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.
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.
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.
...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
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
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.
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 ...
"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.
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.
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."
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."
"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 "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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
A few people have had their lives ruined by being falsely accused (and convicted) of pretty much every crime ranging from burglary to murder. Should we stop going after these criminals too?
Burglary and murder involve actual physical loss of property, death, or dismemberment.
Sharing music does none of these things. It's similar to the argument of losing data when Windows crashes--there's no liability because there's no real harm. But we, the consumers, don't get the privelege of an EULA at the point of sale of music: "You, as the retailer, accept all risk that I, the consumer, am going to do what I darn well please with your product."
I support intellectual property. Music CDs and video DVDs are not intellectual property. They are BAIT. Why should we protect a business model that hands out worthless pieces of plastic with the words "don't share me" printed on them? Aren't we all familiar with the psychological studies of the window with the words "don't look here" printed on it? What do we honestly expect people to do?
There is nothing intellectual about selling a product which is easily copied, shared, and redistributed and then acting as if it's a criminal surprise when people (*gasp*) copy, share, and redistribute it. The medium is JUST ASKING FOR IT.
Stop using my tax dollars to support a childishly naive business model. No one but the media industry receives this type of consideration.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
"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...