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Bittorrent Creator A Digital Pirate?
Alex_Ionescu writes "According to an article in Wired, the old webpage of Bram Cohen contained a manifesto stating that his goal for creating software was to 'Commit Digital Piracy'. Cohen argues that the quote is taken out of context and represents a parody. He argues having written it in 1999, 2 years before even coming up with Bittorrent. You can find the archived copy of his site at archive.org. From the article: "Cohen has never publicly encouraged piracy, and he has consistently maintained that he wrote BitTorrent as a legitimate file-distribution tool. That would seem to make him and his budding company, BitTorrent, safe under the Grokster ruling. But legal experts worry the newly discovered manifesto extolling 'digital piracy' could put him on less certain legal ground."
It isn't just this quote that's the problem, it's the new search engine too.
Together with the Grokster ruling -- and all happening within such a short interval -- he's just too likely of a target now. Once big media realizes that knocking down the Grokster's does NOTHING to stem the tide of wares being traded via BT, they have to go after Bram.
It really sucks that a guy who's given us so much is going to be made to suffer so, but it looks to be damn near inevitable.
Time to donate to the very-soon-to-be-needed legal defense fund.
The Supreme Court decided Grokster is liable for its users criminal abuses, because Grokster "promoted" criminal abuse. They decided that Grokster promoted abuse, because someone in Grokster sent someone else in Grokster a memo saying that they needed abuse for sufficient traffic, and because Grokster targeted old Napster users to use Grokster. So the standards for "promotion" are very vague, a very low bar: "intent" and "benefit" are apparently required, but "action" is not necessarily required.
The same court decided that the government cannot "promote" a religion, by hanging a paper copy of the 10 Commandments in a frame in a courthouse. But a 5 ton rock carving of the 10 Commandments on a courthouse lawn is not "promotion".
I suppose that when you're a million years old, your word is literally the law, and have a job for life, the meaning of "promotion" might be a little beyond your grasp.
--
make install -not war
I found an interesting article from a journalistic perspective about the persistence of stuff YOU disseminate on the net.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
From Bram's archive.org site:u rer.org/a_torturers_account.html
...
...
http://web.archive.org/web/20010812035637/bitconj
"I like the Isolation torture technique best. It crushes 'em every time.
I stand in a big open field. The girl's flown in with a helicopter. It's big and noisy in there, so she's real scared. Or maybe she likes it. She's getting fucked anyway.
Sometimes she runs and I get to fight her. Sometimes she stands there and makes it easy.
One.
Two
Life is good."
Could stories like this one be used as proof that his website was all "fantasy" and he wasn't expressing ideas he truely would act upon?
Legally speaking, Cohen is as guilty as a gun manufacturer. He simply provided the way to others commit a crime. If people using BitTorrent are supposed to make unautorized copies of copyrighted material, then people having a gun are supposed to kill.
But the reality is much more complex then justice would like it to be. RIAA and MPAA are lobbying so heavily that Cohen will be considered guilty and will pay for crimes that he didn't commited. In RIAA/MPAA conception he must sue the users.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Heh. I learned that lesson a long time ago. I wrote for this college newspaper, pretty radical, and we had this huge "Fuck the Police" issue in which I had the cover story (excessive use of force, yadda yadda yadda, I was very indignant), and in which I ranted and raved like a preacher in a whorehouse.
About 2 months later I was working late in the office, and a silent alarm tripped elsewhere in the building. So the cops show up, and who is the only person around? Me, sitting in a office with a full stack of 500 anti-cop newspapers sitting on a desk beside me.
Bad Scene. But a very good lesson in the value of discression and circumspection, as well as the value of never ever having any illegal substances in your car, office, or clothes.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Except if you look at the link from the archive (ie what he actual posted), the disclaimer at the top isn't there. I don't know when it was added, it may have just been added since this all came to light, I don't know.
I'm not saying whether what is happening is right or wrong, just that his disclaimer was added later, and was not a part of the original text.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Direct away from face when opening.
But what if Smith & Wesson published an article on its web site saying: "Our goal for manufacturing guns is to make it easier to kill your classmates at school"? And then someone goes and uses their new gun to kill their classmates at school.
Shouldn't Smith & Wesson be held accountable its actions?
It will just take a while. Smith and Wesson doens't produce anonymous guns. The legal use of cars is subject to extensive regulation, including government registration of every car(at least in the U.S.)! Bittorrent, and p2p software in general, is still really really new, and the laws and regulations surrounding it haven't been worked out quite yet. Not everybody was thrilled when the first cars started to appear, even less so when cars became available to the average man. The law will catch up, and if history is any sort of guide, eventually we will end up with a reasonable solution.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
"Welcome to America, everyday closer to a Socialist Republic."
Actually, America (or more precisely, the USA) get farther and farther away from being a Socialist Republic. In a socialist state, there would be no big difference between people's wealth, there would be a hospitable state with free schools, free health care, etc (this was true even of the so-called socialist states of the former Eastern Block) - clearly, the USA is not heading this way.
Also, a republic is a state where the power is exercised by the people by some means (and not, for example, by corporates).
So, I think, today's USA is becoming more and more the antithesis of a Socialist Republic.
Real life is overrated.