Slashdot Mirror
Sweden's File Sharing Debate Becomes Mass Brawl
praps writes "When Sweden's Data board gave the film and games industry organisation Antipiratbyrån an exemption from data protection laws last week it seemed that file sharers were on the ropes. Then the music industry joined in with some punches of its own, saying it too will hunt those who share songs online. Suddenly, file sharers have the support of their ISPs, who are refusing to cooperate with the big industries - and it's game on." From the article: "Only the file sharer's ISP can link the IP address to the person. If the ISP receives a request for such information from the police, they cannot refuse it, but a few calls from TT revealed that requests from APB would be ignored." We've previously reported on Swedish anti-downloading laws before.
That seems like exactly the right thing to do to me, actually. Not that I think that copyright infringement is something that necessarily should be allowed, mind you, but if somebody's done something wrong, then it's the job of the police to investigate - not private companies'. And the fact that Antipiratbyrån seems to have planted evidence in the past (search for it, I'm too lazy to look up the story; Slashdot covered it) just shows again why this is important.
What's more, it's not immediately clear to me why it would even be legal for an ISP to give out data about customers to a private company that asks for it, without (I presume) the customer's knowledge or consent. Not that I know a thing about Swedish law, of course, but that sounds like exactly the kind of thing that could result in class action lawsuits and the like, so if I was an ISP, I'd definitely err on the safe side here and only hand over customer data to the police, not private companies, and only when ordered to do so by a court of law.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
That's a stupid statement.
... If the owner of said item wants it to be.
.50 to a another schmuck, and then .50 to the musician.
Music, information, entertainment should be free!
Musicians don't make music to just give it away (some do) but they also need to eat. I have no problems handing over some cash for a CD I like.
What I don't like doing is handing over 25.99 for a cd, and having 23.99 go to a label,
That's what I don't like.
But running around saying it all should be free is ridiculous. Remember, making that cd you listen to, or that mp3 you just downloaded, took time, took money and is someones lively hood.
It's like stating all car repairs should be free!
oogly boogly!
>But the first time I saw this happen, it made me think: piracy in general can have more economic impact that you realize at first.
...
Let me get this straight:
If your customers are being routinely hacked
You know why this happens
The link to piracy here is circumstancial. Your bandwidth could be misused in some other way just as easily... a Paris Hilton video, a very popular Linux ISO, or "anything" really.
Of course the customer is always 'right' and you let them use '1234' as a password, and the cycle repeats.
Banks do NOT let their customers use '1234' or '9999' as a PIN!
The person holding you to this policy IS THE PROBLEM. They do not care about the loss of revenue or the distress to the customer, so long as their job is made easier.
There are little rules you can enforce on passwords: 8 characters at least, include at least 1 number, etc. Make it easy to resend the password automatically if they forget it, so you're not getting support calls on that either.
You do NOT need to make them use difficult random passwords to eliminate most of the problem.
'cat'.. LOL...