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A Bit of Bittorrent Bother
Lave writes "A journalist at the BBC is replying to complaints about its recent Newsnight show, where it stated that using Bittorrent to download copyrighted material is theft. It's a very frank and honest account about the perceived realities of the internet and how traditional media represents it. From the article: '[One] answer is that we're totally scared of new media, because new media is railways and we're canals, and you all just know how that's going to end. So we seek to equate the internet with all bad things to scare you off it. At some corporate Freudian level, there's some truth to that accusation.'"
The talk of encryption is what worries me. Given that it's regularly used for secure remote access (SSH), used for secure communications (S/MIME and PGP), and essential to commerce over the internet (SSL), I'd expect there's quite a bit of legitimate encrypted traffic flying around already.
Sure, it's buried amid the flood of email (80% or more of which is spam), web traffic, and P2P traffic. But encryption isn't a rare thing mostly used by bad guys, as the article suggests.
The attitude reminds me of one of the five or so episodes of Enterprise I saw, in which T'Pol got an letter from home and the crew spent the whole episode trying to decrypt it. The theme was very anti-privacy, with one of the characters actually saying to her, "Do you know how suspicious that looked?" It made as much sense as claiming that closed curtains were a challenge to look inside.
I'd guess that even without encrypted torrents, most encrypted traffic on the net is business traffic of one sort or another. So the bad guys using encryption are already lost in the noise.
Why attack bittorrent for supposedly encouraging piracy when it has decidedly legitimate user as well, and there are many, many technologies out there being developed that are solely for the purposes of piracy, spam & exploitation. These technophobes should do a little more homework before selecting their targets, in my humble opinion.
"If you ask the security services and the police why they monitor the internet, [pedophiles and terrorists] are the bogeymen they claim to be chasing.
In a four minute piece, we're sort of obliged to take that at face value"
No. As a journalist, you're obliged to think critically.
The article assumed that it's ok for for security services to "manage" by monitoring, breaking decryption, and reading internet traffic.
The assumption here is that spying on the innocent is OK. I disagree. "Probable cause" in the US (used to) mean that the cops kept their noses out of situations until they had reason to believe that a criminal was involved in the situation.
"Reasonable suspicion" in the US used to mean that the cops did not hassle (or spy on) *anyone* that wasn't doing something suspicious, even when the person was in public. This meant that cops were not supposed to collar someone walking down the street and start asking them where they got the CDs for their walkman: Doing so presumes a crime was committed, and unless the cop had a genuine reason to think so, the cop was supposed to leave the citizenry alone.
The assumption that "it's ok to decrypt every frickin packet we can slurp up" throws out all of that, and privacy with it.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
[One] answer is that we're totally scared of new media, because new media is railways and we're canals, and you all just know how that's going to end. So we seek to equate the internet with all bad things to scare you off it. At some corporate Freudian level, there's some truth to that accusation.
Picture what is happening today with the RIAA/MPAA, publishers, writers, etc. vs. the Internet, BitTorrent, iTunes, etc. as what happened when the printing press first appeared. It used to be the church that controlled knowledge and only gave a few "educated" people access. Then the printing press comes along and the clergy called it Satan's tool because it was something they couldn't control. Well, the corporations are going to do the same FUD spreading to squash what they perceive as a threat.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
However, most of what I use bittorrent for is for downloading copyrighted material that the copyright holder has already given permission for other people to distribute.
So here I am, using bittorrent to download copyrighted material... not only am I not stealing, but I'm not even doing anything remotely illegal.
Putting the misuse of the word theft aside for the moment, I think what they really outta be doing is putting some effort into qualifying statements such as these with the provision that it is being distributed without the copyright holder's consent. Because there's plenty of freely available material out there that has copyrights on it that are just as binding as the copyrights found on works that are not so free.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Theft, the dishonest taking of property belonging to another person with the intention of depriving the owner permanently of its possession
Collins Concise English Dictionary, Third Edition
Yes it's illegal but please don't drink the **AA Kool Aid and conflate it with theft, theft is nicking some old dears purse, shoplifting etc etc. Rather more serious in my opinion, that's why the **AA like to confuse the two. Got to go, dinner is served.
I'm glad to see this apology, I saw the original report and I was shouting at the television. Not only was there the "theft" line, but they also wheeled on a "former CIA security agent" yada yada. He said, and I quote, "the majority of crimes in the US and the UK are solved by the use of telephone intercepts". Which I didn't believe for one minute. He used that line as a justification for banning or severely restricting VoIP. Did people cry upon the invention of the telephone, claiming that it'd be so much harder to catch criminals now that they can't intercept their post? If by telephone intercepts he means "referral to telephone call records", well the statement might be true, although the 7-year data retention rules for ISPs should help in that regard.
Adam Livingstone, the author of TFA isn't the person responsible for the original report. That dubious honour falls on Justin Rowlatt, who in a fit of irony is also currently running a series of reports where he tries to live as an "Ethical Man" - first up, Justin, try checking the definition of 'theft' in the dictionary. Then stop spreading lies about legal technology.
Yup, all over the world early tv was recorded, edited and then erased because who on the world would want ever to see it again eh?
Oh there are other reasons as well but the simple result is that the early seasons of some of the best shows have holes in them.
Just in the last decade both shows I mentioned however have had lost episodes recovered. How? Because somewhere in england somebody had enough money to have the earliest VCR style equipment and made home recordings of them. Badly eroded and of course not exactly made with broadcast level equipment and recorded from a for consumer source it isn't exactly WOW! Except they are the only copies around.
So the BBC took those tapes, thanked the family that offered them and put them through some magic and then aired the lost episodes. TV history came back to life.
Of course nowadays we are smarter and everything is archived BUT the fact remains, home recordings were used by a gratefull BBC to make up for its screwups.
Ah but homerecording wasn't actually illegal? Well not for want of trying and what certainly is illegal is to make a homerecording for anything but private use. Giving it back to the original content owner IS NOT private use. Yeah I know it is in "normal" terms but not in lawyer speak.
Frankly the entire problem with the media is one that this guy touches upon but doesn't seem to realize. It is the whole 4 minute idea to get a point across. If an issue is complex and can't be made in 4 minutes THEN USE MORE MINUTES!
This is not the first time the BBC and newsnight spouted the ??AA crap without fact checking. If they added all those crap 4 minutes segments together they could have made a evening filling in depth report on a changing world.
But no, that doesn't sell.
Frankly all this article tells me is what I know has been true of the BBC for a long time. Only intrested in selling copy in short flashes to keep the punters happy. For in depth, look elsewhere. The net for instance. What exactly stopped the canal owners from investing in rail networks?
The same thing that stopped the ??AA from investing in the digital music stores when they had the chance.
Oh well, at least one person seems to realize that the BBC is old and obsolete. Pity he seems unable to then take the next step and so do something about it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.