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130 Filesharer Homes Raided in Germany
Flo writes "Today, 130 homes have been raided in Germany under the allegation of filesharing. Law enforcement agencies had been monitoring an eDonkey-Server for two months. 3500 identified users are being investigated. Searches took place when users shared more than 500 files. Partners of the music industry helped identifying copyrighted material, but monitoring of the servers was solely done by law enforcement."
I invoke Godwin. Thread closed.
What should we do? Tell us, O Slashdot!
But noone mentioned the Nazis... aw shoot, I guess I just did. :/
Thread closed, sorry folks.
Searches took place when users shared more than 500 files.
I hereby invoke my Triple-S Rule which stats: Sharing Shit (they) Shouldn't
News flash: Break the law, and you might get caught.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Law enforcement officials ARE running servers. I think this has been mentioned on Slashdot before... at least I think someone traced a server group to Sony or the RIAA or something.
If you're american, just shut off all peer connections from your comrades in the states.. connect to japanese/canadians/europeans.. I'm sure they'll be happy to share files with you.
Last week I was sitting around, screwing around on fark.com, when there was a knock at the door. My mom awnsered it, and it was an individual claiming to be from the RIAA, along with two county sheriff's deputies. My mom (stupidly) let them in, and the deputies came into my room and proceeded to throw me to the ground while the RIAA guy started looking around on my computer. I demanded to see a warrant and informed them that they did not have permission to search my belongings, but they said that they didn't need one due to some new state law (I live in Missouri). Anyway, they eventually found my stash of MP3s and my mom got scared and said "you're moving with your auntie and your uncle to Bel-Air" I whistled for a cab and when it came near the licensplate said fresh and had a dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought now forget it, yo home to Bel-Air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight, and I yelled to the cabby yo, home smell you later. Looked at my kingdom I was finally there, to settle my throne as the prince of Bel-Air.
I'm as liberal as the next guy, but people who steal things understand the risks involved, or if they don't, they deserve what they get simply out of ignorance. Actively sharing that much is flaunting illegal activity, and when you do that, you're gonna get caught. I think the RIAA is stealing from us as much as we from them but unfortunately their stealing is legal, and in any case two wrongs don't make a right. That's not saying that I disapprove of piracy, just that if people get caught its not like they can make a case that what they're doing doesn't deserve punishment.
This is excellent news. The IP rights-holders appear to be responsibly investigating the actions of people violating copyright law.
I'd rather have a million more Jane Doe lawsuits and investigations like this one before DRM achieves greater legal backing than (in the United States, anyway) the DMCA already gives it.
Copyright holders have always had the right to take legal action against copyright violators, but they made a tactical error when they chose to fight Napster instead of the users, and when they attempt to pass laws instead of civilly enforcing existing laws.
Das ist nicht gut.
It looks a lot of filesharing is going back to sneakernet like it was in the 1970's.
I wonder if they raided any homes with a wireless AP being leached by a neighbor. That could be fun when they can't find evidance.
The truth shall set you free!
Tired of blaming Disney and the US government for extending copyright protections? You had the wrong target anyway... the US and the rest of the world usually falls right behind Germany's lead in extending their terms to reach back until 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles. That milestone saw Germany lose Asprin and all sorts of intellectual property, and they've been fierce in protections ever since. International trade agreements means that everyone has to play by aproximately the same rules in this space, and decent copyright terms are now long dead.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1196
I don't think the definition of "is" is what you think it, well, is.
Do the bookstores sell dictionaries on your planet? If so, then you don't get to redefine words at your leisure.
(from what I could understand of the poorly translated article) the police were involved because there was illegal/criminal material being shared (kiddie-pr0n), and the people sharing music were just a bonus.
I couldnt see where in the article that the server was being run by RIAA(or similar organisation) as another poster suggested.
Is copying music a criminal or civil offense in Germany? And do their police get involved in catching breakers of civil laws as well as the breakers of criminal laws?
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
Hmmmm yes, raiding people's homes is clearly a fair and balanced response to allegations of copyright infringement.
Yes, but likewise you don't hear about Germany applying pressures to the USA for copyright extensions. Though they might be worse nationally, the extention propositions have always come from internal corporate lobbying pressures; and not a sense to "catch up with the rest of the world."
It's sad really, as its meant the death of one of humanity's greatest intellectual achievements: the public domain. I equate it to the extermination of public libraries; sacrificing the bettering of society for the sake of saturating the corporate coffers. Of course, when politicians in charge of copyright reforms in the US are themselves bribed (via election funds) $300,000 by entertainment conglomerates, how can we expect any differently.
I'm not saying that corporate concerns should have no say in law-making; I'm saying that the laws that are being designed right now should have more of a balance.
Law enforcement agencies had been monitoring an eDonkey-Server for two months.
eDonkey ? Figures, it's always the jackass...
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
How do they prove you were sharing the whole file? As far as I know p2p works by downloading from multiple connections and unless they dedicated a single connection to each of the 3500 or so people they charged can you still get charged if you don't deliver the whole shared file? I know some p2p apps check for junk data, so what if you insert N amount of junk data into what you are sharing which makes it unusable on its own? One situation I can think of is if you were sharing JPEG images have 90% of people sharing portions of the image data as well as ALL the data in between the JPEG markers (I picked the majority sharing this data since its the majority of the data) and 10% of people only sharing the markers and offsets to the next markers with the rest of the data in between being junk random data. You could use some other flag to indicate which of the two types of data the people are actually sharing so the application wouldn't download too much known junk data. Either data downloaded from a single peer on its own is basically unusable and on its own could not be used to render an image, could something similar be done for MP3s and does anyone know the legality of it?
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
> I hereby invoke my Triple-S Rule
I thought the German secret police were just the SS?
Anyhow, Nazis/Godwin aside, the term "steal" implies that it was removed from someone's posession (i.e. they no longer have it any more). But "Infringing upon Stuff they Shouldn't" (ISS) sounds too much like a space station.
Now here's an even more interesting comparison: how many of those were leeched wireless connections? You see, I'm guessing the people who had others infringe via their wireless will get busted anyway. Even though when people are caught doing simple web browsing on a *company* wireless AP they shouldn't connect to (even though it's open and broadcasting an SSID), there the individual gets busted yet again.
It's funny that the laws prevent an individual from making themselves into a one-person corporation, because it would unduly shield them from liability. As if it helps any that normal corporations shield even more people from liability. Oh, and did you know that under US law, you can't boycott a company for "economic" reasons (i.e. because it's too damn expensive)? I'm just waiting for some lawyer to come up with a way to exploit *that* one.
I'd complain even more that too many of those damn Libertarians seem to want not to end this sort of corporate exploitation, but merely to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to engage in it, but I'm already on a wild, anti-corporate rant, so I'll shut up now.
these are German filesharers, remember?
Imagine how many illegal copies of David Hasselhoff "singing" were just taken out of circulation.
Those who argue "Serves them right, they knew it was a crime" don't realize just how bizarre this whole situation is. You have police come to your house, take your computer away, and you'll get fined with thousands of Euros for something which is utterly trivial. If this is taken to an extreme, it's even worse than the "war on drugs": You don't even have to leave your house to be labeled a criminal.
The music industry has this funny idea that they can scare consumers into using iTunes and similar networks. This will work -- for a while. But when you have all the technologies mentioned, copyright infringement that is undetectable will become prevalent -- because you just download 1 GB from your friend via IM, or swap DVDs (or soon HDDVDs), or use IRC and FTP. And it's not like you have to be a technology savvy guy to do these things. My mom can use IM, when she gets broadband, she can swap files.
So, what you are left with is completely arbitrary enforcement on some services, scare tactics that work against some, while the underlying "problem" keeps getting "worse" because of technology (hardware, software). Just wait until the next file sharing application with a built in "how anonymous do you want to be?" slider comes along.
The problem will only go away when those who make music embrace sharing as a way to popularize it. Those who like it, will pay. What will work better in the long run -- scaring people into paying? Or letting them choose to? If the industry doesn't realize the answer and tries to criminalize society instead, it's time for people to force them to. I really hope that initiatives like the Swedish "Pirate Party" are successful in working towards the decriminalization of non-commercial copying.
Marijuana is legal in quite a few countries. It can happen.
This may seem rather archaic, but the IT department is so paranoid about getting in trouble with the **IA that they busted a 5-person DC++ network last year.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Well then may the force be with him.
That statement is ridiculous - it should be the opposite.
I guess that depends on whether you think the laws are fair or not.
Are you saying that all laws are fair? How about the 'Hand over your encryption keys or go to jail?' law in the UK.
Shouldn't we take each law on a case by case basis and determine whether or not it is OK to break that law in certain circumstances, rather than just saying that anyone who breaks a law is automatically evil and should be punished?
Yes, I know it would be better if the law makers made this decision this for us, but they have proved thir incompetence/corruption (probably the first) already and I no longer trust them to decide what is right or wrong.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Anyhow, Nazis/Godwin aside, the term "steal" implies that it was removed from someone's posession (i.e. they no longer have it any more). But "Infringing upon Stuff they Shouldn't" (ISS) sounds too much like a space station.
He said "sharing".
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You use to be cool, German! :'(
In Romania, same thing happened last week. WTF?
So this must mean that Germany has solved all of their problems with child porn, identity theft, extortion, and all of the other shady activities that can happen online, right?
Because there's no way that they'd place corporate trademark and copyright issues ahead of the safety and security of their citizens, would they? On the taxpayer's dime, too?
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Fuck you and your RIAA buddies. If you give me the choice between P2P retrieval of legitimate content and my RIAA music collection, I'll wipe my non free music in a heartbeat. It's crap like this that tightens my resolve to avoid non free music. I can get all I want from archive.org, magnatune.com, others like them, artist CDs bought at the club and etunes. You pigopolists and your old commercial shit are on the bottom of my list.
We can debate the morality of surrendering to government sponsored ownership of culture, but the practical path is to not help by sharing non free material. Government mandated broadcast monopolies and many other bogus laws lead directly to the creation of the big three music publishers. As the owners of the previous convenient means of sharing music, radio, the publishers have co-opted a large part of our culture. No one really won that one, least of all artists and those actually making the music. The best way to fight it is not to purchase or share RIAA shit.
Lack of hassle is another reason to delete it all. The accused should be presumed innocent, despite having their doors kicked in. As I pointed out, there's plenty of free content out there by people who want you to share. Much of it is easiest to get by bit torrent and other P2P services. If possesion of RIAA shit is the incriminating evidence, you might be better off without it. That way, I won't have some dickhead like you tut tuting in my face about how I'm getting what I deserved.
That's kind of what they want - RIAA only or nothing RIAA for you. They are forcing you to chose. If everyone gave them what they wanted, the world would be a better place.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Sometimes I wonder what will the MPAA/RIAA/GEMA/etc. do, when all file-sharers are locked up in prison, all music and film is DRM-restricted, CD sales are still declining and nobody goes to see blockbuster movies anymore...
If you STILL feel inclined to hold your misguided, fanciful, but NOT-thought-out *beliefs* after reading this, and choose to reply... I don't know if you're more stupid or brave...
(Is it "brave" to be steadfastly wrong?
"To err is human, to totally fsck things up requires an election." - L.W. Hale
OK, people broke the law, get busted, may be punished. Nothing terribly interesting there...
What *is* interesting is the use of language. Note that they don't say "illegal file sharing"... they just say "file sharing", under the implicit assumption that all filesharing is illegal (rather than, say, using a torrent to grab the latest linux distro, or sharing photos). Likewise it seems to be assumed that if you offered music, it must be illegal (rather than, say, new bands trying to get an audience by distributing their work). I'm not sure if it's intentional on behalf of the author or not, but it says a lot about how well the **aa has "educated" the media to make the "right" assumptions.
This series of raids is the outcome of a joint operation of several different nations. 60'000 people were caught sharing illegally in a period of 2 months. 3500 of those were germans. 130 of those were heavy users and got raided.
So much for european countries being more socially evolved than america
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
the RIAA oligopoly keeps on violating every anti-trust law on the planet :s
... Those crazy Europeans paid VAT taxes on all blank media because people just kind of assumed it would be used for piracy. (I hope thats not the real reason, I really, really do.)
Live according to the Categorical Imperative. If the Categorical Imperative tells you not to live by it... ignore it
For practical purposes, the term "piracy", as applies to copyright, should be left to its older, but less romantic usage: large scale duplication and sale in lieu of the real article. The reason this is illegal is the original intent of copyright (speaking as an American about our Constitutional notion of copyright): it's a protection of business, sure, but for the more important goal of disseminating information and increasing the collective wealth, both figuratively - as in "mental" wealth - and literally. Protect the business interests of copyright holders, sure, but, along with trade mark law - which, contrary to popular myth, is about protecting the PURCHASER, -not- (especially) the seller - PROTECT THE END PURCHASER, THE CITIZEN.
But file sharing is hardly "piracy". Regardless of how worry-warts of Media Giants would puff up about.
The vast majority of people are "normal"; we have "normal" wealth, which means it's LIMITED. We have limited discretionary funds. We must therefore be selective in how we use it.
Blanket-labeling of file-sharers as "thieves" belies this.
We have only so much money to spend on life's fluff: movies, the theater, dining, gas, rentals, live performances/concerts, museums, books, pre-recorded items, cable TV, software, video games, etc.
It's convenient to believe the world is so simple that "if people have to pay for something, they will." It's a logical fallacy. You moral-superiority types must get along great with the doomsdayers of Big Media. Yes, I said "Big Media" - they're the only ones beating this tired, dead horse.
It's a simple mind-game you can play at home: if you have limited funds to spend, and something drops off the list of priorities for you, would you still buy that thing that you can't afford that's no longer on your priority list?
Honest truth is that many hoard. They'd never buy all they have if they "had" to. They download all the movies/CD's/video games just for bragging rights. MANY of them will OFTEN actually BUY something that they truly value.
Painting all file-sharers as cheapskates also ignores another truth in the argument: people are either "collector" types, or not. Are either "I do it the 'right' way because it's more convenient", or not. I mean this: if you're not prone to buying item X in the first place, you're not stealing it in the second place if you download it. You're decidedly NOT in the "loss" column. Similarly, if you typically purchase movies/CD's/games in stores, even if you -could- download it for free, you're still typically going to purchase what you truly value anyway.
And by value, this means different things to different people. Some of us prefer/like the cover art, liner notes, "extras", and/or the mere convenience of having separate media that's in a convenient package which I may place upon my shelf when not in use. These are all valid reasons why some us PREFER to buy CD's, DVD's, and/or video games.
Media Giants, with regards to music groups specifically, have gone to great lengths over the years to hearken back to the days of yesteryear when bands/singers were a dime a dozen; where it was their one-hit wonder that mattered, not The Group. This is better in their eyes in that it keeps artists at a negotiating disadvantage. Unfortunately, their shortsightedness breeds another outcome that they DON'T like: disposable, generic music/artists have no value. Silly boys...
Sorry, I started to get off target. The point is, no, gentle reader, people don't "always" get for free what they -can-, but what they choose to. And most of us supplant one form of frivolous purchase for another, so that the sum total of our purchases are STILL going to Big Media. They complain we're stealing their movies. Okay, but I'm still buying CD's, and/or more of those. Or vice versa. They can't get blood from a stone, nor money from an empty piggy bank: if I don't have i
"To err is human, to totally fsck things up requires an election." - L.W. Hale
Yes, but likewise you don't hear about Germany applying pressures to the USA for copyright extensions.
Well, indirectly. You may be aware of the tax loophole that allowed Uwe Boll to be profitable. Hollywood has been exploiting that for decades so indirectly the German citizenry funded the MPAA which is applying the pressure for copyright extensions in the US. That hole has been plugged so we're no longer paying for foreign freedom-hating organizations.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
nice to see the government doing the music industries dirty work. the pople who got busted are probably normal people, i doubt that a big time file downloader would allow all of his files to be exposed to edonkey or any other service which might make him/her a victim of just such an action. so yet again, you will end up getting a grandma going to jail screaming "what has my nice niece done!" Oh well.
Fool me once...shame on you, fool me twice...won't be fooled again (our president)
So this is what happens when you buy this rhetoric that the conservatives represent laize faire politics. That's bullshit. Like the Bush administration, Merkle represents big money and this news clearly demonstrates that fucking over the public in a shakedown for big business is clearly not an issue for these conservative pricks.
So, let's not hear about how the left is where the problems are coming from. Sure, in the U.S. Diane Feinstein and a few others have sold out the public's interests in these matters but that doesn't mean the Republicans represent an alternative. If you're a California voter, I suggest you write to Feinstein and tell her you don't appreciate her selling out her constituents for a few bucks on such an important issue. But voting conservative is not the answer.
Merkle has shown her hand and it is up to the German voters to slap that hand by voting her out of office.
If you're a California voter, start setting things straight right now. The Democrats cannot be a valid alternative to the Republicans if they not only support but seek to tighten the absurdly outdated copyright regime in place in the US today.
The following two California politicians drafted the PERFORM Act among other efforts to tighten the copyright noose.
Blurb about the PERFORM Act.
http://www.rwonline.com/dailynews/one.php?id=9011
But beyond the PERFORM Act, contact these people and tell them directly that non commercial sharing of copyrighted material is NOT theft. Tell them their job is to leave the citizen's private Internet communications alone and that their job is to support the private non-commercial communication rights of their voters not to win favors from industry groups. Let them know that the alternative is to lose in the next election. Speak up!
Senator Dieane Feinstein
202-224-3841
202-228-3954
http://feinstein.senate.gov/email.html
Representative Howard L. Berman (D - 28)
202-225-4695
202-225-3196
http://www.house.gov/berman/contact/
And yeah, I'm posting anonymously. But that's the whole point here. I should be able to post anonymously and all of our Internet communication should be anonymous and private. Let's make it so.
Copying somebody else's work against their wishes is also bad.
Copying somebody else's work against their wishes is NOT bad. In fact, the purpose of copyright law is exactly to make this happen.
Copyright law was a deal between the public and content producers that gave content producers the right to limit distribution for a limited time, in exchange for the requirement that their works fall into the public domain (i.e., can be copied against their wishes) after that period. The goal was to balance an economic incentive for content producers against the public's right to copy.
What has happened with copyright law is a perversion: content producers effectively have gotten copyright in perpetuity, through numerous technological and legal tricks. And, worse yet, people like you actually wrongly believe that people have some sort of basic right to control information after they have made it public.
If you don't want your ideas to be disseminated, keep them in your head; you have a right to do that, that works, and you need no goons to enforce it. People like you want the adoration and profit that comes along with sharing your ideas with others; if you want that, you should lose your ability to control your ideas after a short while.
That would never happen in Germany. People never ever got mass-arrested in Germany. Never.
Heil
I think the RIAA is stealing from us as much as we from them but unfortunately their stealing is legal, and in any case two wrongs don't make a right.
Freeing slaves might be illegal, but it's still the right thing to do. I'm not saying that this situation is analogous, but it illustrates that taking illegal action in response to bad laws can be justifiable.
What widespread sharing really shows you is that the law may be out of step with what society wants, and that's a problem in a democracy.
In any case, I think civil disobedience in this case might consist of sharing something illegal that is obviously ridiculous, like an original recording of Glass's several minutes of silence.
The other way to make this sillines stop is to undermine the music industry's business model, to work on the political front, to set legal precedents, and to make recording companies and their artists simply look uncool (need I say Michael Jackson).
Germany's copyright laws aren't that strict actually. It is still perfectly legal to copy a CD or MP3s from your neighbor or even a DVD you rented for private use. And you can make copys of these copys and share them with your family and friends and it's still legal. Of course the industry is constantly trying to change that. They managed to get an insanly stupid copyright act introduced, which makes it illegal to circumvent "effective technical copyright restriction". To this day, their is no clarifying judgment on what the heck is an effective restriction and what is not. After all, you could argue that as soon as the restriction is cracked, is isn't effective anymore.
There's nothing worse than the illegal sharing of German music - except may be bagpipes
I am German (says my passport) and I have never ever owned, shared or stolen any music by David Hasselhoff!
Also I don't know anybody here who listens to him, or even knows him. I don't know him. I only had eyes for Pamela and I didn't own a radio when his songs were played several times a day.
Last defence: I got a Luca Turilli CD playing in the background right now!
Perhaps you have misunderstood the Google-translation, but the article only states that the police (!) had access to the server.
It is completely plausible that they got this access at the ISP backed up by court decision.
It states nowhere that the server was provided by the music industry.
The more interesting thing in the article is that the state attourney (!) states that running an edonkey server is legal in Germany.
...that means don't download, don't buy.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Some highlights:
So it doesn't exactly look like times are tough in the record industry in Europe at the moment. If the european authorities are worrying about margin erosion for european industry then there are plenty of other targets way ahead in the queue.
Yeah, but would they admit not finding evidence or would the AP owner have to prove it?
In any case, you can be sure they'd seize all his IT equipment and burned CDs/DVDs and it would be gone for months while the investigation is in process...
I can see that being a big issue with fon.com for example
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.
"File sharing is no different than what many people did in the 80's when they made tapes of music and shared it."
I beg to differ here. Making a copy of a tape or record and giving it to a friend is "sharing". Making 10,000 copies and giving them to 10,000 friends [sic] is "publishing".
I guess you don't understand how P2P really works. Nobody is giving out 10,000 copies of a song. Typically, they are "giving out" one or maybe two complete copies of a file.
Also, the file is typically not a "perfect copy" of the original, it is downsampled in some way.
I'm not necessarily advocating either side of this argument, but please, keep to the facts.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Check the size of your shared folder in edonkey, amule or whatever.
If you have more than 500 shared items you are at risk. Unshare (or outright delete, if you're paranoid...) any items over 500, and you should be (relatively) safe, unless they already have your IP.
Last week was Romania, this week was Germany, and next week may be another European country. Play it safe, and stay under 500; in Germany the 130 raided had more than 500 items to share.
(I checked my amule this morning: had 1800+ items. I quickly unshared everything older than 100 days, and now I'm down to 96).
This resource, http://toolz.toolz4schoolz.com/geoip_aggregator.t4 s (I wrote it, please be gentle with it), allows you to compare results so you'll get a good overview of the main free and paid-for ones out there.
The 'free' ones are HostIP, Maxmind, and the IP2Country list. It's easy to download these and use them yourself (actually HostIP is about 300 megs so I haven't installed that at the above url). Then it compares the better services from Geobytes, IP2Location ... and also ShowMyIP and DNSStuff ... using iframes.
Wow that's really great police work, you gotta put it to those German police with their efficiency - Apparently next week they're planning to do a big raid of about 10 major street gangs and they're planing to take 5000 guns off the streets! Oh wait whats that? they're not planning a raid to take guns off the streets? they're going to instead concentrate solely on copyright infringement? oh, well, im sure that's pretty important too, I mean a few people getting shot doesn't really hurt the economy!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
OTOH it is illegal to point to libdvdcss.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
now consider this situation: ... wicked!
...
you have a pple tree and sell me an apple. you pay income tax.
i eat the apple and plant the seed. a few years later i sell you
an apple and i have to pay income tax. etc.
the goverment is taxing you to stay alive (eat) and to produce
oxygen (growing plant)
the goverment taxes each dollar more then once, many more times
As I said, that is not clear. If a judge finds CSS to be an effective copy protection, then it would be indeed illegal to distribute tools supporting this circumvention. It would even be a criminal offense (up to 1 year in prison).
Because of this uncertainty many linux distributions do not include libdvdcss in Germany. But it is still possible and legal to install it right after installation using an online update site. Novell etc just don't want to get their linux packages seized in stores one day.
This is from the article, read it in a yoda voice: "Today a very important day for the music industry is"... although he has great use of the force, he doesn't make a very good editor!
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
Where did you get that idea? Care to back it up?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
In America People Share Files
In Soviet Russia Files Share You
But in Nazi Germany...wait...nevermind.
T-X-I
I don't think its a stretch to say that if there were no such things as libraries, anyone who advocated for them would be immediately labeled as a communist pirate who wanted legal sanction to use the creative works of others for free.
And hassle me about my downloads, I'll show them
1000+ LPs
800 CDs
500 DVDs
200 Laserdiscs
5 tapes
And say 'Are you sure it's in your interests to arrest me and stop me buying more stuff?'
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Nosferatu?
Thanks to pirates, we still have the movie.
Stoker's wife, filed a copyright suit, after much litigation she won.
Beeatch burned the film.
Thanks to German pirates today you can view the film.
Danka
Die!
It's die!
I guess that makes it alright...
That milestone saw Germany lose Asprin and all sorts of intellectual property,
You mean synthetic Aspirin? Aspirin was extracted from Willow trees, how in the fuck can that be IP?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
No wonder the sources for all those David Hasselhoff albums I've been trying to get suddenly vanished.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Better yet, file a false police report indicating that you were burglarized. Report that your collection of 1,000 CDs and 500 DVDs were stolen. Now you have it on file that you owned these, and can claim your backups are just that -- backups.
The research i've been doing in P2P networks (due to my involvement in the okopipi project) has shocked me. In file sharing, we're living in the STONE AGE. Yes, even with bittorrent (which depends on centralized servers, and there's practically no privacy. And anonymous bittorrent like mutorrent is closed source, who knows if they got a backdoor in there).
EDonkey uses MD4 for hashing, it depends on central servers, and has no anonymity at all. And without mentioning queue # 4892 for a popular file.
Unfortunately for filesharers, file sharing networks based on modern P2P architectures is very scarse. The supernodes / ultrapeers approach is obsolete, easy to disrupt both denial of service and eavesdropping attacks.
The future of P2P is Overlay Networks.
From an architectural point of view, I would recommend the KAD p2p network, which bases its architecture on the relatively-new kadelmia network (See Technical paper on Kadlemia, 2002).
Even then, Kadelmia could be improved because it's based on a Pastry network topology - compared to other topologies like De Bruijn Graphs, proposed by a recent paper in 2003.
And more research is being done dealing with load balancing, anonymity, trust, reputation, etc.
As I said, current peer to peer networks are in the stone age. Someone needs to design a file sharing network based on the latest research, and publish it.
that the RIAA is taking the most extreme action against copyright-infringers that the law allows a single legal entity to take: the lawsuit.
I would be that, if it were legal, they would kill them on sight.
The DMCA is evidence that RIAA is tampering with the one thing that protects our rights (including our right to life), and believe me, it's not ethics.
Don't you just love corporate America and the concept of the free market?
people use some unpaid copies of multimedia products and go to prison and have to pay a high percentages of their income as compensation
sony writes a rootkit that deliberately destroies hundredthousands of pcs and has to pay an extremely small percentage of their income and noone goes to prison...
anyone else has the feeling that this is out of scale?
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Interesting. I'd never heard of Uwe Boll, bizaare stuff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwe_Boll
This is a good thing guys - when it backfires, it will just end in everyone giving a rats ass about the law.
Take that you controlfreaking assholes !
The allies seized and resold the *trademark* Aspirin after WWI.
that caused the Quakers and other groups to move to America in the first place.
Oh, sure, you say, just because 130 homes have been raided in Germany under the allegation of filesharing, that's not religious persecution.
But, what if your religious beliefs involved the principle that no man can own what we now call Intellectual Property, as the vast majority of religions believed until the mid-20th century?
The very concept that one can "own" an idea, from many viewpoints, can be seen as offensive to God (or Gods, if you are of that nature).
It's time to realize that Bill Gates was wrong when he sent that letter to the open source community that was freely sharing source code for computer programs - he was the lone heretic at the time, and most people believed that code, like speech, should be free.
Most of even the people on slashdot don't grok that you literally do not own, in a legal definition, your very DNA sequence, or have any rights to it, in most states in the USA or other countries around the world. They can pick up some cells from you, and make a wonder drug, and you have literally no say in the matter.
The same goes for file sharing. In the beginning of music recording, the only time an artist got paid was when he actually played, and recording tapes were shared to wide audiences, or played on radios. Then we decided to impose limited music fees for a limited (7 years) time.
Now that period is 70 years after you die, but you can extend it even further by just "re-recording" it while you still hold the license, and claiming a new file date, as Disney and others do periodically.
File-sharing is just the front lines of this fight - the fight to truly make us free - and our silence becomes our complicity. Sure, you think, I might one day go on American Idol and become a rich superstar, so I'll be quiet. But, the cold hard truth is - you're not going to. Very very few people ever will. Those who can actually become rich from this are almost always the middlemen, and virtually all artists never make as much as they can from a normal day job.
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Apparently next week they're planning to do a big raid of about 10 major street gangs and they're planing to take 5000 guns off the streets! Oh wait whats that? they're not planning a raid to take guns off the streets? they're going to instead concentrate solely on copyright infringement?
One should point out that, instead of actually arresting and jailing active al-Qaeda cells, which find Germany to be a safe harbor, they're doing this instead.
My brother went to the University of Hamburg, and got an LLD at UBC, and he always found this misallocation of resources to be very puzzling indeed in terms of what they actually investigate in Germany.
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It's been a few weeks since news came out regarding Bearshare's settlement with the RIAA, which involved Bearshare shutting down or possibly becoming a pay P2P.. Bearshare had a lot of German, eastern euro & Italian dubs and porn, along with loads of music of course.
Despite the supposed shutting down, I chcked this morning and it's *still* possible to download just as many files as before.
So is this German incident a clue as to why Bearshare still operates?
If there was a P2P network that it could encrypt its messages, the police would have no chance to know what is being shared.
How much of those profits went to line the pockets of some nice politician
whose main preoccupation is how much he can stuff his face ?
The tears of the crocodiles...
Thank God. Now I can go to Germany without worrying about all those file-sharers. Way to make the streets safe, guys.
It's pretty simple. The authors need money, too. If you want to SELL your work to other people for money but other people make many copies and give them to many other people for free, then you will not get a lot of money and you will not be happy, either.
If you say, "I am happy to give my work to all other people for free." then I guess you will feel fine, but you can't force everybody to think this way.
Regardless of what all laws say, I think it is simple that "whatever you don't want other people to do to you, don't do to other people." That will make things simple enough!
I'm not saying making a huge profit is justified, but I'm also sure that taking whatever not made by you without the maker's permission is not justified.
Because then that would be a violation of their civil rights.
Plus, it would mean the terrorists have won.
Copyright law was a deal between the public and content producers that gave content producers the right to limit distribution for a limited time, in exchange for the requirement that their works fall into the public domain (i.e., can be copied against their wishes) after that period.
Fair enough: Classically, intellectual property was protected for about 17 years.
Now here are twenty songs from the Billboard Top 100 for 1989:
How many of those "files" are being actively "shared" 17 years later?For that matter, how many of those "files" are still being listened to 17 years later?
Well, other than in elevators, maybe...
"Taking out my hunting rifle and killing the paper boy is utterly trivial too.
Doesn't mean anyone should do it."
Because murder is as comparably trivial as petty theft?
I"ve just reading how in 1934 Hitler and his goons (like SS) invaded the headquoters of SA and shot everyone they could under the pretext of preventing the (what's become known as) "Roehm's putch". Speaking of history repeating itself. Blah...
they will piss them off and deter them even further from buying DRM-enhanced CDs which don't play on their car's stereo.
Bears repeating: it is easy to configure your computer such that even if all your home is raided and even if xxAA knows bit-for-bit what file they want to prove you have - they can not provide any supporting evidence. It is called plausible deniability. See fool-proof software like TrueCrypt. Or just take one big FAT32 partition, put some vacation pictures + Linux iso on it, and make a dm-crypt mapping onto the free space. Have the default, hard-disk based boot os only mount the FAT32 and have some USB key / camera / SDCard / CDrom boot OS mount the encrypted partition. Even with law which force you to reveal secret keys: here you can not prove that there is encrypted data in the first place.
That's it, that's no rocket science, it's trivial, and there is nothing law enforcement will ever be able to do against it.
Once again the business case for creating artificial cash-cow monopolies is being eroded by technology - and there is nothing law can do against it.
(Quick: Which one has the Kangeroos ? Austria ? Australia ?)
The whole issue didn't make primetime news, as a matter of fact, the majority of German law enforcement is busy dealing with more serious issues. The closest equivalent to gangs are teens with spray cans of paint - or neo nazis attacking foreigners, mostly unarmed.
Exercise for the student : find a reliable account of a german drive-by shooting or gang war.
In point of fact, all of them are being shared except for the Milli Vanilli tracks. Consider the continued popularity of Phil Collins, Madonna, and Janet Jackson. Paula Abdul got a new lease on life thanks to American Idol, and her music is being rediscovered by kids who only know her from that. I'll lay you odds that if you fire up a Gnutella client, you'll find that every one of those songs is being shared by a couple of dozen users.
So don't be facetious, child.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
Let's see what happens in 30 years from, when these now in power grow old and die.