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MPAA Sues Movie-Swappers
aacool writes "The MPAA has filed a first wave of lawsuits against individuals they say are offering pirated copies of films using Internet-based peer-to-peer file sharing programs." From the article: "The MPAA said it would also make available a computer program that sniffs out movie and music files on a user's computer as well as any installed file sharing programs. The MPAA said the information detected by the free program would not be shared with it or any other body, but could be used to remove any 'infringing movies or music files' and remove file sharing programs."
They will make available a program that guesses which files are bad?
Can I rename my home movies with names like "Terminator.mpg" and then sue them when the file is deleted?
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The MPAA said it would also make available a computer program that sniffs out movie and music files on a user's computer as well as any installed file sharing programs.
I would like to see the source code for this program, please. (Guessing it behaves much like a common virus or spyware.) I hope SpyBot releases some patches against this kind of snoopery.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Har! But I already wrote & patented a program like that, so the MPAA is infringing on my copyright by distributing it for free over the internet!
"...program that sniffs out movie and music files on a user's computer as well as any installed file sharing programs..."
This program must have access to a master list of movie names for comparison to your filenames that is either installed locally or accessible online. Couldn't an enterprising individual just "back into" those reference names and rename his files to something that then won't trigger a flag?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
It is disturbing that an ad for Doom appeared under this topic...
I want to find out exactly how much stuff I have that the MPAA deems 'copy protected'. I would run their crazy program to find out, but I'm scared it's going to make me delete it all if I run it. Someone has to be first! If it will just give you a count, we could have a competition to see who has the most! Awesome.
"The MPAA said it would also make available a computer program that sniffs out movie and music files on a user's computer as well as any installed file sharing programs."
I believe this to be an opt-in download and scan. Of course, there is no way in Hell I would run this kind of program willingly. However, as a Systems Admin, it would be nice to have this available to scan my corporate LAN. I am all for file-sharing, but I don't trust users to do so safely and would prefer to protect my servers and avoid lawsuits at work.
Just my opinion.
Glad to see the movie industry finally taking action against those responsible for breaking copyright law, rather than against the tools such as P2P, Bittorrent, and other filesharing programs which all have legal purposes.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
and it's probably already been done. I know there where companies specializing in this crap, and like all businesses they've probably got scads of patents. If not, I smell money...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's too bad that they cannot find alternatives to lawsuits, you might find it plausable that they could perhaps offer movie's online at low-prices, and maybe even really early releases for people on the internet, and charge a price? Well I guess the thoughts didn't add up to make enough, although these lawyers aren't very cheap, it's hard to say which would make more profit... Anyway those are just my two cents!
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes something special to be different
...and the home of mega-conglomerates who sue their customers despite record sales!
when they pry it from the ashes of my cold, dead hard drive.
Seriously, I can understand the movie issue but I think it's a bit idiotic of them to go after filesharing in general. Oh, wait - there are no legitimate uses for filesharing, right? I see where I was wrong. I apologize humbly. I will go immediately and chop up my debian cds.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
Somebody at the MPAA must be crazy if this is true.
So this program, presumably similar to what they use to find movies and music, is actually available to everyone? So, for example, I can "check" "my" drive for any "illegal" music or movies? I've ripped most of my CDs onto my hard-drive. Of course the MPAA doesn't know if I own those CDs (they would have to prove I do not), but I will gladly direct them to the boxes downstairs where I keep all the jewel cases (for the record, since file-sharing, my music purchasing has gone from 1-2 CDs per month to 3-4 CDs per week).
Other people might use the program as "insurance" to make sure they are safe from any one tracking them.
As I don't have anything to hide, I would not mind using that program. Rest assured I would do my best to make sure information isn't being sent somewhere (custom host file? firewall? who knows).
So, my guess is I am the anomaly and would actually not mind downloading that software and trying it out.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I have been having problems with bittorrent lately. Anyone else seeing trouble? All I use torrent for is Linux and BSD iso. Could the MPAA and RIAA be starting to mess with iso file transfers? I know my server (telus.net) has started to monitor some of the torrent traffic.
Yeah, it was the *cough* interns *cough* who did it.
Damned kids these days. *cough*
Judging from what the article says, it seems as if the program would act more like ad aware or spybot, since it would be available for download. My guess is targeted toward the soccer mom's, it's available on some site to download and parents would download it and check to see if they have anything that could be pirated stuff, just as if you were checking for malware or spyware and remove it. IMHO the MPAA is evil, but if they want the common person to adopt this, then they are going to try to make the software as nice as they can, and not make it some type of worm. That would also just give them bad press with the regular joes & janes of america.
Oi, no need to be rude now. These people have no reason to lie about it. In any case, SOMEONE is doing it, and they shouldn't be allowed to while at work.
Free as in [freedom|beer] now:
freedom as in slavery!
Parents!
There have already been well publicised cases of families having to settle with the RIAA because of a child's filesharing activities.
I expect this will be promoted by the MPAA as a way for parents to ensure that their children don't get the family in trouble.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This article cites St. Louis as the first city to receive suits, followed by New York and Philadelphia. Examples of movies: "Troy," from Warner Bros., "Spider-Man 2," from Columbia Pictures and "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen," from The Walt Disney Co.
Most of the commenters on this article so far seem to think that the MPAA is going to force the program on people. I think it is more that they are making it available as a free download so that people who aren't sure if they are infringing, or parents who don't want to get sued over what their kids download, can find and delete the stuff. The article says that the data uncovered by the program wouldn't be shared with the MPAA or anyone else. It also says that the program will be made available on a website. That is a far cry from virus behavior.
Not that I think it is a particularly useful tactic, but they may get some parents to clean out their kids pirated movies.
You lack vision. How many people willingly install "Bonzi Buddy" or "Comet Cursors" without reading the license agreement (answer: all of them). They'll be sly and install it along with some system performance booster and WHAM, all those MP3's you searched so hard to find are gone.
Now, I've got several thousand MP3s (and FLACs and OGGs) that I ripped from my own CD collection (really).....Do I get to sue the RIAA for the time it takes me to re-rip them after their application deletes them for me? At my billing rate, I could expect a fairly sizeable check for the time it would take me to rip and encode all of the music that I legally own.
Not that this would happen....I'm far to paranoid to allow it.
"Lame" - Galaxar
...any installed file sharing program That's a good one - I must admit that a lot of p2p file sharing is about pirating software/music/movies, but why on earth are they trying to find out whether someone is using a file sharing app? Looking for people sharing files called Terminator3.avi on Kazaa (example) is one story, but scanning entire subnets for p2p apps sounds to me like the RIAA is pushing it too far again.
I don't read replies by ACs.
I'm rather interested to see about this. I only use BitTorrent right now; are they tracking bittorrent users as well?
I wouldn't be surprised if they were (BitTorrent is inherently public after all), but I'm wondering what they will do about Japanese anime type of stuff (Since that's the only thing I download these days).
From the linked MSN news article: "The copyright law also provides for penalties of up to $30,000 for each motion picture traded over the Internet, and up to $150,000 if such infringement is shown to be willful."
So, if some family member of mine uses my computer, downloads some movie using a P2P program and leaves it there in my "shared files" folder, I can be fined $30,000, or potentially more?
Whatever... hearing about this stuff just makes me want to promote the piracy of movies (and music) because of the way the record/movie industries are handling the situation. They're behaving like little kids who got their candy taken away from them... they'll bitch and whine and scream and do anything to get it back, but never even consider any form of rational reaction.
Maybe these "concerned parents" would be better off monitoring their children's internet use actively, as opposed to after-the-fact.
That's the problem with many of the young people of these days - the parents don't care enough.
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
When you spray pesticides on a population, and only one plant is resistant, that plant thrives. To date, the MPAA has not allowed the porno industry to join its ranks; after all, it's responsible for regulating morality for America via PG and PG-13. So if they go after movie swappers, but not PORN movie swappers, won't this have the effect of creating a population of p2p shared movies which are "safe" - that is, just porn?
I love the law of unintended consequences.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
I think people have the right to be policed by POLICE, not by companies. Companies should have the right to hire reputable companies to research suspected copyright infringement. Corporations should not have the right to snoop on people's private property and delete whatever they want - ESPECIALLY with an automated utility. If it was okay for anyone to be their own police, that would be anarchy. If America was anarchy they wouldn't have just had a presidential election.
Plus it's the MPA*A* - America only. I hope the MPAA does go through with this hackneyed plan so that they delete the private, legal files of some poor Brazillian who, in turn, sues the MPAA and the American government for allowing such a travesty.
Dear MPAA,
I ran your program and my computer said, "not executable". Had I known it might execute me I would not have complied with your request.
Sincerely,
Joe Numbnutz
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
However, as a Systems Admin, it would be nice to have this available to scan my corporate LAN. I am all for file-sharing, but I don't trust users to do so safely and would prefer to protect my servers and avoid lawsuits at work.
Won't the normal snort p2p.rules pick up most of this traffic?
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
Why would the MPAA release a scanner that detects pirated music files? I thought their purpose was to protect motion pictures from being pirated, not music.
Nope, they have more money and lawyers, so they'll win every court case. That's one of the reasons that these tactics can't work in Canada or other places with a loser-pay system.
If they sued me, I'd find ten lawyers who'd work for the "we'll get paid after the case" idea. Then the CPCC (our equivalent) would have to pay my lawyers.
It doesn't really matter. We pay a fee on all blank media, and in exchange, we can freely download music, software, and movies - legally.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Great. So now this'll just further fuel the movement of the extremely large file-sharers to move to those P2P networks that are completely anonymous, like GNUNet or Freenet.
Do you think that 90% of the population even realize the war that is being fought on the internet to protect their basic rights? The invasion of big corporation into our homes is a serious problem that the vast majority of americans would not want to have happen to them, yet they are wholly unaware that this almost happens on a daily basis because of big corporations.
Easy, this is a program that you install and run on your own. It doesn't install itself with out your permission nor does it erase anything with out your permission.
Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it involves terrorism.
I didn't know the Canadian economy was that bad. All of that snap immigration after the election must have been crushing to the labor market.
Although right now it is a opt-in I think they are doing it so they can go to the government and say "We've got this program that works, now make ISPs filter for us". If they can prove it works, they might be able to convince ISPs or the Govenrment that it is a "Good Idea". That part is what worries me. Or in 6 months we find it never completely leaves your computer and keeps on deleting P2P apps and movies, and a reformat the only way to get rid of it.
I hope this goes the way the CRIA (RIAA Canadian Equiv.) suits went in Canada, the ISPs all refuse to give up the information, they are taken to court, and the courts rule in the ISPs favor. I hope htat sent a precident when the MPAA of Canada starts suing.
But, only time can tell. If they courts rule for them then I might have to stop my movie/music downloading.
I've got a new idea that's simple enough. Don't let companies own copyrights. Simple enough, if an artist writes a song, and wishes to be signed to a record label, the label can't own the copyright, only the artist. On top of this it shall be illegal to make a contract binding the individual to use the copyright in any way, shape or form, so companies can't just simulate owning it by saying "you must do what we want with it and we'll make you money." And there shall be punishment to any company who is trying to bribe or use any other type of manipulation to get someone to enforce their copyright in a certain way. This includes threatening to end contracts over it. Assume greed.
This will ensure that those who are using copyright's protections against people are the actual creators of the object, not some corporate giant who had it signed over to them, and is going to use it to "protect" it's investment even if the creator doesn't agree with it.
It also means we know who to buy from, and who to avoid like the plague. Who's evil and who's good. But oh no, this proposal would take away the god-given-right of companies to be treated as individuals. Tough shit.
This is getting ridiculous. Of course you know I'd proposal total elimination of copyright in favor of a system guaranteeing creator-recognition and listing works used, but not guaranteeing any type of profit, but this would get mr.right-wing's panties in a bunch, so I won't go there in this one.
This is just an addition onto an existing law, after all, most laws are. Radical changes never get made in this country because everyone is afraid of failure. Of course those who are really afraid of the change are those in control, those who lose, and those who don't know. When it's already failing, those three are one in the same.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
Since when does illegal = wrong? I don't understand that way of thinking. Yet many people have that attitude.
In some us states, pounding your wife in the ass is illegal. In some us states getting a blowjob is illegal.
You can't turn and say because something is illegal, it's wrong. Take alcohol prohibition in the 1920's for example. Some hard liners in Congress felt that drinking was wrong and made it illegal. Many disagreed. After some civil disobedience, the prohibition was lifted.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
There's no way for this program to tell if I own a legal copy of the CD and made mp3s from it to use on my mp3 player. It seems as though the program would just assume any music found on the computer in the catalog of the major record labels must be pirated. The same goes for movies.
Go change one byte in the file. Doesn't really matter where, MPEG will at worst just glitch from a bad byte, but there's plenty of places that it won't do anything. Hashes are such that a small change will completely alter the hash (that's the point).
How expensive are movies and recorded music? I'm not talking about $8 movie tickets or $20 CDs, I'm talking about Total Cost of Ownership. Suppose some random person had to die every time a new movie was made, or every time a CD was released. Would we value our entertainment enough to tolerate that? What if the RIAA and/or MPAA had to electronically approve every file you saved on your hard drive, and could scan anybody's files at any time?
Helping movie studios and record companies continue to exist in spite of technology that makes it trivial to violate their copyrights does not come free. At some point the cost of these forms of entertainment is too much. How many FBI agents will we need to enforce the technology restrictions the entertainment industry wants to impose? How many more lawyers will we have to support? How much personal freedom will we give up so Hollywood can exist?
At some point you have to cut your losses. I wouldn't go to movies or buy CDs if they were $50 a pop, and I would personally rather live without them entirely than give the people who run studios and record companies all the powers they want, or pay the monetary cost of keeping the system going.
The MPAA also announced the availability soon of a free program that identifies movie and music titles stored on a computer, along with any installed peer-to-peer file-swapping programs. Information generated by the program would be made available only to the program's user, and would not be shared with or reported to the MPAA or any other body. Armed with the program's findings, a computer user can remove infringing movies or music files, and remove any P2P applications.
"Our ultimate goal is to help consumers locate the resources and information they need to make appropriate decisions about using and trading illegal files," said Glickman. "Many parents are concerned about what their children have downloaded and where they've downloaded it from. They will find this tool to be an excellent resource. "
The MPAA's www.respectcopyrights.org site will link to the download site for the Windows-compatible program when it becomes available. The MPAA plans to provide easy access to other such tools in coming months, as demand continues to grow for programs that protect computers from the deleterious effects of peer-to-peer software, including such common problems as viruses, Trojan horses and identity theft.
Did anybody else notice this from the bottom of the article?
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
And just below that:
PRINT THIS ARTICLE -- EMAIL THIS ARTICLE
I mean, stupid unenforceable copyright notices are one thing (especially when it relates to an article that is about illegal distribution of copyrighted material) but then they actually include a link to email it on, encouraging people to break their own rules?
What the hell was going through the minds of the designers of msnbc's website they built that sort of functionality?
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
The damages they ask for are reasonable. If they sue for, say, 2-5x the price of the DVD I'm behind them. That's enough to make it unattractive to copy it (I mean who wants to pay MORE for a poorer quality copy) but still a fair and reasonable amount, as required by the constution. If, however they sue for the statutorly allowed amount of $150,000 per infrimgement (which they will) then I cannot support that. That is basically saying they will financially ruin you simply for copying ONE movie.
c h2004.pdf) found that there was no stasticaly significant impact of file sharing on purchases. So at worst the company is losing a sale, and usually they lose nothing.
That is complete bullshit. We have a very strong concept of the punishment fitting the crime in this country, it's one of the founding ideals. Our justice system is designed around that. Speeding is a small fine, drunk driving is a larger one and loss of privledges, killing someone while driving drunk is serious jail time.
More than just recognising it, it's in the fucking constution, you know, the document that all other laws are supposed to conform to. Ammendment 8: " Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Notice the part about excessive fine not being imposed.
Ok well copying a digital file is a MINOR crime. It causes little to no harm. I mean an empricial study by Harvard and UNC (http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_Mar
Yet for some reason, it is punishable by $150,000 PER FILE? If that's not excessive, I don't know what is. You would literally get off easier if you went and stole the DVDs form a store. Now that's an actual real theft, with reall loss (you took something of value they had, depriving them of it), not just copyright infringement.
That's why I can't support these orginizations in their crusade against sharers. They bribe congress in to passing unconstutional laws, and then use them to beat people in to submission. Even those that are innocent are forced to settle because the amount they stand ot lose is to large to bear.
A person sharing 20 movies should not be a case for a major multi-million dollar civil suit. It should be a matter of a grand or two in small claims court. Enough money to make it a punishment for doing it, but not so much as to ruin a person for life for what is really a piddlyshit crime along the lines of speeding.
This is actually a fantastic tool for pirates.
Afraid that you could get nailed for sharing a movie? Run the tool and see if any of your movies show up on their radar. If not, and the movie isn't brand-new, you can be fairly secure that you won't get caught for it.
If it does show up, edit what you can until the hash value changes and the movie no longer shows up as a known pirated film.
This is a boon for pirates.
so how long before ISPs are going to be required to have these programs scan packets going across there networks?
In which case I will encrypt all of my data to a proxy server off shore. That way there's no way in hell my ISP will be able to look at what I am doing, and any file sharing program I use will show me downloading form outside the US.
I really don't see this effecting me, because I can get around it, long enough for the public to wake up, and realize they are getting raped in the ass by big brother and it's buddy, Corporations.
I just posted a screenshot of an add the MPAA ran yesterday (Monday) in the school newspaper here at the University of Michigan:
- this-week.html
http://adamjh.blogspot.com/2004/11/lawsuits-begin
The ad features the usernames and partial IP addresses of peer2peer file sharers, surrounded by bold, red captions reading:
IS THIS YOU?
IF YOU THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH
ILLEGALLY TRAFFICKING IN MOVIES, THINK AGAIN.
LAWSUITS BEGIN THIS WEEK.
It then proceeds to note that:
Pursuant to the Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. Section 504(c)), statutory damages can be as much as $30,000 per motion picture, and up to $150,000 per motion picture if the infringement is willful.
*sigh*
I wonder if this will result in more blunders like this one?
> Speeding is a small fine, drunk driving is a larger one and loss of privledges, killing someone while driving drunk is serious jail time.
:)
Now this is something that always troubled me : what's the difference between a drunk driver and a drunk driver that kills someone? The only thing I can come up with is that one is a lucky bastard, and the other is not. Why do we fine the unlucky one more? Skill is not involved and intent as nothing to do with it. Why fine more? I thought that the end didn't justify the means. Why does it justify the fine?.
Then again, it would be a handy program to have if you're expecting a knock on your door from a cops' battering ram.
Heard of the undelete command? How about Norton Unerase or RunTime's GetDataBack?
Even if you did a low level format, it's not hard for a lab technition to recover the data. You'd need something that wrote random data to the entire disk multiple times, not something you could do if they were at your door.
Now a self destructing laptop on the other hand would prevent data recovery.
They go after the index sites, more often than not.
Trackers come a dime a dozen, but without the resources for most users to track the trackers via pretty user-submitted (or automated) listings, all the trackers in the world are useless.
I should know. Got a cease and desist for parsing an indexer's data and then publically displaying it, myself. Much as I would have loved to tell them to shove it, being financially ruined by their high priced lawyers didn't sit well with me; it was quickly removed.
In a somehow related note, I often wonder just how their automated systems work -- or rather, don't. For example, a lot of torrent trackers display publically a list of connected IPs. Do their systems pull these, check the netblock for contact info, and mail the ISPs?
The reason for asking is simple. If they do this, how can they prove you were involved in anything, other than being connected to the tracker? Using this logic, how do they prove the file is infringing material to begin with?
Not to condone or belittle the "crime", but really. Something has to be done to keep the little guys (us) safe from these greedy corporations who would just as well ruin us, than have us buy their next CD/DVD release.
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
Right; it's society way of say: Drive, but don't drink; drink, but don't kill. Buy, but don't steal; steal, but don't pirate. I'm glad we got our priorities straight.
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced a strategic partnership with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). By leveraging innovative technologies, content providers streamline compelling enterprise solutions. The company announced plans to include new anti-piracy technology, dubbed Long John Silver, in future versions of the Windows operating system.
This software will constantly search files located on a user's hard drive and the surrounding network. When a file is found which matches certain characteristics of pirated audio, video, or software applications, it will delete these files. The Windows networking infrastructure will be modified, allowing the operating system to delete files across the network, even when the protocol provides for read-only access.
"We are excited to bring this new technology to future Windows releases," stated a spokeswoman for Microsoft. "Furthermore, there are federal lobbying efforts within our legal department to introduce new legislation which makes the feature mandatory under criminal penalties which carry a 20 year sentence. This will end piracy once and for all."
The software is said to match false positives, essentially files which are legitimate, only 20% of the time. "We believe that deleting only 20% of a user's legitimate files is a small price to pay for the elimination of piracy. The consumer clearly receives the benefits of this technology," stated Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. "Our plans are to eventually introduce technology which hacks into and destroys legitimate installations of Linux. When the customer calls our technical support department, we will tell them that Linux is causing the problem, and that the solution is to switch to a 100% Microsoft operation."
The software is due to be released in 2006, the company said.
Disclaimer: This press release is made up. But I wouldn't be surprised if it were real.
"The MPAA said it would also make available a computer program that sniffs out movie and music files on a user's computer as well as any installed file sharing programs. The MPAA said the information detected by the free program would not be shared with it or any other body, but could be used to remove any 'infringing movies or music files' and remove file sharing programs."
Wow. It's like the Anti-Spybot. I get the feeling their servers will just meltdown as fast as this program will get downloaded.
Honestly, who runs this organization, because they always manage to hit the wrong trend at the wrong time with the wrong solution to the wrong problem. For cryin out loud, it wasn't tough to see the movie download tidal wave building years ago, and this is the best they can come up with? Lawsuits and self-serving software?
Well, one of these years somebody is going to ake up and realize their product requires a new method of marketing when it is effectively easily duplicated and free to obtain. I would suggest adding something of physical value (ie; not easily duplicated, collectible, etc) to the purchase, but the MPAA obviously has better ideas.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Oh? It has stayed pretty much the same? Can't be. The RIAA says it did. Oh they are a bunch of lying weasels who turn every figure around to suit their current agenda even telling different things to different audiences at the same time?
Aren't ticket sales up and DVD selling like hotcakes?
In many ways this reminds me of the war on drugs. Apparently america still got that three strikes and your out rule. While I think in itself it ain't a bad idea, if you are to criminal/stupid to learn not to steal/murder/rape after two warnings then you can rot in jail for life, it doesn't seem to work with drugs.
Relativly harmless dopeheads are costing a fortune because they are to stupid not to carry weed after being caught twice before. Sure sure it is the law but is justice really being served by live sentencing stupid but harmless people? Even if a drug user feeds his addiction with a little car stealing give them a slap on the wrist. If you want justice give the chair to the people that buy stolen cars. Kill the buyers and the suppliers will go out of business.
I did however think of something. It is very tinfoil hat but bear with me for a moment.
You got some black activists claiming that the war on drugs is a war on blacks. They may be onto something but in a different way then the immidiate impact of making a fast majority of the blacks criminal. A few years in jail in holland is different then a few years in jail in america. In holland if you come out your a citizen again as far as I know. Not so in america. Criminals loose the right to vote. Now if you read a figure that tells you that the majority of black males have been in jail for tiny drugs related offences does that also mean that the majority of black males has lost the right to vote?
If this is true then a conspiracy can't be far off. Blacks are traditional democrat voters, uncle toms like powell being the exception. Make blacks into criminals and you remove a powerfull voting population.
As I said very tinfoil had BUT now think about laws like criminal charges for filesharing or recording a movie with a camcorder. Can this be an attempt to reduce the voting population?
Of course this all depends on wether everyone who goes to jail really looses the right to vote and I am to lazy to check but if it is true then all this legislation may be nothing else then removing the poor from the voting population.
After all the rich can settle out of court. The poor will just have to go to court and get their sentence.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The beautiful thing is the industry is also raping the public domain.. 75 years ago. Go lord, you watched something that even those with survived WWI watched in their childhood?
The real absurdity of the time limit becomes apparent when you realize that, seventy-five years ago, we were just entering the sound-era in film and Hollywood, as we know it (the bloated, industry that wants these laws the most), didn't even exist.
Even more absurd, the average lifespan of a U.S. male is 77.43 for males (80.36 for females). Meaning, if you're male, you'll probably never be able to experience any of your favorite movies, books, or music--pieces of our common culture and heritage--without paying for it. And if you're female, you're not much better off because you're only LIKELY to see copyrighted material from before your sixth birthday go public domain.
-Grym
If Time Warner collaborated with the MPAA and attempted to go after usenet users _downloading_ from their feed (the only thing they could track), wouldn't it be some form of entrapment?
I think there is a fair chance that the EULA might not be upheld. It is a basic exculpatory clause, protecting them from their own negligence. First, one cannot obtain release from liability from intentional torts. If you have not given the MPAA authority to delete files off your computer and they do, that is an intentional tort - destruction of property. Now, one could say that by accepting the EULA and installing the software you gave them authority. It is pretty clear that whoever installs this software has no bargaining power. My question would be did the installer assent to the terms of the contract? Did they know what they were? I guess it depends on how they bill the software. If they make it really clear that it will delete files, I think users have less of a reason to get mad. If it is hidden and unclear that it will delete files, I do not think the exculpatory clause will hold up.
- Phil