up to it with its tremendous political and financial power.'"
Osama is lucky he doesn't share videos over the Internet or he would awaken the RIAA Rebellious Viva La Resistance Militia capturing him in 24 hours.
I had to look that one up
p lay=faq&faqnr=1&catnr=1&prog=1&lang=en&onlynewfaq= 1
FYI
http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/faq/faq.php?dis
What exactly is the Copyright "Industry"? Do you mean the music industry or the movie industry? Copyright is not an industry.
they're helpless to pay $8 to see a movie in the theater?
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
Does that mean the copyright industry is an enemy of the USA and Americans? Why else would it be waging wrath upon them?
dropped an amazing 40% after the raid. Wow. Fun.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I have a long term vision on the end of this: http://www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA/love7.html
God spoke to me.
As this register article (from today) shows:_ music_pirates/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/01/uk_to_sue
Anyone know how they go about infiltrating a DC network?
What's so shameful about this is: file sharing is not going away
And people buying CD from artists under RIAA isn't either.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
When the RIAA went after P2P software we all screamed "don't attack software that has legitimate uses, go after the people actually breaking the law." Now that they're doing just that everyone's still pitching a fit.
'It's almost as if having lost its bitterly fought case against the p2p application owners and failed in its many obvious (and expensive) attempts to disrupt the p2p networks, the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on helpless men, women and children who can't hope to stand up to it with its tremendous political and financial power.'
Maybe those poor helpless men, women and children should stop stealing then.
These icelanders hadn't been using a network like my own. Anonymity, each link to another person crossing an international border... it wouldn't have been infiltrated nearly as easily. Oh well...
The RIAA just doesn't get it. Continuing with these lawsuits is not going to do anything but build another revenue stream for them. At this point, one has to wonder if they realize that and if that is all they are hoping for.
You see, the market has already spoken and it has spoken loudly. An entirely new paradigm of music distribution has evolved and it isn't going to regress to the way it was in the previous generation. The RIAA had their chance to give people a product they want online and to use the new mechanism of distribution for profit. It failed to do so, thus other non-sanctioned methods entered the space to fill the void.
What will happen now is one of two things. Either the RIAA realizes that they can't have it their way and comes up with an acceptable online offer that will attract customers, or they will continue to spin their wheels in vain and alienate their customers who will in turn seek other outlets from which to obtain music.
1. Sue tons of people.
2. People bitch to politicians.
3. Politicians pass another copyright adjustment law that 'protects' consumers while improving the recording industry's profit margin.
4. Profit!
It's that simple. They have no fear of boycott or consumer retribution. Consumers of music are sheep. Even if some of the sheep wise up and stop buying, there are more people growing up to take their place, which is probably as good an explanation as any for why the music industry targets youth.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Back when the RIAA was focused on Napster and P2P, didn't we say they shouldn't be focusing on the technology, but on those who misuse it?
Now they're doing just that - focusing on the people, not the technology. Their methods could be a lot better (they should focus on people who share a lot, not anyone with an MP3 with a suspicious name), but they *are* on the right track.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
It's almost as if having lost its bitterly fought case against the p2p application owners and failed in its many obvious (and expensive) attempts to disrupt the p2p networks, the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on helpless men, women and children who can't hope to stand up to it with its tremendous political and financial power.
Of course it is - they're the ones causing all the problems!
...the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on helpless men, women and children who can't hope to stand up to it with its tremendous political and financial power.
This is precisely the right thing for the labels to do. Go after the people who are breaking the law, not the people who make products that can be used to break the law. It is good because it is the way law should be (punishing the infringer, not the toolmaker), and it is good because it shows people how much the current copyright model sucks. Actions like this are exactly what we want, so that people will be motivated to move to new economic models of content distribution.
We need to find an economic model that both compensates the creator and moves the product into the public domain (or a similar Open license). Actions like this are exactly what will show the general public the value of the public domain.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Who happen to be sharing copyrighted material, i.e. breaking the law.
Lets call a troll a troll, here.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
From a moral point of view: people who distribute copyrighted material are violating both the letter and spirit of the law, and deserve to be punished.
From a strategic point of view: The only alternative to punishing copyright violators, short of abandoning copyright altogether, is to make violation impossible through Orwellian DRM backed up by even more Orwellian legislation, or by hamstringing the Internet in some other way. I don't want to lose my freedom and my technology because some punks thought they should be allowed to download music without paying for it.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
We won't need the internet anymore, after all there isn't enough music being created to keep up with the ever increasing storage capacities.
Soon everything ever created will fit on one DVD and that will be the end of the RIAA as we know it!! The pirates win!!
Of course I'll have to explain to my future grandchildren why we have been listening to the same Britney Spears song for the last 30 years, but screw it!! it was FREE!!
Anyone know exactly how the RIAA is going about prosecuting these days? I'm one of a lot of people who used to do a lot of filesharing and have since cleaned up their act (I went the way of iTunes). I deleted music I didn't honestly own and haven't obtained any illegally since; my question is, is the RIAA suing indiscriminately based on IPs possibly logged many many months (or even years) ago, or are they going after still-current offenders?
It seemed in the beginning that they were making a statement, and that (based on decreased Kazaa traffic) the message got through. The fact that they're still suing people is scary of those of us who got that message long ago but no longer have the opportunity to sign onto the now-defunct amnesty list (which was plagued by legal issues anyway).
http://actionPlant.com
A quote from a German Colonel made during operation Barbarossa:
"The German Army in fighting Russia is like an elephant attacking a host of ants. The elephant will kill thousands, perhaps even millions, of ants, but in the end their numbers will overcome him and he will be eaten to the bone."
So it is with the *AA. Eventually they will fail out of the sheer weight of numbers they are fighting.
My rights don't need management.
'It's almost as if having lost its bitterly fought case against the p2p application owners and failed in its many obvious (and expensive) attempts to disrupt the p2p networks, the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on helpless men, women and children who can't hope to stand up to it with its tremendous political and financial power.'
I hate to side with the RIAA here, but don't you remember all the p2p networks screaming in court, "You can't blame us, we don't put pirate music on the internet, our users do!" Apparently the RIAA got the message.
If this were about the SCO lawsuits we'd all be crying for the distros and hardware vendors to indemnify us. I guess it's a little too late to ask Kazaa to take the blame for us.
Why are we sticking up for people who make copyrighted Hollywood movies available for download? The one and only defense of P2P networks is that they are not "pirate to pirate" networks but rather a new tool for distributing independent, privately financed media and breaking the Hollywood deathgrip on media distribution. For years we've screamed that attacking the toolmakers (DMCA) is insane, that the tool abusers are to blame. And now, when the RIAA finally listens to Slashdot and sues the pirates themselves we're still against them?
It's articles like this that convince lawmakers, businessmen, and the Silent Majority that all this crowd is actually interested in is stealing movies. Right now I'd be hard pressed to argue with them.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
This is pretty funny, as stated in the news report domestic bandwidth for the entire country dropped about 40%. This can be seen as clear as day from the usage stats for RIX (Reykjavik Internet Exchange) a centralized point for traffic between Icelandic ISPs. Check out the second and third from top here
You can see the bandwith reduction here
We want them to go after the people ILLEGALLY sharing files.
These people are knowingly and willingly breaking the law.
This is much better than them trying to shut down the p2p networks/applications themselves.
With the Icelandic population betwen ages 10-40 at probably about 100K, 12 people going icefishing for a weekend makes a substantial decrease in Icelandic Internet traffic.
--
make install -not war
...this is exactly what we asked for, and it's the right way to do it. For years advocates of P2P have said that copyright holders (which, regrettably, includes corporate entities) should be pursuing the individual violators rather than trying to kill P2P software or force ISPs to block their use.
The corporations may be a bit severe in their approach, and IMO the RIAA's tactic of fining offenders through a pre-court settlement is something of a miscarriage of justice. But when press releases tell us about P2P users busted for blatantly ignoring copyright holders' rights -- to the tune of thousands of files, twenty-four hours a day -- I find it hard to sympathize with them.
Best quote 'It's almost as if having lost its bitterly fought case against the p2p application owners and failed in its many obvious (and expensive) attempts to disrupt the p2p networks, the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on helpless men, women and children who can't hope to stand up to it with its tremendous political and financial power.'"
How about this instead:
"It's almost as if having lost its bitterly fought case against the p2p application owners and failed in its many obvious (and expensive) attempts to disrupt the p2p networks, the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on the actual men women who are breaking the law and causing the problems on the first place"
Finkployd
The one and only defense of P2P networks is that they are not "pirate to pirate" networks but rather a new tool for distributing independent, privately financed media and breaking the Hollywood deathgrip on media distribution.
The one and only defense?
I thought it was that we are free people who are innocent until proven guilty, and should be free to connect our computers together without having to prove that we have a "legitimate" reason first. But that's just me ...
Nice sig, very poetic.
Have you read "Grendel" by John Gardner? There's a scene where a dragon is telling Grendel that Nature has no absolute scale, that things have size only in comparison to other scales, and that there's infinity in both directions. Gardner phrased it much better than I did.
Btw, the book "Grendel" has nothing to do with computers, the RIAA or Iceland. It was however, enthralling and fresh. To the mods: I know this is off topic, which is why I posted with no Karma bonus. Thank you in advance for not mod-bludgeoning me :)
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
"Best quote 'It's almost as if having lost its bitterly fought case against the p2p application owners and failed in its many obvious (and expensive) attempts to disrupt the p2p networks, the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on helpless men, women and children who can't hope to stand up to it with its tremendous political and financial power.'"
At the risk of being modded troll, what is wrong with cracking down on people who are:
Since when was it a right to do that with one's internet connection and movies? How does the headline submitter expect movie industries to make any money, if he endorses this behavior?
DC++ hubs were started in Iceland because we usually have to pay extra for foreign downloads so people started sharing stuff between them for free.
When they raided the 12 guys (and seized 11 terabytes of data) all the dc servers were shut down and immediatly MRTG graphs clearly showed about a 50-60% traffic between domestic connections.
We have long heen proud to say that we have very high percentage of net users here, about 95% (number pulled out of ass) of the country has the internet and DC isn't the only way Icelanders share copyrighted stuff.
In fact most people just get cd's from friends who download from DC or someother p2p sharing app.
So in our case most of the population is rampantly breaking copyright laws all the time and suddenly because of complaints from SMAIS 12 random guys are arrested and two of them held for 24 hours.
2 years in prison is the maximum punishment for a crime like this while murder is maximum 16 years and if anyone is convicted for a copyright violation in Iceland we are going to have to put the entire nation behind bars.
I'm personally disgusted that our government is even thinking about putting profits of american companies above the well being of the people it is supposed to serve.
Hitler's in the fridge.
People trading in illegal media are not "helpless", they're criminals. The RIAA should be suing lawbreakers instead of trying to get software banned. The same goes for people who pirate Windows and then complain about Linux/BSD -- a bunch of whiners.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
I think you misspelled a word there, earlier. Instead of "is not an industry", the actual spelling should be "should never have been allowed to become its own industry".
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
This biased story line read like an excerpt from Les Miserables or Oliver Twist. If I don't like the 35 MPH speed limit on the road leading to my home I can't commute 70 MPH every day and not expect repercussions. If you don't like a law why not attack it legislatively? Make a grassroots effort to overturn the law. But don't knowingly break the law and expect to get any sympathy from me.
We're not talking about smoking here. Kick the little pissers out until they can act responsibly. Example:
The last four movies I've either seen in a theater or rented, in no particular order:
--(unadulterated) Gojira: Theater, fulfilled an old promise to myself.
--X-Men (1): Theater, first week of release.
--Episode 1: Theater, on release night.
--Princess Mononoke: Theater, on release day.
This, from when I used to rent/watch movies at least once a week. And my DVD collection stopped at 8 or 9. I remember enjoying movies, but since I really don't like the Racket, I avoid paying it for anything. Now movies and albums are a novelty.
They might force me to pay to watch, but they can't force me to watch in the first place. The same goes for music.
Oh come on. In this day and age if you share copyrighted goods online and have no clue that it is illegal then you are helpless because of a mental disability, not your financial state. While I have some sympathy for those who get caught, I just have to say you brought this on yourselves.
Until the law is changed, you know what you are up against if you share files you have no right to. We can disagree with what the RIAA is doing all day, and I certainly don't think that sharing a few songs is worth $5000 in fees, more like $1 or so for each song IMO, but these people are merely stupid, not helpless.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
This is a flaw in the justice system then, and not an indication that the RIAA should stop trying to sue. If you think that it costs too much money to defend yourself in the judicial system (which I wouldn't disagree with...), that's great -- but don't confuse the two issues. By the way, where are the "numerous" cases of people who don't even own computers being sued found at? I was under the impression that they were tracking all of this with IP information, and ISP cooperation...
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
One way to test a thesis is to view the result if it were true.
The record industry wishes us to believe that every download is a lost sale. If true, what would their sales be if all downloads had never happened? Does this figure sound reasonable? Or does it exceed the total GNP of the G-7 nations, plus Nigeria?
I, for one, do not believe for a moment that Internet music sharing has kept the music industry from suddenly expanding several times in size. And since they can't tell the truth about this, I don't believe them about much else either. Do you?
Then again, I don't believe memos allegedly typed in 1971 clearly using Microsoft Word are authentic either. But if they are, then I'm using them as prior art to invalidate all patents relating to Microsoft Office!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"suspected of sharing massive amounts of copyrighted material over a private, local DC++ hub that was infiltrated by SMAIS"
I just finished reading TFA, and the only two hits on google-news,
and I saw no explanation for the phrase "private local hub".
This phrase made it sound (to me) like the arrestees were on a LAN,
where the p2p traffic wasn't passing over the public net --
which, IF true, would be a lot more chilling.
Once again, let me post our Constitution: Article 8, Section 8, Clause 8:
/.'s, a lot of whom do programming for a living, can support theft of digital media.
The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
Our Constitution protects the authors and inventors from theft via the "exclusive right" clause. That means the authors and investors can say how much they will charge for their works, and how their works will be distributed.
I read over and over again how socialists try to justify "copying" files saying that nothing is really stolen. Wrong! The author's exclusive right is stolen. This all goes back to property rights - which is something socialists and communists do not understand. Property rights enables capitalism which is what makes America great.
It still surprises me how
So if you're going to mod be down, you better have a good arguments against our Constitution and exclusive right.
Or, one could say that the action had a chilling effect on privacy.
<gets ready for beating>
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
Since it's not the politically correct point to make at
That's a heckuva lotta file sharing.
And within that 2.5TB of data, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some pirated software [MSDN Universal, Autocad, Acrobat/Photoshop] that might interest the BSA [or whatever they call it in Iceland].
Iceland might consider becoming the world's library since the other aspects of their financials are changing. The fishing is not as good as it used to be and trans-Atlantic airplanes don't need refueling stops anymore.
So why not just become the center of world trading in 'copyrighted' materials and take a microcharge of each trade? They'll get kicked out of the EU? Hardly likely. Brussells can be really boring on a small Eurocrat's salary and full-price media product can be mighty expensive (and will definitely be going up in price).
Better Iceland become the world's library than Vanuatuu, because that little island could just disappear in a typhoon and take all the servers and storage with it.
Maybe, you say, no one should be the world's center of 'illegal' trade in 'copyrighted' materials. Nonsense, that is a spin fantasy of the media giants who need inexpensive unofficial downloads as much as they need full-service 'all-fees-paid' fully-legit product sales.
When five companies control most of the world's media, it doesn't really matter if people buy the product at full copyright-paid Western prices or discounted 'pirate' prices. Either way they get all the money eventually because they are the only game in town. It's more important that people consume ever-increasing amounts of corporate media product. The money will get back to them. That isn't the case when there are thousands of small and medium-sized media companies globally. However that situation no longer exists and the media executives should revise their overall concept of how this new global framework works.
In a sense the reference in the parent to secret underground terrorist religious organizations is apt because these groups are the primary competition to the global media companies, especially in the developing world where 2/3rds of the population is under the age of 25. Hollywood and religious fanaticism don't mix all that well in the long term. Both compete for the leisure time attention span (and the loyalities) of the billions of new young people. In America, corporate Hollywood won because in the current political alliance between the major corporations and the religious right the religious community has always been the weaker partner.
This should probably be a Slashdot FAQ:
Q: "Why does the rest of Slashdot hold inconsistent opinions?"
A: "Because it has more than 2 users."
Venting their power on the helpless men and women who can't fight the financial and legal power of the RIAA is still a futile and losing battle by virtue of the simple fact that there are too many people sharing files. They don't have the resources to get everyone. :)). The War on Drugs has backfired and bankrupted it's proponents. Let's hope the War on P2P will do the same.
It's as if you tried to stop drug use by targeting all the users of drugs (and we've seen how well that works
*yawn*
In the article(pretty much the same one that's being "passed around"):
RIAA sues 762 more over music swaps
In addition to those sued anonymously, the RIAA said it had sued 68 defendants whose identities had been discovered and who had declined offers to settle.
Looks like we'll finally get to see someone stand up to the RIAA's lawsuits.. I wish them luck..
"Don't want to get sued? DON'T BREAK THE LAW!!!"
;).
No, don't want to get sued then *change* the law. Let us make copyright 0 years. The people can make it any length they wish since copyright is an artifical creation of law.
I may settle for 14 years though, if they beg us enough
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
As long as people keep having kids, do you not think there is a ready and vast supply of people willing to trade stuff online?
Teenagers are the expendible infantry of the P2P wars.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The "War on Drugs" analogy isn't really applicable. P2P participants are the drug suppliers as well as the drug users. If you rip a new CD you just bought so others can download the files for their own use then you are a pusher that is a valid target, right?
That's all?
The "If you aren't guilty you have nothing to worry about!" attitude. Please, that is just stupid. The problem with civil suits is that the bar for bringing them is much lower, as is the standard of proof.
The RIAA doesn't really need to do anything but file to have a lawsuit against you, they don't have to meet any real burden. In a criminal trial, the prosecution has to have a minimum level of evidence, or the case will just be thrown out. Likewise the burden in a criminal trial is beyond a reasonable doubt, meaning they have to have pretty convincing proof you are guilty. In a civil trial it's a perponderance of the evidence, meaning they have to argue a little better than you.
Now all this was intentional. Criminal trials are intended to be for, well, crimes, things that society wants to punish you for. They also can carry very stiff penalities. Civil trials are for resolving financial disputes. If a tennant skips out without paying you, you take them to civil court to try and get your money.
The thing is, with copyright infringement, the amount they are allowed to ask for is so outrageous, it might as well eb jail time. They can sue for $150,000 PER INCIDENT which means for EACH file. Now you cannot honestly believe that someone having a signle MP3 on their harddrive costs the RIAA $150,000 (if you do then realise you are saying they should be worth several times the current gross world product). The fine is clearly excessive, which is prohibited by the constution.
So you get sued. Even if you are innocent, you basically have to settle. Hiring a defense isn't cheap (and you don't get one by default like in a criminal case). You also need a GOOD defense since they don't have to prove you shared the files beyond a reasonable doubt, just argue that you did a little better than you argue you didn't. Then, if you lose, well they basically own everythign you make for the rest of your life since we are talking of millions of dollars per CD.
THAT is the problem. If the RIAA was suing people for the price of the CDs they are sharing, I'd have no problem. I've got no problem with them saying "Oh you have 20 CDs worth of music you didn't purchase? Fine, we want $350." I wouldn't even have a problem if they sued for say, twice the amount. YOu are allowed to have some punitive damamges in there. However the statutory damages on the books are so excessive that it's literally a matter of your entire finincal future, just for a few songs. You are forced to settle, innocent or not.
What's more, UNC did a study, the link I'll post from home later if you like that showed that filesharing has a stasticaly insignificant impact on music sales. So you are talking extreme punishments for something that appears to be of very little harm.
It's like speeding enforcement. It's a minor offence, so it's a minor punishment. A reasonable fine, and some points on your license. We could reduce speeding to almost nothing by giving police M2s and having them destory any vehicle and kill any driver going over the speed limit, but that seems rather excessive and unfair. The same is true of having a hundred thousand dollar fine on copying music when it seems to have no impact on sales anyhow.
"It's almost as if having lost its bitterly fought case against the p2p application owners and failed in its many obvious (and expensive) attempts to disrupt the p2p networks, the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on random men, women, children, and elderly grandmothers who do not even know what P2P is but have their lives screwed over because of spyware or a wonky ISP IP log."
Yes, I can see where that is fair.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
" People trading in illegal media are not "helpless", they're criminals."
That's a little too simplistic, esp. since we are talking about copyright which is an artifical line drawn in the sand.
Draw it else where, at say 0 years and abolish it altogether. Since copyright is law, and law can be changed by the people, we can change it if they continue to harass the population.
The small mogols will find their quest for profit by stifeling new technology and turning society into a copyright police state will not be tollerated.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
"As for the drop in traffic - the entire population is ca. 300.000 people, so 12 active users account for quite a bit of traffic - although the entire country is wired." It wasn't only those 12 users that were suddenly "disconnected". It was the whole file sharing community of Iceland. Thousands of users.
Intellectual property is no longer intellectual if you put it in a medium that is easy to copy, share, replicate, and redistribute...
And then act as if it's some big criminal surprise when people are copying, sharing, replicating, and redistributing it.
That's not intellectual anymore. It's just plain naive. Stop supporting legislation which promotes the naive. Face reality.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
"committing tons of theft of intellectual property"
Its called copyright infrindgement and is seperate and different from theft. No physical object is stolen and the 'owner' is not deprived of use of their 'property'.
"How does the headline submitter expect movie industries to make any money, if he endorses this behavior?"
Does this industry's fantasy 'right' to profit trumpet the peoples' right to freedom of information? Their fantasy 'right' to profit include turning society into a DRM police state and blocking new technology?
Their right to profit, if it exists at all, comes secondary to the will of the people. Copyright is a mere bill that can be revoked with a majority at any time, and that time seems sooner then ever.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
Individuals create MP3 from CD tracks - RIAA does not sue
Individuals swap these MP3 files - RIAA does not sue
Individuals buy 10 billion dollars of MP3 players to play the shared files - RIAA sues
RIAA allowed the infrastructure for the usage of Music files to grow to a usables size then converts it into a profit point without having to spend marketing dollars to convince user to switch to this new music format. RIAA did not lose money to files sharers- They gained millions of addicted customers.
I once read a book that another family member bought, am I a copyright infringer? I still have a local copy- I remember the story.
-
Even if some of the sheep wise up and stop buying, there are more people growing up to take their place, which is probably as good an explanation as any for why the music industry targets youth.
Except those youth are growing up in an environment where they've probably downloaded the music they listen to more than bought it. They're not likely to suddenly change and go to buying only. In fact they're more likely to stop buying music at all. Lawsuits aren't likely to faze the younger generation, especially teenagers who already think they're invincible physically.So now that's not going to work, the number of people willing to share/download music, even in the face of lawsuits, is only likely to increase, not decrease. Surely someone at the RIAA has enough brain cells to realize this.
Please use the correct terms: this isn't stealing music, it's illegally copying copyrighted material.
This is not just a semantic argument - the natural state for music is to be free (libre), whoever can hear it can enjoy it. When I play the organ in church on Sundays, the music isn't mine, it's just the music I'm making. If people come to the church not to worship God, but just to hear me playing the organ, that doesn't fall outside the "Acceptable Use Policy" of my organ playing, it's just a bunch of people in the church listening to some music [they don't, BTW]. And if the service is taped so that people who couldn't get to church can hear what went on, that doesn't get a whole lot of boilerplate attached to it: it's just people hearing the service as it was.
Now, there are a bunch of people out there who've decided to use the legal artifice of copyright to stop people listening to the music they make unless they are given money. But please, please don't write as if the only way to enjoy music is to give somebody money, because 99.9% of the people in the world who make music don't do it for money, they do it because they like to do so, and if other people enjoy listening to them it gives them even greater pleasure.
This isn't about music, it's about copyright. You can't steal music, but you can infringe copyright.
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
Fuck you asswipe. I keep pushing it, because by nature it can be invitation only. I can't put up an asshattish sourceforge page and let every loser join at will.
As for it being a network, it's more of one than any of the alternatives. Let's see:
Freenet:
1) Takes a day or two for the cache to fill.
2) Impossible to publish anything on it
3) Within 18 hours, had 200 java processes running on my machine
4) I see kiddy porn links on the front page of all the "major indexes"
5) At best, web-like and email-like capability. Of course, good luck getting frost to work
Mine:
1) Static IP (IPv4 and IPv6)
2) If someone is narced, only they're in trouble. You're in another country, and since you know youre not a pervert, even if they try to railroad you, fighting extradition shouldn't be too tough. Not to mention, they don't want to extradite you, you won't remember some VPN config (the other end of the tunnel's IP address) 8 months ago.. they want an international search warrant, or to confiscate your router.
3) It's invitation only. Only invite those you personally trust, since they're the only ones that can hurt you.
4) It's a true routed IPv4/IPv6 network... run anything you want that works on the internet.
5) It's a chance for you, the little guy, to experiment with running anything you want. Email server? DNS? Anything goes.
But please, just mod me down without reading it, like the asshat commands.
"Boy, that Jaguar is overpriced: it's a few hundred dollars of steel, glass and leather. Therefore, I can steal it."
- don't-deprive-you-from-using-it." Do you scream when companies use GPL code without releasing the source? How is this different?"
It's called 'copyright infrindgement' and not theft for an important reason, they are different. Physical property is different than ideas and information. You do realize that you are not deprived of your ideas when someone else thinks them, right?
"Don't give me that "copyright-infringement-is-not-stealing-because-I
Do I scream? Who are you talking to, I think you'll find a wide audience here at Slashdot. As for companies bullying individuals, you'll find people fighting against them by what ever means at their disposal including flinging called copyright laws in their face.
"Let's make a deal: Microsoft can close the Linux source and you can copy all the music you want."
Lets make a better deal, abolish copyright and then the GPL and all other licenses won't be necessary. I like that better, lets go for it all it takes is a simple majority vote to repeal the copyright bill and we are there.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
The tragedy of this is not only that these penalties are overly harsh, not commensurate with the crime, and burden millions of users for the benefit of a relatively small industry.
The tragedy is that it is a grotesque distortion of the once highly limited copyright law, a law that was only meant to regulate publishers. The incessant lobbying of spineless representatives has caused the scope and penalties of 'infringement' to balloon, without deliberation and without consulting the public.
Just as importantly, it is the industry's public relation's 'propaganda' (as Chomsky would call it) that has effectively morphed public opinion about what copyright was, what it is, and what it should be. It has changed from merely affecting publishers to affecting everyone, and it seems to many 'natural' and 'obvious' that individual users are committing willful and egregious crimes. It is not surprising, therefore, to find the parent post accepting the sad truth--"Downloading copyrighted material that you have not purchased is a crime."--wholeheartedly.
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
Name calling is a great way to benefit your cause there....
Of course people are going to get irritated by ads, irregardless of it they're for a free product.
feh. stuff.
Anonymous Coward:
"So in your mind the well being of your fellow countrymen and women depends on the free and unfettered distribution of warez, music and movies?"
Answer:
Well being = not being thrown in jail for two years for a victimless crime.
The companies that are claiming losses are companies distributing music and movies but since the internet these information distributors are completeley useless and should be putten out of their misery as soon as possible and if sharing copyrighted material is losing them money, GREAT!
Then I can feel good about dl'ing my daily dose of warez knowing that Im helping bringing down a complete waste of resources such as SMAIS and MPAA and RIAA and all those fucking abbreviations.
PS. I would also like to mention that in Iceland we have 5 local TV channels and most of the stuff I download is something I couldn't even see here if I wanted to pay normal price for it.
Hitler's in the fridge.
OK. lets get this out of the way. It is NOT theft. It is NOT a criminal act [yet]. In fact calling it htat shows how much propoganda can program folks. Theft is when you steal a tangible item.
Now. Why is it social protest? Its people realizing that they are being price gouged by large corporations involved in price fixing. Price fixing and unreasonable extension of copyright. Copyright was a thing granted to people and companies to ENCOURAGE development and to help the author benefit from it. Unfortunately the length of it now does just the opposite. And in some ways this is another aspect of the problem
Recent court cases have ignored the basis of it. And the industries involved have refused to compete with each other pricewise for the most part even today, and tried to avoid using new technologies to help them stay competitive. As such people are using the much lower priced alternative of P2P, many recognize the greed and conspiracy among the music and other companies. People feel a bit pissed that they have been abused to the degree that these companies have fixed prices, etc. Some of the online music sites are a good step in the right direction. $.99 a song isn't too bad. The problem is that the music companies are going to try and conspire to raise these prices I think. I think that the record companies are in for a shock. They are no longer needed. The internet has replaced them.
As computer capabilities expand hollywood too could be in for a shock within my lifetime. I can see a day where 1 guy in his basement will write, direct, etc a computer designed set of actors and props to make a movie. Currently its a group effort, but I can see a day where 1 person alone....will make movie magic.
Adapt or die. The future is coming and if you stand against it you will fall.
We seem to have tons of hacked windows boxes out there spewing spam and everything else out into the wild. How come no one has made some sort of P2P zombie that shares (or at least proxies) tons of music from all over the net? That would either get the RIAA to sue the owner of every unpatched windows box in the world, or make it pretty much impossible to prove that anyone knew they were sharing.
Either result seems like it would be fun to watch.
Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours.
"Sky Captain and the World of Tommorow" is an excellent example of the basic Hollywood problem today.
It didn't make any money.
In fact it lost a ton of money.
Box Office Mojo website reports that this product costs $78 million US to produce and $28 million US to advertise and promote. Yet in the critical first two weeks of theatrical release, it has brought back only $25 million. Generally Hollywood movies now must bring in 1/2 of their production costs in the first weekend of release in order to be considered profitable in the long run.
This product was well-made and certainly has appeal to a segment of the audience, but it was essensially a vanity project between the star Jude Law and the art director.
The real problem here is that someone in the studio framework who should know better allowed a $100 million vanity project to get made. This seems to indicate that Hollywood is running out of ideas for product and are beginning to throw money at anything that has a star's enthusiasm.
Studios are supposed to the star's bullshit filters, not bullshit enablers.
This is just one sign that Hollywood is on the verge of a product crisis not unlike those that hit it both in the 1950's from television and the early 1970's from the counter-culture.
This is not just a semantic argument - the natural state for music is to be free (libre), whoever can hear it can enjoy it. When I play the organ in church on Sundays, the music isn't mine, it's just the music I'm making.
Hmmm, using your line of reasoning...
The natural state for oil paintings is to be free (libre), whoever can view it can enjoy it. When I paint in my college art class the painting isn't mine, it's just the art I'm making.
Sounds a little bit crazy right? But the only difference is that there are tangible elements involved with an oil painting that maybe I had to pay for. Musicians have overhead too, marketing, instruments, studio time.
Is there no such thing as art that someone can't keep to themselves? What if Shakespeare wrote some incredibly good but incredibly personal poetry? Is he somehow obligated to share that with you? It's art right so it should be free (libre).
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Murder seems immoral in and of itself. The freedom to have information does not seem remotely 'evil', if it is even evil, or as extreme as murder.
Thanks for playing though...
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
http://www-m.isnic.is/status/rix/linanet/linanet-w eek.png
Hehe... warez is teh shit!
Then he can turn off sigs, and put me down as a foe.
Besides. Take a look at who called names first.
Yes, compare me to the wealthy that loot old people's pension funds. Of course it's illegal to violate copyright, congressmen were bribed repeatedly to make it so. I'm supposed to feel ashamed because I think those laws are less valid than some of the more fair, sensible ones? Fuck you.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Yeah, I see your point.. But just for the record, it wasn't the sig that was the problem - the post was about metanet.
:)
:)
No, I'm definetly not trying to start a flame war or upset you / etc
As for the names first thing, eh. Why bother? Feeding the trolls keeps them alive.
feh. stuff.
It's amazing the twisted logic people will use to remove themselves from all responsibility for their own actions.
" Best quote 'It's almost as if having lost its bitterly fought case against the p2p application owners and failed in its many obvious (and expensive) attempts to disrupt the p2p networks, the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on helpless men, women and children who can't hope to stand up to it with its tremendous political and financial power.'" "
The RIAA should have never even gone after P2P application writers. Being able to share a file with someone (or everyone) is not in itself any crime at all! They should ALWAYS have gone after the infringers of the (C) themselves. If sharing a (C) file with someone (or everyone) is a crime, then the sharer is certainly the main guilty party here. Secondly, anyone knowingly DLing and using (C) works is a secondary culprit. Running (or writing) a P2P client itself is NOT A CRIME AND SHOULD NEVER BE!
When did we lose all our sanity anyway?
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
The death of the RIAA would NOT mean the end to music. It might however mean that in 30 years, you won't be listening to whatever they call the Britney Spears clone who would be popular at the time.
I'm certain Apple will be surprised to hear that.
The non-sanctioned services I refer to came on the scene long before iTMS. I was pointing out that the RIAA failed to see the need for a legitimate online service until long after P2P was firmly established.
iTMS represents an improvement in their online policy, but whether or not it is what the market will ultimately accept in the online music arena still remains to be seen.
I used to very anti-IP from a libertarian standpoint that it interferes with markets. Wouldn't it be so elegant if we could do away with these silly laws and let the bits free? But anarchy belongs after the singularity, when we know the output to sentience and control the input.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Under current law, movie and record companies have a legal right to go after those who distribute their copyrighted material without authorization. If you don't like it, than work to change the law instead of bitching about them abusing the law. All corporations that sell directly to consumer are actually extremely vulnerable. Organize a boycott that results in even a 5% decrease in their sales, and you'll get their attention -- fast! The problem is, 99% of the consumers simply don't give a shit.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I decided to translate what was going on on the chatroom on the biggest Direct Connect Hub in Iceland just before it was closed down.
:@ :////////////////////
[22:31:15] <Eval> Guys
[22:31:17] <Eval> LISTEN
[22:31:24] <Eval> THERE IS A BIG BUST GOING ON AT THE NATIONAL POLICE COMMOSSIONER
[22:31:30] <Eval> REMOVE ALL THE DISKS YOU ARE SHARING FROM YOUR COMPUTERS
[22:31:34] <Eval> I MEAN ALL OF THEM
[22:31:53] <Eval> THEY HAVE ARRESTED A FIEW, INCLUDING OLD ADMINISTRATORS FROM DCI [Direct Connect Iceland]
[22:32:03] <Eval> THEY WILL BE HAVING A MASSIVE SEARCHES THE NEXT DAYS
[22:32:12] <Eval> ALL DISKS FROM YOUR COMPUTERS AND GO AWAY FROM YOUR HOUES
[22:33:25] <Eval> THEY HAVE ARRESTED 12 PEOPLE SO FAR
[22:33:30] <Eval> WE DON'T KNOW IF ANY USER OF THIS HUB IS RELATED TO ANY USER IN HERE
[22:33:34] <Eval> BUT TO BE SAFE, REMOVE THE DISKS
[22:33:43] <Eval> NO ONE FROM VALHOLL [this hub] HAS BEEN ARRESTED YET
[22:33:44] <Archanum> lol you are joking, right?
[22:33:51] <Eval> NO I'M NOT JOKING
[22:33:57] <Archanum> ok )
[22:34:03] <Archanum> Thanks for letting us know
[22:34:11] <Eval> i know some of those who have been busted
[22:34:24] <Archanum> eww i wouldn't let this happen to me
[22:34:25] <Eval> i tink we will close tempoarilly while we try to find a way out of this
[22:34:54] <Archanum> i was calculating the fines i have to pay if the c0ps find this out
[22:35:02] <ingo> WTF!
[22:35:03] <Archanum> compared with the fines they have in denmark..
[22:35:07] <Eval> ingo this is NOT A JOKE
[22:35:07] <Archanum> and that's 16 millions [16.000.000ISK = $224656]
[22:35:14] <Eval> and we will most likely close for a while after a fiew minutes
[22:35:26] <Eval> you have our addresses
[22:35:29] <Eval> xxxx@xxxxxx.xx [address hidden]
[22:35:37] <Eval> we will watch this and see what happens
[22:36:10] <Eval> Skifan [the biggest reseller and publisher of music in iceland, a division of the Northern Lights Corp, the biggest media corporation in Iceland and a member of SMAIS] is doing that
[22:36:18] <Eval> just letting you know so you know where you should NOT buy Christmas presents
[22:36:26] <Eval> i have to go outside. everything is going down here
[22:36:38] <ingo> i will never shop there again!!!
[22:36:51] <Eval> later guys
[22:37:07] <Eval> let the word spread. make a copy-paste of what i wrote
[22:37:12] <Eval> this is not a joke
[22:37:15] <Eval>
[22:37:32] <Eval> DON'T let them take arrest you with your share
[22:37:37] <Eval> later, i have to fix......my computer
* The text inside the brackets is only for explaination but not from the oginal text.
Copyright infingement can also be criminal matter
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
but it's not small independant developers that are hurting, atleast in this case, the entire 11 terabytes were mostly movies, music and tv material not being broadcasted in Iceland!! as for software piracy, most people I know learned how to use Photoshop or 3d studio or whatever using pirated copies, but when something commercial is being made it's almost never made with pirated copies. People claiming that this is not a victimless crime have not said anything to make me think otherwise, but whatever views I have now I am always willing to change if new information is shared with me. So please SHARE :)
Hitler's in the fridge.
"You have no right to be entertained. If no one wants to sell/give/whatever something to you. A bond of automatic entitlement doesn't immedietly form."
As usual, you're missing the entire point of copyright law. At least in America, copyright law was not introduced to give publishers a license to print money, it was introduced to encourage people to produce material which would then enter the public domain after a limited time.
So those people who have rights under copyright law also have an implicit responsibility to make that material available, otherwise if they could simply destroy all copies the day before copyright expired they would obviously have eliminated the entire reason why they were given that right to print money in the first place. As such, I can't see any reason why someone should not download material that the publisher is not releasing to buy.
"I give you exhibit A what's wrong with humanity"
No, what's wrong with humanity is people who expect to get rights without accepting the associated responsibilities.
In this scenario, I'm sure that speeding is but one of the many laws this person violated.
> "...the music industry is now determined to
> vent its wrath on helpless men, women and
> children who can't hope to stand up to it with
> its tremendous political and financial power.'"
Helpless? A handful of people lob the equivalent of a nuclear bomb at an industry trying to rightly profit from its own intellectual property?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Metanet is somewhat known, I've spoken with the owner before. Don't insult things you dont know about.
Good work everyone working on the next generation of P2P networks.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
Situational? My ethics are quite solid. When someone starts filesharing what little I have created, I'm going to be quite flattered.
You see, ethics != laws. The few times they do, it's almost certainly either coincidence or an example of a really old law. Oh, and don't start comparing constitutions with me... even with the contortions mine has been twisted into, it still kicks yours squarely in the ass.
After the raids DC++ use and file sharing droed and alot of ftp sites were closed down by their owners fearing further raids.
So file sharing accounted for 40% of the internet traffic.
Sindri Traustason.
Within hours of the raids, net traffic in Iceland fell 40 per cent, according to SMAIS (Iceland's association of film right holders)
what the hell do film right holders know about network traffic? is it the icelandic department
of copyright enforcement, networking services, and bait&tackle shop?
-evilme
The multi-billion-dollar music industry is selling CDs like hot cakes but it claims its record label components, the artists under contract to them and support workers are suffering terrible financial and personal hardship because of online file sharing.
This is utter nonsense.
It's almost as if having lost its bitterly fought case against the p2p application owners and failed in its many obvious (and expensive) attempts to disrupt the p2p networks, the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on helpless men, women and children who can't hope to stand up to it with its tremendous political and financial power.
So let me see if I have this right. P2P networks help increase CD sales according to the slashdot crowd, which means more profit for the RIAA members. And now the RIAA is suing Joe and Jane User for sharing files through P2P, which means more profit.
Sounds like two healthy profit centers to me. I wonder if there's a way to reflect this through GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Procedures)?
Ruby on Rails Screencast
To my thinking you've shown a mark of real intelligence. I wish I was less stubborn, sometimes!
Wikileaks, no DNS
far better to bitch-slap individuals engaged in wholesale copyright infringement than to try to outlaw P2P apps outright, which have legitimate uses.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
"You have no right to other people's IP"
You may obtain a property right in that IP if you agree to the asked-for price. If you do not pay the asked-for price, you are misappropriating someone's property. Again, for the love of God, get it through your head, you have no right to someone's IP.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
It puzzles me why nobody ever goes after USENET backbones, etc. for having such an extensive archive of commercial software. Is it possible to hold a service like Supernews (www.supernews.com) accountable for hosting certain binary groups? Is there some kind of loophole I'm unaware of that makes the worlds most persistant warez distro (alt.binaries.*) invisible to legal radar?
Perhaps it's just to obscure (read: hard for morons to use).
..since I am SO disgusted by these raids I will never EVER pay for movies and/or music again, in protest.
Boycott the media companies and copyright profiteers!!
The cause of the raid is that both major ISP's in Iceland are also television-station-owners, they are ISPs and Copyright sellers. Its a bad situation for filesharers. What is working for Icelandic filesharers is the law. It is NOT against the law to download copyrighted media. It only illegal to share it. The drastic drop in traffic is because the DC hubs that most all filesharing Icelanders connected to closed down as the news broke out. Icelanders are very computer literate and this is going to be a short term effect only. As soon as we as a nation can start syphoning of everyone else without ever sharing anything we in the clear.
John_Allen_Mohammed. they might as well sentence these guys to a lifetime of Icelandic Living, the best they can do. Iceland is consistently in the top 5 countries "to live in" lists by the UN. Iceland also scores very well in happiness questionaires (Gallup). Now with global warming, the only real Icelandic defect is disappearing.
> Any law that turns half the population into a criminal, is a wrong, stupid law.
Such as speeding?
> they are unwilling to pay 99 cents to download a song, they
> are unwilling to buy music at the retail level -- there is no
> excuse left.
Yes there *IS* an excuse. A fairly major and important one.
When you buy that $.99 song from the iTMS, the majority of your money... I believe it's $.67... goes to the record label, which then.... maybe.... gives a tiny cut of that to the artist. That is just not acceptable. When, after Apple takes their cut, the money goes ENTIRELY and ONLY to the artist, and NOT to anyone affiliated in any way with the RIAA; then, and only then, will the iTMS be a proper way to buy music.
ANY solution, including the $.99 iTMS downloads (And yes, on other issues, I probably COULD be fairly called an Apple fanboi.), that delivers even a single penny to the likes of hillary rosen and lars ulrich is entirely unacceptable.
And that's why I DON'T use iTMS.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Who happen to be sharing copyrighted material, i.e. breaking the law. Lets call a troll a troll, here.
I hate this kind of crap. Illegal or not, there is nothing inherently evil with copying things. BTW, I suppose if they stang up Harriet Tubman for starting the underground rail-road .... would you say she got what's comming to her? Yeah, tell me all about it .... or do you even know what I'm talking about.
Obviously, there is a difficulty in debating things if they never make it to court, or any other forum where some kind of precedent can be established; furthermore, there is a definite sense of severity and fear.
But it would be interesting to look at this one aspect of the situation: How many hours there are in a day. How many movies, how much multimedia, how much music can one single human being (assuming that this is for personal use) possibly listen to or watch in any given period of time?
This is where the distinction between personal use, sharing on the internet via some software application, or mass-producing for profit can be drawn. The people doing the suing and the raiding and the lobbying are interested in getting their point across, even if the punishment doesn't fit the crime. Somehow, it seems that this is what the whole point has become, up and down the ladder of authority.
But I think if you were to really look at the legal situation, the legal details, aside from any pre-set fines of any kind, the actual financial liability that any one human being could be liable for - the one thing that you couldn't really get past is that there are only 24 hours in one day, 365 days in one year, and that the average life span of a single human being is so and so. And then, of course, an individual must sleep and do other things besides listen to music or watch movies, so any potential financial liability should be calculated around that figure.
This only applies to personal use, however... it does not apply to sharing or mass piracy for profit - but I think that it is important to draw a distinction between these things. You could have terabytes upon terabytes of stuff, but you would eventually end up having more stuff than you could ever listen to or watch in your entire lifetime - if you download a song but never listen to it, where has there been any kind of financial damages occured to the artist?
Also, it is good to have a forum of some sort - the ability to share - say, for instance, if a group of friends gets together for dinner and a movie, and each time they get together a different person out of the group brings a movie to share... that way they can share and discuss their likes and dislikes. This is good for the individuals, it's good for the culture, and it's good for the artists involved as well. Whether this type of forum takes place on the internet or in someone's house shouldn't really make that much of a difference.
It might be a good idea show the RIAA the error of its ways. Sure I have downloaded a few songs from P2P networks but I have also downloaded some of those same songs from iTunes to have a better version of them than what was available on P2P networks.
If all P2P file traders could stop trading and buying music for one month the RIAA could see the loss in business and they would not have the networks to blame it on. They might not be so quick to sue the people that are buying their music....I doubt it but it would sure make their cases much harder to prove no matter how much they pay Howard Berman.
I do know an acquaintance of mine was convicted of battery and had to pay a lot more than $5,000. He is also now a felon; I don't think you can put a price on that.
If you are correct, I would admit that that would definitely bother me.
I wouldn't worry too much about the lawsuits until the RIAA actually wins a court case.
This whole "big brother is watching" business gets me the nerves. Hello??? We live in America, not the U.S.S.R (big bad communists! remember?)
Unfortunately, one can't debate on piracy either because he'd have the feds tapping his phone line.
I'd say more, but hey...
<.<
>.>
big brother is watching.
Didn't Jesus say...
"The Law was made for man, not man for the Law"?
So what should we do with Laws that protect the powerful and threaten the weak?
Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
Hey, I'm sure some folks might be seeing "red". Deep breath, please.
Instead of the other "illegals", the norm violated may not be substantive in the eyes of many (similar to pot in some communities). The societal norm here (a/k/a "The Establishment") is the current system for delivering reasonable and proper remuneration to artists and creative folks and their producers.
While a bunch of folks are heavily involved in pursuing criminal prosecution of the illegal organizers/profiteers (the "bad guys"), another group or groups is involved in making public examples of the "users". Face it - without the "users" the problem goes away overnight. The "bad guys" are in it for bad guy purposes - to exploit for profit at expense of others. I am all for the FBI, state and local police, Homeland Security, CIA, etc to go after the "bad guys" and I can see some value in doing something to the active "users" group.
The prosecution of "users" seems unfortunate, but we do not seem to have worked out a better societal solution to "warning" vast numbers of potential "users" away from supporting the illegal activities of the "bad guys". Our society has a history of pillorying relative innocents - consider Hester Pryne in Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter" - nothing much has changed in 300 years...
When we really understand why we do this as a society, maybe we can work out something better and it will change. My current opinion is that we won't in my lifetime...
Since I do not like what the RIAA IS doing, I just don't buy their stuff. I spend my money to go to a concert instead..
ps SMNO (def)- "sticking my neck out"
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
Two points. First, speeding is not a felony. A felony if punished by losing the right to vote, several years of jail time, and a very hard time finding a respectful job afterwards. It is generally reserved for such acts as murder and bad cases of rape. Speeding is punished by a small fine and a few points on your license. This punishment is enough to deter speeders, while not ruining their lives or unnecessarily punishing them.
Second point: The speed limits are stupidly low in many places. The Long Island Expressway (near New York City) has a speed limit of 55 mph, yet people regularly do 80 mph when there isn't much traffic. 65 mph is perfectly safe, and 80 mph would be a reasonable tradeoff among safety, fuel efficiency, and time. The law is designed to make most people violate it (about 99% on that particular highway), which gives excessive power to the cops since they get to pick and choose who gets the ticket, instead of forcing them to only ticket the fastest speeders.
Of course, that misses the whole point that I don't believe in copyright and therefore would like to see the entire copyright code repealed (and replaced by an anti-plagarism law, which curiously enough does not exist in the USA).
I agree totally.
The only thing I find lacking with this argument is a scientific basing for that conclusion, which I will try to fill.
I define good as the being the common good, which I define as a combination of equality and the summed happiness of every person. Evil is definied as !good. It's a complimentary term that isn't strictly needed, though it can be quite conventient.
Like any basic premise, there is no hard scientific reason to accept my basic premise, but I consider it to be a very reasonable and common sense definition of good that lends itself to some level of scientific scrutiny, though being a social science, it can never be as exact as physics or mathematics.
Using this premise, simple cases of murder, like a person killing his ex-spouse or a drunk crashing his car, are evil because they reduce the happiness of the victim all the way to zero, are very unequal, and do not bring nearly enough, if any, benefit to society to balance the costs.
As far as information goes, violating copyright generally increases both equality and happiness, since raw efficiency is increased (the ideal price point for any good or service is where marginal_cost = price, which basic economic theory gives us) and you have many poor and middle class people benefiting at the expense of the rich. To punish copyright violators is evil, since overall happiness is reduced (both from the direct cost of having people sued or thrown in jail, and from the increased prices and reduced usage of information) and money is transferred from poor to rich. Therefore, copyright is an evil law.
The argument about 'people not creating if they're not compensated' can also be explained with this theory. For people who do stuff for the love of it, that love and the potential fame contributes to their happiness, the art contributes to overall society happiness, and since everyone benefits, it is fairly equal, though a small payment to the artist might be most equal. For stuff that people don't love to do, the resources should be mobilized so that projects that return a net benefit to society get done, and so that their fruits are as widely distributed as is efficient. The infornmation workers would be paid a normal salary, since this is just like any other job.
What I like about my 'good' and 'evil' is that it is fairly objective, as each individual gets to define his or her own happiness, and so long as you accept the basic premise, good and evil can be argued using psychology and economics instead of religion and morals.
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March 2004.pdf
PDF only, sorry if you're a Linux type. Joint study on the effects of P2P on music sales by Harvard and UNC Chapel Hill. They did quite an excellent job of analyzing the data and did a good control for causality (way too many studies look only at correlation which is fairly meaningless).
I see you don't unxderstand at all what I said. Probably why you posted AC.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Does anyone find this figure stupidly ridiculous? 2.5Tb of storage wouldn't be difficult in most of today's PC's but 2.5Tb of illicit material stored on a (or multiple) PC's? Please, who would even bother with that? It would be a nightmare to maintain that much data just for the sole purpose of sharing. Think about how much 2.5Tb of 'media' would involve.
If your average mp3 is around 6Mb, then that would be 436906 songs.
Even if he was storing DVD ISO's on there, that's still 543 films.
2.5Tb between the 12 of them poerhaps, but one person? I doubt that for a second.
"Dre don't get as high as me.... I'm Cheech and Chong" - Snoop Dogg
I still think they're pondscum for some of the intimidation tactics they've used, particularly the wildcard searches in which they claim rights to files they don't even own, but where ISPs are forced to fold because of (justifiable) fear of lawsuit. But good tactics on attacking the sharers rather than downloaders...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.