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Terrorist Link to Copyright Piracy Alleged
xbsd writes "John Stedman, a lieutenant in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in charge of IP violations, testified in front of the Senate Homeland Security committee that some associates of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah may be involved in copyright violations. According to CNET's Declean McCullagh: 'Even though Stedman's evidence is circumstantial, his testimony comes as Congress is expected to consider new copyright legislation this year. An invocation of terrorism, the trump card of modern American politics, could ease the passage of the next major expansion of copyright powers'."
Is that a shock? Terrorism is the new buzz word, slap it onto anything you don't like and it's instantly evil.
Hell lets just call Nazis terrorists now. They are pretty much interchangable if you ignore the "short" gap between the end of the second world war and today
I like muppets.
<SARCASM>
So people who drive too fast obviously have terrorist connections. They should be punished as terrorists.
</SARCASM>
Haven't you heard? Terrorism is the new communism now.
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
I think this is directed to the people who sell pirated DVDs on the street, not P2P users.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
Now, if only we could catch Al Qaeda's Osama Bin Laden in violation of copyright laws! Then he'd have to deal with the RIAA and the MPAA.... heaven help him!
Fucking socialist bastards.
This has nothing to do with socialism. Socialism includes state housing, healthcare, and welfare. What you are thinking of is right wing authoritarianism, also known as facism. Please use proper terminology when trying to state a flame war over political ideology.
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Ever heard the Cheeky Girls? Point proven.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Yup. Except it's not just the left wing. BOTH parties are authoritarian.
I'm old enough to remember when the Republicans wanted to "get government out of our lives."
i.e. before they had all the power in government.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
My guess is that in two years (or less?), your right to think freely will also be considered a danger as it might be linked to terrorism in some way (as of yet to be discovered)...
You might call this a troll post, but seriously guys (and gals), doesn't anyone in the US Government think rationally anymore? Or is that also somehow an act of terrorism? Sheesh.
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to patent and copyright violations."
with apologies to
Thomas De Quincey
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
...We finally figured out how we can take back our land that was given to Israel. It's quite simple actually, we just pirate Episode III, and the U.S. government will become so wrapped up in finding out who did it, they'll completely forget the Middle East actually exists.
Yup. Except it's not just the left wing. BOTH parties are authoritarian.
Too true. How many bills had Bush vetoed?
I'm old enough to remember when the Republicans wanted to "get government out of our lives."
Yeah, they certainly enjoyed the Libertarian line until it came to their term in power.
Do you remember Reagan's acceptance speech?
"...Government *is* the problem"
How soon they forget.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
only outlaws will participate in piracy. So naturally the organised crime groups got involved. It's the same reason crime gangs run the drug trade, it's the same reason the Mafia controlled alcohol distribution in the Prohibition, and abortions before they became legal. Whenever legitimate businesses can't do something that's very much profitable, the illegitimate ones will. Piracy funds terrorism because it is illegal, not the other way around.
I am trolling
Bill: "We should really ban open source."
Random manager: "I know how to sway Congress, just tell them terrorists are using open source software, and they'll outlaw it in no time."
Bill: "Do they? Use open source, that is??"
Random manager: "I haven't met any terrorists, so I wouldn't know. The point is, they could."
Bill: "Good point."
... is getting in my nerves. Why should the big corporations here have the right to meddle into our copyright laws, and then slap the name "terrorism" in the justification of doing so? The problem with these copyright laws that the MPAA/RIAA have been pushing is that they are forgetting our (the citizen's) end of the stick. They have been increasing the duration of copyrights and patents to the point that most of us would be dead before we see Mickey Mouse in the public domain (since they keep extending it). They have been increasing the punishments for people who have already been illegally copyright infringing (since when does uploading a movie to the Internet warrant a 3-year prison sentence?), and illegalizing things that should be under fair-use (e.g., the DMCA; why should the government tell me what to do with my DVDs in my own private use?). The politicians are ignorant about technical issues, the voters are ignorant about the politicians, and they're letting the corporations run amok. But where is our public domain? Where is our "fair use"? Where is our freedom?
It's like our government is being run by the Socialist Party and the Fascist Party. Both of them don't care about liberty and both don't want a small government. All they want to do is to continue manipulating the public until they reach their logical goals: a huge, authoritarian government. The only difference is that the socialists would justify it in the name of "helping the poor" and the fascists would justify it in the name of "moral values." Both would justify it in the names of "protecting the children" and "defending this country against terrorism."
Come on Libertarians and Greens. They will have to win the 2008 election if we ever hope for this country to be saved by this rampant corporatism and the move toward totalitarianism.
Before the Soviet Union collapsed, everything evil was blamed on communists, and any response, no matter how stupid, was deemed acceptible in order to fight communism. And it "worked". The Soviet Union's collapse occured after the US did all sorts of stupid things in the name of fighting communism, therefore the fall of communism *must* have been brought about by America's direct intervention!
Fighting terrorism is no different. And I quote:
Homeland Security is a bigger threat to the American way of life than anything Osama bin Forgotten can come up w/. Feel free to do something about it...
[o]_O
you're fighting terrorism! Don't take the chance that you're legitimately purchased DVDs are in fact funding terrorists. Get out there and seed one for Uncle Sam!
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Joe Stalin was dictator and he got his education in Tiflis Theological Seminary. Stalin used communist party to get into power and then killed all hard line commie competitors like Leon Trotsky during Great Purge. After that the proper name of his rule was Stalinism
Dyslexics have more fnu.
"Socialism," by which you mean some sort of statism, and capitalism are inseparable. The origin of the modern state is indistinguishable from the formation of modern capitalism. Capitalism requires a labor force that can be moved around, made abstract, is not too tied to one way of living or another, has a certain basic education. Capitalism in its modern form requires considerable state infrastructure to create currency, manage trade policy, control monetary policy, provide infrastructure for transportation, to prop the system up when it is about to break (see the airline bail-outs) and the like. The creation of the modern citizenry that owes primary loyalty to a nation-state is completely in line with the creation of a consumer/producer who sells his work in the market place. There is no capitalism without socialism.
You are all socialists in that regard. The question is a matter of a degree, and who gets "serviced" by these government institutions. The government is really a whole network of institutions, and just who those institutions work for is often up for grabs. Many conservatives are quite happy to evoke the idea of "laissez-faire" after they hide or ignore the ways in which the interests of the powerful are being buttressed by the state. When the state provides any services to the not-powerful, though, it gets tarnished as "socialism."
If the **AA spends wipes out common piracy, people won't be getting their free movies through BT, Kazaa or whatever. By the laws of human desire, the next cheapest way to get this content would be the knockoff DVDs right? Won't kicking people off of common piracy just make professional piracy more profitable?
Therefore fighting piracy funds terrorism.
Of course, this is a simplification, but offers a starting point. Next:
Stalin was a socialist. Hitler was a socialist.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? The fact that "nazi" comes from "national-socialism" or that Lenin and Stalin claimed to have "embraced and extended" Marx's theories is circumstantial for the end result - everything must start somewhere. You might as well say that Napoleon was a republican, since he begun by serving the French Republic.
Now look up those definitions on your own if you don't trust these, but to spell it out for you: Hitler was the head of a fascist regime in its purest form ('extreme right wing' some would call it). Stalin was the head of an authoritarian regime whose ideology is usually known as Marxism-Leninism (or 'extreme left wing') - some people would say it was not communism, but a perverted form, while others will argue that it was indeed communism - and the logical conclusion of any attempt to follow the theoretical sequence capitalism -> socialism -> communism to its end.
To go back to the original point, in practice there is not a whole lot of difference in form between the two extremes, but you have to bear in mind that socialism means state ownership and in the extreme (communist) case no private property, while fascism means state control, which is a little less. Also, in theory socialism does not advocate an authoritarian government, but it can easily fall into one when pushed. Now, what we have here is neither
Fascistic socialism is just communism.
Have you even read Marx? Communism is an economic system in which the people themselves collectively own the means of production; communism is *NOT* the strict authoritarian regimes you've come to know and hate. Fascistic socialism is Fascism. Communal ownership of factories and fields is Communism. I have no-the-fuck idea where you pulled *your* definition of communism from, but it sure wasn't from Marx, nor any valid political scientist.
Did anyone RTFA? Oh wait... this is Slashdot, nevermind. The "copyright violations" in question involve the fashion industry, ya know... making counterfeit watches, purses, etc. They aren't referring to P2P, filesharing, warez or anything of that sort.
.-.
Socialism is a form of economic production and distribution of wealth. It is not a form of government. Hitler was a totalitarian ruler. His economic policy may have had socialist retoric but what it accomplished was the aggrigation of wealth by the select few, hardly socialist in practice.
Also, don't be an idiot and say Nazi's were socialist because they called themselves socialist. Do you beleive everything the Nazi's tell you?
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
not sure whether it's firefox or the html, but here's the actual link to the archived video of the testimony
a m
http://hsgac.senate.gov/audio_video/052505video.r