Pirate Party Launches Commercial Darknet

CrystalFalcon writes "The Swedish Pirate Party has launched a commercial, high-capacity darknet, on an unprecedented scale and bandwidth. This service lets anybody send and receive files anonymously without being tracked or traced. 'There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet,' says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. 'If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check.'"

Comments

Rock On Dude

[Anonymous Coward]

The nightmare of the *AA and my pipe dream. When's it coming to the states and where do I sign up?

Re:Rock On Dude

[RShizzle]

From TFA:
One question we get is if this works in the US. Yes, it does.

It looks like just a PPTP connection to a Swedish ISP, doling out some Swedish IP addresses. I'm curious as to the speed the service offers. What's the pipe feeding into Relakks?

Re:Rock On Dude

[Fredrik Leijon]

They have a contract with Labs2 (run by the former ceo and founder of bredbandsbolaget) so bandwidth shouldn't be a problem.

Re:Rock On Dude

[larytet]

did you try gomyplace.com ?

this one free. install an open source client and allow remote restricted/unrestricted access to file(s) on your PC/Linux/Mac

Re:Rock On Dude

[Anonymous Coward]

this doesn't do ish! what happens when the goverment - sorry the cartel, thinks your a security risk and suspect your on the darknet. next thing you know, an international coalition is formed and subpoena's the pirate party who has to give up your "proxy ip". This doesn nothing. much like how the bush administration has been getting info about terroists funds through and international coalition. This does nothing. don't believe techhype.

Re:Rock On Dude

[dekemoose]

Where is the -1 Shill moderation?

Re:Rock On Dude

[Anonymous Coward]

it is not offtopic, gomyplace does similar trick - this is a open reverse proxy. people care about anonymity and here it is - another tool to answer the problem

Re:Rock On Dude

[Anonymous Coward]

PPTP is where Indians go whizz.

Re:Rock On Dude

[Anonymous Coward]

it is not offtopic, gomyplace does similar trick - this is a open reverse proxy. people care about anonymity and here it is - another tool to answer the problem

that is true, until anonymity is spoiled by poor english, larytet

Net Neutrality

[comrade k]

I think this is an awesome idea, but how will it work with the looming lack of net neutrality?

Re:Net Neutrality

[frosty_tsm]

It's in Sweden. Net Neutrality doesn't directly affect it.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I understand the "lack of net neutrality" would only effect US* users of the aforementioned darknet. AFAIK for networks outside the US the net remains neutral**

*Yes yes I know or packets traversing across a US network segment.
**Neutral until the Telco's lobby the US administration to reign in them darn foreigners. After all its their divine right to extort money from those who have made a successful internet business.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

US. law applies everywhere, apparently.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Tim C]

Law, perhaps; money grubbing schemes of US corporations that require the physical presence of equipment, no.

Re:Net Neutrality

[oKtosiTe]

You must be American... ;-)

Re:Net Neutrality

[oKtosiTe]

Depends how you look at it... the US still control most of the nets core services.

Re:Net Neutrality

[andrewman327]

Wait, I didn't think that any country had net nutrality. Does Sweden?

Re:Net Neutrality

[Chris whatever]

It's not an awesome idea because as much as it has it's good use there is also the darker side with pedophile, snuff and other crap that should not be tolerated.

So for all the good thing it will do you'll have a lot more people exchanging Serious illegal stuff and no way to get to them.

The net cant be neutral, it is utopic to think that unless everyone was good but it's not the reality, you cant have a place where you can bend the rules forever, that's anarchy!

Like any other things there should not be any invasion of privacy unless a criminal act is being committed.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Mr. Slippery]

It's not an awesome idea because as much as it has it's good use there is also the darker side with pedophile, snuff and other crap that should not be tolerated.

Snuff films are not real. And the problem with pedophilia isn't the transmission of images of the sexual abuse of children, it's when actual sexual abuse of children goes on.

Freedom has risks. If you have free elections, the "wrong" guys might win. If you have secure communications, "terrorists" might use them to make plans. If you have the right to keep and bear arms, "bad guys" may have guns.

But if you believe in freedom, you're very very wary of the state getting to define who the "wrong" guys, the "terrorists", the "bad guys", are. Consider that Martin Luther King Jr. was a target of COINTELPRO; consider Nixon's "enemies list"; consider the Fugitive Slave Act, the Dredd Scott decision, the Alien and Sedition acts, the Red Scares, the concentration camps for Japanese Americans...

you cant have a place where you can bend the rules forever, that's anarchy!

And? "Anarchy" means no ruling hierarchy. Some people think that's a good idea, especially when it comes to communication. As Robert Anton Wilson put it, "A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of `monopoly in the means of production.' Since man extends his nervous system though channels of communication like the written word, the telephone, radio, etc., he who controls these media controls part of the nervous system of every member of society. The contents of these media become part of the contents of every individual's brain."

Re:Net Neutrality

[Jeff DeMaagd]

How about: how does this bypass the Berne Copyright Convention? Sweden is a signatory. I know that most countries don't completely abide by all their treaties, Sweden seems to be the biggest violator of Berne in the developed world.

Re:Net Neutrality

[mr_mischief]

Not outside the US, no.

Inside the US, though, the customers of large US telecom companies may be firewalled off from the service by the very people they are paying for Net access. If not that, they may be slowdd to a trickle of traffic.

If I was paying for access to "The Internet", and my service provider wasn't giving me access to everything I could legally access, then I'd be getting ripped off, wouldn't I?

So for the rest of the world US net neutrality laws don't matter so much. For those of us in the US, they matter a great deal, even when the traffic starts overseas.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Dark_MadMax666]

Methinks transmission of the images is problems as well , though the actual abuse is obviously worse. But again those hypocritic " think of the children" never make a dent in in me - look at statsitics and see how many children die from preventable disesases, hunger , in wars, abuse by their relatives etc. etc. What pisses me off about sheeple regarding fear mongering issues (such as "chidlren " or "terrorists") is that people refuse to look at where actual problems is. 5 thousand people died in 9/11- this is absolutely nothing compared to other preventable causes of death .

For start shuttind down and air polluting facicilties (such as coal plants) and replacing them with clean energy(nuclear reactors) would save millions eash year dying from bad air induced disease (such as lung cancer) . Getting some taxes out of filthy rich corps to make globally avaialble clean air and food would save another 5-10 millions. Promoting AI research and replacing human drivers with AI would save 50k of people dying in mostly preventable car accident each fuckign year. -
Then you can start solving issues such minor things as suicides (in many developed countries suicides double the amount of homocides)

And yeah after all those are solved ,then you can raise minor non-issues such as a couple hundred children abuse and a few terrorists induced death. How about that?

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Switzerland might.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Qzukk]

What about the nuclear waste, not very clean.

Only because the government wants it to be. Waste would be vastly reduced if only the government would allow it to be recycled in breeder reactors, but oh noes it might be used for teh bombz!!1!1

That the rich have made possible for you.

Ah of course, the rich did it all. How about the rich go to some distant island with their capital, and see what they can do? I suspect all they'll get from waving their wads of cash at the local monkeys is a coconut to the head. Until the rich realize they need to keep a working class, the world will continue to suck for the vast majority of its inhabitants.

Re:Net Neutrality

[DarthStrydre]

I assume videos of beheadings and dismemberment using not-so-sharp blades are not considered snuff, since they are not mass marketed? Or is there something else I am missing here?

Re:Net Neutrality

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

Why are snuff films such a big deal? I would assume they are quite morbid, but other than that... Are they viewed as a gateway drug or what?. I'm not trying to troll, but it's not like leaving the camcorder at home would have necessarily extended anyone's life would it?

And the only people who need to "Think of the Children"(tm) are the parents of said children.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Mr. Slippery]

I assume videos of beheadings and dismemberment using not-so-sharp blades are not considered snuff, since they are not mass marketed?

Films of people dying obviously exist. They are not snuff films. A snuff film is a killing done explictly to be filmed and sold, i.e. if they ran out of film, they'd wait to kill the guy until the camera was reloaded.

Snopes quotes Kerekes and Slater's "Killing for Culture", which they call "the bible on the snuff film rumor":

Snuff films depict the killing of a human being -- a human sacrifice (without the aid of special effects or other trickery) perpetuated for the medium of film and circulated amongst a jaded few for the purpose of entertainment.

Films take to inspire terror - the execution videos taken by Islamic extremists, the bombing raid footage proudly displayed by the American military - aren't snuff films.

Re:Net Neutrality

[MamiyaOtaru]

Bob the Angry Flower's Atlas Shrugged 2: One Hour Later http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif

Re:Net Neutrality

[Yrret]

"Snuff Films are not real.." I am assuming you don't count http://ogrish.com/ ? There is undoubtedly a lot of killings and deaths posted there. Beheadings, roadside killings.

Re:Net Neutrality

[J.R. Random]

Like any other things there should not be any invasion of privacy unless a criminal act is being committed.

The pro-active net vacuuming approaches that the NSA has been using mean that by definition there are continual invasions of privacy in the hopes of eventually catching someone in a criminal act.

Our best defense against terrorism would be to end the acts of empire that encourage it, but our administration will never think of that. Instead they will continue to shred the Constitution.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Tweekster]

Do you even know what a snuff film is?

Re:Net Neutrality

[skink1100]

You're missing the point here. The Internet is not like a Big Truck that you can just dump stuff into. It's a Series of Tubes.

S

Re:Net Neutrality

[Mr. Slippery]

I am assuming you don't count http://ogrish.com/ ? There is undoubtedly a lot of killings and deaths posted there.

Yes, and those are not snuff films. A snuff film is not just a film made of someone dying, plenty of deaths have been caught on film or video over the years. A snuff film is (hypothetically) someone dying explictly so that a film of it can be made and sold - i.e., if they ran out of film, they wouldn't kill the guy until they reloaded the camera.

Here's that Snopes link one more time: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/snuff.htm.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have the right to keep and bear arms, "bad guys" may have guns.

And bear arms! Did you think about that one? Terrorists with bear arms insted of human ones? They'd knock you head right off. None of that freedom for me, nosiree, bring in the telescreens boys...

Re:Net Neutrality

[Ceriel Nosforit]

Snuff films are not real.

And then you link to Snopes... Snopes! Snopes is a worthless piece of shit when it comes to reliable info, and they say so right out on their site. Had you read it, you wouldn't be suggesting Snopes is fact.

Re:Net Neutrality

[gstoddart]

So for the rest of the world US net neutrality laws don't matter so much. For those of us in the US, they matter a great deal, even when the traffic starts overseas.

Given how much packet traffic routes through the US, lack of net neutrality there could cause foreign traffic to be slowed as they won't have paid the toll to the US carriers.

A popular service which isn't in the US could conceivably be affected by this.

Cheers

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

If you over tax the Corps, who make jobs and build these power plants that you seam to hate, they will no longer produce these goods for you.

The rich must be rich, do not try to tax them down too the poor.

This sounds like the old Laffer curve argument from the 1980s. Yes, if taxes are too high, many people will stop producing, but the evidence suggests we're all well to the left side of the curve (even here in Scandinavia, where the state sector is about half the economy). Historically, even the extreme case of the top UK marginal income tax rate, which peaked at 99% in the 1970s, did not push the UK tax system as a whole into the right side of the curve (because the lower rates which applied to the overwhelming majority of people were far more reasonable), even if it did lead to a relatively large number of tax exiles (but even with today's relatively low income tax rates, there are still tax exiles).

All in all, it is impossible to perfectly equalise wealth amongst the population, but the degree of levelling found in the world's most equal states (e.g. here in Scandinavia) is not demonstrably damaging to overall economic development, so it's reasonable to say that most countries could be made far more equal, without any adverse consequences. More simply put, in most if not all of the world, there is considerable scope to increase taxes on the rich (and middle/high income groups), without causing any harm.

Re:Net Neutrality

[mr_mischief]

That's entirely true in the short term and a very good point.

Eventually routes which run past the U.S. instead of through it would be built and configured. That would be good for the rest of the world and bad for the U.S. telcos (and U.S. government spooks, presumably). If it's bad for the bottom line of greedy, shortsighted telcos, it may have a snowball effect of more negative consequences on the customers of those telcos.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Knuckles]

Thanks! I've been waiting for that since I read the first part of the book. (A few years ago out of interest for what these people are raving about on /.)

Re:Net Neutrality

[Knuckles]

Snuff films are not real [snopes.com]

While nothing has changed about the general gist of this article, it is not entirely true anymore. After the simple definition you quoted, they further refine and then end with

A psychopath who tortures and murders solely to satisfy his personal demons but who videotapes the event to create a reliveable record of the experience has produced a snuff film.

Using that definition, their strong statement

No snuff films. Some clever fakes, yes. But no real product.

is not true anymore since the "Rotenburg Cannibal".

Important note...

[RyanFenton]

...The cost of the service is 5 euros per month,...

It looks like it is at least a quasi-commercial darknet.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Important note...

[Harodotus]

While I have not of course RTFA, I would thihnk that charging comercially for the service is nessesary to keep it from becoming a spammer tool.

Re:Important note...

[Jugalator]

And of course also to pay for the bandwidth. One of the points with it is to reduce the bandwidth loss one will see in e.g. TOR, which comes with absolutely no guarantees of high bandwidth proxies, and is actually very slow for many P2P services. But solving that problem costs a lot of money. On the other hand, that makes this solution centralized, which opens up a large box of security issues on its own, like requiring a trusted single third party, additionally easily targettable by an organization.

Re:Important note...

[70Bang]

There's very little in the actual document which isn't in the published article when it comes to cost.

...I would thihnk that charging comercially[sic] for the service is nessesary to keep it from becoming a spammer tool...

Have you been living on Gilligan's Island?

5eu/month is, as pointed out in the FA, at the current exchange rate: $6.359.

Before Scotty Richter was castrated, he was bringing $2M into his office, yes, two million U$ monthly. And he wasn't the king of the mountain.

Can you explain how $6.359/month going to make a spammer think twice about using the service? Particularly when you consider the anonymity. No more looking for open proxies & relays.

They pay far, far, far more than that to set up shop in China, then send all of that crap back to the US. Most spam originates from the US as the 2003 U-CAN-SPAM law[1] basically gave them free reign, but the big boys still rely upon China.

Here are the top 200 spammers responsible for 80% of the crap which is dropped in your inbox.
Some of these guys (e.g. Ralsky) have substantial setups in their basements or an office (when they-he aren't|isn't getting caught running around in nothing but a black thong -- yes, there's a picture of it in an anti-spam archive.

But seriously. How do you think ~$6/month is going to stop a spammer. I'm not trying to present a loaded question here. I really do want to know your perspective on this because you may have insights no one else has considered.

The only way I can see this not becoming a spam haven is if there's a volume limit for that price and you have to pay $x/volume for each increment after that.

I'm all ears.

_______________________________
[1] Very effective, wouldn't you say? Has your volume of spam decreased (without human intervention to separate the wheat from the chaffe?)

Re:Important note...

[aiken_d]

Spammers use free and hijacked services because they get shut down a lot. Suppose some spammer can get 10,000 emails out using a commercial darnket before the account gets TOS'd. Even if they can get 100,000 emails out before having to spend another $6, that still destroys the economics of spamming.

Unless you're suggesting that the darknet is soft on spam and won't shut down spammer accounts.

-b

Re:Important note...

[Sippan]

However, it's apparently free of charge for Swedish residents - until the upcoming elections. A very interesting way of fishing for votes =)

Re:Important note...

[tehcyder]

Before Scotty Richter was castrated

Wow, did the militant wing of /. take direct action then?

Re:Important note...

[Procyon101]

This is why email is an obsolete protocol. I cannot believe we stick to these flawed protocols and bitch about the consequences.

Re:Important note...

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of us that understands Swedish it's possible to read that smtp:s are blocked in Realakks VPN and they ain't providing the users with any own server to solve the problem...

From https://www.relakks.com/faq/qna/
      SMTP-server
      F: Har ni någon SMTP-server jag kan använda eftersom min egen SMTP-server inte fungerar över RELAKKS?
      S: Nej, tyvärr kan vi i dagsläget inte erbjuda någon SMTP-server.

In English:
      SMTP-server
      Q: Do you have any SMTP-server I can use because my own SMTP-server won't work over RELAKKS?
      A: No, unfortunatly we cannot provide any SMTP-server at this time...

So spamming through this darknet won't be a problem, at least not yet... /fegis

Ahem

[Umbral Blot]

And how is this different from Tor or Freenet?

Re:Ahem

[Raul654]

Tor has three intermediate hops between you and the destination; this only has one - so you get lower latency. Also, with Tor, your download speed is the minimum of the 4 intermediate connections' bandwidths. If one of those people happens to be a dial up user, you will be getting dial-up speeds.

Re:Ahem

[Canordis]

Although this is better for speed, isn't it bad for anonimity? Traffic that has been over four hosts is harder to trace back than traffic that has hopped over a single host.

Re:Ahem

[kistel]

That means, you are introducing a single point of "failure": if things turn really bad (by some definition) the authorities only have to go to one place to collect all personal data. What we don't know currently is that how much personal data it is, i.e. could you or your IP (the real one) be traced back later. They'd certainly need to provide more information on this before people do start to sign up massively (I mean, those who care about this). Highly interesting, though.

Re:Ahem

[ichigo 2.0]

It's located in Sweden, so that's not a problem.

Re:Ahem

[paulmac84]

This is what they're saying on their website:

RELAKKS is a company incorporated in Sweden. The service is basically a Swedish broadband subscription offered over the Internet. This means that the legal framework mainly consists of the The Electronic Communications Act 2003 389. What will this mean if:

Swedish authorities or,
Other organization or individuals demands access to information protected by RELAKKS?

RELAKKS Safe Surf enjoys the strongest legal protection possible under Swedish Law because of the service type (pre-paid flat-rate service). This means that RELAKKS do not have to keep an ordinary customer database (to be able handle transactions etc.). This is of importance if forced to hand over information.

If Swedish authorities can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have a case for demanding subscription information from RELAKKS (they have to be of the opinion that if convicted the user will be imprisoned fined not enough). .

RELAKKS then have to hand over the subscription information entered by you (but thats all). RELAKKS do not store any subscribtion information about you except what you entered yourself when signing up for the RELAKKS Safe Surf service.

For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over traffic data including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment.

Regarding inquires from other parties than Swedish authorities RELAKKS will never turn over any kind of information.

So as long as the Swedish government can prove beforehand that you will be convicted, then they'll hand over the data, otherwise it's no-go. And as for non-Swedish authorities, Relakks say they won't give them anything.

Re:Ahem

[Bobosan]

If you're in that much trouble that they NEED to find you, believe Me, they will find you. Be it 1 hop, or 4 hops, it doesn't matter. Sure, I'd rather trust a Sweedish company for my sense of peace rather than Tor. At least you know where your hops are going with this. With Tor, it's a good idea, but what if the governemnt was running massive tor routers, sniffing packets from whatever comes across their electronic doorstep? You see, that is the weakness of Tor, besides it's speed. You need a trusted source to begin with. If you don't, it will auto-build the network as time goes on as it finds a node. But still, if one of those nodes are packet-sniffing everything, then all is for naught. Either way, if anything 'bad' happens to you, you'll still be just as screwed, but hey, at least you'll have more bandwith and less latentcy.

Re:Ahem

[larytet]

check gomyplace.com
install an open source client and allow remote restricted/unrestricted access to file(s) on your PC/Linux/Mac. Just you and open reverse proxy.

Re:Ahem

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

They'd have to want you pretty damn bad. Even giving you that the government could own all the hops a TOR user is using, which would be necessary to trace activity to a particular user, the government or *AA would have to admit evidence of having done so in open court, ruining their hard-won subversion of TOR as an intelligence gathering tool.

Re:Ahem

[muffen]

Important to note though is the fact that if you are dealing with copyright violations only, you will get a pretty huge fine for swedish standars, but you will _not_ get sent to prison. This means that if you want to use this service for downloading music/movies, unless there is a change of Swedish law there is no chance that they will be forced to give out any information.

Re:Ahem

[hweimer]

So as long as the Swedish government can prove beforehand that you will be convicted, then they'll hand over the data, otherwise it's no-go. And as for non-Swedish authorities, Relakks say they won't give them anything.

Except that Swedish authorities are known to violate the law if they like it.

Re:Ahem

[John.Thompson]

Bobosan wrote:

what if the governemnt was running massive tor routers, sniffing packets from whatever comes across their electronic doorstep? You see, that is the weakness of Tor, besides it's speed. You need a trusted source to begin with.

AFAIK, only the first tor router in the chain knows the originating IP address. And if that happens to be running on a machine you control, how will any subsequent tor router discover it?

Re:Ahem

[paulmac84]

Except that Swedish authorities are known to violate the law if they like it.

Fair point. If Relakks were forced to release their logs to a foreign authority, would there be sufficient detail to take a prosecution against a non-Swedish subscriber in a non-Swedish court? (Given that Relakks state that they will keep only the minimum required by Swedish law and that the burden of proof may well be higher in overseas courts).

Re:Ahem

[Dread_ed]

Just because they are a Sweedish Government doesn't negate the "government" part of what they are. Just because they say that they need these assurances before they subpoena data doesn't mean that this is how the system will work.

The trademark and seeming compulsion of all governments is ability to completely ignore what they commit to, may times without real recourse. Sure public outcry can be harsh, but no one responsible goes to jail. Selective enforcement, coercion by litigation or force, and antithetical movements within the government itself could result in this "darknet" becoming the largest honeypot in history.

Re:Ahem

[the_REAL_sam]

How do you propose that there is only one hop in between, for instance, San Francisco or Buenos Aires or Moscow and Sweden? (or whereever it is their server is hosted?)

Use the traceroute command to their proxy server and that will tell you how many hops there are between you and their VPN-tunnelled proxy.

Incidentally, the feedback from that traceroute informs you just how many intermediate hops could be ratting you out by silently double-forwarding your packets to an NSA-style Big Blue.

Right?

Re:Ahem

[Raul654]

One logical hop; any wide-area-connection has (almost by defintion) more than one physical hop. Yeesh... picky picky.

Re:Ahem

[Valdrax]

"...[T]he government or *AA would have to admit evidence of having done so in open court, ruining their hard-won subversion of TOR as an intelligence gathering tool."

Welcome to the US! You must be new here.

Re:Ahem

[Anonymous Coward]

imagine a laptop with weakly or unencripted account data is lost... whoopsy daisy's !

Re:Ahem

[Brother Dysk]

It should be noted that the records they hand over are of what you enter when you sign up - not anything that is at all necessarily true. Consider:

SWEDISH POLICE: Relakks! Hand over information on the user with IP x! Here are documents that prove we will imprison him for a year when we find out who he is!

RELAKKS: Here you are: a certain Mr Joseph Bloggs, number 1, 1st Street, Anytown, USA.

SWEDISH POLICE: Crap.

(I know this is actually complicated by little things like paying by credit card where they either need your real name, or your bank needs to believe a fake one...)

Re:Ahem

[the_REAL_sam]

OK. One logical hop, many physical hops.

I don't mean to be a stickler, but it seems healthy to remember that there's more than one non-anonymous hop between the user and the proxy, since each of the intermediate routers IS a computer with all kinds of software and programs running. There's no telling what router version they run.

If they could be double-forwarding packets (100% packet logging / decrypting) then I'm inclined to keep that in the forfront of my awareness. They could (theoretically) be decrypting EVERYTHING they route.

In fact, that's precisely what the FBI's infamous "Carnivore" was made to do. It supposedly require(s/d) a warrant.

The reason I place emphasis is that it's better to be aware of the "shortcomings of encryption in the wild" than to live in a false sense of "VPN tunnel" security.

Re:Ahem

[the_REAL_sam]

(cont'd)

Unless, that is, you aren't using the net for anything they'd care about. But then I could ask why you'd use a VPN that's routed all the way to Sweden and back.

swedish ip's

[viniosity]

Basically, this gives users the advantage of a Swedish IP address from anywhere in the world.

That's what I call massaging the numbers!

(Unfortunately,) I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waiter.

Re:swedish ip's

[Anonymous Coward]

Ba-dum dish! Wahh-Wahh Waaah!

Re:swedish ip's

[nacturation]

Be sure to tip the chef, otherwise you might be borked.

Re:swedish ip's

[faragon]

I know you were kidding, anyway, in most european countries, contracting Tele2 services, you get a swedish IP. My sister has Tele2 as her ISP at Barcelona (Spain), and his IP is reported as swedish. As curiosity, there are many web pages that ban the access depending on your country (G.W. Bush anyone?).

Question?

[Cherita Chen]

If it is commercial, couldn't the company' records be subpoenaed (in a worst case scenario) by state/local/etc authorities? If so, I would think that would spell even worse trouble for a user.

Re:Question?

[kickedfortrolling]

I think part of the point is that sweedish law gives much higher burdens of proof for requesting such info. TFA gives some interesting (but maybe unreliable given US law's recent incursions) info about the law they rely on

Re:Question?

[Alpha830RulZ]

Quite possibly, but the facts that its: 1) a different country, with a separate legal system that seems to deliver what the US constitution promises 2) A European Union country, which has demonstrated a much less media industry friendly policy and 3) a different judicial system, so that US laws don't apply, and US legal precedents won't have much weight suggest to me that it will offer quite a bit of protection. A terrorist might get caught up in the legal web, but the RIAA will have their costs raised by a couple of orders of magnitude, and Jesus, that's alright with me (cue guitars...)

Re:Question?

[dcapel]

Records? What Records?!

Re:Question?

[mincognito]

If it is commercial, couldn't the company' records be subpoenaed (in a worst case scenario) by state/local/etc authorities?

Records? What records?

Re:Question?

[tmk]

They could if there were records.

Re:Question?

[dcapel]

Re:Question? (Score:2)
  by dcapel (913969) on Tuesday August 15, @02:01AM (#15908566)
(http://wot.narg.googlepages.com/)
Records? What Records?!

Re:Question?
  (Score:2)
  by mincognito (839071) Alter Relationship on Tuesday August 15, @02:01AM (#15908567)
(http://thegreennotebook.blogspot.com/)

  If it is commercial, couldn't the company' records be subpoenaed (in a worst case scenario) by state/local/etc authorities?

  Records? What records?

Ok, you are either copying me (your post id is one larger) or that is plain SCARY.

Re:Question?

[mincognito]

Re:Question? (Score:2) by dcapel (913969) on Tuesday August 15, @02:01AM (#15908566) (http://wot.narg.googlepages.com/) Records? What Records?! Re:Question? (Score:2) by mincognito (839071) Alter Relationship on Tuesday August 15, @02:01AM (#15908567) (http://thegreennotebook.blogspot.com/) If it is commercial, couldn't the company' records be subpoenaed (in a worst case scenario) by state/local/etc authorities? Records? What records? Ok, you are either copying me (your post id is one larger) or that is plain SCARY.

Re:Question?

[Jugalator]

Quick translation from their Security FAQ:

What do this law [of Swedish electronic communication; 2003:389] say when it comes what Swedish government agencies or others request access to the information protected by RELAKKS?

When it comes to Swedish law enforcement agencies, RELAKKS has the same rights and obligations as a regular ISP with two important differences.

1. RELAKKS uses advance payments, which implies RELAKKS does not need to follow a traditional subscriber register. This is of great importance due to what kinds of customer information RELAKKS can disclose.

If Swedish agencies can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have legal support in requesting the user information from RELAKKS (the penalty has to in this case be greater than fines), RELAKKS need to disclose the subscriber details you as a user has submitted.

2. RELAKKS does not save customer details beyond those you have given yourself when signing up for the service (you can also change these details as long as you're a paying customer). If you don't proceed using the service, RELAKKS will delete your user account.

The details Swedish agencies can request beyond user account details (see above) are so called traffic information. These are protected by a much stronger legal protection. To disclose these, the crime needs to have a penalty of at least jailtime in two years.

I understand it that it's business and laws as usual here too, of course, but if they're enforced of leaving out user details, I wonder what exact differences their unconventional subscriber register has compared to a regular one. They don't seem to go into detail of that, and I'd guess that is the most interesting part here.

Re:Question?

[monoqlith]

In the late 17th Century, Newton and Liebniz came up with Calculus almost simultaneously.

Now, in the 21st century, we have 'dcapel' and 'mincognito' with identical, +1 Insightful Slashdot posts simultaneously.

I call that progress.

It's now time for you two to sue the pants off of each other for copyright infringement.

Ready, set, call your lawyers...now!

Re:Question?

[mincognito]

um, that was supposed to be funny but i forgot to copy the formatting. but seriously, that was an amazing coincidence. 1 in a 1,000,000. other people win the lottery, i simultaneously post the same message to slashdot as dcapel.

Re:Question?

[Jugalator]

Hmm, related to the subscriber register, I see right now that to trial the service until the election, you need to provide a: Name (which I suppose one could fake.. I wonder if there's any implications for that), any username of choice, a mail address (that can of course be quite anonymous or hard to reach; plenty of those exist), and password. Nothing about street addresses, or even country. The other thing is then probably IP address logs being kept, or not...? Not sure here. But I can clearly see what they're talking about now about their registered details, that one can also change at any time.

Re:Question?

[evilviper]

Ok, you are either copying me (your post id is one larger) or that is plain SCARY.

In other words...

    DUPE! DUPE! DUPE!

Okay, everyone can mod him down (-1 Redundant) now, for being a fraction of a second slower than you to submit.

You should be happy that this is nothing major. I heard an American sniper tell a story of when he was assigned to kill a Vietnamese sniper. The American's bullet went straight down the scope of the Vietnamese sniper's riffle, and killed him. If the American had pulled the trigger just a bit slower, it would have been the other guy telling the exact same story.

Re:Question?

[Threni]

So you've not heard of groupthink then? The hundredth monkey? Roswell! Aliens? ALIENS!!

Re:Question?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thing happened in private ryan.

Re:Question?

[mgblst]

Well, to anyone with any basic physics knowledge that is not true, unless they were at point-blank range.

The number of events acting on the bullet are huge, and the chance that they would have a similar affect on the bullet going either way are almost impossbile. This is after assuming the guns are pointed at the same location? Ridiculous.

Re:Question?

[RobbieGee]

I heard an American sniper tell a story

Send it to Mythbusters :-)

Re:Question?

[complete loony]

It would have been better if you'd replied to his original post instead..

Re:Question?

[evilviper]

I have absolutely, positively, no idea what you are trying to say, here. I can only assume you misunderstood what I said, and are responding to something entirely different.

Well, to anyone with any basic physics knowledge that is not true,

WHAT is not true?

and the chance that they would have a similar affect on the bullet going either way are almost impossbile.

What affect?

Re:Question?

[gkhan1]

Actaully, this is not true. Newton developed Calculus WAY before Leibniz did, he was basically done in 1671 and it took Leibniz more than a decade longer (even though it is his notation and words we use today). The point is that Newton didn't publish until much, much later, so this remarkable mathematical technique that would change how people do mathematics forever was known only to him. The remarkable thing about that story isn't that they came up with it simultaneously (they didn't), but that they did it independently of each other. It shows that during the second half of th 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, two giants walked the earth, two of the perhaps five most intelligent men in history. It is, truly, an extraordinary thing.

And, oh yeah, they couldn't stand eachother.

Re:Question?

[evilviper]

Send it to Mythbusters :-)

Why? So they can spend 3 weeks methologically "proving" that guns can't possibly work?

Re:Question?

[cloricus]

A minor correction. The sniper in the movie would have taken several more seconds to fire a kill shot excluding any flukes. I suggest at least two seconds to make sure the sights were lined up and breathing was correct and that shot probably would have missed over the distance simply because of the rush of having some one else aiming at you and not doing any of the usual checks which take longer. The book may differ.

Re:Question?

[mgblst]

I was talking about this part of your comment:

I heard an American sniper tell a story of when he was assigned to kill a Vietnamese sniper. The American's bullet went straight down the scope of the Vietnamese sniper's riffle, and killed him. If the American had pulled the trigger just a bit slower, it would have been the other guy telling the exact same story.
 
A little of topic, sure.

Re:Question?

[evilviper]

Same thing happened in private ryan.

Exactly what I hate about "Based on a True Story". Disney is the worst of them all (See: )

Anything "Based on a True Story" is 99% fiction, and 1% facts, and that 1% is usually just details like names of individuals and places, even though they probably don't match the appearance of the people/places whos names they have used.

Speilberg openly admits the sniper scene in Saving Private Ryan is based on the (anachronistic) Vietnam-era story of Carlos Hathcock, which I relayed (who knew it would get modded up?).

Re:Question?

[Supersonic1425]

that happens more often than you might think. sometimes the flicker of light that a sniper rifle lens reflects is the only thing you can see, and therefore the only thing an enemy sniper can aim for.

Re:Question?

[evilviper]

I knew you were talking about the Sniper story. However, these unnamed forces of yours, which act in unnamed ways, on unnamed objects, in unnamed directions, preventing unnamed conclusion from possibly happening... remain elusive.

And, more importantly, the story (of Carlos Hathcock) remains true, whether you have any knowledge of physics or not.

Re:Question?

[RobbieGee]

I was thinking more in the lines of them trying to blow one gun up with the other and if said target would allow the person behind it to be killed from the resulting debris.

I accept that the chance of hitting the barrel entrance is very small, but people win the lottery as well. What is less convincing is that a bullet down said barrel can kill the person holding the gun, seeing as how not even a welded shut shotgun will do the trick.

Re:Question?

[mgblst]

OK, I am not doubting that the story is true, I am doubting the conclusion that if the other sniper had fired first, a similar result would have ensued.

The unnamed forces I am talking about are wind, gravity, spin... a thousand other forces have small effects, that are significant depending on the distance between the two snipers. All these forces added together would mean that there is no way that both snipers bullets would end in each snipers gun barrel.

This conversation has gone on way too long. If you are still misunderstanding me, then too bad.

Re:Question?

[MightyYar]

I think the other poster probably mis-read your original post and thought that you were claiming the bullet went down the other sniper's BARREL, not SCOPE.

Re:Question?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly, it seems that Archimedes was close to The Calculus when the Roman soldier killed him. See http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/ for more. What the world would have been like if Rome's military empire building had not held it back for centuries - in this case more than 1000 years - is anybody's guess but it is one reason such emipires should be resisted even today: far from being the pinicle of civilisation, empires are the ultimate barbarians.

Re:Question?

[evilviper]

All these forces added together would mean that there is no way that both snipers bullets would end in each snipers gun barrel.

Who said anything about going down the gun barrel? You even quoted me correctly:

The American's bullet went straight down the scope of ...

If you are still misunderstanding me, then too bad.

Learn to read, then learn to write coherent sentences.

Re:Question?

[evilviper]

You're the second person now, who has misread "scope" as barrel.

Re:Question?

[mwvdlee]

Perhaps the records that Relakks claims only need to be handed over when there is a possibility on 2+ years imprisonment under Swedish law?

There are records, Relakks implies so themselves. It's just that Relakks claims to not hand them over readily.

Considering how effective the *AA's have been at getting access to private information based solely on completely meaningless evidence (a screen printout with filenames that look like copyrighted material), I have to wonder how easy it would be for the Swedish *AA-a-like to make up a bogus claim which could potentially get somebody imprisoned for 2 years.

Re:Question?

[Bromskloss]

I think the other poster probably mis-read your original post and thought that you were claiming the bullet went down the other sniper's BARREL, not SCOPE.

Now wouldn't _that_ be something?! Perhaps you could even shoot it out again, killing the first shooter with his own bullet. ;-)

Re:Question?

[jayloden]

It was marine sniper Carlos Hathcock that you're thinking of.

Re:Question?

[v1]

Of course there are records. Even a "pay as you go" service still has to have contact with its customers in some way. Even if you have a disposable pre-pay cell phone the company still has to put an ESN (serial number) on the phone for their account tracking. With phones, when your prepaid phone runs out you simply throw it away and buy another one with more minutes. Here, you are staying with the service through each renewal, this makes you much easier to find. It would be akin to you wanting your cell phone calls to be totally anonymous but still going to radio shack once a month and cutting them a check.

Best scenario I suppose, you would stop down to the local office with an envelope of cash and your account number into the darknet and nothing more.

I am wondering how you are connected to the darknet though. I can only assume you have a standard internet connection and route into and through the darknet and exit somewhere else, a bit like Tor. If not, if the customers have a dedicated line into the darknet, that would be optimal for initial privacy and bandwidth, but now you have a hard connection to their network and this alone makes you easy to spot. They may not be looking for you, but they can narrow down the list of suspects really quick and your name will be on that list. That gives them quite an advantage to violate your privacy. From there, traffic analysis on your internet connection could identify you even if the traffic is encrypted.

Re:Question?

[mindstrm]

This is interesting.. all these factors you speak of (gravity, wind).. imagine how accurate a sniper could be if they could learn to accurately guage for, and compensate for these things!

Professional sharpshooters can knock the dits out of playing cards at quite a distance... hitting a scope is about the same thing.

Odds are if one professional sniper could make the shot, the other one could too, conditions being the same for both (same time, same place).

Re:Question?

[finkployd]

This conversation has gone on way too long. If you are still misunderstanding me, then too bad.

For the purposes of this argument that you started, it would help to have a basic understanding of firearms. Here is a quick guide:

Scope: The thing you look through to see stuff
Barrel: The long part the bullet goes through when you pull the trigger

It is within the realm of possibility that both could have fired in such a way that each bullet ended up in the other's scope. Unlikely, but so is getting hit by lightening twice and that has happened to a few people.

Finkployd

Re:Question?

[muffen]

Breaking copyright laws in Sweden for non-financial gain does not result in any prison sentence.

Re:Question?

[Savantissimo]

Leibniz had apparently had some news of Newton's thinking and IIRC seems to have read an unpublished paper by Newton that had some hints. On the other hand, Newton's mathematical formalism and clarity of thought regarding calculus were much inferior to Leibniz's. Newton had not published this most important discovery despite having many years to do so, and so had cut himself off from the community of scientific endeavor, despite his later use of the Royal Society and other scientific contacts to attack Leibniz.

Newton did a handful of big things - laws of motion and universal gravitation (although these were building on the work of others more than is generally seen); color and light (although his corpuscular theory was not really even half right - photons aren't anything like Newton's corpuscules), and the reflector telescope (which didn't really work very well at the time). That's pretty much it, aside from the politics and the alchemy.

Hooke and Leibniz each did far more than Newton, and were better men intellectually and personally - and perhaps because of that, Newton destroyed the work of one and did his best to destroy the reputation of the other.

Re:Question?

[RobbieGee]

Ah, now that makes a lot more sense. My bad.

Re:Question?

[ShooterNeo]

The sniper's name was Carlos Hathcock, and his opponent happened to be a woman.

Re:Question?

[Zelbinian]

Well, to anyone with any basic physics knowledge that is not true, unless they were at point-blank range.

To anyone with basic comedic knowledge, that was a joke. :p

Re:Question?

[orielbean]

For those of you who think the sniper story is implausible - keep in mind that the scope's glass lens is probably the only thing that would reflect much light in the sniper & his gear. It would be a natural target for an opposing soldier to spot. The timing thing sure is creepy though...

Re:Question?

[mwvdlee]

Which only means the local **AA will have to make bigger accusations and provide some more meaningless evidence to make them seem plausible (the quality of the evidence isn't called into question until a trial commences, after they obtained a legal order to get your personal information).
I'm not knowledgable of Swedish law, but this is pretty much how it works in most of the western world.

Re:Question?

[_Swank]

you probably got modded up because you lied about your relation to the story, essentially claiming that you heard the story directly from the source ('I heard an American sniper tell a story...'), when it appears that you absolutely did not. but good job pointing out how distasteful disney's disney based-on-a-true-stories are being 99% fiction, 1% facts.

Re:Question?

[SpiritusGladius1517]

And, oh yeah, they couldn't stand eachother.

Wernstrom: And what will you be presenting this evening, grandpa?
Farnsworth: Let's just say it'll put you young whippersnappers in your place!
Wernstrom: I just hope it's not as lame as that death clock you presented last year.
Farnsworth: Uh, last year, you say?
Wernstrom: That's right.
Farnsworth: Oh, my! Did it put you young whippersnappers in your place?
Wernstrom: Hardly! We laughed until our teeth fell out. Come along, Cinnamon.
Farnsworth: Oh, dear, I'll have to invent something new in the next ten minutes. Perhaps some sort of death clock.

Re:Question?

[gkhan1]

Been reading the Baroque Cycle, have we? ;)

You are drastically underestimating the genius of Newton and the influence he would have on science. Saying "Newton did a handful of big things - laws of motion and universal gravitation (although these were building on the work of others more than is generally seen)" is like saying "Yeah, Einstein fooled around with physics, but really anyone who studied Planck and Maxwell could figure out that stuff".

He didn't just develop "laws of motion" and figure out "universal gravitation". As you said, this had been worked on by many people before. What Newton did that was so extraordinary was that he was able to, with four simple laws, explain EVERYTHING. He explained why Galileos balls fell like they did, he was able to explain Keplers four laws (which took Kepler 17 years to figure out), he was able to explain how the earth was kept in orbit around the sun, he was able to explain why the moon circled the earth. You have to realise the enourmous scientific breakthrough of being able not only to explain planets and apples movements, but to actually realise and prove that they were the same force!

After Newton, most people were of the opinion that physics was basically done! The rest was small stuff, maybe clarify exactly how the laws worked in fluids, or figure out that magnetism stuff. In the 19th century, students were actually advised not to study physics, because since Newton had finished it, it wasn't really a subject for the future.

Newtonian mechanics reigned as completely unchallenge for 180 years! 180 years! Only in 1864 with James Clerk Maxwells equations did a seed of doubt become planted, but there would be no other theory for another forty years. Between 1687 and 1905, Newton had not ever been even slightly modified. I mean, imagine that. In the modern world there is general relativity and quantum physics, but they change all the time, with string theory and m-theory, and the accelarating universe and whatnot. Not so with Newton, his theories remained, completely intact. They were that good.

A wonderful quote from Lagrange (who inarguably knew more about this stuff than us two) is "Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish". Turns out he weren't entirely correct, but you can hear in that quote that impact that Newton had had. He had explained how the world worked. All of it. Simple as that.

This is not even mentioning all the other amazing stuff that he did, the optics, the telescopes (which were indeed the greatest telescopes of it's day, and is still in wide use today), etc. Yeah, I agree, Hooke was a genius, but what did he do that was comparable to Newton? Discovered and coined the word "cell"? Hooke's law of elasticity? Assorted discoveries in Biology? His architetural feats? That doesn't even come close to Newton.

And so what if he was an asshole? Sure he treated both Hooke and Leibniz (and pretty much the rest of the western world) like shit, but does that mean his scientific discoveries are somehow worth less?

Bottom line, Newton completely changed how we view the world. Him and Einstein, those are the only two that can make a claim on explain the System of the World.

Re:Question?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thing happened in private ryan.

And in "Eraser" (which came out YEARS before Private Ryan)

Re:Question?

[Fujisawa Sensei]

I suggest you actually study basic physics and engineering before saying "Hooke and Leibniz each did far more than Newton".

Re:Question?

[autophile]

Slashdot: the only place a discussion on darknets can turn into an argument about historical calculus.

--Rob

Re:Question?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, he Hathcock and she doth not?

Re:Question?

[Anonymous Coward]

"He explained why Galileos balls fell like they did"

*snerk*

Re:Question?

[MBGMorden]

Don't know to what degree you were joking, but you can't "shoot it out" again, even if it were neatly placed in the barrel ahead of time :). The gun isn't designed to move two bullets, and the increased chamber pressure would lead to an explosive failure either in the barrel (bad for the shooter) or the action (even worse for the shooter). Even a plug of dirt in the barrel can cause this.

Re:Question?

[EvilMagnus]

Dear G. Khan,

I came to this topic looking for a discussion on hot Swedes downloading porn, hopefully with some hyperlink thingies.

Instead, I find the most erudite defence of Sir Isaac Newton I have ever read.

Thank you.

Yours, et&,

E. Magnus.

Re:Question?

[sploxx]

The existence of slashbots has been confirmed!

Re:Question?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that Newton didn't publish until much, much later, so this remarkable mathematical technique that would change how people do mathematics forever was known only to him.

Guess he didn't know that calculus wants to be free.

Re:Question?

[gkhan1]

You're welcome
.
.
.
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.
.
.
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(the other guy started it!)

Re:Question?

[Cally]

What Hooke was, was desperately unlucky to live at the same time as Newton. Offset his life 50 years either way and he'd be much better known.

Re:Question?

[networkBoy]

I understand your admiration of the two, but I would propose that Tesla is easily in the same eschelon when it comes to electro-magnetic forces. Mind the world said AC was useless prior to Tesla's investigations.
-nB

Re:Question?

[kidcharles]

Bah, not such a rare event, happens all the time to me. Playing Counterstrike.

Re:Question?

[Bromskloss]

Don't know to what degree you were joking

All the way, man. :-)

Re:Question?

[evilviper]

you probably got modded up because you lied about your relation to the story, essentially claiming that you heard the story directly from the source

I did in fact hear the story directly from him (the source). It was probably over a decade ago now, so I've forgotten many of the specific details.

But don't let that stop you from trolling.

Re:Question?

[Savantissimo]

Have you actually read the Principia? Newton hid the calculus he really used and instead turgidly explained everything by geometric construction. This indicates to me that he not ultimately seeking to increase shared human knowledge and that he preferred the secretive alchemical way of operating when it came to important methods that others could potentially use to compete with him. When he did finally publish work on the calculus, he made his notation and methods more obscure than the earlier-publishing Leibniz. And the Newtonian telescope really did suck at the time - nearly everybody was still using refractors for about 200 years after Newton. (Newton's design was not the first reflecting telescope design, either. The more technically advanced Gregorian design was first, although Hooke didn't actually build one until a bit after Newton's prototype.) You say: "What Newton did that was so extraordinary was that he was able to, with four simple laws, explain EVERYTHING." No, he explained many things, and people who should have known better took that to mean that he had explained far more than he really had. In truth, the claims of long-term and in-principle perfect predictability of planetary motion or other complex mechanics were never well supported and have been disproven in the past few decades. Still, many continue to act as if present theories, logic and math can answer all questions. Newton's most lasting legacy (beyond his vicious academic infighting) may be that common strain of unscientific dogmatism and certainty in many who claim to be supporters of science.

While Hooke didn't discover universal gravitation, he might have if Newton or Halley hadn't, and some believe Newton might never have refined, justified, and published books on his ideas if it hadn't been for the acrimonious argument with Hooke about optics. There is only room for at most one grand theory per generation, so not discovering universal gravitation is no certain mark of inferiority, especially when you consider that it was Hooke who came up with the inverse-square law and suggested to Newton that the motion of the planets might be a combination of circular and linear motion. As for the supposed brevity of Hooke's accomplishments: who knows what else Hooke was up to? Newton really did do his best to see that Hooke's works wore destroyed.

Nevertheless, what we do know about his accomplishments is impressive. The discovery of cells was at least as fundamental for biology as universal gravitation was for physics (though that did not really become clear until later). Hooke was in charge of demonstrations for the Royal Society and was one the foremost experimentalists of his day. Neal Stephenson in his fiction attributes the first internal combustion engine (gunpowder-powered) and designs for human-carrying winged aircraft to Hooke, although I do not know if this was accurate. Certainly he did more than you list -
Wikipedia lists Hooke's major contributions:

* First to refer to cells in living matter. 1665: Robert Hooke discovers cells in cork, then in living plant tissue using an early microscope.
* First to study fossils and hypothesize that they were extinct species.
* First to report Jupiter's Red Spot and by observing it deduce that the planet rotated.
* First to report the rotation of Mars.
* Worked out the number of vibrations of each musical note.
* Observed Lunar craters.
* Published the first book on microscopy, Micrographia.
* First to explain the shape of crystal in terms of the packing of their component parts.
* One of the first to observe a binary star.
* Postulated a wave theory of light, rejected by Newton and not re-established until about 1820 by Fresnel.
* Advocated the me

Re:Question?

[gkhan1]

First off, you are completely wrong about why Newton used geometry instead of calculus. He used geometry, not because it was some mysteries science of alchemy, he used geometry to be RIGOROUS! It is true that he had invented calculus, and it was ingenious, but it was in no way solid mathematics. Indeed, it wouldn't be until the 18th century, with developments by Cachy and Riemann and others. Newton understood this. He knew very well, that it is mathematically dodgy to deal with infinitesimals, and you know what, he was right. So instead of using calculus, a very new, poorly understood and mathematically dodgy discipline, he used instead a branch of mathematics that was old and very well understood. He used the language of Euclid. And you critizise him for this?

And it's also completely wrong to say that he disregarded calculus completely. Just look at lemmas I-IV of book 1 (and yes, I have read it, you obviously haven't), where he places parralellograms under a curve and let their width diminish to zero and their number to infinity. Sound like any theorem you might recognize? Since you probably don't know enough math to figure it out, I'll just tell you, it's the fundamental theorem of calculus. Before spouting things like "Have you actually read the Principia?", make sure that the person you're speaking to actually haven't, and make sure that you have atleast opened the FIRST PAGE of book 1. The theorem is on THE FIRST FUCKING PAGE! Look and see for yourself. See that little image there? Compare that to this, which is how people prove the fundamental theorem of calculus nowadays, with Riemann integrals.

You're list of accomplishments from Hooke just proves my point. Did any of them even come close to being anywhere near Newtons accomplishments? He discovered craters on the moon. Meh. He discovered that Mars is really spinning. Dobule-meh. Wave theory of light? That wasn't him, that was Huygens, and nobody had proven it till Thoman Young. The only one that really comes anywhere near Newton is the inverse square law, and that claim is dubious at best. Even if he did think of it first, he just thought of it as a hypothesis, a "what-if". Newton took that law, and explained the world an how everything works.

And yes, to the 17th and 18th century mind, he did explain everything. Science was physics, it was astronomy, it was explaining why things moved the way they did. The rest of the stuff, biology, magnetism, optics, they were the small stuff that could be dealt with once you actually find out how the world works.

Also, while I don't dispute that Leibniz was Newtons intellectual equal, when it came to physics, Newton was a giant and Leibniz....well....not so much. His monadology was a nice philosophy, but can you honestly claim with a straight face that it had a millionth of the influence on the scientific world in comparison to Principia. Even Wikipedia which you quote so extensively, agrees with me. Quote, "While he may have been Newton's peer as co-discoverer of the calculus, he was not in Newton's league as a physicist and may even deserve to be ranked below his mentor Huygens". When it comes to physics, there are two giants. Einstein and Newton. They explained the world, no one else. There are a few that comes very close (most notably Maxwell and the quantum mechanics guys), but those two have no peer, and it's ridiculous to claim that Hooke and Leibniz were even close to them.

You're obviously a big Stephenson fan (obviously your main, if not only, source of information) and I like Quicksilver too. It's a good book. But even he admits that Newton and Leibniz were the best. Over and over again, he states (well, Daniel Waterhouse does) that Newton and Leibniz are the greatest. He portrays Ho

Re:Question?

[monoqlith]

In my defense I did say "almost simultaneously." I had to, of course, to make the joke work. And that's all we really care about here.

What's a dozen years between friends? Or - with the case of Liebniz and Newton - sworn enemies?

ah...

[Anonymous Coward]

this seems like good news during a time when I'm nervous after visiting the iranian president's blog page...

Re:ah...

[Zontar The Mindless]

I'm nervous after visiting the iranian president's blog page...

I'm nervous when people are nervous about standing up for themselves and saying, "Go fuck yourself, I'll read whatever I damned well like."

Re:ah...

[Xenna]

I get nervous when things world gets so tense that some people don't recognise a joke like this anymore...

X.

Re:ah...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm nervous when people are nervous about standing up for themselves and saying, "Go fuck yourself, I'll read whatever I damned well like."

What country do you live in? I live in the USA where people voted in a facist administration that thinks the Constitution is a quaint document that is exactly where it belongs in a museum. If we could wrap copper around the founding fathers we wouldn't need foreign oil. Their spinning bodies could power the country for the next thousand years. If you mod this funny you aren't paying attention.

Re:ah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so everybody is nervous now. Unfortunately the current panic rating is already at the top of the scale, so we can't nudge it up. This can only mean one thing: Time for war.

Re:ah...

[Snaller]

Its just that they don't want to read it in Guantanamo on some trumpet up charge.

Re:ah...

[fimbulvetr]

There's something about trying to get a hold of, and reading, the wrong books and me ending up imprisoned without a trial that bothers me.

Re:ah...

[JavaLord]

What country do you live in? I live in the USA where people voted in a facist administration that thinks the Constitution is a quaint document that is exactly where it belongs in a museum. If we could wrap copper around the founding fathers we wouldn't need foreign oil. Their spinning bodies could power the country for the next thousand years. If you mod this funny you aren't paying attention

1. Fascism isn't a product of the right, it's more leftist. You aren't even using the term correctly.

2. The Bush administration does not compare in ideology to Hitler nor Mussolini. By regurgitating the internet group think you add nothing to the conversation, but you do get a +5 from the other monkeys that agree with you.

3. Clinton and Bush's attempt to pass the line item veto is a much larger violation of the constitution then anything in the patriot act.

4. Yes, our founding fathers would be rolling over in their graves, but most likely it would be over congress having surrendered most of its power to the executive branch over the past 80 years. The rest of the rolling would be over social programs like welfare. When you run around quoting Ben Franklin about "Trading freedom for security", do you realize he was talking about taxes?

5. There is plenty of things the Bush administration has done that can be argued are ineffective, or just wrong. Framing your arguement with "OMG BUSH IS FACIST" is worthless.

6. Bring the pirate party to the USA!

Re:ah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a life. If they were really facists, you'd be on your way to the camp right now.

Re:ah...

[Dread_ed]

Nice post and great link. Thanks.

I especially like the illumination of the circumstances and background of Ben's quote.

Re:ah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Bush administration has a ton in common with the pre-Mussolini Italian conservatives who formed the bulk of the Fascist party. Strong emphasis on "traditional values", often with a religious bend; criticism of liberalism; and, perhaps most prominently, and absolute fixation on shadowy "external threats" used to keep the people afraid and willing to allow draconian government action they would otherwise never tolerate.

Re:ah...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing that scares me more than republicans is libertarians, except thankfully they're pretty much confined to the intarweb because it appears they don't leave their basements.

http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html

Re:ah...

[JavaLord]

The main problem with Libertarians, is that being a minority party they have to appeal to extremes. I did take some time to link the FAQ sheet you linked which stated:

There is no reason short of worship of the founders to presume that the Supreme Court is less capable than the founders.

Do we really want to compare Ruth Bader Ginsburg to George Washington? It doesn't take 'worship of the founding fathers' to presume that Washington was more capable.

Anyway, thanks for the link, I'm going to read some more of it on my commute home.

Re:ah...

[Castar]

OK, the only thing in your post I'm going to argue about is the first one.

Facism is classically placed on the far-right side of the two-dimensional political spectrum. You can certainly argue that a two-dimensional spectrum is lacking, but you can't really shoehorn Facism, as such, into a leftist world view. On the left, the authoritarian government of choice is Communism. Facism is much too concerned with corporate power and welfare to be a leftist trait.

I realize that no one likes to see their pet political views tarred with an epithet, but that doesn't mean you can redefine terms so that everything bad is automatically "leftist".

Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds

[Propaganda13]

FTA: "We got Dugg pretty hard and expect Slashdot to come visiting at any time now."

Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds

[richie2000]

Welcome! You're late. :-)

Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds

[Res3000]

RTFA! The parent isn't a flamebait...

Ok... the moderations are strange anyways. One poster can say "It's in Sweden, net neutrality doesn't affect it" and one post under that anoother says basically the same, but the first is a troll, the seconde insightful...

Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds

[Chabil Ha']

I think that there's something to be said here about that. To me it says that /. users are too lazy to go forage for their own articles and instead go cherry pick them off of digg. Why? Because the digg community picks the stories, not a handful of select people. If /. wants to continue to do things that way, I have no bones about, it's just interesting that the /. model lags behind other sites.

The one thing that I think /. has over digg is the discussions and moderation system. I was reading the comments over at digg and I felt like I was in a room full of 3 year olds (insert joke here). At least here I feel like the least meaningful and mature comments carry more relevancy than most of what I read over there.

Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds

[oKtosiTe]

That's really nice. Now change my diaper!

Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds

[tsa]

But with the 'new' moderation system Digg has in place the dialogues also get more readable, and more interesting. I already have accounts on 10 forums but I'm now considering Digg as my 11th forum. It's getting there. Just give it another year or so and Digg'll be better than /..

Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds

[ben there...]

Not trying to burn Digg, but every time I've had any discussions there, I always assumed I was talking to HS kids. The mental picture I have of every poster there is some under-16 Apple/Xbox 360 fanboy or Linux/Windows newbie. If there are more mature people there, I haven't been able to tell from their posts.

The mod system is pretty sad there too. If you post in a topic about Apple, XBox, or any other popular "community", and your post is even neutral (not fanboyish), it will be modded down instantly. That's probably why /. limits the number of mod points that are given out, so people don't just mod everything until there's a picture perfect promotion of a popular product.

Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds

[mariotwins]

Because the digg community picks the stories, not a handful of select people. Even in Digg's setup, the majority of stories that make the front page are submitted by a relatively small number of people: see here.

I agree though, reading comments at Digg is about as satisfying as gouging my own eyes out.

Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds

[tehcyder]

I was reading the comments over at digg and I felt like I was in a room full of 3 year olds (insert joke here). At least here I feel like the least meaningful and mature comments carry more relevancy than most of what I read over there.

smelly poo poo face!!!

Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds

[cayenne8]

I like to browse /. and the like with lynx at work...that way, well, it doesn't 'look' to most folks around me that I'm on the net.

Digg doesn't seem to work that well with text browsers...you can't "Digg It" on an article.....and I've seen a few other quirks....

Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds

[ZERO1ZERO]

OMG LOL!!!!! WTF ROFL!!!111 You posted a message!!!

Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds

[heson]

Its a feature of /. to let digg betatest the articles.

Re:Question? - Eliminates WIFI RIAA defense

[Anonymous Coward]

It eliminates claiming a person hijacked onto your WIFI.

Credit cards link you to the p2p site. How CONVENIENT.

Records? We don't keep no stinking records!

[WalksOnDirt]

Since they have to be able to bill you, the fact that you are a subscriber might be available if the Swedish government caves, but I doubt they will keep any records linking you to any specific traffic.

Re:Records? We don't keep no stinking records!

[Troed]

The service is pre-paid, and you're the only one entering your information.

Security

Worst case scenario is when:

For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over traffic data including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment

... and that is exactly what the "BOO TERRORISTS!"-scare is trying to accomplish now, with sentences going up to four years.

(And we all thank the almighty Fascist States of America for that)

Re:Records? We don't keep no stinking records!

[man_ls]

I'm confused as to what that means...will they be turning over your source IP at the specific point in time, will they be linking your source IP to your VPN IP at a specific point in time, will they be linking you VPN IP to your name and address at a specific point in time, or what?

Based on a very embarrassing situation I saw happen to a classmate on an overhead LCD projector, people oftentimes can accidentally download material even more illegal than copyright infringement off a P2P network without intending on it. Things such as that tend to, rightly, carry huge penalties for actual abusers and distributers the world over. That said, however, it would be a shame if this "anonymous" service was able to point a finger at F. Idiot, username FIDIOT001@EXAMPLE.COM, with RELAKKS IP of S.WE.ED.EN and Source IP of A.ME.RI.CA at TIME.

People need to know exactly what is and isn't privvy information, and the english-sweedish language gap is a fairly large one.

Re:Records? We don't keep no stinking records!

[Troed]

I'm confused as to what that means...will they be turning over your source IP at the specific point in time, will they be linking your source IP to your VPN IP at a specific point in time, will they be linking you VPN IP to your name and address at a specific point in time, or what?

My _guess_ is that they're never under any obligation to keep a record of your source IP, and thus they can never give that away.

The service is pre-paid. If they have done their homework it's up to you if you enter your real details. All you really need is a secret token of some sorts (password, certificate) and all they need is to make sure that reaches whatever means of communication you entered when they've got paid (anonymous mail, sms etc).

Note: I have no idea if that is how they've done it - if they haven't, they should. I'm sure Rick managed to get hold of a few people with security know-how in creating this service. If not, he knows where to find them .. *g*

Re:Records? We don't keep no stinking records!

[Andrzej Sawicki]

People need to know exactly what is and isn't privvy information, and the english-sweedish language gap is a fairly large one.

Security through obscurity? ;)

Re:Records? We don't keep no stinking records!

[richie2000]

with sentences going up to four years.

We're not there yet and with a bit of luck in the upcoming elections, we'll never go there. Besides, the current law stipulates a minimum of two years inprisonment, copyright infringement has a maximum penalty of two years. But yeah, the RIAAs and MPAAs want to raise the penalties to four years and lower the limits for getting access, as well as make logging mandatory (it is currently forbidden) through the data retention directive.

So it is an encrypted proxy service

[appleprophet]

I am very skeptical. My question is, how can they afford that much bandwidth? Given that their target market consists largely of P2P users, how can they tunnel all of a heavy bittorrent user's encrypted traffic for only $6.50 a month? It sounds to me like they should get into the ISP business or file hosting business instead...

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[D14BL0]

Well, bandwidth is already overpriced. The technology costs pennies compared to what they're charging you for it. They're still making a profit charging $6.50, and you're getting an awesome deal in the process. Win-win situation, if you ask me.

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[TooMuchToDo]

Bandwidth is much cheaper in Europe then the US, depending on who you're peering/getting transit from.

-b

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you should stop basing your price estimates on what you're currently paying in USA. I currently pay roughly $10 per month for my 100 Mbit line, both directions I might add. Though I rarely get to use it all unless I'm using a domestic server.

Feels nice though to grab a DVD from Usenet in about 15-20 minutes.

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[xming]

They just have a local copy/cache of piratebay.org

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[giorgiofr]

100 Mbit/s at 10 /mo is sweet but it's not exactly *common* in Europe. Are you located in East Asia by any chance?

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[baadger]

...your definition of Europe obviously excluses the UK.

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[Troed]

He's probably swedish, some residental cooperations and city networks have got very good deals on fiber.

I can't get fiber, but I have symmetric 12/9 VDSL (of which my actual throughput, measured, is 9/9) - at ~$50/month. The uplink makes all the difference.

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[advid.net]

I would rather say:
Relakks offers a personnal gateway to Internet over VPN, along with SNAT/DNAT I guess.
(by personnal gateway I mean you don't share a public IP-address with others, good for P2P apps)

This is not a darknet as usually defined.
Neither a proxy, technically speaking.

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[Anonymous Coward]

Just following british custom here...

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[giorgiofr]

That's more like it... I have ADSL at 6, soon switching over to 12 Mbps at 30 euros/mo. Unfortunately upload speed is quite limited - I think I'm running at 512 kbps, but that's not really a problem for me, I'm not running servers under my desk. Just some online gaming with friends over my VPN :)

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[Anonymous Coward]

Well duh! Even in the UK the definition of Europe excludes the UK.

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[muffen]

100/10 Fiber in Sweden, under $45/month: http://www.bredbandsbolaget.se/portal/PRIVAT_BREDB AND_LAN_BREDBAND%2B100

24/1 ADSL in Sweden, under $30/month: http://www.glocalnet.se/tjanster/bredband/product_ 24.jsp

The two services above includes a modem either for free or very cheap, and these are services you get to your home. Bandwidth in Sweden isnt that expensive. I can add that for the 100/10 service there are much cheaper choice's, I've seen some "citynet's" offer it for less than $20/month.

I don't think they are making much money with the $6.50 pricetag, but I do believe they are making some (btw, all exhange rates I used are estimates and counted high

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[Anonymous Coward]

you can buy bandwidth at $0.20/G rate and even lower. Assuming that you do not need dedicated high performance servers this is about all the service costs. Technically one can provide such service for free with let's say 1-2G/month limitation. gomyplace reverse proxy is one of the examples. there are many others.

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[TooMuchToDo]

My mistake. I did not take into account the stranglehold BT has on you guys.

-b

Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service

[empaler]

Sweden has one of the best internet infrastructures in the world; I am actually considering moving there for various reasons - cheaper living, cheaper food, 10/10 pipe for the same I could buy a 2/½ pipe for in Denmark.

On the minus side, I'd be living in Sweden. Seriously.

Piracy really isn't all that bad.

[D14BL0]

This new political party is sure to cause a bit of panic all over the world, due to the extreme, overrated hype of piracy.

Not all piracy is a bad thing. I mean, software these days is seriously overpriced. You could teach yourself some very basic programming skills (Visual Basic, for instance), and create a program that'll do exactly what the $100+ equivilant does.

So of course people will pirate it. Why? Because it's rediculous to pay for something like that.

Then there's music. Just to let you know, piracy HARDLY hurts the musician. Considering that 90% of the sales go to the record company before the artist ever sees a penny, they're really not "losing" much at all.

Then again, sometimes piracy is a bad thing. Especially for the movie industry. Millions (if not billions) of dollars go into the making of a movie. While, yes, theater sales bring in tons of cash, DVD releases are also a huge factor in a movie's income. Downloading a movie hurts people a lot more than downloading music.

Piracy has become such an overrated "controversy" lately that it's unbarable. Look at the price of blank CDs. Did you know that you have to pay a "piracy tax" for these? Yep. All because some higher-ups think that an extra buck or two will help save a movie studio or a record company. It's batty. What if I just want to burn copies of pictures from my family vacation? Now I've gotta pay the MPAA and RIAA some extra cash for something that they don't deserve? Get real.

All these corporations think that they're helping people by attempting to foil piracy. Yes, they've got their hearts in the right places, but they're doing it all wrong. "Right track, wrong train" is a good saying for this. They really need to clean up their acts when suing people. I mean, they've gone so far as to sue old ladies who can barely turn their computer on, yet let huge pirates go unnoticed.

Why's this?

Because if they let big pirates continue doing their thing, then they get to keep on making more and more money with the "piracy taxes" and suing people left and right for WAY more than the material they've pirated is worth. They're letting people go to keep themselves in the game, which is horrible.



Also, just a little side note, to anybody who thinks the RIAA or MPAA might be knocking on your door. Go ahead and go to court, but bring up the fact that an IP address is not a person. Since your IP is the only log they have of the download (even if they have the MAC, that'll only ID a computer, not a single person), you'll win in court. And they'll lose out on a bunch of money for the court date, as well. Two-for-one, if you ask me. =D

Re:Piracy really isn't all that bad.

[Rakishi]

Piracy has become such an overrated "controversy" lately that it's unbarable. Look at the price of blank CDs. Did you know that you have to pay a "piracy tax" for these? Yep. All because some higher-ups think that an extra buck or two will help save a movie studio or a record company. It's batty. What if I just want to burn copies of pictures from my family vacation? Now I've gotta pay the MPAA and RIAA some extra cash for something that they don't deserve? Get real.

No, unlike many nations (like say Canada) only music cds have such a tax in the US.

Re:Piracy really isn't all that bad.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Not all piracy is a bad thing. I mean, software these days is seriously overpriced. You could teach yourself some very basic programming skills (Visual Basic, for instance), and create a program that'll do exactly what the $100+ equivilant does."

Erm. Okay. Let's pretend that a.) VB will do everything you need and b.) You have the expertise to do it, there's still the time investment. Can you write that VB app in a timely enough fashion to recoup that $100 expense. Chances are: Probably not. It's hard to call software overpriced in that case. I'm a Lightwave user with a talent for writing my own plugins. I still find other plugins worth purchasing. Hopefully in understanding this, you'll get my point of view.

"Then there's music. Just to let you know, piracy HARDLY hurts the musician. Considering that 90% of the sales go to the record company before the artist ever sees a penny, they're really not "losing" much at all."

Just so you know in advance, my post is not a complete rebuttal to yours. I agree with your point here, but for different reasons. The artist and/or the record label typically lose $0 in sales due to piracy. What they lose instead is potential sales. There is no way to measure whether the lack of that song for download would have earned a sale. You can count the billions of songs flying around the net every month, but you just cannot match it to an actual percentage of a drop in revenue. (This is one of the reasons the RIAA has had trouble proving P2P is a real threat AND why iTunes has sold over a hundred million songs.) What's ridiculous about the RIAA's stance on this issue is the 'open-your-mouth-and-close-your-eyes' business model. You have to pay for the album and... well you better hope you like it. No satisfaction guarantee. The ability to preview the album is limited. You just have to have faith in what you're buying. Welp, this model isn't working, hence the reason why people would go to the net, even in the days when it took up to an hour to download a single song. Of course, this is just my humble opinion, but I think the RIAA created their situation they think they're in with their crummy business model.

"Then again, sometimes piracy is a bad thing. Especially for the movie industry. Millions (if not billions) of dollars go into the making of a movie. While, yes, theater sales bring in tons of cash, DVD releases are also a huge factor in a movie's income. Downloading a movie hurts people a lot more than downloading music."

I think this is a reasonable statement. Not for the movie budgets, though. Movies are usually watched once or twice. Songs can become part of you for years. Movies, however, have an edge over music when it comes to sales value. Computers today aren't typically well geared for watching movies. Even a pirated movie still has value to the MPAA. Suppose somebody goes to the trouble to download a movie they've never purchased. Suppose Hollywood then makes a sequel to said movie, or a movie of a similar genre that the 'pirate' would probably enjoy. Is he or she really going to wait 3+ months after the release for the DVDs to arrive so he can download one at a decent quality? (I'm intentionally skipping the 'video camera in a theater' or screener copy. That's a hole in my argument I'm just not prepared for. At least I'm honest. :P) If Hollywood does their job right, they can turn that previous lost sale into a new sale. Unfortunately, their brains don't work like this. I still cannot believe they ran anti-piracy ads in the theater. I'll never forget sitting through 20 minutes of previews, watching the propganda, then hearing several people in the audience go "Wait... you can download movies from the net? How do you do that?" Heh.

Anyway, I agree with your point that DVD downloads probably do more monetary damage than MP3 downloads, at least on an individual level. I do think, though, that there's a much stronger potential to recover

Re:Piracy really isn't all that bad.

[Rollebollen]

"Since your IP is the only log they have of the download (even if they have the MAC, that'll only ID a computer, not a single person), you'll win in court." Techincally, the MAC address only IDs a specific network adapter, not the complete computer...

Re:Piracy really isn't all that bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you find software overpriced, then don't buy it. You do, most emphaticly, not have the right to copy it because you want it but don't feel like coughing up for it. If you can create the programs you need with the basic programming skills you have, then do (you may look into this little crazy idea called "Open Source" - I hear sometimes people even work together to create the programs they need). However, in the likely event that you cannot (because of time constraints, of course), pay the person that did take the time to write it for you.

As for the argument that artists don't get much of each sale, that is true. Thus, they need to shift a lot of stuff before it becomes worthwhile for them. Not getting two cents is not big deal. Not getting two cents a million times is.

IHBT, I know, but I'm pre-coffee at work and needed release.

Re:Piracy really isn't all that bad.

[Mongoose Disciple]

Not all piracy is a bad thing. I mean, software these days is seriously overpriced. You could teach yourself some very basic programming skills (Visual Basic, for instance), and create a program that'll do exactly what the $100+ equivilant does.

So of course people will pirate it. Why? Because it's rediculous to pay for something like that.

I'd be curious to hear what kinds of software you think are that trivial to create.

I can put a garden in my backyard and grow my own vegetables, but I'm still going to jail if I try to take anyone else's.

Re:Piracy really isn't all that bad.

[poot_rootbeer]

software these days is seriously overpriced. You could teach yourself some very basic programming skills (Visual Basic, for instance), and create a program that'll do exactly what the $100+ equivilant does.

Example please? I doubt that an untrained noob programmer is capable of replicating a $100+ commercial software package like MS Office or Photoshop or What-Have-You 3.0. Hell, there's a lot of brilliant people working on projects like OpenOffice and The Gimp, and they've been at it for years, and they still aren't quite there yet.

Just to let you know, piracy HARDLY hurts the musician. Considering that 90% of the sales go to the record company before the artist ever sees a penny, they're really not "losing" much at all.

"The record companies are ALREADY screwing the artist up the ass, so it's okay if I do it too!" No.

Look at the price of blank CDs. Did you know that you have to pay a "piracy tax" for these? Yep.

Nope. Or at least, not run-of-the-mill CD-Rs sold in the United States. There's the "Music CD-Rs" that cost a lot more than "Data CD-Rs" and have the piracy levy built into the price, but nobody uses those.

Go ahead and go to court, but bring up the fact that an IP address is not a person. Since your IP is the only log they have of the download (even if they have the MAC, that'll only ID a computer, not a single person), you'll win in court.

No, you probably won't. The courts aren't immune to common sense; if they prove that a computer was used for piracy and you own that computer, they're going to assume that you are responsible for that piracy unless you present a compelling case for why you are not.

Re:Piracy really isn't all that bad.

[D14BL0]

Nope. Blank CD media here in the US has a piracy tax added to it. Yeah, it's not much (and since I usually buy CDs in bulk, I get massive rebates, anyway), but it's still annoying to me that these corporations are this worried in stopping piracy that they'd hurt EVERYBODY who wants blnak media (even if it's a legit reason).

Re:Piracy really isn't all that bad.

[Rakishi]

Could you provide a link, everything I've read has said that only blank cds labeled as music cds (ie: music cd-rs) got the tax.

Re:Piracy really isn't all that bad.

[D14BL0]

Example please? I doubt that an untrained noob programmer is capable of replicating a $100+ commercial software package like MS Office or Photoshop or What-Have-You 3.0. Hell, there's a lot of brilliant people working on projects like OpenOffice and The Gimp, and they've been at it for years, and they still aren't quite there yet.

I've got a buddy I go to class with who, back in his day, wrote a program in VB that'd pull up all your network stastitics of a specific computer. A few years later, some company produced the exact same program (with just rearranged code) that was selling for about $40.

"The record companies are ALREADY screwing the artist up the ass, so it's okay if I do it too!" No.Think of it this way. The artist uses the record company to help sell their album. To get the word out. To get people interested in the artist. The record company, however, uses the artist to bring in assloads of cash for something that they only put a shiney ribbon around. If you download the music illegally, you're hurting the record company, and helping the artist. Musicians make very little money for CD sales anymore. They get more money from donations and selling stuff themselves than they get from the record company.

So, pirating music hurts the record company (which, in my opinion, they totally deserve), and helps the musician out even more than buying the CD. Sure, the artist might get a buck or two, per CD sale, but more people donwload music than buy it, and thusly, more people hear about the artist that way.

There's a SiD metal group called Machinae Supremacy that I've gotten really into lately. How'd I first hear about them? By grabbing random songs from a buddy on IRC. So, because of piracy, they got a new fan, who happened to enjoy the music so much that they actually went and bought the CD. Looks like piracy only brought these guys something good in the end.

Besides. Musicians should be doing it entirey for the music, anyway. Not the money.

Nope. Or at least, not run-of-the-mill CD-Rs sold in the United States. There's the "Music CD-Rs" that cost a lot more than "Data CD-Rs" and have the piracy levy built into the price, but nobody uses those.

Actually, the tax applies to both. The "Music" CDs are just a nametag added by the manufacturer, to try and trick a poor consumer into spending an extra buck or two. The tax still goes for both because of the fact that they're the exact same thing. Blank media that's perfect for piracy.

No, you probably won't. The courts aren't immune to common sense; if they prove that a computer was used for piracy and you own that computer, they're going to assume that you are responsible for that piracy unless you present a compelling case for why you are not.

I wouldn't even need a lawyer to explain to a judge in under five minutes how an IP address only identifies the person who's paid for the internet access, and how very possibly somebody could've parked their car outside my house and downloaded the files from my unprotected wireless router. Once the court understands how the network works, then it'll be blatantly obvious that there's no solid proof of who downloaded what. At this point, the RIAA has absolutely nothing against you, other than suspicion, which doesn't work as solid evidence in court.

Trust me. People have actually won court cases against the RIAA using the same method.

Re:Piracy really isn't all that bad.

[Brother Dysk]

Then again, sometimes piracy is a bad thing. Especially for the movie industry. Millions (if not billions) of dollars go into the making of a movie. While, yes, theater sales bring in tons of cash, DVD releases are also a huge factor in a movie's income. Downloading a movie hurts people a lot more than downloading music.

If movie studios are going bankrupt, perhaps they should stop paying idiot celebrities increasingly obscene amounts of money to act badly in their films? 75 million dollars is not unusual anymore, for a single film. Ridiculous. They DESERVE to go bankrupt, with spending that reckless.

Darknet?

[Matt Perry]

I wasn't quite sure what a Darknet was so I had to read the wikipedia article. According to wikipedia it's a network where "users only connect to people they trust". If that's the case then that's different than what the linked article in the /. summary is talking about. According to it this is "a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged." If anyone can connect, I can't trust them all. It would only take one person within the web of trust to ruin it for everyone. Besides, if data eventually has to make it to me then there's always a way to locate the destination and source.

This article seems like BS.

Re:Darknet?

[man_ls]

I think the point is that it's (1) based in Sweeden, (2) encrypted end-to-end, (3) as anonymous as you want it to be based on the information you provide to them, and (4) fairly strongly protected legally in the jurisdiction it operates in.

1 and 4 being pretty big for USians who are using it...2 for people whose ISPs filter. 3, dubiously so, as at some point they have your credit card saying that you have an account although I suppose that, if they don't store your tunnel account with your CC number, they have no way of getting to you personally.

It doesn't matter if someone nefarious is on the same link-local segment sniffing all your traffic, if they can't identify through technological means who you are, and can't compel the provider through legal means either because they didn't keep that information or just won't give it over.

Re:Darknet?

[Matt Perry]

It doesn't matter if someone nefarious is on the same link-local segment sniffing all your traffic, if they can't identify through technological means who you are, and can't compel the provider through legal means either because they didn't keep that information or just won't give it over.

What about someone nefarious at the company that you are paying? What measures are in place to prevent someone there from sniffing traffic? What's to prevent them releasing information about particular (or all) users either by negligence or malace?

As you say, all this does is concentrate your incoming/outgoing connection through a Swedish ISP. Combined with the dubious anonominity of a credit card transaction this will only make this service a sizable target.

I think the point is that it's [...] fairly strongly protected legally in the jurisdiction it operates in.

Until one asshole starts uploading/downloading child porn and then the game is up for everyone using that service including all all those credit card transaction histories.

I still think purely decentralized services like TOR are, while less than perfect, a better idea than this.

Re:Darknet?

[evilviper]

According to wikipedia it's a network where "users only connect to people they trust".

Whaaa? Wikipedia is incorrect, and you have to be stupid to blindly trust what it says? I'm SHOCKED! Shocked I say! Sadly, About.com gets closer to the mark than Wikipedia.

A darknet is really just about any VPN for elicit purposes. Some maintain privacy/secrecy between subscribing nodes, while (most) others do not.

This article seems like BS.

Or maybe you have no idea what you're talking about, which is why you had to look-up the definition of a key term in the first place.

Re:Darknet?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I got this, I'd probably TOR over Sweeden. Only trouble being, many TOR endpoints block output for P2P apps.

I also don't think that they should hand over records of anyone who is trafficking the more illegal material, honestly. They should try and shut down where it's coming from, the servers, not the guy who is sitting in his basement downloading it. Going after downloaders is like trying to stop a soaker hose from leaking with scotch tape...or, you can just turn the valve off entirely. As repulsed by it as I may be, if they're not actually producing the original content and perpetrating the abuse therein, it's mostly harmless.

Re:Darknet?

[Hobbex]

According to wikipedia it's a network where "users only connect to people they trust". If that's the case then that's different than what the linked article in the /. summary is talking about.

Well, in some sense it does fall under that defenition, since you have to trust the service provider to use it, and they are the only people you connect directly to (they act as an anonymizing proxy to talk to anybody else). Of course, having one large centralized anonymizer is not at all within the spirit of the definition, which rather means things like WASTE or Freenet where everybody has their own circle of trusted peers.

The service they are providing is usually referred to as as anonymous proxy. The reason they are using the term Darknet is probably that I have been bounced around Swedish media using the term with regards to Freenet, so it is a term that a lot people here have heard meaning "file sharing they can't stop" to them.

Re:Darknet?

[Jugalator]

Parent is right, while it offers some protection (although this is assuming the trusted company is actually trustworthy, a huge disadvantage compared to decentralized solutions like TOR) and maybe even good performance, this is a VPN tunnel from you to an ISP that relays your requests to the big web in totally unencrypted form, not a Darknet. There is also no trust involved here; they let anyone who sign up use it.

A Darknet is more like an encrypted network that is supposed to be very hard to penetrate, and where unencrypted requests and information don't leak from it. The new versions of Freenet are better example of Darknets, and the pre-0.7 version of Freenet is like one really big Darknet, just without any trust involved.

This concept lacks even more features of Darknets than that.

Re:Darknet?

[kistel]

What about someone nefarious at the company that you are paying? What measures are in place to prevent someone there from sniffing traffic? What's to prevent them releasing information about particular (or all) users either by negligence or malace?

You can always design a system that logs everything necessary to reconstruct events thus provides potential traceability. You can design one that has the only information (maybe even logged) absolutely needed for providing such a service. And you can have anything in between. What we don't know is where this service is in this aspect.

As you say, all this does is concentrate your incoming/outgoing connection through a Swedish ISP. Combined with the dubious anonominity of a credit card transaction this will only make this service a sizable target.

Call me bold, but I do think you can make it "secure" even if you have credit card payment (which is not worse (better?) in terms of traceability than any other method).

Suppose that when subscribing, you select a username/password on your own. To provide the service, they only have to know if a certain user has payed for the service - they don't have to (should not, in this case) store which transaction was that. When you connect, they check this, and associate your regular IP with another one. Since they have to keep bits moving, as long as you are connected, this association can be discovered. But if they don't log this and you disconnect, you're untraceable.

I'm sure life is not this easy, but my point is that it should be possible to set up a (centralized, for-profit) service that by design provides a level of anonimity. I hope this one is like that.

Until one asshole starts uploading/downloading child porn and then the game is up for everyone using that service including all all those credit card transaction histories.

Sadly, such jerks do and will exist. I'm afraid that only total surveillance could detect that (and - sadly again - not prevent it).

Re:Darknet?

[owlnation]

And seemingly Darknets numbers have doubled over the past 3 months...

Please. I beg you. STOP!

Slashdotters please, for the love of Linus or whomever you hold sacred, stop using Trivipedia as quoth fact. There is NO guarantee whatsoever that anything a Wikipedophile writes is true, accurate or precise. I can understand why Joe Sixpack uses Jimbo's Whacky World of Infotainment in this way, but really a Geek should know better. You might as well search Myspace for a fact.

Sorry, but I'm certain I'm not the only one who is tired of wikipedia's quality standing, and the misguided respect the site generates.

Re:Darknet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Until one asshole starts uploading/downloading child porn

You misspelt "secret writings of Scientology", HTH.

Re:Darknet?

[ajs318]

If it's all strongly encrypted end-to-end, how's anyone except a party to the transaction going to know it's child porn anyway?

Re:Darknet?

[cluke]

The scenario: Man gets busted for leering at kiddies in the park. Police search his house, find loads of dodgy stuff on his PC. Where did he get this stuff? Go to his ISP, and sub-poena his credit card records. Darknet, you say? Get the pressure on the Swedish admins. They bow to pressure, and release their customer records. By infallible police logic, all users of this service are pornographers, and are arrested. Hurrahs all round!

Couldn't happen, you say?

Re:Darknet?

[ajs318]

Which is why I firmly believe that people should only be arrested for child abuse offences if and when they actually abuse a child. Granted, that's a lot harder to prove in a court of law .....

How much further can we take the concept that words and images have some power to damage the reader's mind irreparably? Should reading car magazines be equated with speeding? Should visiting tech news sites be equated with cracking?

Re:Darknet?

[makomk]

Sorry, but Wikipedia has got it right this time (and the press release in question is the one misusing the term). Also, "Wikipedophile"? Someone please mod this person down a Troll already...

Re:Darknet?

[nmos]

How much further can we take the concept that words and images have some power to damage the reader's mind irreparably? Should reading car magazines be equated with speeding?

That's not the logic behind making viewing child porn illegal. If it were then pictures featuring very young looking 18yr olds and claiming that they are really only 16 or whatever would also be illegal but they are not. The logic is that by buying or viewing child porn you are supporting the person that really did molest that child and making it more likely that they will do it again.

Re:Darknet?

[jafac]

It doesn't matter if someone nefarious is on the same link-local segment sniffing all your traffic, if they can't identify through technological means who you are, and can't compel the provider through legal means either because they didn't keep that information or just won't give it over.

There are many technological means by which they can successful defeat your anonymity.

1. Crack the encryption: what do you think the NSA has all those computers for?
2. Get a bogus warrant, and impound the provider's server, gather the keys.
3. Hack the provider's server, gather (or otherwise compromise) the keys (some proposed laws actually gave the RIAA the right to do this - those laws were not passed yet, but I'm betting they'll be slipped in on some "anti-terror" or "anti-child-porn" rider at some point).

The ONLY way to transmit this data securely is to not physically connect to the actual internet, and instead, connect via some independent network that is not being monitored. Old-fashioned BBS dialup? We already know that the Phone Companies are allowing taps.

Re:Darknet?

[Matt Perry]

If it's all strongly encrypted end-to-end, how's anyone except a party to the transaction going to know it's child porn anyway?

It's only encrypted to the ISP in Sweden. From there it's unencrypted net access originating from the Swedish ISP.

Not sure about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean the serious side of evil people will be able to conduct their business without fear of being caught?

This is a problem with the darknet. I like freedom but sometimes a little monitoring and record keeping should be used to help police catch the weirdos that exist in our society.

I think there should be a balance of privacy and safety for our society, maybe there is, but it doesnt look like it to me with this new service.

Re:Not sure about this

[merikari]

Read the Relakks legal page:

"For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over "traffic data" including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment."

Re:Not sure about this

[atarione]

well for the momment doesn't d/l music just get you sued?

if they hand over pedo's or terrorists records I guess that is fine with me

Re:Not sure about this

[pembo13]

The serious side of evil people are right there on the news everyday. The seriously evil people don't have need for darknets. Think of it logically. No, I do not consider the type of internet offenders to be serious evil.

Re:Not sure about this

[nude-fox]

srysly i dont really care its not their job their job is to make money not be civilan police

Re:Not sure about this

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "seriously", and seriously, you're killing English....

commas, words etc. all came about so that people could communicate. Please use them.

Re:Not sure about this

[Malluck]

The trouble with true freedom is that you have to give it to people you don't like.

Re:Not sure about this

[PrescriptionWarning]

i hope this doesn't become a haven for kiddy porn and the like

Re:Not sure about this

[Alchemar]

If the people with the power to conduct such searches would demenstrate the ability not to use that power for trivial matters, then people wouldn't mind as much. With the stuff the RIAA is pulling, and the fact that I have been sent letters from the FBI for being in a militia( it is a D&D style live action RolePlaying game amtgard, I guess they are afraid of being stormed by imaginary wizards), have been told I had to move because my roomate needed an FBI security clearance. I have done nothing wrong, but I have things that I NEED to hide in order to live my life. If they are worried about not being able to capture the evil terroist, they need to focus there resources on that, when the goverment is using its resources to harass ordinary people, ordinary people will find a way to make things inconvenient for them.

Re:Not sure about this

[dave420]

Targetting the cause of these weirdos would be a better use of everyone's time and money, as opposed to investing heavily in monitoring random sets of people looking for bad guys.

Re:Not sure about this

[acherusia]

If you want to distinguish between true criminals who are a danger to others, and people who just want a little privacy, the first thing to do is distinguish between people who want to download a cd before buying, and people who want to kill as many people as they can. Because so long as the RIAA are going after music pirates, they're going to be clogging up these sorts of services and making it absolutely impossible to track the people who might actually be a danger. The more people you turn into criminals, the harder it is to find the dangerous ones. Why is this so difficult for people to understand?

Exporting a society's good things

[Aceticon]

After all these years of the US government exporting moralistic and lobby-built laws (soft drug prohibition, "ethernal" copyright, etc), it's nice to see somebody trying to export their society's (swedish) values of respect for freedom and privacy, even if their current crop of mainstream politicians seems to be in the pockets of the US admistration.

On the other hand, i expect that if the Relakks service becomes popular expect laws to be passed soon in other countries to curtail access to it.

Re:Exporting a society's good things

[Anonymous Coward]

After all these years of the US government exporting moralistic and lobby-built laws

Yeah, I prefer the old, "amoralistic" laws myself, like prohibition of theft, murder, that kind of thing.

Clue: most laws are "moralistic."

Re:Exporting a society's good things

[Aceticon]

Yeah, I prefer the old, "amoralistic" laws myself, like prohibition of theft, murder, that kind of thing.

Clue: most laws are "moralistic."

Most laws are designed to make it possible for people to live together in the most productive way possible (thus NOT an anarchy and NOT the law of the strongest). These laws thus concern themselfs with avoiding that one person knowingly or purposelly causes harm to another person (such as murder, theft, etc), secure trading (contracts, sales laws, etc) and avoiding "tragedy of the commons" situations with shared resources (environmental laws, zoneing laws, etc)

Any laws dictating what a person cannot do with their own bodies in the privacy of their own house and without causing any harm to others is a moralistic law in that it tries to forcifully deny to others the (lawfull) possibility of acting in certain ways, even though those actions would have no negative impact for third parties.

Soft drugs prohibition is thus a moralistic law since smoking pot in the privacy of one's home causes no harm to others, while for example a law prohibiting driving while under the influence of drugs would NOT be a moralistic law since driving under influence strongly increases the chances of an accident which could harm to others.

Re:Exporting a society's good things

[xmda]

I agree to some extent, but the problem is that the production and distribution of these drugs creates problems for our society. Of course, some say this is just because it is illegal, and some countries have more relaxed laws for this (the Netherlands, for example.) I don't know if that has solved their problems (crime, extra health care costs etc) though.

But if you, in your own home, produced and consumed your own drugs, without affecting anyone, directly or indirectly, in any way, then I would agree 100%. I guess the lawmakers actually thinks so too, but allowing such things opens up many gray areas.

Re:Exporting a society's good things

[Aceticon]

The issues with the production and distribution of drugs have to do with it being illegal.

If large scale production/distribution of drugs is illegal, then only criminals will do it. For those people, the quality of the product is of little concern beyond it having a significant amount of the active substance. Those same people, when faced with possibility of ending up in jail, will hardly think twice if comitting a "minor" crime will minimize the chance of them being caught for the bigger crime.

In technical terms, hashish, for example, is a weed and it will easilly grow anywhere - producing it in large quantities using the same means as use today to raise wheat would hardly be a problem ... except if that it's forbidden.

I live in Holland, and i can tell you i see a lot less poverty and drug-related drudgery around here than i did in most other cities i've visited (or lived in).

Still, soft drugs are not actually legal around here - instead they are tolerated (meaning the law is not enforced). In practice, the current conservative-moralistic government (expected to fall on the next elections) has taken to enforce the law on large scale production of hashish and on some coffeeshops (a bit like bars but you can buy and smoke pot in there - very common in the turistic area of Amsterdam) close to the Belgian border, but not in other areas ... in other words, an attempt at prohibition but without being overt about it.

Data retention

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems, if they do not collect data on users, this might fall foul of EU data retention laws soon to come into effect... Depends on whether they're considered an ISP or not, I suppose.

Software piracy really is all that bad

[patio11]

I run an independent software vendor (gross sales to date: $250 -- hey, its a hobby and if you're going to make fun do better first). It took me approximately 50 hours to write the software which I sell and the program's complexity approaches that of Notepad. Perhaps some people with far, far too much free time would say its ridiculous to pay me $25 when they could just spend the 50 hours themselves. Fine, I understand that -- then bloody write the thing yourself. In reality, everyone who comes up with that lame excuse spends 45 seconds trying variations on Google of crackz, serialz, and whatnot to find the latest Chinese hacker group to have broken my just-enough-to-keep-honest-men-honest registration scheme, and then 600 of them hit my web server in a day.

Thats not enough for some cheeky bastards, though. After people have gotten their latest crackz, I get a surge of search results from Google for things legitimate customers never search for (e.g. Name of the Program V 1.0 download). I lost $10 last time I got the hacker surge because I bid on my own program name as an AdWords keyword and the "its not stealing, its copyright infringement!!!1" crowd literally picked my pocket for a quarter a click.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[D14BL0]

Well, yeah. For your case, it does hurt you. But then again, that's the risk you take being an indie developer. You simply don't have the "force" to do anything about people pirating your software. Also, our of curiosity, what kind of software do you produce? Not that I'd want to pirate it, just curious what an indie developer puts together that people would actually want to steal. I mean, if it's good enough for people to want to steal, then maybe you should start thinking of bigger things.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[bayankaran]

its ridiculous to pay me $25 when they could just spend the 50 hours themselves...

One of the issues I have with smaller shareware apps is the price - rather than $25 for your app, if you cut the price to say $10 more people will be tempted to pay rather than look for a crack/serial. And I am writing from experience.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[modeless]

This is why the Internet needs a workable micropayment scheme. $25 is far too high a price for software of the complexity you describe; $.25 is more like it. If people could send you a quarter hassle-free and without minimum per-transaction overhead eating your profits alive, it wouldn't even be worth their time to try and search for a crack. You could be earning $150 in a day (your 600 hits figure) instead of $25 once in a blue moon.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Congratulations. You've learned the truth that no matter how much you wish it to be otherwise, you can not control an idea and it only cost yout $10 and 50 hours of your time. Some companies are spending billions of their dollars and billions of our dollars in the process of learning the same thing.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[cliffski]

I agree, but you will find slashdot swamped with people who think they have a 'right' to take your hard work, and cloak this theft under some truly lame argument about 'information wanting to be free'. They are communists, as their actions clearly show, but they tend to get annoyed when described as such.
If your believe you have a right to take anything you need, regardless of your means to pay, i cant see how your not an anarchist or a communist. Especially if its software, music , dvds or games. These arent food or shelter, rights dont come into it. Nobody is born with an inate right to enjoy all episodes of "24" for free.
ho hum.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[cliffski]

So he should abandon software development and go learn plumbing instead?
Sounds like you want the information tech revolution to grind to a halt immediately. nice one.
or should he work for free, while you get the benefit?

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

They are communists, as their actions clearly show, but they tend to get annoyed when described as such.

So, is it correct to presume you believe that patio11 is a capitalist?

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So he should abandon software development and go learn plumbing instead?
Sounds like you want the information tech revolution to grind to a halt immediately. nice one.
or should he work for free, while you get the benefit?

Nope. He should be a capitalist, like myself. He needs to make use of the fact that he has ownership of the means of production and charge the most the market will bear for its employment. I do well, very well, selling the use of my expertise to people who want software developed. If he's any good at all, he could do the same.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Rakishi]

Ah but you also don't take them away from anyone as they still have a copy.

Nobody is born with an inate right to enjoy all episodes of "24" for free.

Ah but neither is anyone born with the inherent right to make you pay to get a copy of all the episodes of 24. It's all human social constructs in the end, as are all other "inherent" "rights" really (except anarchism, ie: the right to do anything you want and for everyone else to do likewise to you).

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[cliffski]

I see, but someone IS born with the right to complain if they make some furniture and you take it right? So on the one hand, the carpenter has a business model, and a salary and can feed his kids (if he makes good furniture), but the software developer does not (even if his software is wildly popular). Please explain why you hold software devs in lower esteem than a toilet cleaner, as you seem to advocate them earning less.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[cliffski]

He is a capitalist, like msyelf. He may be charging too much for his software, but that does not justify stealing it. Maybe I'm on minimum wage and think your expertise is too expensive, or maybe I just dont give a shit and dont want to pay you, does that mean I can have your expertise for free please? I might also use up some of your bandwidth while I do it ok?

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

He is a capitalist, like msyelf.

No he is not. Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production, it is not private ownership of ideas.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Rakishi]

I see, but someone IS born with the right to complain if they make some furniture and you take it right?

As can the software developer, they have the inherent freedom to do whatever they want. My point is that there is no inherent right for anyone to care in either case. I simply find people talking about inherent rights to be silly.

So on the one hand, the carpenter has a business model, and a salary and can feed his kids (if he makes good furniture), but the software developer does not (even if his software is wildly popular).

Neither one does inherently as another other party can simply kill them and take their stuff. Society has had a long time to deal with the physical possessions and from on such behavior relating to them. It's also much easier to frown on such things due to their direct negative impact and the much easier methods of tracking such thefts.

Please explain why you hold software devs in lower esteem than a toilet cleaner, as you seem to advocate them earning less.

Where exactly do I say any of this, you're simply jumping to conclusions. I simply noted the difference between digital and physical items. Anyway piracy does not inherently hurt a developer as he loses nothing directly from it. He may lose potential sales however not every piracy is a potential sale. In some cases he may gain sales from piracy due to evaluations and for example future usage in say a company the pirate works for.

It needs to be noted that these excessive anti-piracy measures simply result in more entrenched pirates who gain a dislike for copyrights in general. I don't know what the solution is however the current methods are probably not productive in the long term. We all lose rights to draconian DRM schemes and there is a large group of now grown adults who grew up disliking copyrights. Also shareware costs too much imho, and often enough I just can't justify spending the money on it as a result.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[novus ordo]

This sounds like Bill's "Damn Hobbyists" rant. Also the "poor starving inventor" line of reasoning is close. But the fact is more people will pay for something that is useful to them than shamelessly steal it. Think of it this way: if you are using somebody's shamelessly ripped code in your app, you get too look at that every single time you work with the app. But then again, some people don't have any respect for themselves or others.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[evilviper]

I get a surge of search results from Google for things legitimate customers never search for (e.g. Name of the Program V 1.0 download).

I am a legitimate customer, and often search for older versions of a specific program. Bugs are introduced, features are remove or "fixed" in ways that make it useless, important buttons get moved around, the CPU or memory footprint increases, etc. etc.

I lost $10 last time I got the hacker surge because I bid on my own program name as an AdWords keyword

That's just entirely your own fault. You got the click-throughs you paid for, your product just didn't warrant any sales. Perhaps the price was too high, or the software wasn't very good. But like the RIAA, you desperately want to blame someone else for all your problems. And you've gone out of your way to avoid mentioning the product name so we all have to trust you that this actually happened, and that your reasoning (as to WHAT is to blame for your problem) is correct.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[stinerman]

I agree, but you will find slashdot swamped with people who think they have a 'right' to take your hard work, and cloak this theft under some truly lame argument about 'information wanting to be free'.

In fact, I do have a right to copy and distribute anyone's writings, but the society in which I live gives the creator of those writings a limited monopoly on distribution. This is, in theory, so that he will continue to distribute other writings that will increase the sum total of knowlege when the monopoly has expired. (To be perfectly clear, copyright infringers do not "take work" as that is impossible, but I gathered what you meant)

If your believe you have a right to take anything you need, regardless of your means to pay, i cant see how your not an anarchist or a communist.

I believe all people have the right to take anything they need to live regardless of ability to pay. Oddly enough, I do consider myself a bit of an anarchist and am not ashamed to say it; do not make the mistake of taking my sig for my ideology though -- it is just something interesting I read. Since the topic is copyrighted works, none of which are essential for survival, it is odd that you would say that.

Nobody is born with an inate right to enjoy all episodes of "24" for free.

Just as nobody is born with an innate right to sell episodes of "24" for whatever they wish. You seem to mistake copyright as being a property right. I assure you, it is not. Society has decided it is better for all of us if we give creators that monopoly on distribution that I spoke of. My society (well, politicians) thinks that the life of the author plus 70 years is the length of monopoly best to get people to distribute their works (with the overall goal being the enrichment of the public domain, mind you). I respectfully disagree.

Reminder: copyright infringment is illegal, but not necessarily immoral.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[cliffski]

so in that case you dont use it right?
or do you just take it and say fuck the developer? do you send him the money you think its worth?
I love the way pirates always claim that its not a lost sale, even when its photoshop and they use it every day.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[cliffski]

So you should not pay for ideas any more at all then. Thats interesting. Kiss goodbye to all new pharmaceutical drugs. If someone has an idea for curing Aids, he might as well go learn plumbing by your system. Nice one.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Rakishi]

so in that case you dont use it right?
or do you just take it and say fuck the developer?

I'm not the most ethical of people which is a somewhat separate issue.

do you send him the money you think its worth?

Well now that I'm getting money I've been buying various pieces of software that I've been using already. Well except the annoying ones which charge too much for me to justify it yet. I'll either move to something else or pay sooner or later.

There are a few that I would not even consider buying, and probably will now, were it not for the extended trials I got (IDEs require me at least one decent project to feel up and I don't code that often).

I love the way pirates always claim that its not a lost sale, even when its photoshop and they use it every day.

I love photoshop as an example. How many people would ever buy it? How much popularity does it get by being on every pirates computer? How many extra sales does it get to pirates turned professional graphic artists or pirates working for a company? It's like free advertising for Adobe with a generally minimal loss of sales. It's THE graphics program and everyone "knows" it, you can't buy better advertising than that. If I was at Adobe the last thing I'd want is to cause a massive migration that leads to people calling things "Gimp Contests" instead of "Photoshop Contests."

As an example, my friend decided he didn't like piracy anymore so he now runs mostly free software for his main apps. Companies need to be aware that there are alternatives and pissing off potential future customers (you know when they get jobs and money) is not a good idea.

I also love how yet again my position is somehow assumed despite me never stating it. On that note I fully sympathize with developers but accept my actions as being hypocritical and unethical. Honestly my own view is that f you're going to steal at least admit it to yourself and don't try to justify your actions to yourself. Anyway this is all a random train of mental thoughts and devil's advocate statements.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So you should not pay for ideas any more at all then. Thats interesting. Kiss goodbye to all new pharmaceutical drugs.

You can certainly charge for the development of ideas -- I do it all the time myself and so do the vast majority of white-collar workers, but trying to control the distribution of ideas is impossible.

The only feasible level of control you have over the redistribution of an idea is the first copy - the point at which you give that idea to someone else. After that, trying to control further distribution is fruitless. So if you want to make money by creating ideas, you can only feasibly charge for the effort that leads up to and includes that first copy.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Mistshadow2k4]

When the developers of Photoshop have to work 60 hours a week just to pay the rent & eat, then maybe I'll care. But that's a bullshit argument anyway -- the developers have already been paid. When you buy a copy of PS it's Adobe the company that gets yet more money, not the developers. And it's most definitely not a lost sale because I won't be buying it whether I use it or not. People like you always ignore that fact, don't you? If no one could pirate software, how much do you think your sales would increase? 10% That's pretty generous, actually. How much might your sales drop if no one could pirate your software? If you think they'd only go up you'd be in for a big surprise. Chances are many people would never have eve heard of your software if it weren't pirated. Where would Photoshop be if no one had ever pirate dit? It would probably still be one of the best image-editing apps, but many people wouldn't know a thing about it. "Photoshopiing" would be an unknown phrase.

But I use free software myself; so yes, the devloeprs of over-priced shareware can go fuck themselves. Why not? That's their attitude -- give me your money and then go fuck yourself. It's not working right? Tough. Free software devs don't charge for bug fixes and call it a new version, nor do they charge for bug-ridden new versions that they refuse to fix. How come it's so bad for people to pirate software but it's okay for software companies to screw over people left and right? Because it sure as hell seems to be okay for them to do so as no one ever does anything about it. And people like you always support their right to be paid but never seem to support the customer's right to get a quality, working product for their money.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

Software is not just an "idea", any more than a book, song, or movie is just an "idea". "Ideas" are a dime a dozen. However, the people who can take them and create something worthwhile from them... are not. And the work, money, skill, talent, time and effort it took to go from "idea" to "product" is what you're actually paying for, and what is "owned".

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

From a recent article:

"Destineer President Peter Tamte ... said that when his company shipped its squad-based first-person shooter First to Fight last year, it found within a few weeks that more people were trying to log on to multiplayer servers with a single banned serial number than the total number of copies Destineer had sold combined."

So, "the fact is more people will pay for something that is useful to them than shamelessly steal it" is probably somewhat less than a "fact".

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Znork]

Anyone can copy the carpenters furniture. Or would you claim making a chair just like one you've seen is 'stealing'?

Of course, if there were automatic furniture building machines that could copy the furniture in a few minutes, betcha you'd find people arguing that nobody will make any new furniture unless this rampant carpentry piracy is prevented, and that carpenters deserve monopoly rights to protect them from competition.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[ultranova]

Nope. He should be a capitalist, like myself. He needs to make use of the fact that he has ownership of the means of production and charge the most the market will bear for its employment. I do well, very well, selling the use of my expertise to people who want software developed. If he's any good at all, he could do the same.

If he spent 50 hours writing a Notepad equivalent and thought that people would pay $25 for it, then he isn't likely to be very good at all, in either business or programming ;).

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[geminidomino]

do you send him the money you think its worth?

That might be doable if it didn't give their lawscum something to sniff to hunt you down and do horrible horrible things to you.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Software is not just an "idea", any more than a book, song, or movie is just an "idea". "Ideas" are a dime a dozen.

Right, they are ALL ideas. Good, bad, simple, complex, but still just ideas.

the work, money, skill, talent, time and effort it took to go from "idea" to "product" is what you're actually paying for, and what is "owned".

We are in complete agreement. Work, money, skill, talent, time and effort - although the list is a little redundant, those are all the means of production, and are owned and should be paid for.

But the idea itself, it can't be owned. You might want to own it, you might have been trained to think it is ownable, but it is not and the original poster's experience is proof of exactly that.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[ultranova]

So you should not pay for ideas any more at all then. Thats interesting. Kiss goodbye to all new pharmaceutical drugs. If someone has an idea for curing Aids, he might as well go learn plumbing by your system. Nice one.

"I know how to cure AIDS and I'll tell you for one hundred billion dollars !"

You can sell ideas, but you can't keep control of them once you've sold them. You can't stop the people who you've told about them from telling them to others. That means that you'll have to keep coming up with new ideas if you want to keep on making money, instead of getting more and more money without doing anything. Oh the horror.

All of which you knew perfectly well, since it's pretty self-obvious. So why did you bring up a strawman ?

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

"Destineer President Peter Tamte ... said that when his company shipped its squad-based first-person shooter First to Fight last year, it found within a few weeks that more people were trying to log on to multiplayer servers with a single banned serial number than the total number of copies Destineer had sold combined."

Again, further proof that you can't control an idea. Despite what the other guy said, morality has nothing to do with it. It is human nature to share information, trying to fight it is like trying to keep teenagers from having sex.

Too bad Tamte's an idiot. If he were a smart businessman he would have seen the huge potential to make money - instead of trying to charge for copies of the software, he should charge for use of the servers. After all, if he's got more people who want to use them than he's even sold copies of the game, then obviously the market for the service of multiplayer gaming is bigger than the market for physical CDs with copies of the game on them.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[giorgiofr]

You might say you are unethical if you think so, but I don't see any hypocrisy on your part. Quite the opposite, in fact, it looks like you're very honest about what you do.
I share your view that "if you're going to steal at least admit it to yourself": too many people around here seem to be uneasy about stealing stuff because they want to feel ethical, yet they pirate like crazy (like you and I apparently do). I have no qualms whatsoever about it, I pirate lots of software and steal (oh yeah, *steal*) countless videogames, anime, movies, and music. It's what most people out there do, but they won't admit it and will try to rationalize their actions. What's my problem with this? The *dilution* of important values and ideals for the sake of... pirating, of all things, irks me. Every time I see someone talk about freedom, knowledge, pursuit of happiness, that stuff, and it comes out they're just defending their very personal position, I cringe. That's why I like a sig I see here that reads "Information wants to be free. You just weant to be cheap".

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

"Right, they are ALL ideas. Good, bad, simple, complex, but still just ideas."

You miss the point, as they're not just "ideas". An idea is, "hey, let's write a book about some short people, elves, dwarves, wizards, and whatnot." Or "hey, maybe I should write a program to help me draw pictures on the computer." And you know what? That's about as far as most people get.

But there's a distinct difference between that "idea" and an 1,216-page book that took ten years to create. Or a multi-million line program called "Photoshop". You don't pay for the "idea", but the actual representation of it, and indirectly, for the work, skill, money, time, and talent that went into that creation.

Because if someone HADN'T made that investment, you'd still have nothing more than an "idea"...

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's most definitely not a lost sale because I won't be buying it whether I use it or not. People like you always ignore that fact, don't you? If no one could pirate software, how much do you think your sales would increase? 10% That's pretty generous, actually. How much might your sales drop if no one could pirate your software?

I suspect by rather a lot (without piracy I suspect you'd see a doubling of sales). You have no ideas how many small companies are using pirated software to serve their business interests even though they can afford (and actually do need) the software. I work for a software development company, and we pirate even our development tools, even though we absolutely need them and could perfectly well pay for them (but make marginally less profit). At the same time, the boss is asking us to improve the licensing system so customers can't run more copies than they purchased. There is a lot of hypocrisy when it comes to piracy.

And people like you always support their right to be paid but never seem to support the customer's right to get a quality, working product for their money.

If you buy a chair and you don't like the way it sits, you return it and get your money back, you don't keep it, use it, and still get your money back. If you use the product, you pay for the product. End of story.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[novus ordo]

Maybe real gamers don't find Macs useful? The same article says that consoles have less piracy. I wonder why people would pirate less where there was more opportunity to do so. Oh my god! I need my thinking cap!

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

"...morality has nothing to do with it..."

That's where we have to agree to disagree. Because without guys like Tamte, people would have nothing to steal. And because I think it's immoral take a guy's creative work without compensation. If he wants to give it away, fine. But if not, who are you to decide you're entitled to it anyway?

Human nature? Yeah, the selfish, greedy, immature side of it...

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[The Cydonian]

It is human nature to share information, trying to fight it is like trying to keep teenagers from having sex

Just make sure you sell the software only to people who haven't had sex as teenagers, then. Problem solved.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You miss the point, as they're not just "ideas".

No, I get your point. It's you who are deliberately avoiding my point. Ideas, information, knowledge, they are all lay synonyms for a specific group of non-rivalrous, non-excludable goods.

You don't pay for the "idea", but the actual representation of it, and indirectly, for the work, skill, money, time, and talent that went into that creation.

And why is it that this payment must be made indirectly? In fact, that's where the system breaks down. You can't expect to get paid for non-rivalrous and non-excludable goods. Copyright law tries to manufacture excludability, but as the original poster demonstrated it doesn't work. So, it is only reasonable to find the point in the production where rivalrous and excludable goods (e.g. work, skill, money, time, talent) are used and charge for their use.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

If you can't figure out why games made for a protected, proprietary piece of hardware are harder to copy...

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[jsebrech]

Of course, if there were automatic furniture building machines that could copy the furniture in a few minutes, betcha you'd find people arguing that nobody will make any new furniture unless this rampant carpentry piracy is prevented, and that carpenters deserve monopoly rights to protect them from competition.

Your example doesn't hold with mass production. Mass production has a large up-front design investment, which is repaid with every mass-produced copy sold. This holds for chairs as well. If matter scanner/printers became cheap enough that you could duplicate a chair for not much more than the material cost, I can assure you that Ikea would go out of business. Why buy a genuine Ikea chair when you can get a perfectly capable replica for a fraction of the price?

I fully expect to see this revolution happen within my lifetime. Matter printers will change the entire value proposition of the market. Software is on the vanguard of this movement. By making the value of a copy worthless (because almost no production costs are involved), you must assign value to the idea and its initial realization, instead of to the copy. Ideas no longer remain free, but become something that must be paid for in full, or people can't earn a living wage.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

It had better work, as I don't want my authors, singers, musicians, directors, actors, and so on working somewhere flipping burgers to make ends meet. I want them to spend ALL of their time (or as much as possible) creating new works for me to enjoy.

Books take years to write, and aren't going to get paid for just by readings at book signings. Not all musicians tour. Movies are multi-million-dollar investments, as are most major software and game titles. Moreover, those investments in time and money are made in the expectation, the hope, that they'll pay off. Without copyright, and without that potential payoff, the same level of investment is simply not going to be made.

As I said in another post, it's a question of morality and respect. If you have no respect for those who would create what you enjoy, then, in the end, you're going to get everything you're "entitled" to... which is nothing.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Eivind Eklund]

Until you separate "theft" and "copyright infringment" in your mind, you cannot think clearly about this area. There is a host of cases, and a host of issues, making for an almost unlimited number of shades of grey, with reasonably economic incentive for (author|consumer|society) varying depending on perspective.

And until you split your concepts, you are blind.

Eivind.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

But if not, who are you to decide you're entitled to it anyway?

Who are you to decide I am not entitled to it anyway? Making a copy of it changes nothing, not one thing, about the state of the creater. Seriously, do you know the origin and justification for copyright under anglo-saxon law? It has nothing to do with ownership of the creation, it is all about encouraging more public knowledge (and paying taxes to the king, but that's particularly relevant to the discussion).

Human nature? Yeah, the selfish, greedy, immature side of it...

No, the civilization building side of it. If humans were not natural information-sharing creatures we would never have been able to rise past the level of small nomadic family groups.

Because without guys like Tamte, people would have nothing to steal.

And this, as I like to say, is demonstrably false, even if you buy into the whole broken paradigm of "stealing" - if it were true then all the free software, all the free music, free art, free stories, none of that would exist. There are other ways to fund the development of ideas than simply charging for distribution. Nowadays, especially, trying to charge for distribution is a particularly BAD way to fund development.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Eivind Eklund]

I am a software developer and noticable parts of (about half? I've not calculated) my lifetime income has come from sales of software, and I say you're still missing the point. Try to list out all the different cases involved - and understand that copying can INCREASE sales. That's even common.

Eivind.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Eivind Eklund]

You're (also) missing a distinction between stealing and illegal copying. They're different, and should be put in different mental slots.

Oh, and I tend to avoid illegal copying, and regularly earn money from sales of software, just to put THAT part in place.

Eivind.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I want them to spend ALL of their time (or as much as possible) creating new works for me to enjoy.

Then you really don't want the copyright model. That model encourages people who create high quality work to do it once and then retire on the ever lasting royalties. The best creators are actually economically discouraged from any further creations. Its only the mediocre and barely-passable who have any incentive to keep producing new work.

Without copyright, and without that potential payoff, the same level of investment is simply not going to be made.

That's just your lack of imagination talking. You only see one economic model. But look around you, creative people are paid for their effort all the time. Make-up artists, set designers, recording engineers, etc, all those jobs traditionally pay by the hour or by the production, not by royalties on copies. Software engineers, copy writers (not copyrighters), commercial artists, they all get paid on comission too. There is no reason that some form of assurance contract can not be used to fund the development of big-ticket creations too.

As I said in another post, it's a question of morality and respect. If you have no respect for those who would create what you enjoy, then, in the end, you're going to get everything you're "entitled" to... which is nothing.

Do you respect the men who designed your car? The carpenters who built your house? If you do, how come you don't pay them a fee every time you drive somewhere or sleep comfortably in your home?

Ultimately respect has nothing to do with it, its just economics, just like it is for all the other jobs in the universe.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think I have a right, but I will occasionally still do so.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Bobosan]

Since we're talking about Econ,anyone remember that show called "7 Days" where they found a cure for cancer? Then the entire global economy went in a huge depression because a gazillion dollars wasn't being pumped into the economy for healthcare? cool show >.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[f64]

howdy.

just thought i'd give a liberal socialist/anarchist take on this, seeing as i'd like to consider myself cut from that cloth (english not being my first language, do excuse my attempts at flair).

the old kropotkin quote does apply: "to each according to need, from each accoriding to ability". of course, in 19th century tsarist russia you often had a limited group of people to interact with and it's easier to imagine one who has great needs getting his ear clipped by someone who doesn't agree with the limitations of said persons "ability". it's a social leveller that is missing when it comes to all things interwub, and in its place are personal morals and cost/benefit analysys of the risk of getting caught by **AA or whatnot.

i'm in no way downplaying personal morals, ultimately i believe in the right of every individual acting on the basis of them, but they will not be enough to "stop piracy" simply because what most people would say they need is in no way proportional to what they have the ability to exchange for it, not to mention what others demand for it. the sticking point is of course how people justify "need". the secondary point is how well people actually adhere to the morals they profess to.

it's almost pointless to use oneself as an example (you can't extrapolate information on group behaviour from a group of one), but since this issue revolves around personal morals and ones adherens to them (imho), i'll use myself as an example and try to justify my behaviour:

i have a subscription at emusic, occasionaly buy cds off of local/unsigned/indy bands that i see at a concert and once in a blue moon i buy music from a band homepage (the 'blue moon' part is cause many of the bands i like offer wma or don't cater to mac users). i try to use freeware software or stay within shareware limitations; i try to buy apps that i use commercially but that almost never happens since i have very little use for them. occasionaly i use cracked versions of software if the functionality is too severely limited in the demo/nag version. i honestly can't recall any cracked app that i'm using today; last app i was actively using was propellerheads reason, but that was two years ago, hot on the heals of when i borrowed a midi-keyboard from a friend of mine.
this isn't to say that i don't download pirated versions of apps just to stay on top of things, just that i don't feel morally obliged to pay for them just for novelties sake. if i use it a lot, be it commercially or just for fun i try to make good and pay. same with movies or tv shows; i had high rez versions of "invader zim" downloaded a good year before i had the opportunity to go to new york where i bought the dvds (and not for any 'added value' mind you, since the commentator tracks blew donkey and the behind-the-stage footage gave the donkey a rimjob); same with babylon 5, same with farscape, same with the cris cunningham compilation.

i also download shitloads of other stuff. like, a neurotic amount of stuff. i probably have a manual on how to program milling machinery from the 70s using PASCAL on one of the countless dvds that obscure the line of sight to my wall, desk and floor.

before the interwubs with all the irc/hotline/kdx/dc/bt and whatnots i used to go to the local library once a week and take out anywhere between ten and twenty books on anything that caught my fancy. i'd read one or two of them, browse the rest, return and repeat. the comparatively generous library system of sweden allowed me to do this, and libraries act on exactly the notion that there's no chance in hell you could affort to buy, or be able to loan privately, all the books you'd like to read.
yes, there's a remuneration going out to the authors of the books that are being loaned, but the basic ethical reasoning behind a library is that you shouldn't be limited by your income or personal network when it comes to information access. the analogy isn't spot on because there isn't a good micropay

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

"Who are you to decide I am not entitled to it anyway?"

In this case, let's say I'm the person who spent years of effort creating that work. Because without me that work would not exist. At all. Period.

And the "encouraging more public knowledge" portion of your rant is correct, although you forget that unless I can pay the rent and feed the kids, I'm not creating MORE work and adding to the whole. Moreover, had I not had some expectation of recouping my losses I probably wouldn't have created the first one. You may steal my work for free, but I can't steal food with the same expectations of not getting caught.

Finally, it's a matter of respect. If you don't like my work, fine, don't pay for it. I rolled the dice and lost. But to ignore my wishes AND steal my efforts simply for your own enjoyment (let me repeat that), SIMPLY FOR YOUR OWN ENJOYMENT, is the very definition of selfish, greedy, and immature.

You are NOT entitled.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[anexium]

i don't wish to appear rude, but why would i throw down $25 (or £13.25 in real money) for a program that only has the complexity of notepad? it really does seem overpriced, in fact i'd go as for to say that for something with the complexity of notepad, you should be giving it away for free.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[bky1701]

If you can't take the heat - get out of the job. Now if you had donations (if you really are doing so badly, this should be no major step back) you would probably get more, do a service to people (not being another greedy SOB) and eliminate any keyword problems that may came from people trying to crack it.

Solve the problem. The RIAA can't solve it your way, and they have more money then you would if everyone *bought* your notepad, so figure out a way to solve it. Crying about how hurt you are is only going to generate more spite and reason to pirate your toy.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[ajs318]

Congratulations! You're finding out the hard way that there's no future for closed source payware. The fact is, software can be reproduced at essentially zero cost: it is a plentiful good. You can't expect to be able to apply the old economics of scarcity to software, and any attempt to do so will fail.

You're basically in the same situation as somebody trying to make a living operating a pay toilet in a forest. Ask yourself the questions: Why would someone pay me to do basically the same thing as they could do for nothing elsewhere? What can I offer my loyal, paying customers, that people can't get if they choose not to pay for it?

BTW, if you have used any "pirated" software in developing your product, including in the course of learning whatever it took to develop your project, you're not alone. Bill Gates and Paul Allen never paid for the computer time they used developing Microsoft BASIC, the subject of Gates's famous "$2 an hour" whinge.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

In this case, let's say I'm the person who spent years of effort creating that work. Because without me that work would not exist. At all. Period.

How is that any different from someone who spends years of effort, hundreds of thousands of dollars to build up a business only to have it fail because customers won't buy what he's selling? Just because he puts all that into his work doesn't mean society owes him squat.

And the "encouraging more public knowledge" portion of your rant is correct, although you forget that unless I can pay the rent and feed the kids, I'm not creating MORE work and adding to the whole.

How is this a moral argument? Stick to your guns man. Either its morality or it isn't. So far each time I disprove one argument, you switch to the other, then switch back when that one is disproven. You are arguing in circles and the fundamental problem is that you think that copyright is the only mechanism that can fund creation. Face up to your FAITH, yes FAITH, nothing more than faith, in that belief and you'll approach enlightenment. Until then, all you are doing is clouding your understanding.

You are NOT entitled.

Proof by assertion doesn't cut it. But when your beliefs are all based on faith, you can't do any better than that.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the issues I have with smaller shareware apps is the price - rather than $25 for your app, if you cut the price to say $10 more people will be tempted to pay rather than look for a crack/serial. And I am writing from experience.

I really don't believe lowering it from $25 to $10 would make a difference. I don't think he'd see 2.5 times or more the sales. We're not talking about charging what the market will bear-- after all, if it's an app you find useful (and use often) $25 is a bargain. We're talking about morals, not math.

If he lowers to $10 someone will come along and say "I would have paid $5, but $10 is too much." If he lowers it to $5, they'll say, "It's only $5, he won't miss it", or they'll say they just want to test it for a few months, or that they would pay but they don't trust Paypal with their credit card number because of an eBay dispute two years ago.

Fact is, most people who want it for free will find an excuse to justify stiffing the shareware author so they don't have to feel like such the bad guy.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[ajs318]

Wouldn't the obvious way of doing that be to offer material for download from premium-rate dial-up servers invisible to the rest of the Internet?

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Stalyn]

Nobody is born with an inate right to enjoy all episodes of "24" for free.

You do realize that "24" is broadcast on an air station? Anyone with a TV, VCR and Antenna could watch and record all of "24" for free (excluding cost of TV, antenna, VCR, tapes, electricty, etc) and legally.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

If you bag plumbing one more time... !

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[ajs318]

Under American-style capitalism, if somebody had a cure for AIDS then condoms would be outlawed.

Anyway, most pharmaceutical drugs could be done without if people just lived healthier lifestyles. Think wholesome, home-cooked, maybe even home-grown food. Walking or cycling occasionally instead of driving everywhere. Owning a pet. Being content to be the way Nature made you and not trying to be what you are not just because someone else is.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[lisaparratt]

Out of interest, how would you suggest someone makes money out of single player, non-networked games?

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

"That model encourages people who create high quality work to do it once and then retire on the ever lasting royalties."

Yeah, because I've noticed that the most popular people (King, Koontz, Clancy, Weber, JRR, Heinlein, etc.) ONLY wrote one book and retired...

"...creative people are paid for their effort all the time. Make-up artists, set designers, recording engineers, etc, all those jobs traditionally pay by the hour or by the production, not by royalties on copies. ... There is no reason that some form of assurance contract can not be used to fund the development of big-ticket creations too."

Which assumes that the final product (e.g. the movie) will be paid for by the people who want to see it. Because unless it is paid for, those people aren't going to get paid either.

You're particulary dense, if you think that tens of thousands of people are going to individually decide that they're going to front the costs for hundreds of movie productions, based on nothing more than an idea and maybe a script. People want to see what they're paying for. You're going to send twenty dollars to a new author who has an "idea" for a book?

There's little wrong with the current system, where "big-ticket" items are funded by investors, who're paid back by millions of people, each judging the result and paying a small portion of the final cost because they think they're going to have a good time. The product is done. They can see what they're getting.

And yes, I do "respect" the people who built my house and car. If not, I would have had someone else build both. I also ended up paying a higher percentage of the costs for my "copy" of both, not to mention indirectly paying the architect and the automobile designer, and their suppliers, and so on.

Bottom line. The problem we have now is that some people think they're entitled to content for free because distribution is now "free". Production and creation, however, is most definitely NOT free, and that is what needs to be reconciled. And I doubt that "performances", part-time workers, and/or patronage is the answer, as those are models from which we've spent years moving away...

"Just like it is for all the other jobs in the universe."

Really? All of those jobs where you're self-employed, have no benefits, no paid insurance, no vacation pay, and spend years up front creating something in the hope that someone will see the value in it and buy it later on? Those kind of jobs?

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

"How is that any different from someone who spends years of effort, hundreds of thousands of dollars to build up a business only to have it fail because customers won't buy what he's selling? Just because he puts all that into his work doesn't mean society owes him squat."

Finally, something we can agree on. You're absolutely 100% correct. Society doesn't owe him a thing. And if I spend years writing a book that no one wants to buy, or producing music or a movie that no one wants to hear or see, then society owes me nothing either.

If, however, customers DO want what he's selling, then they'll buy it, yes? Because if they didn't want it, they wouldn't pay for it. If it had no value to them, they wouldn't pay for it.

And the same applies in my case. If they want to read my book, hear my music, see my movie, if they want that enjoyment. If they want to be transported into that world for a brief period of time. If they decide it has that value... then it, too, should be paid for, and not stolen.

I never said copyright is the only method that can fund creation. But I've yet to hear one that isn't wishful thinking, or one we've moved away from for good reason (patronage), or one that encourages new participants, or provides the same number of incentives to generate the diversity of choices we currently enjoy.

Or one, for that matter, that isn't a thinly disguised rationalization as to why theft is okay.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[ajs318]

You're comparing a cabinet maker to a software developer.

What would you say if someone took a tape measure to a piece of furniture, made notes and sketches; then went out and bought some wood with their own money, and used this together with tools that they had bought and paid for with their own money, to make a broadly identical piece of furniture?

If you think that is O.K., why do you think there is anything wrong with substituting a blank CD for the wood, a CD reader for the tape measure, a hard disc drive for the notebook, and a CD burner for the woodworking tools?

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[mormop]

"If your believe you have a right to take anything you need, regardless of your means to pay, i cant see how your not an anarchist or a communist."

Well you missed out the common thief option. Thievery has no political persuasion and stretches from poor people who steal to eat, to your Enron's and politicians who want control of someone else's oil.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[MightyYar]

Aw, c'mon, it's more complicated than that. Certainly there are a bunch of kids just blindly filling up their hard drives with IP booty (you never did that in college???). But there are reasonable people that selectively pirate. For instance, I went into a CompUSA one time a few years ago and was shooting the shit with one of the Mac salespeople in there. He was telling me about how he was pretty into photography, so I asked what program he uses to edit his photos. He laughed at me and said "Photoshop, why what do you use?". I told him that I hadn't found anything suitable for the price range I was willing to pay. He and another associate laughed at me and said, "Dude, just get a pirated copy! Do you really think that they expect a hobbiest to pay $500 for a photo editing program?" Note that this was pre-Elements, so there was some logic in that arguement, and damnit, I got myself a pirated copy the next time I was in Malaysia for $1.50. Am I a dirty, low-down pirate? Perhaps, but I sleep well at night. I pay for reasonably priced software. I just bought RapidWeaver, an excellent demo-ware product.

Another example - P2P music sharing. I believe the geeks of the world have a duty to try to destroy the RIAA's business model. Their organization has many of the elements of organized crime, from intimidation tactics up to and including complicit politicians. They are not as bad as the mafia, since there is not any physical violence, but they are nasty nonetheless. While I do not file share using P2P anymore because I am spineless and afraid of their lawsuits, many of my friends regularly share hundreds of gigs of MP3s via external hard drives. You can argue that Madonna, U2, Britanny Spears... none would be possible if this ideology were to be taken to an extreme. GOOD. That's my goal.

A friend of mine is an IP lawyer, and it drives him nuts that I have this attitude. He says that I'm simply doing what I'm doing because I'm selfish. I pointed out that that's what drives EVERYONE, including his clients, and he had to agree. The high ground here is not the legal ground, in my opinion. Obviously, your opinion differs - and that's okay. I just hope we win this little battle.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[James McGuigan]

The core issue here is scarcity vs abundance economics as well as the definition of wealth.

Western economics is based on scarcity, demand is usually greater than supply (think money, oil, land). Fortunes can be made simply by controling the supply. The natural instinct when faced with scarcity is to hoarde (which in turn also reduces the overall supply). Status in this society is usually based on who can hoarde the biggest pile of scarce resources.

Abundance economics, as in free software, says that scarcity reduces the overall true value of an item - to maximize value supply should be greater than demand. The natural instinct when faced with abundance is to share. Status in this society is based on who makes the biggest contrubutions to the community, who can give away the most, a person who hoardes is not rich (as he keeps it all to himself).

A copy will have its own intrinsic value, but it is not limited by scarcity and thus the two systems have two incompatable definitions of value. Its the classic question: Which is more valuable, diamonds or air?

With the dawn of the information age and invention of replicators, you are correct that system of scarcity based economics will quickly become obsolete (but not for lack of trying by those who whish to keep it alive). But you also forget that when can create all your material needs at the touch of a button, why will you still need money except to barter for the few nessecities/luxuries that can't be replicated and are still considered scarce.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Lorkki]

They are communists, as their actions clearly show, but they tend to get annoyed when described as such.

Despite the fact that greed is such an integral part of today's culture, I think there's still a solid difference between that and actually advocating an alternative social structure. A thief (a real one, as in property) or a software pirate is simply a person who's chosen to go by his own rules despite society.

I certainly believe information wants to be free, but I prefer using and creating free information and advocating the idea to others. Piratpartiet has an agenda I tend to agree with, but I'm not so sure about some people's reasons for supporting it.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Keeper Of Keys]

I can give you a concrete example of this. A long time ago while 'unemployed' some friends and I started up a niche magazine on very minimal funds. Somebody gave us a copy of Photoshop 2.5. I'd never heard of it before, but of course it proved very useful for image retouching, etc. Crucially, we could never have afforded to buy a legit copy.

Over the years I have become pretty skilled with Photoshop, and three companies I have worked for in past few years have bought the latest version specifically so that I can use it. Although they're very hypocritical about this, Adobe knows full well that this kind of thing happens, and it continually renews the user base for their overpriced products.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[LordKronos]

You're basically in the same situation as somebody trying to make a living operating a pay toilet in a forest. Ask yourself the questions: Why would someone pay me to do basically the same thing as they could do for nothing elsewhere?

Well then go take your shit in the woods instead of busting your way into his pay toilet without paying him. But what's that? Oh, it's more comfortable to shit on a toilet than it is squatting over a hole in the ground? Well there you go...IT'S NOT THE SAME THING, IS IT?

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Explodicle]

Um, "just enough to keep honest men honest" would be a paypal (or the like) icon on your site. If you need any sort of DRM, then you're telling the honest men that even they cannot be trusted.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[LordKronos]

Then why don't you record it off the air and watch your recording? Could it be that the DVD offers you something that the broadcast version doesn't? Convenience of not having to skip commercials? Better quality? Bonus features? Whatever it is, it obviously offers you something extra, so why don't you pay for the privilege of getting that something extra?

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Snaller]

But it is copyright infringement.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[LordKronos]

Perhaps ...the software wasn't very good.

"Oh man, that product absolutely sucks. I've just GOT to have it!!!!!!"

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[ryanduff]

I watched it for free on TV, why can't I download it and watch it for free a second time instead of waiting for them to air re-runs.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I get a surge of search results from Google for things legitimate customers never search for (e.g. Name of the Program V 1.0 download).

I'm sorry, help me here -- how is "NameOfProgram V1.0 download" not a legitimate search query to find your software with?

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Stalyn]

Because I hate "24".

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't because the current version is e.g. 1.2, and the cracks are only available for the old 1.0, so these queries are obviously from people who are looking for the matching program version for the crack they have found.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

"Destineer President Peter Tamte ... said that when his company shipped its squad-based first-person shooter First to Fight last year, it found within a few weeks that more people were trying to log on to multiplayer servers with a single banned serial number than the total number of copies Destineer had sold combined."

That doesn't surprise me. First to Fight was a terrible game; I can't imagine many people bought it. The reason the only people playing it were pirates was they were the only ones with it on their hard-drives.

And I bet even they didn't play it very long...

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[dean.collins]

totally agree, micropayments can make software developers rich/writers/musicians/artists etc, they just need an efficient collection method.

Dean

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[cliffski]

if everyone behaved as you did, photoshop would not exist, because the huge dev costs would not be supportable. theres a word for a person who benefits from other law-abiding people who pay for stuff.
freeloader.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[cliffski]

oh grow up. So who is the lucky indidivual who shells out the billion dollars then? you? I dont think so.

If you create something that brings benefit to a million people and costs ten million dollars to develop, whats your model? to not bother unless you find some idiot to pay 10 million so everyone else gets to be slashdot-style freeloaders?
nice business model you got there.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Tom]

I'd assume that most of your potential customers have actually bought your program. My experience - on both sides of the fence and then some - is that upwards of 90% of the people who copy something illegally wouldn't have paid for it anyways.

Most of the people who copy your stuff aren't participants in the market anyways.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[larytet]

part (major part ?) of his sales come from google ads $0.25 does not make sense, because the ads cost him $10/sell

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

$25 for an app that took a man week to write?

This is part of why OpenSource is sinking the shareware model.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is, software can be reproduced at essentially zero cost:

The words of someone whose time on this Earth is of no value.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[JesseMcDonald]

The core issue here is scarcity vs abundance economics as well as the definition of wealth.

[...]

This is a joke, right? There is no such thing as "abundance economics"; economics is, by definition, the study of the allocation of scarce resources. A world without scarcity would have no need of economics (or society, for that matter, since society itself is the result of trade and division of labour). What you are describing is the sociology of an unrealizable state of perfect abundance, which not even perfect matter replication could achieve. (Where would you get the energy? Or the raw materials?) In particular, time will never be abundant, regardless of advances in technology. Human labour will likewise remain scarce so long as the population does not exceed that which can be sustained at subsistance levels (a state even less likely in a wealthy society than in a poor one).

The natural instinct when faced with abundance is to share. Status in this society is based on who makes the biggest contrubutions to the community, who can give away the most, a person who hoardes is not rich (as he keeps it all to himself).

In your fictional world of abundance, what value would there be in such contributions? Abundance dictates that everyone has everything they want or need; what contribution would possibly add to such a state? Giving something away would be equivalent to throwing it away, as the recipient has no need of the gift. If there is such a need, then the state of abundance does not exist, as some individuals do not have all that they need. At the very least, "contributions to the community" must consist in part of one scarce resource: labour. Labour can be made more productive through technological advancements, but it cannot be replaced entirely, as it is (in any human society) grounded in purposeful human action. At the pinacle of human development it might consist of nothing more than the choice of which action to take, with the actual work accomplished by armies of robots, and yet that choice is still inescapably a form of scarce human labour.

A copy will have its own intrinsic value, but it is not limited by scarcity and thus the two systems have two incompatable definitions of value. Its the classic question: Which is more valuable, diamonds or air?

Just for the record, the old "paradox" of the relative values of diamonds and water (or air) was resolved decades ago with the advent of the subjective theory of value, which is the only theory of value supported by any modern school of economics, the labour and utility theories of value having both been thoroughly disproven. The "paradox" results from trying to establish univeral values for all diamonds vs. all the air, when in fact the decisions being made contrast a specific additional quantity of diamonds vs. a specific additional quantity of air according to the situation of a specific individual. Since air is abundant, meaning that everyone already has as much as he/she needs, no value is generally placed on additional air. In contrast, diamonds are relatively scarce, and few people have any; thus an additional diamond may have value to some individuals. Incidently, this demonstrates that scarcity does not reduce "the overall value of an item", since scarcity is in fact the only thing that can give any item any value at all. No one will give anything in exchange for an item abundantly available to all; full abundance eliminates value entirely.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shark72]

"One of the issues I have with smaller shareware apps is the price - rather than $25 for your app, if you cut the price to say $10 more people will be tempted to pay rather than look for a crack/serial. And I am writing from experience."

This argument comes up every time piracy is dicussed on Slashdot. Somebody points out that if the rightholder simply charged LESS, then piracy wouldn't be a problem! Add the following on the part of the poster:

1. The belief that the supply/demand curve MUST be a 45 degree straight line.
2. A fundamental confusion between cost of manufacturing and cost of sale (or, if you like, the difference between gross margin and net margin),
3. And the belief that because the product is more than the poster wants to pay, why then it MUST be overpriced

...and hilarity ensues. The implication is that the piracy is actually the rightsholder's fault for being both stupid and greedy.

The interesting thing is that I doubt very much that the retail industry bothers with this. Do Fry's or Best Buy ask themselves "perhaps the way to lower shrinkage is to lower our prices?". Not likely. But on Slashdot, pricing strategy is the alpha and the omega of the piracy industry. People seldom want to admit that they are simply cheap.

If you've pirated stuff because it's $25 rather than $10, then bully for you... you've saved $25 and I hope that $25 savings helped you out. But perhaps the software vendor actually knew what they were doing when they priced it at $25. This does not, however, remove their right to complain about piracy, or take measures to stop it.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[poot_rootbeer]

$25 is far too high a price for software of the complexity you describe; $.25 is more like it.

So you're saying a fair price for software development work is not 50 cents/hour, but rather 0.5 cents/hour. Sorry, no.

You could be earning $150 in a day (your 600 hits figure)

Yeah, if there were a 100% conversion rate on those clickthroughs. Which no ad will ever get.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Mr. Slippery]

If you create something that brings benefit to a million people and costs ten million dollars to develop, whats your model? to not bother unless you find some idiot to pay 10 million

Find a million people to chip in ten bucks each. Or ten million to chip in a buck each, or a hundred million to put in a dime. (By the time you get to groups of 100,000,000, they may have organized a group of representatives to make some spending decisions on behalf of the group, you might try to convince those representatives for a grant.)

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[poot_rootbeer]

Nobody is born with an inate right to enjoy all episodes of "24" for free.

Bad example? If Fox doesn't want me to have access to all the episodes of "24", they shouldn't be beaming them into my home over public airwaves.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[NichG]

If this is a serious problem for content creators then they should simply stop creating. Right now, despite piracy, people are STILL making enough money that they'd rather be in that business than flipping burgers and can sustain it. But if they're really hurting, then they should go and flip burgers or become lawyers or whatever so they can make ends meet, rather than expecting the courts to force people to pay for their stuff.

Extracting fines for people seeing information without the creators permission is more theft than copying their information ever was, and I certainly don't want a system where that is their means of income. In my mind, rather than living in a world like that I'd by far prefer all of these injured content creators to simply stop creating content, if it hurts them so much to do so.

Either people will say 'What, no more music? That sucks! Hey, will anyone make a song for me if I give them this donation?' (or groups will do so), or people will say 'Huh... There's less music, but strangely I don't miss it so much, and I can find people who are still willing to make music for free as their hobby or use alternate methods to extract an income from making music.'

Everyone keeps saying 'if we didn't have copyright, there would be no creativity'. Well, I'm saying put it on the line and try it. Speaking for myself, it won't stop me from doing research or writing software if I can't hold a copyright on those things.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Mr. Slippery]

Nobody is born with an inate right to enjoy all episodes of "24" for free.

You've got it backwards. Nobody is born with an inate right to point guns at other people to prevent them from making copies of all episodes of "24".

Copyright is an artifical right created by the state. Its purpose is to "promote the progress of science and useful arts". However, this purpose can no longer be achieved by an artifical monopoly on the making of copies. Other means must be found.

(I have for years suggested that a model based on songwriter's performance royalites would be much more workable; you can give it away (like singing in the shower or playing at a friend's party), but if you make money, you owe the author a cut. A royalty-right, not a copy-right.)

The sooner governments, and the corporations they are symbiotic with, recognize that information can no longer be controlled, the sooner we can get on with new models that let writers get paid.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yeah, because I've noticed that the most popular people (King, Koontz, Clancy, Weber, JRR, Heinlein, etc.) ONLY wrote one book and retired...

Ask any of those whom you have cited who are still alive and they will tell you, and have already repeatedly told the other interviewers, that they do not write books for the compensation. They write because they want to, and sometimes because they have to, they are obsessed with it. For those people it doesn't matter what economic model is used in their case.

You're particulary dense, if you think that tens of thousands of people are going to individually decide that they're going to front the costs for hundreds of movie productions, based on nothing more than an idea and maybe a script. People want to see what they're paying for. You're going to send twenty dollars to a new author who has an "idea" for a book?

Why is that so dense? What do most people do today? The vast majority of books, movies and music are sold today because of the creator's reputation. You send amazon $20 for a new book based on a vague plot outline, the author's reputation and maybe a couple of reviews, most of which are written by anonymous people who might as well be shills for the publisher (or for another publisher). Similarly, the highest grossing nights for most movies are opening weekend where people have only seen trailers advertising vague plotlines and the fame of the director and actors.

There's little wrong with the current system,

Except one HUGE problem. No matter how much you wish it to be otherwise, you can not control an idea.

And yes, I do "respect" the people who built my house and car.

ANSWER THE QUESTION ASKED. Since you've equated respect with paying a fee everytime a person's work product is used, why don't you pay them a fee every time you use your car or house?

Bottom line. The problem we have now is that some people think they're entitled to content for free because distribution is now "free".

Whenever someone says "Bottom line" in a sentence all by itself, you can be sure that the only bottom is them talking out of their ass.

You've got faith in the face of all contrary evidence. You constantly make up wild accusations with no basis in reality ("all those jobs wtih no benefits, no insurance, blah, blah, blah" hello mcfly?) You wish to believe that world must work on a system that is free from the basic rules of economics. That when those basic principles manifest anyway it isn't economics, it is human indecency.

Like the catholic church doggedly sticking to the belief that condoms are evil because of some vague doctrine that no longer applies to the modern world, that it is better for a million children to live in the reality of poverty than for even just one couple to use a condom you would doom a whole society to billions of dollars of waste and inefficiency just because you want to believe that information should not be freely shared. Get your head out of the sand because the world ain't going to stop kicking you in the ass otherwise.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[BalanceOfJudgement]

And the belief that because the product is more than the poster wants to pay, why then it MUST be overpriced

Unless I'm mistaken, isn't that precisely the definition of 'overpriced'?

An item is overpriced if the sticker price is higher than the market will bear - meaning, you are losing money by keeping the price higher.

Do Fry's or Best Buy ask themselves "perhaps the way to lower shrinkage is to lower our prices?".

Shoplifting (especially at those two stores) seldom has anything to do with demand for the product and more to do with the shoplifter's emotional state. Obviously I recognize that that kind of blanket generality has its exceptions, but it seems that there are often other motives.

But on Slashdot, pricing strategy is the alpha and the omega of the piracy industry.

I have to agree with you because I haven't really seen many posts to the contrary.

There have been a few notable ones though, but my favorite, and the one that really helped me understand alot of what is going on (and what is at stake) was this post yesterday by mrchaotica. Be sure to read the links to Jefferson's writings on copyright at the end of his post.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If, however, customers DO want what he's selling, then they'll buy it, yes? Because if they didn't want it, they wouldn't pay for it. If it had no value to them, they wouldn't pay for it.

Aren't you the one who just cited a game developer's experience as proof that people won't pay for something even if it is valuable to them? Especially when the "stealing" of it is imperceptible to the "owner" or anyone else?

I never said copyright is the only method that can fund creation.

Your constant denial of it is the same thing.

But I've yet to hear one that isn't wishful thinking,

Right, because the vast majority of white collar workers, you know "knowledge workers" rely on copyright instead of hourly wages to make a living. Variations on the model of charging for the work of creation rather than charging for copies of creations are so plentiful they out number the people who live by copyright alone by at least 1,000:1.

or one we've moved away from for good reason (patronage),

And just why did we move away from patronage? If you are capable of a rationalize analysis, you'll find that the changes in technology that made patronage less desirable have been obsoleted by even more changes in technology that have made patronage exceptionally feasible once again.

or one that encourages new participants, or provides the same number of incentives to generate the diversity of choices we currently enjoy.

Just how does the current system encourage new participants? Any objective measure of any of the creative professions such as writing, music, acting, painting, etc shows that the vast majority of new members are thoroughly used and abused, and that even of the ones who stick it out, only a few of them are able to make a living wage solely from that work.

Or one, for that matter, that isn't a thinly disguised rationalization as to why theft is okay.

Fuck you. Your posts have been full of self-righteous condescension which you use to avoid acknowledging the obvious. You have no right to make such accusations, and the fact that you do is just more proof that you are backed into a logical corner and have to resort to emotional and specious accusations to get out.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[dwandy]

Read this.
by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[dwandy]

Because without guys like Tamte, people would have nothing to steal [sic].

Yeah, 'cause creativity was ...created(?!?) ... by copyright law. Prior to copyright, there was no music, no books, no paintings...

Might as well codify gravity: it's going to happen with or without the law.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shark72]

"Unless I'm mistaken, isn't that precisely the definition of 'overpriced'? An item is overpriced if the sticker price is higher than the market will bear - meaning, you are losing money by keeping the price higher."

I probably wasn't clear enough. When I wrote "...higher than the poster is willing to pay" I meant that in the sense of that particular poster. The common pattern is for the pirate to make the leap that because they don't want to pay that much, then the product must be overpriced for the market. That's usually incorrect; the stuff that's pirated the most is often the stuff that sells the most, too. The reality is often that the poster isn't the customer that the company is trying to get.

An assumption that many lay people make is that when you launch a product, everybody is in your target market, but that's not the case (and this is the essential theory behind the supply/demand curve). There are just certain groups of people that sometimes you don't want, or can't, sell to. Or, more to the point: Am I willing to pay $200K for a Ferrari? No. Are they overprice? No way in hell. Ferrari sells every last car it can build, and frankly, Ferrari doesn't want to build a $50K car so that I and others like me can finally enjoy a Ferrari. Ferrari may be an extreme example, but there are dozens of other brands who use pricing to define their market, and do brisk business although some people don't think their product is worth the money.

"Shoplifting (especially at those two stores) seldom has anything to do with demand for the product and more to do with the shoplifter's emotional state."

That makes sense. I think that piracy often is due to an emotional state, as well. The reality is often that one really can afford to buy that software, and one really does know that the software isn't overpriced, but there are emotional drivers that make us want to pirate.

"There have been a few notable ones though, but my favorite, and the one that really helped me understand alot of what is going on (and what is at stake) was this post yesterday by mrchaotica. Be sure to read the links to Jefferson's writings on copyright at the end of his post."

Agreed, mrchaotica is a smart cookie. I think he's on my list of friends. But I am perpetually amused when people trot out those quotes by Jefferson in relation to copyright. As if it has any relevance to today's digital world. And, of course, this is a fellow who quite likely knocked up his slave. Sally Hemming had bigger things to worry about than her freedom to copy a map or some sheet music, or having her copyrights protected. Jefferson did not see fit to grant her basic human rights.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[BalanceOfJudgement]

But I am perpetually amused when people trot out those quotes by Jefferson in relation to copyright. As if it has any relevance to today's digital world.

Which is exactly the problem - people have forgotten what copyrights are for, and we have runaway megacorporations that are using that ignorance to rape the world of its cultural heritage (and even they are passive participants in that process - they aren't exploiting ignorance... they're simply equally as ignorant). It seems to me very important to remind people why copyrights exist - not to guarantee fiscal wealth, but to guarantee cultural wealth.

And, of course, this is a fellow who quite likely knocked up his slave. Sally Hemming had bigger things to worry about than her freedom to copy a map or some sheet music, or having her copyrights protected. Jefferson did not see fit to grant her basic human rights.

DNA tests have determined he did indeed have children with at least Sally Hemming. Either way though, not really relevant to this discussion.

And in regards to the founders and slaves (Jefferson in particular)... that is a complex issue that goes far beyond "they didn't really believe in freedom because they had slaves." It's just not that simple.

But that's a discussion for another time.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[modeless]

You get paid .5 cents per hour if only one person buys your software; in that case perhaps you should consider writing software for which there is more demand. Every person who buys raises your hourly rate.

To make the most money, you don't set the price according to the cost of your labor and capital; instead you set the price according to demand, at the optimal part of the demand curve where lowering the price further wouldn't encourage enough people to buy to make up for the lost revenue. This is Econ 101 here.

What I am saying is that the optimal price is far below the current price. And since software costs practically nothing to distribute, that low price would be feasible if only there was a way to take the payments.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[arbarbonif]

I love photoshop as an example. How many people would ever buy it? How much popularity does it get by being on every pirates computer? How many extra sales does it get to pirates turned professional graphic artists or pirates working for a company? It's like free advertising for Adobe with a generally minimal loss of sales. It's THE graphics program and everyone "knows" it, you can't buy better advertising than that. If I was at Adobe the last thing I'd want is to cause a massive migration that leads to people calling things "Gimp Contests" instead of "Photoshop Contests."

Not to mention that when you are using your illegal copy of Photoshop you are most likely not out buying a competitor's product, thus putting Adobe at a monetary disadvantage.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[ultranova]

oh grow up. So who is the lucky indidivual who shells out the billion dollars then? you? I dont think so.

As there are quite a lot of people suffering from AIDS, I'd imagine the governments of the hardest-hit countries would pool their resources together and pay the required sum. Which would likely not be that high - the "one hundred billion dollars" was from Austin Powers.

If you create something that brings benefit to a million people and costs ten million dollars to develop, whats your model? to not bother unless you find some idiot to pay 10 million so everyone else gets to be slashdot-style freeloaders?

Maybe I could inform those million people, and they could then form an organization and pool the money for the purchase ? It's only 10 dollars per person.

This is how Blender became free software, BTW.

nice business model you got there.

Yup. It's called "selling for profit". You may have heard about it concerning physical goods; it works just as well with ideas. The key steps are:

1. Create something (a tangible product or an idea), costing you X dollars.
2. Sell it for X + Y dollars, where Y is a positive rational number.
3. Receive Y dollars of profit.

The part where various "intellectual property" laws go wrong is letting you repeat steps 2 and 3 forever without having to repeat step 1. To accomplish this they also seriously limit everyone else's ability to perform step 1, since they cannot use the thing they purchased at step 2, or any other thing like it.

Intellectual property laws not only discourage continuous creation of new ideas of someone who has created one, but they actively harm other peoples ability to do so. We must get rid of them, or they will keep on slowing our cultural, technological and scientific development.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[xmda]

Let's say you put 50 hours into this piece of software, and let's say you normally earn $4000 per month (Swedish figures), and you charge $25 for it. Would you, when you have got money compensating for your time, release the software free? In my view, this is the only ethical option. I develop software for a living (not selling it myself) so I know it takes a lot of time. And it would not work letting a single user pay for all that time (if we for the moment agree that you are entitled to make money creating software). That's why we split up that cost into smaller chunks. But, the problem as I see it, is that if we get the compensation for our time, we still continue to charge for it. Apart from other "creative" arts (music, film etc etc), where do we see something like that? Nowhere. If I build a house for someone, I got paid and that's it. I don't demand money for all people using that house. Of course, only one person can own it at a time, and this does not apply to the bits and bytes that we develop (basically zero cost of mass-producing software), and this suggests, to me, that there is something special about things like this that makes normal rules fail, and that all these "information products" should be free, once released into the wild.

My very incoherent 2 cents...

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Znork]

"Your example doesn't hold with mass production."

Yes it does. The idea of needing to recuperate up-front costs is invalid and largely based on up-front costs growing large if they are protected. Without protection, design remains incremental with very small up-front costs.

"you must assign value to the idea and its initial realization, instead of to the copy."

Flawed reasoning. There is no such must; the evolution of ideas is intrinsic to human nature; they're not a scarce resource, they're aggregated by communications and enablement, criven by the need for doing things better and faster and to lower costs, and which is something which opensource has abundantly proven.

"Ideas no longer remain free, but become something that must be paid for in full, or people can't earn a living wage."

Here you're expressing another fundamental (but too common) mistake; wages are not an end in themselves, they're merely a method for maximizing the production of scarce resources by allocating labour in needed sectors.

If the concept of people earning a living wage was fundamentally good for a free market economy, we'd forbid farming mechanization, and everyone could work 16 hours in the fields, thus getting their wages (which will buy them, well, food). But you know as well as I do that that's not desireable.

The end of scarcity means we dont _need_ wages because nothing _costs_ anything. To introduce costs merely 'because' is antithetical to an efficient free market economy, we might as well put a cost on air to employ any unemployed persons with counting other peoples breaths. Which would be pointless, as it would end up as nothing but a hidden tax on the few remaining necessary economic segments (just like intellectual property) employing people for doing unecessary work.

Yes, the end of scarcity means we'll all have to work less, as the only jobs that need to be done are those that cannot be done with robotic production. Boo. Hoo.

Of course, a whole lot of people will go that way kicking and screaming, and probably try to advocate various taxation and monopoly schemes all the way forward. All to the tune that people 'need to earn a living wage'.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

"Fuck you. ... just more proof that you are backed into a logical corner and have to resort to emotional and specious accusations to get out."

Now THAT's funny...

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

Ask any of those whom you have cited who are still alive and they will tell you, and have already repeatedly told the other interviewers, that they do not write books for the compensation. They write because they want to, and sometimes because they have to, they are obsessed with it. For those people it doesn't matter what economic model is used in their case.

Talk about MY changing my argument. What happened to the model being broken because of ALL of the people who ONLY write one book and retire? Hell, I bet you'd have to do some significant research to name ONE famous author who wrote only one book and retired off their single hit.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

ANSWER THE QUESTION ASKED. Since you've equated respect with paying a fee everytime a person's work product is used, why don't you pay them a fee every time you use your car or house?

I don't, and neither do you. Nor do I pay a fee every time I read a book or watch a DVD (everytime a person's work product is used). I did, however, PAY for that house, and that car, and that book, and that DVD. (Okay, I'm still paying for the house.)

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Do you deny accusing me of "ratonalizing theft?" Since you couldn't be bothered to respond with a single coherent argument, I'll take that as a sign of agreement.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

alk about MY changing my argument. What happened to the model being broken because of ALL of the people who ONLY write one book and retire?

You are being deliberately obtuse, further sign of your poor logic. You cited a handful of people as some sort of proof that the current model does economically incent the best to keep writing, I said that that the members of your example don't need economic incentive, they have other motivations. If you consider that validation of copyright you need to explain how a whole lot better.

Hell, I bet you'd have to do some significant research to name ONE famous author who wrote only one book and retired off their single hit.

Fame does not equal quality. If I wanted to, I'm sure 10 minutes with google would turn up quite a few lists of such people in all genres.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

"...you would doom a whole society to billions of dollars of waste and inefficiency just because you want to believe that information should not be freely shared."

No, but I'm not about to kill the goose until I'm good and positive that viable alternatives exist. "Information" is not free. It costs time and money to produce, and as such has value in and as of itself. (Otherwise, you wouldn't persist in the idea it needs to be "shared" (stolen)). And I'll gladly exist in a utopian society where everything is free.... once EVERYTHING is free (food, rent, clothing, transportation, insurance, etc..)

So until that time, I will continue to pay for value received, and I will continue to respect our artist's and author's wishes (a trait you seem to lack), and I'll also continue to demand that others do the same.

Bottom line: (I know you love that term) Given a choice to stand with the few highly talented people who spend years creating everything that we love and enjoy, and the parasites who believe they're "entitled" to those efforts simply because, at the moment, they can steal that work from the safety of their parents basement with relative impunity, well...

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

don't, and neither do you. Nor do I pay a fee every time I read a book or watch a DVD (everytime a person's work product is used).

You do pay that fee if you watch pay-per-view, you do pay that fee every time you walk into a theatre, watch a movie on an airplane, etc. You've just admitted there is no connection between "respect" and the copyright model. Glad you were able to put that whole red-herring to bed, it only took you, what 8 posts to get there? Just like it only took you about 6 posts to figure out what an idea is. I must say, you are extremely poorly equiped to be judging the effectiveness of copyright law considering all the irrelevancies you try to drag in to confuse the issue, and your apparent lack of even a first year college understanding of economics.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

And for every one you find I bet I can find ten who wrote bestsellers (how else could they retire?) and kept on writing. Face it. You lost this one.

As to your "motivations" side-track, doctors proably have "motivation" to do what they do too. But if they didn't get paid for it, few could afford to be one.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

No, but I'm not about to kill the goose until I'm good and positive that viable alternatives exist. "Information" is not free. It costs time and money to produce, and as such has value in and as of itself. (Otherwise, you wouldn't persist in the idea it needs to be "shared" (stolen)). And I'll gladly exist in a utopian society where everything is free.... once EVERYTHING is free (food, rent, clothing, transportation, insurance, etc..)

Whoppity-freaking-do. Damn, here I was just congratulating you for figuring out what an idea was and then you go and conflate rivalrous and excludable products with non-rivalrous and non-excludable.

So until that time, I will continue to pay for value received, and I will continue to respect our artist's and author's wishes (a trait you seem to lack), and I'll also continue to demand that others do the same.

Oh shit, and now you go and backslide on the whole respect issue too. Will you ever figure out that "respect" has never driven the market and is almost completely orthogonal to it?

the parasites who believe they're "entitled" to those efforts simply because,

Why do you waste your time posting? Your emotional arguments don't have any depth to explain. Everybody who thinks differently from you is your social inferior, got it the first time around. Meanwhile the rest of us will worry about the mechanics of the market without resorting to irrational and unsupportable accusations.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

No, I admitted that I PAID for the work that I would enjoy, which equates to "respect". I they wanted to give that work away for free, fine. They didn't, I respected their wishes, and above all I didn't steal it just because I could.

"I must say, you are extremely poorly equiped to be judging the effectiveness of copyright law considering all the irrelevancies you try to drag in to confuse the issue, and your apparent lack of even a first year college understanding of economics."

Sticks and stones, my boy. Though I have to say you're the one who seems to be fuzzy on the concepts of supply and demand, capital investment, ROI, and so on...

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

And for every one you find I bet I can find ten who wrote bestsellers (how else could they retire?) and kept on writing. Face it. You lost this one.

Apparently you don't understand that everytime you argue that economics are not an incentive, you are arguing against the need for copyright law in the first place.

As to your "motivations" side-track, doctors proably have "motivation" to do what they do too. But if they didn't get paid for it, few could afford to be one.

Damn, there you go again with the confusion between rivalrous and non-rivalrous. Next time you want to make an analogy, try to stick to non-rivalrous, non-excludable goods. Then you will have a chance at being relevant to the issue.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[yargevad]

I believe all people have the right to take anything they need to live regardless of ability to pay.

Anyone who believes this is a socialist. To say "It's not wrong to steal in order to survive" is a tiny bit less bad, but that still violates somebody else's property rights. Once the polarizing phrase "It's my right" gets pulled out and added to the opinion, this person is advocating socialist at gunpoint.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Sticks and stones, my boy.

Not trying to hurt you, trying to point out that you seriously lack the education required to comprehend the implications of what you are discussing. You are like a cargo-cult native worshipping the sky gods without understanding what is really going on.

Though I have to say you're the one who seems to be fuzzy on the concepts of supply and demand, capital investment, ROI, and so on...

Nope, you are just the one blind to the implications of non-rivalrous goods and alternative business models, instead constantly focusing emotional arguments like morality. You can have all the morality and respect in the world and it won't get your diddly-squat of an ROI.

Paraphrasing my first post in this thread - the truth, undeniable truth, is that you can not feasibly control the distribution of ideas. Once you accept that truth, you will understand that the system of copyright, which until just recently, has rested on the setting of ideas in rivalrous goods, is no longer functional. That in order to incent continued creation of new idas, a new model is required. This ain't no utopia, this ain't about catering to "thieves" it is about realizing that the world has changed and anyone who wants to make money in the new environment needs to keep up with the changes.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

"...conflate rivalrous and excludable products with non-rivalrous and non-excludable..."

Here, I'll put this in terms that even a high-school freshman should be able to understand. It doesn't MATTER what the product is. X costs Y to create. If Y isn't paid, then X can no longer be produced.

Now, Y can be paid by up-front investment, in which case costs need to be recouped, and THAT can be done by by one person, or by many, many people "splitting" those costs into manageable pieces. But again, those costs MUST be recouped, or that product is driven from the market.

Now, you seem to think that we're going to get the same number of people who're capable of spending their own time and dollars to create the same number of products WITHOUT getting paid, or that enough people will "donate" money (look up the history of shareware), or that a mid-tier author can make a living getting paid for book readings or the like.

And I say that's preposterous. So until someone can come up with a model, or models, that will support the same amount of work, AND provide the incentives needed for its creation, then "information" can NOT be free.

BTW, I love how people use the word "information" to trivialize the fact that it's books, music, movies, software, and games we're talking about (e.g. products), and not a fact like Columbus hit the beach in 1492. (You can spread the latter around all you like.)

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Now, you seem to think that we're going to get the same number of people who're capable of spending their own time and dollars to create the same number of products WITHOUT getting paid, or that enough people will "donate" money (look up the history of shareware), or that a mid-tier author can make a living getting paid for book readings or the like.

Despite my use of the term at least 2 twice now, you still haven't figured out what an assurance contract is. Go look it up and then forget about this "donation" red-herring of yours.

BTW, I love how people use the word "information" to trivialize the fact that it's books, music, movies, software, and games we're talking about (e.g. products), and not a fact like Columbus hit the beach in 1492. (You can spread the latter around all you like.)

This is just more of your bizarro application of "respect" that is a denial of reality. I can only presume you keep bringing it up as an attempt avoid the fact that bits are bits. It doesn't matter if it took a billion dollars or two cents to produce a bit, it is still just a bit and thus non-rivalrous. If the effort put into the creation of those bits made a difference in their rivlarousness, then you would have a point.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[stinerman]

Anyone who believes this is a socialist.

Imagine that, I'm a socialist, too!

To say "It's not wrong to steal in order to survive" is a tiny bit less bad, but that still violates somebody else's property rights.

You seem to think that property rights are more important than someone living. I find that sad.

While we're on the topic, I don't even ascribe to the belief in property rights. Being an anarchist, I'm more in tune with the idea of "use rights". Property rights are all too often used to infringe on the rights of others.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[yargevad]

To say "It's not wrong to steal in order to survive" is a tiny bit less bad, but that still violates somebody else's property rights.

You seem to think that property rights are more important than someone living. I find that sad.

Quite to the contrary, the right to continue living is the most fundamental property right. By your logic (a person living is more important than other people's property rights), homeless people should be allowed to break into my house and steal food out of my fridge, possibly killing me in the process.

I'm a socialist... [I'm] an anarchist...

You must disagree with yourself a lot.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[stinerman]

Anarcho-socialism. I wouldn't say I agree with all of it, but its as close as I've found.

homeless people should be allowed to break into my house and steal food out of my fridge, possibly killing me in the process.

Yes, if they are on the brink of starvation. I'd hope they'd have the sense to break into a well-off person's house rather than another poor or middle class person's. They have no right to harm you or anyone in your house though. It would only be ethical to take only what you needed to survive in the immediate sense (perhaps a day or so) and do so in a way that minimizes the negative effects on the person you stole from. That is, take the bare minimum you need from someone who would miss it the least.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[yargevad]

homeless people should be allowed to break into my house and steal food out of my fridge

Yes, if they are on the brink of starvation. I'd hope they'd have the sense to break into a well-off person's house rather than another poor or middle class person's. They have no right to harm you or anyone in your house though. It would only be ethical to take only what you needed to survive in the immediate sense (perhaps a day or so) and do so in a way that minimizes the negative effects on the person you stole from. That is, take the bare minimum you need from someone who would miss it the least.

Ok, so you probably have no problem with the concept of welfare then, other than that is administered by the government. I have no problem with individuals or charitable organizations giving food to homeless people. What I have a problem with is someone taking my property without my consent. The problem with any part of what you describe working is that everybody must believe in exactly the same levels of moderation that you describe, and it is a horribly slippery slope. At what point can I stop worrying about this poor homeless person's well-being and start worrying about myself? So can I shoot him for stealing if he takes 5 apples, but not 4? What recourse do I have when I have 8 apples and 2 homeless people take 4 of my apples each, leaving me with none? Now, under your system, I have to go steal apples from somebody else. Stealing is either ethical or not, there is no middle ground. Under this system, there is also no motivation for anybody to do well at anything. Socialist structures of any kind, government-supported or not, spoil the pot and remove the motivation to be productive.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[stinerman]

I never said that it would be easy to determine where the line is drawn. I just said what I thought was right. You have found one of the major problems of anarchism.

I do not need the law or money or anything to motivate myself other than knowing that I am doing my best to help make a positive impact on those I interact with. Some people do need such motivation. Anarchism/socialism are not for those people. Those people should live in a society that has a carrot and stick approach to motivation.

On another note, it is good to hear someone debate the issues rather than start with the OMG COMMUNIST stuff. Civil discussions on /. are few and far between.

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[shmlco]

First, I know precisely what an assurance contract is, and that model won't fly, as it assumes that N number of people will make a commitment up front for a product. While N number of people might agree to pay up front for a new Stephen King book (he is, after all, Stephen King), it doesn't help the new author with little or no fan base, the mid-tier author, or the unknown director or screenwriter. Further, the model is not scalable or sustainable, in that many, many, many people would have to continually browse sites and directories of authors and agree to pay for something they're not going to get for a year or more, as opposed to browsing Amazon, seeing a product you'd like, paying a reasonable amount, and having it the very next day.

Plus assurance contracts suffer from the "fan" problem. I may be a fan of one or two or three favorite authors, and as such donate to them, or engage in a assurance contract with them, but that's it. Conversely, I have over 500 books on the shelf behind me, and each and every one of those authors was "paid" for their work.

As to your own "denial of reality", bits are not just bits. If bits are all you want, I'll hook you up to a random static feed, and you can download all you want. But people don't want "bits", they want content, and continue in a state of denial if you want, but content still has to be created and produced.

BTW, go to your definitions and look up the free rider problem...

Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Hey, at least you are mostly paying attention and not making up as many bullshit strawmen to beat your chest about.

it doesn't help the new author with little or no fan base, the mid-tier author, or the unknown director or screenwriter

Just how do you think those people make any money now? They get the shaft all the time under the current system - just ask any unknown screenwriter, director or actor (all synonyms for waiter) or 'mid-tier' author (who alomst certainly holds down a regular day job, usually in academia). Nobody starting out and nobody doing a mediocre job gets paid very much, it really doesn't matter what industry they are in. You have to establish your credentials before you can convince anyone to give you the big bucks, a system based on assurance contracts would be no different.

Further, the model is not scalable or sustainable, in that many, many, many people would have to continually browse sites and directories of authors

Hardly. All they have to do is watch, listen to or read any of the FREE previous works and when they are done, they decide if they want more. If they do, they put down their money. If they don't want more it doesn't matter because the author has already been paid for the work he's already done and if not enough people think he's good enough to warrant another one, then that's the free market telling him to get a new job.

and agree to pay for something they're not going to get for a year or more, as opposed to browsing Amazon, seeing a product you'd like, paying a reasonable amount, and having it the very next day.

What good is money that sits in the bank? Might as well put it up to purchase something else, especially if it gets you something cool in the short term (like the exceptionally effective trinkets NPR and PBS give away during their fund-drives, oh please don't let that trigger a backslide into another 'donation' fixation again, alright?) or it earns interest sitting in that escrow account so that if the contract is not completed, you get more money back than you put in. (See the concept of a dominant assurance contract.)

BTW, go to your definitions and look up the free rider problem...

Don't get it do you? The free-rider is only the problem for copyright-based schemes. The work is already done and released, so the free-rider takes it for free and the creator does not see any compensation. Here, I'll say it again - free-riders are a primary reason why copyright does not work any more. If you can solve the free-rider problem for the copyright cartels, hollywood will make you their king.

So instead of trying to fight a losing battle against human nature, we need a system that harnesses the free-rider. Free redistribution does exactly that, the free-rider now becomes the engine of promotion for more paying work. Instead of 'stealing' he's now working for the creator by spreading advertising for the creator.

As to your own "denial of reality", bits are not just bits. If bits are all you want,

Oh puleaze. Grow up already. Your assinine fixation on terminology does not lead to any better understanding of the problem, in fact it prevents you from seeing the situation clearly. Just as "respect" doesn't earn a dime of ROI, neither are "content" bits any harder or more costly to duplicate than "random" bits.

Re:Question? - Eliminates WIFI RIAA defense

[Jugalator]

Credit cards link you to the p2p site. How CONVENIENT.

No, they won't.

Awesome!

[TastyCakes]

Man what a great idea. Justifying the 99% of the traffic on this thing that is piracy with 1% of "secret communications", of which a significant chunk is going to be concerning other law breaking, laws likely worse than piracy. Wire taps are the tools of opressive society! Oh and also the tools to catch mobsters and terrorists, I guess. But don't worry, I'm sure the people who wanted to blow up thousands of westerners on planes about this time wouldn't figure out how to use something like this.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on. Real terrorists are true darknets of people trusting each other. There is like this encryption thingy, called "gpg" og "pgp" or something you know. No need to use eDonkey to share "crash the plane" ideas. These people could even use illegally large keys too!

Do you REALLY feel safer on the airplanes now than you did before 9/11?

Re:Awesome!

[bky1701]

You forgot to mention "think of the children!".

Re:Awesome!

[stinerman]

I'm sure the people who wanted to blow up thousands of westerners on planes about this time wouldn't figure out how to use something like this.

They already use something like this. If you were doing something really illegal, like planning to kill thousands of people, would you send it in the mail or speak about it over an unsecure line?

The problem (is it a problem?) with freedom is that people will abuse it. In this case, the right is privacy. If you outlawed crypto for fear of terrorists using it they would just use other methods. It might not be SSL/TLS/etc. but simple keywords. For instance, it could be agreed upon at a meeting that if the heist/bombing/etc. is going to go ahead, I speak to you about my mother. If not, I could speak to you about my father. Simple things that like that is essentally all they'd need to do to circumvent any outlawed crypto. The counter to that is to monitor the communcations of every last person on earth for all time.

Here, I'd hope you'd understand that the solution is worse than the problem. So that terrorists can't use tools that law abiding citizens use, you'd have to totally eliminate privacy and have everyone monitored all the time.

Re:Awesome!

[LordLucless]

Well, the FBI can't even catch them when they do use wiretaps, so who cares.

Re:Awesome!

[init100]

If you outlawed crypto for fear of terrorists using it they would just use other methods.

I cannot understand why terrorists, planning to e.g. blow up a plane (which is highly illegal) would care about cryptography being outlawed. They would use it anyway, legal or not. The result is that honest people cannot use cryptography, but terrorists can.

Re:Awesome!

[stinerman]

That, too. :-)

Of course, even if the government could simply wipe crypto off the planet except for themselves, it wouldn't change a thing.

Re:Awesome!

[TastyCakes]

My point is that they are justifying some illegal act with other, potentially worse, ones. I know there are other ways to communicate privately. I just don't like these people glorifying piracy by playing to the conspiratorial element of society's distrust of governments, governments that for the most part are just trying to protect the people of their nations.

Re:Awesome!

[DaDibbel]

Brilliant insights!
The situation is becoming ridiculous in fact farcical!

It would be laughable if it wasn't happening for real!
Everyone is being criminalised - our freedoms are being abused, in fact slaughtered.
How soon before we have no freedom at all

Rationale?

[evilviper]

I have to ask... "Why?"

There are numerous companies already providing anonymizing services, very similar to this. What's special about this one, other than it's affiliation with the Pirate Party?

Re:Rationale?

[montyzooooma]

"What's special about this one, other than it's affiliation with the Pirate Party?"

I've no idea. A few people above have mentioned similar free services which I have no knowledge of. But for five bucks a month maybe it's worth backing purely from the standpoint that the Pirate Party is the only organisation taking a public stand like this. I don't even agree with a lot of what they represent but as a counter-balance to the **AAs of the world it's a case of "the enemy of my enemy"...

Re:Rationale?

[evilviper]

But for five bucks a month maybe it's worth backing purely from the standpoint that the Pirate Party is the only organisation taking a public stand like this

Donate your money to the EFF instead.

They will offer you a 6 or 12-month subscription to Anonymizer as a gift, and have already done far more to counter the RIAA and MPAA than the Pirate Party could dream of.

Re:Rationale?

[pembo13]

I see your point, however, I suspect an American organisation will only be allowed to cause a finite amount of harm to the bottom line of said organisations.

Read The FAQ

[tmk]

Short version: They keep only records who is customer, not about his traffic. https://www.relakks.com/faq/legal/

Legal

RELAKKS is a company incorporated in Sweden. The service is basically a Swedish broadband subscription offered over the Internet. This means that the legal framework mainly consists of the The Electronic Communications Act 2003 389. What will this mean if:

Swedish authorities or,
Other organization or individuals demands access to information protected by RELAKKS?


RELAKKS Safe Surf enjoys the strongest legal protection possible under Swedish Law because of the service type (pre-paid flat-rate service). This means that RELAKKS do not have to keep an ordinary customer database (to be able handle transactions etc.). This is of importance if forced to hand over information.

If Swedish authorities can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have a case for demanding subscription information from RELAKKS (they have to be of the opinion that if convicted the user will be imprisoned - fined not enough). .

RELAKKS then have to hand over the subscription information entered by you (but that's all). RELAKKS do not store any subscribtion information about you except what you entered yourself when signing up for the RELAKKS Safe Surf service.

For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over "traffic data" including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment.

Regarding inquires from other parties than Swedish authorities RELAKKS will never turn over any kind of information.

The combination Swedish high-tech encryption and the strongest legal protection give you true access to Internet, safer and speedier then ever before.

For more information about Swedish Telecom Law: The Electronic Communications Act 2003:389

Re:Read The FAQ

[kickedfortrolling]

Do you think ISP's of this nature will be required by some anti-terror law to maintain records of surfing? Surely if BT have to, this compnay should? maybe i'll re-read tfa.

Re:Read The FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Keeping records from surfing is not required in Sweden. Not that it matters, if anyone remebers the Pirate Party raid this summer you'll see that there's an easy way around this. The police/procecutor just played the guilty by association game and all computers the ISP housed was taken and examined.

Re:Read The FAQ

[jr87]

except for the fact that not alot of the people involved in that raid are now in deep shit.

Re:Question? Answer.

[grrowl]

If it's a truly anonymous darknet, they won't keep 'subscriber linked to ip accessed this resource'-type records. Even if the US or any other overzealous country or power subpoenaed or stole the records to prosecute, they won't know which subscriber did what and when.

So the minimum of records they would have to keep is who's subscribed and paid, and even with only a handful of people on the service, there's no way anyone could prove beyond reasonable doubt that a specific person did it, and I don't think swedish law would enable prosecution of the ISP.

Right...

[jandersen]

There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet

'There must be a thousand reasons why you might want to be completely anonymous, but right now I can't think of one...'

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want people tracing my family and knowing when we go on holiday so they can steal things;

You want to be able to google search in Privacy;

He/she doesn't want the Chinese to Torture her.

What are their reasons? They don't have to be big, just private.

Re:Right...

[crhylove]

Freedom of Speech doesn't jump to mind? Especially in this day and age of NSA wiretapping? I have no idea what you've been smoking in order to lack the imagination to see that one.

rhY

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about voicing an unpopular opinion?:

"I believe that the RIAA and MPAA are among the finest organizations seen this side of Standard Oil."

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I support freedom of speech, but there are going to be allegations that folks will use this for things more sinister than trading MP3s, like kiddie porn and terrorist communication.

The later will be used to justify the former. Terrorists have an insane amount of options for communications, Darknet is another one. Using some simple codes/ciphers they do the same thing using IMs or commercial email. But they will use it as an excuse anyway.

Re:Right...

[novus ordo]

You will get a thousand reasons why you should have considered that before posting.

Re:Right...

[xQx]

Okay, here's the short version of why it's important to remain anonymous.

Even in day to day business people do things that other people don't like.

If you are about to do something that people more powerful than you aren't going to like, it can be important for your own personal safety that they don't find out you were responsible.

Got it? It's not just terrorists and pirates.

Re:Right...

[Eivind]

There's many reasons, some noble, some less noble. Anyone that wants to can easily think of reasons one migth want to be anonymous on the internet.

For example;

• You may want to blow the whistle on some illegal or unethical behaviour where you work, but fear losing your job.
• You may want to critisize government, but fear negative consequences. (depending on where you live this may be from none up to and including imprisonment, torture or execution)
• You may want to lobby for an unpopular position.
• You may want to send email to your friends in the near east (I've got several friends in the UaE and Saudi-arabia) without ending up on the "no-fly" list.
• You may want to help the police figthing corruption or mafia without yourself or your family ending up dead.
• You may want to post anonymized nude photos online (for fun or profit) without exposing your identity.
• If you're a boss, you may want to pose as an "outsider" and f.ex. contact your own support-department to get a picture of how said department works, as seen from the outside.
• You may not *want* people to know you're collecting pictures of rhinos.
• You may want to be able to discuss personal problems online without those you discuss it with knowing who you are.
• You may want to look for love online without risking stalkers.

There's a zillion reasons really. But more importantly, you shouldn't need any reason at all. The simple fact is, there exist people who would prefer, atleast sometimes, being anonymous online.

Re:Right...

[Eivind]

Sure there are going to be "allegations". So what ?

Telephones, letters, ads in the New York Times, cars, bicycles and pigeons are also all usable (and doubtlessly used!) by people with nefarious purposes. So what ? That's neither here nor there, certainly not a reason to forbid any of them.

Re:Right...

[shmlco]

Yeah, and I predict that 0.001% of all the traffic on the darknet will be used for those legitimate reasons... which leaves the other 99.999% for you know what.

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

You may not *want* people to know you're collecting pictures of rhinos.

Wow!!! Someone else that has my interest in Rhino Pictures!

Cool!

Eamil me and lets swap pics sometimes..

anonymous@coward.com

Re:Right...

[evilviper]

'There must be a thousand reasons why you might want to be completely anonymous, but right now I can't think of one...'

They explained, in no uncertain terms, that Democracy and Freedom of Speech inherently requires anonymity.

What good is freedom of speech, if defacto sensorship is imposed on anyone who says anything unpopular? If you get identified, and can no longer find a job, any place to live, any stores open to you, etc., do you really have freedom of speech?

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea what you've been smoking in order to lack the imagination to see that one.

I'm guessing it's not marijuana.

Re:Right...

[dreamchaser]

Oh please. This argument is getting very tired. Show me one case where someone has been persecuted for legitimately excercising their free speech rights. The NSA has been tapping phones for a LOT longer than the current administration has been around. This service has everything to do with being able to circumvent copyright laws and little to do with political freedom. They just dress it up in sexy anti-government language. Note their first goal; the reform of copyright law.

This reminds me of the people who cried out 'Freenet is about social and political freedom, not about downloading kiddie porn'.

I'm not saying that this might not be a useful service, but please, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then call it what it is; a duck.

Re:Right...

[Overzeetop]

You mean, after reading all the AOL serach log stories for the last couple of days, there still aren't enough reasons?

Re:Right...

[jandersen]

First let me say that my comment was ony meant as a humorous paraphrasing of some Clint Eastwood film where he says something like 'There must be a thousand reasons why I shouldn't blow you away, but right now I can't think of one'. To see it marked up as 'Insightful' is surprising, not to say a bit ridiculous. Apart from that I guarantee you that what I smoke doesn't tend to make me less imaginative.

Freedom of Speech? Yes, it did spring to mind, but when I had finished laughing, I thought it had only little to do with freedom of speech. Anonymity is simply hiding and while there are many good reasons why you would want to hide, there are even more bad ones. I'm not going to parrot the 'terrorist' nonsense, but spammers, virus producers and other criminals are probably the biggest group of users of this kind of service.

I don't know how it is in the US now, but I doubt that a generally law-abiding person would get into much trouble by airing controversial views; I could be wrong, of course.

Re:Right...

[jandersen]

As I already replied in another posting, I was actually just making a joke - inspired by some Clint Eastwood film, I think.

However, I think your reply deserves some response, so here goes. Some of the reasons you list seem valid enough; but I'm sure you realize that on the net you will never be truly anonyous. The IP packets need to know where to get from their server to your machine, so they'll know who and where you are. Also, since it is a commercial service, they will hold credit card info etc. Unless the service is hosted in a country where the US have no leverage at all (like China ;-) you can, and will at some point, be found out if you express views that are sufficiently controversial.

I think in many ways this is a luxury problem - you want freedom (of speech) without consequences; but freedom has always cost something, and you have to be prepared to pay the price.

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we want to steal music and movies -- wait! no! um...

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people - like me - can't voice their opinion about their government in public without getting arrested. The world is bigger than you think, asshole.

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you live in North Korea or Iran?

Re:Right...

[sixdaywar]

The IP packets need to know where to get from their server to your machine, so they'll know who and where you are.

Relakks is a VPN service using 128-bit SSL end-to-end. You are hidden behind a Swedish IP, so no one on the other end has any direct connection to your computer. As the entire point of this service is anonymity, it is safe to assume (but is worth clarifying with them if you are concerned) that they don't not log any data related to your connection. The outside world sees Relakks, Relakks sees you.

Also, since it is a commercial service, they will hold credit card info etc. Unless the service is hosted in a country where the US have no leverage at all (like China ;-) you can, and will at some point, be found out if you express views that are sufficiently controversial.

Before making statements about a service it is worthwhile to actually go through the legal information they provide. As stated on the Relakks website, under Swedish law, the only way they are disclosing any information regarding your account is if it can be proven, before hand, that you have done something that would put you in jail for a minimum of 2 years. This will ONLY be provided to Swedish authorities. At no point will they disclose your information to foreign authorities.

Re:Right...

[Guuge]

I often foil terrorist plots over the internet. If one of the nefarious fellows ever found out who I am, I would be found dead. These guys are the nastiest scum in the world by far. The fates of freedom, liberty, truth, justice, and patriotic euphemisms all hang in the balance.

You don't support the terrorists, do you? DO YOU? WHY AREN'T YOU ANSWERING???

Re:Right...

[Hillgiant]

• You may want to send email to your friends in the near east (I've got several friends in the UaE and Saudi-arabia) without ending up on the "no-fly" list.

Nah, they will just put everyone who uses the service on the "no-fly" list. It's a whole lot easier to justify blanket suspision with all the illegal wiretaps, financial record tracking, and whatnot they have already justified. Innocent until proven guilty? How about suspect until proven innocent. (and maybe even not then)

Re:Right...

[DanQuixote]

The real problem is not the privacy or a person's motives to be private.

By giving our government the authority to investigate, arrest, convict and punish, a potent mechanism is put in place. If the law is well written, and the police are properly intentioned and balanced in their thinking, then it works quite well.

But (you knew that was coming didn't you?), it is a sword whirling through society. Sometimes, the sword cuts those who deserve it not. The mere fact that there is a potent and active system that causes pain, means that you should want to protect yourself from that system.

What if you really aren't breaking the law, but you don't agree with the law you are carefully not breaking? Are guns your hobby even though the rest of the country hates them? Do you believe people should carry them even though it tends to get one-self arrested?

Will _they_ be watching you? Will they seek to accuse you? Will they decide that where there's smoke, there is fire - and find whatever excuse they can to penalize you?

It can be very wise to fly under the radar my friend. I say kudos to this effort.

Re:Right...

[djcondor]

Do you seriously think the NSA can't break 128 bit encryption?? If they have your phone and internet tapped, obviously you're suspicious, and in that event, YES, they WILL decrypt your 128bit encrypted connection to whatever anonymizing service you use. Here's a novel concept for those who don't want to get in trouble with the law...STOP BREAKING IT. It's that simple. By continuing to live in a society that has certain laws, you implicitly agree to abide by those laws. If you don't like them, try to change them, while still abiding by them. If you're unwilling to abide by the law, move into a society that more closely fits in line with your ideals. So either obey the laws of the land in which you choose to continue residing, or try to change the laws while still obeying them, or gtfo.

Re:Right...

[man_ls]

Does this mean the Swedish won't share it with say the Americans, if you're doing something that would anger them?

Granted, I doubt for anything short of terrorism the authorities on both sides would bother to communicate with the Sweeds, but still.

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guarantee that you break laws on a regular basis. You might not even be aware of it, or you might not even think they're important laws, or you might disregard them as pointless local ordinances, but you almost certainly violate some laws. The unfortunate fact is that there are so many broadly worded laws on the books that almost anyone can be found guilty of something. It's up to the individual to protect himself from these things.

Re:Right...

[crhylove]

Man, did you send a clue train all the way down that guys throat or what? I've been making this case every day for all types of technologies that retards are afraid of. I mean, sure, rapists can find teen age girls on MySpace, but they can also find them in a house that has an address on the front. Should we stop having addresses? Phones? Regular mail? People who make decisions based on irational fear really irk me, especially the ones who would attempt to run the country. DOH!! TOO LATE!

rhY

Re:Right...

[Eivind]

First, I explicitly said some reasons where noble, and some less so. That's perfectly fine with me. I don't *want* to live in a world where only noble actions are possible.

Anonymity can also be used to spread slander, to threaten or intimidate someone without being traced, to further pump-and-dump frauds in the stock-market, to organize criminal activity and so on.

I still prefer to live in a world with strong anonymity. We've had that for a long time. It's bloody damn hard to track who the sender of a letter is. It's near-impossible to figure out who calls in a tip with a greymarket prepaid mobile phone.

Yes. It helps criminals. So does cars, houses, telephones, indeed *everything* that is useful is useful also to those with illegal intentions. That's no argument at all in my opinion.

Re:Right...

[Eivind]

How can you ?

To figure out that someguy@gmail.com was using the service, you'd first need to subpoena google for the ip-adresses of the person accessing that account. You'd get the ip-adress of the anonymizer.

Then you'd need to subpoena the anonymizer, in Sweden, which only works if you've got proof of a crime with a (in sweden) penalty of 2 years prison or more. And even then, you cannot subpoena information which the anonymizer simply do not have -- because they deliberately don't keep any logs.

So, just how would you go about adding people to no-fly lists based on the usage of an anonymizer such as this ?

Re:Right...

[Hillgiant]

I'm talking about reading it from the other direction. Blanket wiretap the ISP for anyone using the anonymizer. Add all these people to the list. Obviously, if they are using an anonymizer, they must be up to something. This is what happens when there is no oversight.

Re:Right...

[Eivind]

But just how would the US government go about "blanket-wiretapping" a swedish ISP ?

Besides, even if they somehow acomplished this, I doubt that the USA is *that* close to a dictatorship.

It is true that compared to what most europeans are used to, and even more compared to what scandinavians are used to, your transparency, oversigth and democracy is utterly ridicolously weak, but Bush is still not quite a dictator for life. (even though he seems to claim rigths such as starting wars and wiretapping US citizens without a warrant, and getting away with it)

I could be wrong. Maybe you guys are even more screwed that I imagined.

Re:Right...

[Hillgiant]

Naturally this tactic would be mostly focused on US ISPs. As for the actual technique, I imagine it would go something like this:

NSA: Good morning, we need account information and # Mb transfered for all of you customers who contacted 87.96.134.19 from date XX-XXX-XX to date YY-YYY-YY persuant to an anti-terrror investigation. Note: we do not need, nor are we interested in what information was exchanged, just the account information and how much data. After all, we do not want to monitor these private conversations. Have a nice day.

ISP: Ummm... Okay, I guess...

Next day: *NSA adds top 25% by transfer volume to no-fly list* Don't think it would happen? This is exactly what they did to the telecom companies. But rather than ask for calls to a specific number, they asked for EVERY international call.

Re:Right...

[Eivind]

but they didn't add everyone who called abroad to the no-fly list. That's the part I find hard to imagine being possible in todays USA. Despite being very critical of your current administration. (I actually don't know anyone over here that are enthusiastic about your Mr Bush)

Copyright incompatible with privacy

[gronofer]

I'm impressed with this idea, and particularly with one of their statements:

The only way to enforce today's unbalanced copyright laws is to monitor all private communications over the Internet.

This is one of the reasons I'm opposed to copyright myself.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[D14BL0]

I agree. I believe that nobody should be able to "own" something that isn't physically there, like land, houses, or "stuff". Music, movies, and programs aren't "physical", and should be free, since all you really own is the name to an idea.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[cliffski]

i see. are you opposed to the payment for digital content then? you would rather no new commercial software, music or games were ever produced? because without copyright, explain to me how the content producer has a business model?
You can argue to limit or reorm copyright (i agree) but to say you oppose it is madness. Or anarchy/communism.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[cliffski]

Great plan you got there. So who is going to make new movies, tv programs, books and vidoe games and operating systems then?
Nobody, because you just removed their incentive.
Go read "economics for dummies" to see how capitalism works, or admit to being a communist. Your choice. I'm not insulting you, thats communism, go look it up.

Current copyright law is too severe, but arguing that the concept is wrong just makes you look silly.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[richie2000]

Nobody, because you just removed their incentive.

No, not really.

Current copyright law is too severe, but arguing that the concept is wrong just makes you look silly.

Oh?

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[cliffski]

interesting, so lemme se, you only want freeware software, freeware music, freeware movies now? Did you enkoy Lord Of The rings? as i recall, it cost quite a bit.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[stinerman]

At this point, you are certainly trolling, but its 4:48 EDT and working 3rd shift at a small private college has left me with little work to do. CHOMP.

So who is going to make new movies, tv programs, books and vidoe games and operating systems then?
Nobody, because you just removed their incentive.

You can't really believe that with no copyright that nobody would make any new artistic works. I point to the books, songs, and plays that were made before the advent of copyright. I will also point to Wikipedia, to which people regularly contribute with no expectation that they will recieve anything out of their contributions.

Go read "economics for dummies" to see how capitalism works, or admit to being a communist. Your choice. I'm not insulting you, thats communism, go look it up.

False dichotomy. I suppose you think that our friend dada21 is a communist because he is against copyright. Hint: he's an anarcho-capitalist. In fact, many libertarians believe that copyright is incompatible with the free-market because it involves government intervention. Communism is about communial ownership of property. Since copyright isn't property, communism doesn't come into the discussion.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

interesting, so lemme se, you only want freeware software, freeware music, freeware movies now?

Don't know about grandparent, but most of the software I use, the music I hear and the moving images I watch are in fact just that (I buy a cheap DVD once in a blue moon and sometimes turn on the TV)--books is what I'm buying as they have a greak bang-for-buck ratio, if I'll ever have more disposable income for entertainment most of it will go to creators of Free content, not the RIAAs of this world.

Did you enkoy Lord Of The rings? as i recall, it cost quite a bit.

I enjoyed the book and that has paid for itself many times over.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[Jugalator]

are you opposed to the payment for digital content then?

Why should he? That's a rather unrelated question. You'd still pay for something if you wished to support an author, right? Is that not why we pay for content today?

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[Troglodyt]

And this is one of the main reasons I'm voting for the Pirate Party this election.
People have mistaken their politics a lot, thinking it's just about kids wanting to download free stuff. It's starting to change now though, they are getting a lot of attention in media and people willing to listen can understand what it's all about.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[salesgeek]

Current copyright law is too severe, but arguing that the concept is wrong just makes you look silly.

This is one of the best summaries of the current IP situation I've seen put into words. Copyright works if you shave a few decades off the term, eliminate renewals and place a few boundries on what rights publishers get. Boundries like fair use, a reduction in the penalty for infringement where there is no commercial gain and particularly the right of they buyer to change the format to remain compatible with the technology of the day.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[damienl451]

What if you've just spent a whole year writing your Ph.D thesis and your advisor publishes it as his own? Are you still opposed to copyright? Or you've writtent the next "Da Vinci Code" and the publisher decides that he can publish it, make millions, and still not give you a dime? Do you think it's fair? You can be opposed to some laws regarding copyright, to the length of copyright terms, but never to copyright itself.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[richie2000]

First of all, copyright is not a business model for creators. Never has been. The only ones to profit from it is the distributors. There's a Swedish scientific study out (from the university of Uppsala) that says that a whopping 2% of the money we spend on buying music, going to the movies and buying books actually goes to the creators. 2%. The rest goes to miscellaneous distributors, distribution costs and advertising. The Internet has changed that equation, radically. There's no point in keeping an old and failing method for spreading information just to keep the distributors in business. There are plenty of other ways for creators to earn money for their works without having a monopoly on making copies. To facilitate this shift, we need to change copyrights so they de-emphasize the value of the copy and place the value in the work of creation instead.

BTW, I watched Lord of the Rings in a theater, even though I had downloaded and seen parts of it before. One does not invalidate the other. Heavy file-sharers are those who buys the most CDs and DVDs. Scientific fact.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[Eivind Eklund]

The question is if I enjoy Lord of the Rings more than I would enjoy the benefits of not having copyright laws, including the amount of freedom that gives to people to develop new stuff based on the old stuff already made. The answer to THAT isn't quite as obvious.

(Note that I am not in favour of abolishment of copyright, though I'm in favour of very significant reform.)

Eivind.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[alexgieg]

I don't think the "PayPal - Click Here to Donate" buttons would suddenly disappear. Quite the opposite.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[cliffski]

no im not trolling, but your post and the people who modded this as flamebait shows that slashdot readers have their 'software is free man" attitude so entrenched up their own ass they cant cope with the concept of capitalism. Why not go live in North Korea? seriously, they love you people.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm opposed to IP because the concepts of owning a word (trademark), group of words (copyright), or idea (patent) are not found in human nature. Hence, IP requires an initiation of force against others (i.e. government coercion on behalf of the IP holder) in order to implement the concept. Real, tangible property requires no initiation of force against others, and for that reason, would exist in the absence of government. It is as natural to human beings as eating and sleeping -- in fact, the fundmental concept of freedom could not exist if each person wasn't naturally entitled to exclusive ownership of his body. (Of course, that ownership is eroded proportional to the size of government.)

Government, with its special "right" to employ coercion as its means, is the key difference between IP and real, tangible property. As I am opposed to government in general, I must also be opposed to anyhing derived from it. That includes basically everything except pure voluntary association (i.e. freedom).

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[tiocsti]

Explain to me how opposing a government sanctioned monopoly = communism? It seems to me that lack of copyrights is a very capitalistic goal, as it lets the free market embrace, extend, and produce at progressively lower costs all works.

I personally think some limited form of copyright is helpful, but certainly it is not a capitalistic concept.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[tiocsti]

Copyright is not how you address fraud; I believe there are already laws on the books to address that problem, and copyright is not among them. Misrepresenting yourself as the creator of a work in the public domain is not lawful, as far as I know.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[DarkDragonVKQ]

Because capitalism has proven that it by itself is just as bad as communism. There needs to be a balance in the middle instead of swinging one way or the other. Not to mention your insults diminish your arguement. When you insult somebody they're less likely to listen to your point.

Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Very well said. I wish you had not posted AC so that I could add you to my friends list.

No Linux support !? (Read the FAQ at relakks.com)

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, do they have linux support ?, Or only XP and OSX are supported ?

Except it's not just copies of the latest movies

[Anonymous Coward]

What about terrorist plots, child porn, and all the other stuff that Osama Bin Laden and his cronies want to send anonymously?

it will just be full of movies and music and games

[cliffski]

"There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet"
And copying a King Kong DVD rip is not one of them. Its sad when people take the legitmate point about anonymity that you might need for political organisations, journalists and whistle-blowers, and just use it as an excuse to facilitate warez and music copying.
And calling yourselves the 'pirate party' is just plain insane. Whats wrong with "the consumer rights' party? or do they realsie thats way too hypocritical.

Given that you said it's a hobby

[leehwtsohg]

Do you use any free software? gcc? linux? Firefox?
Now, if you replied yes above, then...
How long would it take you to write that stuff yourself? How much would you have paid to get equivalent stuff? How long would it take you to write the equivalent stuff yourself?
Why don't you make your software free for others to use, if you use anyone else's free software?

That is the cool thing about software and information - you don't lose anything when someone makes another copy (or Linus would be bankrupt now). So you can pay the community back by contributing your own stuff. It is true that you don't become rich, but you do have all the software/info you want - and that's what you'd do with the money anyway, right?

Re:Given that you said it's a hobby

[Rakishi]

Why don't you make your software free for others to use, if you use anyone else's free software?

Because then you won't have much free software. Guess what? Many of those "developers" work as programmers on paid software to pay the bills.

So you can pay the community back by contributing your own stuff. It is true that you don't become rich, but you do have all the software/info you want - and that's what you'd do with the money anyway, right?

Eat. Pay bills. Save it for a rainy day.

Re:Given that you said it's a hobby

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Guess what? Many of those "developers" work as programmers on paid software to pay the bills.

Guess what? Many of those "developers" work as paid programmers to develop the free software and pay the bills.

Re:Given that you said it's a hobby

[Rakishi]

Guess what? Many of those "developers" work as paid programmers to develop the free software and pay the bills.

If by many you mean a few then yes they are. I doubt a majority of all the free software developers make money on it. A few big projects get companies to pay some developers, a few other projects make some money off support or other means (ads, etc.). However in the end it's a fraction of all the free software devs, especially those working on smaller projects.

Re:Given that you said it's a hobby

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

However in the end it's a fraction of all the free software devs, especially those working on smaller projects.

You are demonstrably wrong. Most of the people contributing to free software are "scratching an itch" - an itch that is part of their daily jobs. They are not paid to be dedicated free software developers, but they are paid to get their jobs done and that often involves improvements and fixes to Free software tools. The few people who do spend most of their time working on Free software are doing it professionally - it may be as professionally employed software engineers for a salary or as part of their studies at university for a degree, but they are still being compensated for their work. Indeed there are some who work on Free software as a hobby, but it's a myth that they are the driving force behind any of the projects that are in widespread usage.

Re:Given that you said it's a hobby

[Rakishi]

I find it amusing how neither one of us is proving anything to back up our claims. Granted since you said "demonstrably wrong" feel free to do just that.

Re:Given that you said it's a hobby

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Look at the email addresses of the contributors list for most projects - either .com (and not ISP .com's either) or .edu.

Re:Given that you said it's a hobby

[leehwtsohg]

Could it possibly be programmers/students/researchers who do programming as a hobby, but use their company/school e-mail account for it? I'm know of at least one...

Re:Given that you said it's a hobby

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I am sure there are some, and I am also sure there are some who use their personal addresses for their day-job related activities because they tend to use the same tools no matter who their employer is. But based on my experience with various projects, those cases are the exception, not the rule.

Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, if you really want to be anonymous you have to give in to even the bad things that comes with anonymous communication.
The Tor Onion Network describes it quite good in their site:

"Criminals can already do bad things. Since they're willing to break laws, they already have lots of options available that provide better privacy than Tor provides. They can steal cell phones, use them, and throw them in a ditch; they can crack into computers in Korea or Brazil and use them to launch abusive activities; they can use spyware, viruses, and other techniques to take control of literally millions of Windows machines around the world.

Tor aims to provide protection for ordinary people who want to follow the law. Only criminals have privacy right now, and we need to fix that.

Some advocates of anonymity explain that it's just a tradeoff -- accepting the bad uses for the good ones -- but there's more to it than that. Criminals and other bad people have the motivation to learn how to get good anonymity, and many have the motivation to pay well to achieve it. Being able to steal and reuse the identities of innocent victims (identify theft) makes it even easier. Normal people, on the other hand, don't have the time or money to spend figuring out how to get privacy online. This is the worst of all possible worlds.

So yes, criminals could in theory use Tor, but they already have better options, and it seems unlikely that taking Tor away from the world will stop them from doing their bad things. At the same time, Tor and other privacy measures can fight identity theft, physical crimes like stalking, and so on. "

However you should note that this "darknet" isn't as secure as Tor. Especially when our Minister of Justice is advocating for laws that allow for copyright voilations to be punishable by death!(no not really, but up to 4yrs... ;)

That means that the prosecutor can subpena (spelling?) relakks for the records of who you are. But fortunately, that law isn't in effect yet and wont be for some time. However if you download kiddy porn (through this service or without) or similar you can face prison up to 2yrs and is today very much exposed to the long arm of the law.

And btw, I'm a member of The Swedish Pirate Party :) /Mats

Help us n00bs!!

[crhylove]

Will somebody explain how this is significantly better/different than privoxy and torbutton? Now granted, it'd be nice if Shareaza came with TOR and privoxy included, but from what I understand this can already be done, and some people are doing it. Will somebody knowledgable on these topics spout off in here and educate the rest of us? What is the likely path to truly anonymous online communication for all? Commercial darknets or embedded onion routing? Some other thing I can't imagine, fathom, or haven't heard about?

rhY

Re:Help us n00bs!!

[stinerman]

I believe that it is in the article summary:

The Swedish Pirate Party has launched a commercial, high-capacity darknet, on an unprecedented scale and bandwidth.

Even today, you can route your Bittorrent traffic over Tor or I2P, but its slow as hell. And lets not be coy. The vast majority of people will use this for infringing copyright. That is the difference -- performance.

Re:Help us n00bs!!

[crhylove]

And how much is it a month? Sign me up!

oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

RIAA, BSA, and MPAA are pissed. I'm sure their lawyers are weighing their options. Where will the poor artist are going to get their money from after RIAA sucks them dry. Or what is software industry going to do when software is shared anonymously.

  I know what they will do. They will raise prices and/or sue people using the service. and yes, they can sue. You're all forgetting ISP logs. They can monitor your bandwidth usage.

Governmental power

[Colin Smith]

Actually a lot of it comes from the ability to devalue the currency by printing money on demand.

The police, intelligence services, military industrial complex for instance have to be paid. You can do that by raising taxes, or by printing more money. Raising taxes is the obvious way to do it, but how popular are you going to be if you increase income and sales taxation? You'd be out at the next election.

Well, you control the printing presses, so just print more money, pay the services and suppliers with this new money, you can do what you like then without raising taxation and pissing off the electorate. Unfortunately, money like any commodity is subject to the laws of supply and demand so if you increase the amount of money around, each dollar becomes worth less and you have inflation, though you can easily deflect that blame on to others; Oil suppliers, employee wage demands, greedy retailers etc.

If the government was unable to print money (actually to borrow it) on demand, it's power to wage war, to pay for expensive surveillance etc would be very severely curtailed because it would have to raise taxation to pay for these services.

If you really want to limit the power of governments, then you have to remove or reduce their ability to create money on demand. If you're a libertarian for instance and really believe in small government then move your savings out of your local currency and into some other commodity; Property, gold, silver, shares etc.

Re:Governmental power

[joshier]

Also note that they don't even print the money anymore, they make it out of digits, the actual money is worth nothing anymore, it used to have gold plating on the notes.

Re:Governmental power

[Colin Smith]

Which is why some people buy bullion coins and e-gold with their excess cash.

Read the title of my comment

[leehwtsohg]

That's why I said "given that you do this as a hobby". A hobby is: "a pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation" (it also seems to be a kind of falcon, but I don't think that's what was meant).

I was assuming that if you do something as a hobby, you don't do it in order to "Eat. Pay bills. Save it for a rainy day". I do it as a hobby, and I do it exactly because it is the only way for me to pay back for the work many many others have done so that I can enjoy my hobby.

Re:Read the title of my comment

[Rakishi]

Relaxation does not mean the activity cannot help ones finances and extra savings are usually a good thing given the fluctuating economy. That money may be the difference between spending 20 hours on the hobby and spending 10 of those hours at work instead to make up the difference. In some cases hobbies can lead to decent payoffs.

As for giving back, well I'd first want to give back to all the companies I pirated from.

The math doesn't work, trust me

[patio11]

I did due diligence before I opened my little business. First, the demand curve for software doesn't fit what you might think from a microecon 101 textbook. Price is a signal of quality, and $10 software is "crud" whereas $25 software which accomplishes what you are setting out to do is worth actually getting out ye olde credit card. The other wrinkle is that advertising costs money and its impossible to make money at the $10 price point if you advertise. For example, during my last week I made roughly half of my sales through Google AdWords, at the cost of roughly $10-15 per sale depending on the campaign. I then get $25 and split $1 with Paypal, leaving me with money in my pocket. Google will not decrease my CPC just because I charge less for my product.

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[dbIII]

First, the demand curve for software doesn't fit what you might think from a microecon 101 textbook.

Hmm, an economist eh? How many hundreds of hours have you spent supporting sales for your 50 hours of production product? I've never really understood the shareware thing apart from big killer apps like trumpet winsock, pkzip and winzip - but then again on a *nix platform it is fairly pointless (look at what happened with xv - a killer app and shareware few bothered to register).

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[patio11]

How many hundreds of hours have you spent supporting sales for your 50 hours of production product?

Did I mention my software is as complex as Notepad? I don't get all that many support requests. I get up in the morning, I pour myself a cup of cocoa, put in the ice and wait for it to cool, and check my email. 5 days in the last week it was to news that I had gotten richer when I was sleeping (I live in Japan, so purchases happening in the US workday happen in the middle of the night here.) Two times in the last six weeks I've seen "Hey, I've got a question...". I spend 2 minutes writing an email answering the question, then I chug my cocoa and go to my day job.

I spend a little time in the evening working on marketing and the next version, of course, but like I said its a hobby. And its certainly more intellectually stimulating than my previous time waster.

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[Upphew]

Price is a signal of quality, and $10 software is "crud" whereas $25 software which accomplishes what you are setting out to do is worth actually getting out ye olde credit card.

Thats probaply true, but... I don't have credit card! And I don't trust Paypal. I have loaded dozens of times some shareware app, which I would gladly pay, if only I could.

It should not be too hard to offer option to pay with my own bank (which I trust!) online! And I fully understand that it should be easy for the seller to set up and cheap to use (like paypal?).

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[RajivSLK]

You left out some important information; what's the name of your product? what does it do? and where can I download the crack?

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

The only shareware I ever registered back in the day was in the $10-$15 range. $20 or more is past the threshold of pain, and usually makes corporate software look reasonable. That said, I look for free alternatives rather than going through the effort to crack the shareware. And crippleware is a non-starter, no matter what the price.

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[CastrTroy]

Seriously though. He's complaining about the cost of google adwords, and he's leaving out the cheapest form of advertising available, Slashvertisement. I think that a lot of people think Google Adwords are way more important than they are. I may have in my 10 years on the internet clicked on 20 ads. And 99.9% of the time I don't even read them. I imagine that most people are the same. He'd get much better value for his time/money if he just linked to his program in his sig, and posted a bunch of stuff on slashdot.

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[IngramJames]

Price is a signal of quality, and $10 software is "crud" whereas $25 software which accomplishes what you are setting out to do is worth actually getting out ye olde credit card.

I disagree. In my experience, the quality of software bares little relation to the price. I've seen video editing software going for hundreds of dollars which has an abysmal, non-standard interface which is a pain to navigate, and very buggy.

I've also seen freeware apps which do exactly what they say they will do.

On the other hand, I have been on the dev team of some software which was very, very good at what it did, and would cost you a heck of a lot to use. Per Annum, as well.

As far as shareware is concerned, sure I'll download the demo version and try it out. But for $25, it better be doing something that I'd pick off the shelf in a shop for $25. And Notepad would definately stay put.

You ought to consider competition, too. If it really only takes as long as you describe to write the software, and there's also the demand you describe, then sooner or later, somebody else will make the effort. And charge $5, or $2, or (if they're like me) issue it as freeware. And all of a sudden, your sales will drop to zero, because another product which does the same thing at the same level of quality is available at a fraction of the price.

A case of Caveat Vendor, perhaps? :-)

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[Anonymous Coward]

If it really only takes as long as you describe to write the software, and there's also the demand you describe, then sooner or later, somebody else will make the effort. And charge $5, or $2, or (if they're like me) issue it as freeware.

I'm quite disappointed he didn't name the software in question since I think I'd spend over 100 hours programming an open source alternative just to spite him. I am an asshole that way though.

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[larytet]

one of the problems of open source/freeware that these projects can not be made popular using google ads. The only possible advertising is via message boards. When you release an open source there is a fair chance that you are going to be the only person who uses it.

When somebody looks for "internet browser" in Yahoo the first result is link to IE. If you use google first result is FF, but I think you got the idea. Try to look for "remote desktop" and what you will likely find are commercial or shareware products. And there are at least two top quality projects on SF.net which do the same - open source VNC.

The smaller the niche the harder to "sell". "Free" does not mean "sell easy". Generally people just love to pay money.

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[ortholattice]

In your earlier post you say you've sold 10 copies total. In this post you say, "during my last week I made roughly half of my sales through Google AdWords, at the cost of roughly $10-15 per sale depending on the campaign" which sounds like you're selling many copies per week. I'm confused. So you've only been selling it for a couple of weeks, with 10 copies total, and already multiple cracker groups have independently "broken my just-enough-to-keep-honest-men-honest registration scheme"? And these other cracker groups are also selling your cracked program (presumably for less) since you have to bid against them "on my own program name as an AdWords keyword"? I can't pin it down, but something just doesn't seem right about your story. What is the name of the program you are selling?

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[patio11]

Bingo Card Creator, a product for elementary school teachers. I don't bid against cracker groups for my program's name -- I bid for clicks, against other folks selling items tangentially related to bingo (broad match on "bingo cards" will also match "Bingo Card Creator" and any variants on it). When someone looking for the installer .exe to go with the keygen he just got from www.yo-ho-me-hearties.cn types something like "Bingo Card Creator v 1.0 download" into Google, my ad will show up with about 3 other people (the others selling, say, actual paper bingo cards -- "Come to Bingo Planet! Cheap prices on bingo supplies!") and when they click on my ad I get charged (about 9 cents today, was a quarter a month ago -- changes in the AdWords landing page algorithm benefitted me greatly, but thats a long story).

I don't know how many groups have broken it independently -- I do know that there are at least 4 places to find a keygen at the moment, although I haven't seen a spike since 1.03 came out so that might not be busted yet.

I've been selling since July 1st of this year. 5 sales in the last seven calendar days, 3 of them I can tell from the cookie were from AdWords. Two sales in the first week of August, two in the last week of July, my very first on July 15th.

Any other questions, see the screenshots I posted elsewhere somewhere in this thread, or Google the software and find the blog, I give a pretty blow-by-blow account there. Trust me, if I wanted to tell tall tales about something I'd pick something a little more amusing than the day-to-day affairs of the world's smallest software business, don't you think?

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[Anonymous Coward]

Price is a signal of quality

Only to a fool.

They say "you get what you pay for" and repeat it ad nauseum, but it just ain't always so. You usually pay for what you get, but you DON'T always get what you pay for, either.

An example is gasoline. Some fools think "premium" is a better grade of gasoline, when in fact it is higher octane; it burns more slowly. It is designed for higher compression engines, like (eg) a crotch rocket. Use it exclusively in your generic Chevy and you'll ruin your valves, because when the exhaust valves open it's still burning! If the gasoline detonates ("ping") you either need to adjust the timing, or use a higher octane (more expensive) gasoline.

Another example is canned food. Generic cans come from the same factory as the name brand cans, have the same contents, but cost a whole lot less.

Only fools parrot "you get what you pay for."

That's not to say more expensive is never better, it's just that more expensive is not necessarily better.

And, er, you're a complete and total stranger who is making an obvious fallacy, why in hell should I trust you about anything?

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[patio11]

Bingo Card Creator, software to help elementary school teachers make bingo cards. If you really want to spite me with an open source alternative, http://sourceforge.net/projects/bingo-cards would probably be the closest thing to my program. Oh no, I just spited myself! ;) I don't think its very responsive to the needs of my market, which you can verify in about 30 seconds if you've got an elementary school teacher handy. I actually passed it around to a few of my teacher friends and the response universally was "Um, it won't run". Have fun with it.

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[NichG]

Except if you know that opensource/freeware is what you want and you search for it specifically on places like freshmeat and sourceforge. Or just add 'GPL' or 'opensource' to your search.

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[larytet]

yes, that's what me and you do, but we belong to very small group of people who spend time looking for open source alternatives.

btw another approach i find useful is search synaptic data base in my Ubuntu.

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I did due diligence before I opened my little business. First, the demand curve for software doesn't fit what you might think from a microecon 101 textbook. Price is a signal of quality, and $10 software is "crud" whereas $25 software which accomplishes what you are setting out to do is worth actually getting out ye olde credit card.

Obviously I don't know what your software is or what the market is like, but I have noticed that price as an indicator of quality is more applicable to high priced software with direct competitors. If you're selling a photo editor to compete with photoshop, making sure you charge at least $100 is probably going to net you more cash. If you sell an IDS system for $40K, higher prices often signal quality. On the low end, however, this is less true. If you are selling something at the $25 price point, there is a lot of pressure to drop below the $15 pain point and it may result in a much larger volume of sales.

For example, during my last week I made roughly half of my sales through Google AdWords, at the cost of roughly $10-15 per sale depending on the campaign.

If your sales are low volume, Google is not a great way to advertise. You might want to consider some of the more viral marketing techniques, like telling people on Slashdot the name of your software and what it does. :)

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[Anonymous Coward]

When I use a piece of software I like, and the price is $10 or under, I pay it without thinking about whether its worth it or not. Because its not worth my time to figure that out. Plus, it encourages people like you to do things I can't.

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[D14BL0]

This is very true. I once linked to a website me and a friend were running in my sig, and after only a few hours of posting a couple comments, we'd hit over 200 unique visitors.

Re:The math doesn't work, trust me

[geekoid]

ou are comparing preception price point to a 25 dollar software product? haha, laughable.

This perciption stem from high cost software, SAP, Oracle, you know, not your rinky 25 dollar product.

That like saying Doom would be populare if you gave the first part free, and then charged 10 bucks for the rest.

Or the Adobe would suddenly loose sales if there product cost went down.

I am aware of th economic model and affect you talk about, but I have never seen a study that indicates it applies to your cost bracket.

Just ebcasue your advertiser charges too much for there service, doesn't negate what the poster was saying.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[kfg]

Whats wrong with "the consumer rights' party?

When I was a kid we had these things called "people." I miss them. Nice folk; and a good many of them were producers.

KFG

Pirates planning obsolecence...

[GapingHeadwound]

From TFA:

The cost of the service is 5 euros per month, and it is available now at www.relakks.com. A portion of the subscription fees will go towards the Pirate Party's work in changing the copyright and privacy laws and making the service obsolete.

This notion needs to be ported to *Management*...

1) Provide Middle Management services, a portion of the cost of which goes towards making Middle Management obsolete

2) ?

3) Profit

(hence the attraction to pirates.... aargh....)

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[radja]

--
There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet"
And copying a King Kong DVD rip is not one of them.
--
why not? it's completely legal for me to copy a rip of any DVD.

Extra money is always good

[leehwtsohg]

It is nice to have some extra money. (But you don't rely on software writing for food then, I hope)

But it is also nice to be able to find the software I want, or the wikipedia article I want, or the scientific paper I want for free. It is called a public good. If 1000 people contribute just 100 hours of work each, then each can enjoy the equivalent of 100,000 hours of work, having spent just 100 hours. Amazing, huh? It's like magic. Of course you can also enjoy the product of 100,000 hours of work without contributing a minute. But I feel a bit like a parasite in that case.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[QuantumG]

Why is it so hard for you to understand? "The people" want to copy. Any law that prevents "the people" from doing what they want to do is unjust. Simple as that. Yes. That means laws that prohibit recreational drugs are unjust. Yes. That means laws that prevent people from riding motocycles without a helmet are also unjust. And yes, that means any law the prevents the people from overthrowing or resisting governments that enact unjust laws are also unjust.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[GroeFaZ]

And calling yourselves the 'pirate party' is just plain insane. Whats wrong with "the consumer rights' party? or do they realsie thats way too hypocritical.

According to the rest of your rant, 'honest' should come to your mind instead of 'hypocritical', because you don't perceive them as a "consumer rights party" anyway, or do you? It's an ironic statement on how they are perceived, playing with their underdog image. And people like you, obviously, would never see anything else than the "pirate" part, which is exactly why they are important, to constantly challenge such views.

Furthermore, I think the name is well chosen regardless, because can "The Consumers' Rights Party" get any more boring and non-descriptive? "The Pirate Party" is concise, provoking (to some), and easily remembered.

one regret

[Anonymous Coward]

i just regret the part that isnt free.

pay for a pirate service, there isnt something wrong?

2 Questions

[itsthebin]

How long would it work from China through the great firewall or say Thailand through TRUE's Bluecoat proxy ? once pptp.relakks.com is blocked whats the next step. Can it be made to run from a flash mem stick - or are you required to have admin rights on the machine you wish to use ?

Re:2 Questions

[Anonymous Coward]

check gomyplace.com open source reverse proxy - just anybody can run this thing and allow people to use it for publishing of sensitive material, sending large e-mail attachments, etc.

Re: Frickin darknet

[flumps]

.. so it must be only quasi-evil..

mwahaha.. mwahahahaha..

A SERIES OF TUBES!

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, everyone can mod him down (-1 Redundant) now, for being a fraction of a second slower than you to submit.
Maybe they actually did submit at the exact same time but dcalpel's tubes were faster.

Shoot, if only I had photographic proof...

[patio11]

The software is Bingo Card Creator, which makes bingo cards principally for elementary school teachers. I didn't mention it because its associated with my real name and, well, no sane person exposes their real name to Slashdot. But, eh, whatever. My minor loss of privacy is worth getting to laugh a little at your expense.

>>Perhaps the price was too high, or the software wasn't very good.>>

Well, I suppose a lot of slashdotters might say that. Then again, 10 elementary school teachers (who, you know, are actually in the market for this) paid money for it, and I'm inclined to trust opinions which come backed with checks. My best guess is that the spike was caused by that whole being on the front page of a major warez site thing, which I learned about from my referrer logs. But you can't see those, so I guess you won't trust me. Ahh well, here's the next best thing: a screengrab of my Analytics console (yeah, I could fake this if I had a few hours -- but do you think I bothered?). It doesn't show you the 3GB of transfer from my screenshots or the 500 direct-linked downloads because Analytics uses Javascript to record hits and jpg/exe do not, typically, contain Javascript :). (My plan, incidentally, was to use .htaccess to replace the hotlinked image with the Japanese imperial war flag and replace the hotlinked .exe with one with all the buttons saying "I love Falun Gong". I decided against it because I figured some bastard would just DDOS me. Plus a lot of the l33t cr3w were actually from outside of China, so they wouldn't be able to appreciate my sense of humor.)

Here's one showing the "slight" increase in my traffic. http://www.bingocardcreator.com/images/hacked1.jpg From single digit pageviews per day to about 200 -- and thats just the number hitting my home page. The graph then trails off to normal and you can see me busily building up my little hobbyist marketing campaign. (Notice the spike marked "Market Seasonality"? The full explanation for that: traffic always dips on a weekend, and lots of teachers go back to work in August. When August 1st rolled around right after the weekend, I had a 30% or so increase in traffic from the Friday before. As opposed to the gazillion% increase from the hacker site.)

Here's another showing exactly who was hitting my site for 2 days before and 2 days after the crack debuted. http://www.bingocardcreator.com/images/hacked2.jpg (Funny, 0daycn.net does not sound to me like a place where elementary schoolteachers hang out.)

Re:Shoot, if only I had photographic proof...

[1u3hr]

The software is Bingo Card Creator, which makes bingo cards principally for elementary school teachers... My best guess is that the spike was caused by that whole being on the front page of a major warez site thing.

Do you imagine any Warez Dude actually used your Bingo card Creator? These are the kind of guys who collect gigabytes of software just for bragging rights, and to swap with others like baseball cards. Or do you think that elementary school teachers were searching Astalavista for cracks?

It's undoubtedly annoying, but in this case it seems unlikely any of your market was lost. I hope the bandwidth wasn't expensive, but that seems to be the only loss.

Re:Shoot, if only I had photographic proof...

[evilviper]

Well, I suppose a lot of slashdotters might say that. Then again, 10 elementary school teachers (who, you know, are actually in the market for this) paid money for it, and I'm inclined to trust opinions which come backed with checks.

Tiny checks from 10 people don't prove much of anything to me. I've seen too many sales of $10 "Instructions" on getting/doing something free.

It's an very long jump to say that those hordes of people who downloaded your software would have done so if not for the crack...

Since it took me about 2 seconds to find a free and perfectly adequate Bingo Card Creator, I'm at a loss to who you think your market is. Teachers who can use the internet well enough to find your site, but poorly enough they won't find any others?

My best guess is that the spike was caused by that whole being on the front page of a major warez site thing, which I learned about from my referrer logs.

You're not exactly helping yourself here... If they went to your site because of the crack, it's not really a lost sale to you, then, is it? Sure, the added cost of bandwidth is unfortunate, but very minor.

It seems clear you've got a lot of people who wanted to try out a crack, not a bunch of people who were on the verge of buying your software.

So what's the harm you're complaining about, here? Just because you paid for ad (which MAY have gotten a few more clicks because of the crack) and didn't make the money you were expecting you would make, on software anyone competent can easily find elsewhere for free? It that it?

Re:Shoot, if only I had photographic proof...

[complete loony]

I wonder how that will compare to the slashdot referrers ;).

Re:Shoot, if only I had photographic proof...

[patio11]

>>
Since it took me about 2 seconds to find a free and perfectly adequate Bingo Card Creator [gatheringbasket.com], I'm at a loss to who you think your market is. Teachers who can use the internet well enough to find your site, but poorly enough they won't find any others?
>>

Got a stopwatch handy? Click it on. Now print one card for every student in a class of 30 using that website. You can use any wordlist you want. Now click it off. If you perform the stopwatch test with my program, you end up with 30 seconds if you use a pre-made list (plus whatever time it takes your printer to get through 30 cards) or perhaps 5-10 minutes if you don't. If you perform the stopwatch test with the Gathering Basket folks, your stopwatch test will take between 10 minutes and a half an hour depending on how fast you can give yourself carpal tunnel clicking "Generate, Print, OK-Print, Back, Generate, Print, OK-Print, Generate..." and how long your printer/browser combo blocks input for between every cycle. Now imagine doing this stopwatch test four times a week for the rest of your life. $25 doesn't sound quite so expensive anymore, does it?

>>
So what's the harm you're complaining about, here?
>>

People took $10 literally out of my pocket, ganked something I made for their own use, and made it difficult for legitimate users to find me for about a week because they kept draining my daily ad budget dry. As for the "OK, so pirates *may* have clicked on your ad a few times", I think the graphs speak for themselves.

Re:Shoot, if only I had photographic proof...

[evilviper]

Now imagine doing this stopwatch test four times a week for the rest of your life. $25 doesn't sound quite so expensive anymore, does it?

That was merely the first one I found. Besides, your arguement is beyond ridiculous. Who honestly generates unique bingo cards every single day, year after year? What's more, who has this list of words for each of them, already written down for them in an accessible format?

People took $10 literally out of my pocket,

If you put $10 out there, expect someone to take it, with no guarantee you'll get anything back on it. That's advertising for you.

You could complain that ANY publicity would have cost you the same ammount of money, even if warez wasn't involved. Are you going to sue http://www.cornyschoolstuff.com/ for linking to your program, just because the hundreds of people that follow the link don't actually buy it?

ganked something I made for their own use,

Somehow, I doubt any single one of them has ever actually used it. Besides, what is the cosmic obsession of yours, that you are harmed by someone who is using your software without the nag screen?

and made it difficult for legitimate users to find me for about a week because they kept draining my daily ad budget dry.

The problem is with your business model, not with the warez sites. The thing which put you over an arbitrary edge, just happened to be pirates in this case. It's completely irrelevent, and YET, you're complaining about the Pirate Party here.

I got excited too but then read the fine print

[forwardhairbrush]

Hey idiots: "Records? What Records?!"
Har har har--I'm laughing too, but:

If Swedish authorities can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have a case for demanding subscription information...RELAKKS then have to hand over the subscription information entered by you.

Granted--I can type in any old crap I want when registering but my actual actual IP address sounds like it's logged:

For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over "traffic data" including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment.

So they are keeping logs.
The American in me is hearing: "The Swedish [authority] has to be really reaaaally sure you're gonna go to jail for this" to get all the information they wanted anyway. Forgive my skepticism. What I'm saying is: I was about to sign up for this and this is why I didn't.

Re:I got excited too but then read the fine print

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU data retention laws force them to keep records. The big question is how Swedish law and EU law will change in the future. It looks quite likely that the treshold for getting info will be lowered, and the penalties for copyright infringement or whatever "they" want to accuse you of will get higher.

Re:I got excited too but then read the fine print

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey idiots: ..."

Hey idiots? Nice.

"The American in me is hearing ..."

Oh, that explains it.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[Troglodyt]

Piracy is not what the party is about, it's a name they picked to be noticable.
The consumer rights party would be a stupid name, as it would infer some capitalist values and the party does not take a stance in questions like that.
Everyone please read! http://www2.piratpartiet.se/international/english
The party is here to counter the police state we are turning into with Bodström giving the lobbying organisations whatever they want, and to put a stop to the silliness of patents and eternal copyright.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn it, I had mod points yesterday, and none today.

This is one of the best summaries of why we might want anonymity that I have ever read.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Hillgiant]

Alright. Who the hell gave Anonymous Coward mod points?

Latency?

[hippo]

I see lots of posts about bandwidth, which is fine if you're planning to use this service to copy large quantities of data, but for any other use latency is more important.

This won't be much use for me if it makes the latency of my VPN connection to my employer so slow that typing into VNC becomes useless. At the moment I get ~20ms ping times from home to work (somewhere in the UK to somewhere else in the UK) and typing via VNC over a VPN is just as good as if I were at work. I've had times when the latency went up and it rapidly becomes impossible to type at normal speed because you can't correct your mistakes as you go.

Has anyone got any figures for latency for this ISP?

Re:Latency?

[stinerman]

I've regularly been getting pings to pptp.relakks.com in the 150ms range.
This is from Dayton, OH using Roadrunner as my ISP.

If you're going to use this for any sort of interactive application, you may want to look elsewhere.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[jez9999]

just1
adj.

      1. Honorable and fair in one's dealings and actions: a just ruler. See Synonyms at fair1.
      2. Consistent with what is morally right; righteous: a just cause.
      3. Properly due or merited: just deserts.
      4. Law. Valid within the law; lawful: just claims.
      5. Suitable or proper in nature; fitting: a just touch of solemnity.
      6. Based on fact or sound reason; well-founded: a just appraisal.

Which definition of 'just' is analogous to 'whatever the people in general think', exactly?

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[whig]

Actually, the pirates are motivating a lot of investment in the technology to protect identity online. Privacy activists care deeply about these issues and study them in mostly academic ways, but developing a user experience that will be seamless enough to be used by many people requires a lot of actual user testing. Pirates are performing a valuable service in their way, regardless of the ethical implications of unauthorized and uncompensated copying.

Er...

[aiken_d]

A portion of the subscription fees will go towards the Pirate Party's work in changing the copyright and privacy laws and making the service obsolete.

I applaud their honesty, but I'm not convinced on this "you pay us monthly, and we'll destroy the service" business model.

-b

Re:Er...

[lixee]

I applaud their honesty, but I'm not convinced on this "you pay us monthly, and we'll destroy the service" business model.

Said the representant of the fanatic branch of the "Church of the Mighty Buck"!

Solution to his software sales delima

[JumperCable]

Spend the day playing Lemonade Stand. Pretty much any version will do. It's a fairly good educational tool.

argh!

[Anonymous Coward]

why pptp ?

PPTP tunnel ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading FAQ on their site it appears they use PPTP tunnel. While it's quick and easy to setup for clients, looks like it has some security flaws, quoting Poptop page about PPTP security (http://poptop.sourceforge.net/dox/protocol-securi ty.phtml):

"PPTP is known to be a faulty protocol. The designers of the protocol, Microsoft, recommend not to use it due to the inherent risks. Lots of people use PPTP anyway due to ease of use, but that doesn't mean it is any less hazardous. The maintainers of PPTP Client and Poptop recommend using OpenVPN (SSL based) or IPSec instead."

Re:PPTP tunnel ?

[CRC'99]

PPTP is known to be a faulty protocol. The designers of the protocol, Microsoft, recommend not to use it due to the inherent risks.

Sure thing! Do you honestly think that the NSA etc throughout the world can't decrypt PPTP VPNs in real time? While this probably won't stop government agencies from wanting to know what you're doing if they feel like it, it does make things a lot harder for other companies that want to use the law to their advantage to nail people (think RIAA/MPAA/local equivalent). This is because they can't get the records from your ISP anymore.

It would be nicer if they allowed you to use IPSec, but this is a lot more resource hungry when you're doing a few thousand (hundred thou?) sessions. I'd still trust it more than nothing - but a better method of connectivity would be better.

Warning! Not Anonymous

[bananaendian]

The claim that this service provides anonymity and immunity to logging is only true in a very limited sense! This is basically a simple one level proxy which keeps access records which the authorities can get their hands on if they "suspect" a crime is being committed. Sweden is signator to various levels of intellegence sharing deals on international crime and terrorism so none of the Swedish laws on privacy have effect if some outside government presents "reasonable suspicion" of a crime being committed. And no, you don't have to be a terrorist or kiddy pron baron to be concerned here - tyrannical governments have been known throughout history to use any means to available to them suppress and oppress their citizens...

Tor on the otherhand can claim to provide a level of true anonymity because of the 'onion routing' concept. A potential adversary would have to infiltrate the network with enough fake nodes to get to both the input end (to get the ip) and the the exit node (to get the traffic) and then do some traffic analysis to match these two together in order to figure out who is doing what. This being very resource intensive, such capability would only be available to the highest levels of intellegence gathering and even then only for a limited set of survaillance targets.

Re:Warning! Not Anonymous

[gothzilla]

From TOR's FAQ

http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/Tor FAQ#TotallyAnonymous
7.3. So I'm totally anonymous if I use Tor?

'No.'

Re:Warning! Not Anonymous

[sootman]

The claim that this service provides anonymity and immunity to logging is only true in a very limited sense!

I wonder how long it will be until a government sets up their own honeypots? A few things: I remember seeing a show about the police in, like, Chicago or something, sending out letters to hundreds of crooks with outstanding warrants, telling them that they won tickets to a superbowl party. Scores showed up and they were all arrested.

Also, Car and Driver has this cool article about car theft in Modesto. (Lotsa meth = lotsa cars thefts. It's a really fun article, I recommend it.) The police set up "bait cars" (cars that are attractive targets for theft; i.e., unlocked with the keys in them) and wait for crooks to steal them. The interesting point is on page 2: "bait cars are not considered entrapment because the thieves do not have to take them." Similarly, any government could set up a darknet to lure pirates--it's not like you have to join and infringe copyright.

Re:Warning! Not Anonymous

[Tweekster]

Who said this company is keeping records?

If you dont keep records and someone asks for you to turn info over, you give them a blank page

Re:Warning! Not Anonymous

[exegene]

How about if those who would render Tor ineffective have the capability to record traffic passed by an isp to any node in the USA? How about if that same adversary has intelligence-sharing agreements with foreign intelligence agencies? It's not just hostile nodes you have to worry about, but also the possibility of the insfrastructure on which Tor is built being hostile.

http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/CALEA/
http://usinfo.state.gov/dhr/Archive/2003/Oct/15-98 5918.html

Sacrilege!

[elyobelyob]

"We are currenly experiencing problems with some of our creditcard transactions not passing correctly through our bankingpartner's systems. They are working on a solution. In the meantime - it appears as if you have a better chance to get payments through by utilizing Internet Explorer as a web brower."

I couldn't agree more

[Ogemaniac]

Keep pointing out what hypocrites these cheap bastards are.

There is no excuse for not paying for your software, music, movies, etc. There are numerous affordable, legal alternatives. To do anything else is immoral and illegal. Get over it.

Re:No Linux support !? (Read the FAQ at relakks.co

[Anonymous Coward]

Labs2 (the ISP) runs on Microsoft software. If you don't trust Microsoft, you can't trust this service.

Brilliant idea!

[patio11]

>>Wouldn't the obvious way of doing that be to offer material for download from premium-rate dial-up servers invisible to the rest of the Internet?>>

Why didn't I think of this? All I need to do is charge money while making my website harder to access than a pirate FTP server! You should try selling this idea to Starforce! It seems to fit in perfectly with their business plan of causing the most pain for the people most likely to pay you money.

Re:Brilliant idea!

[Duds]

I doubt most people even have the ability to dial-up anymore. I certainly don't own a standard 56k.

Re:Brilliant idea!

[blackest_k]

ok you now have a thread which is visable to everyone and you haven't even got a link to your website.
you would be getting clicks through to your product right now and a percentage would be buying what exactly I don't know...

Re:Brilliant idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but his software is obviously crap. If it wasn't crap, then he wouldn't be afraid to nail his colours to the mast and show us the source code. File this whole thread under "spat dummy out".

Moderators Aren't Strange

[Morosoph]

They're PC. The now grandparent was fluffing up Digg, and clan loyalty is such that some consider it flamebait. I try to point this out sometimes, but that itself risks a downmod.

The average Slashdotter is still under the influence of either their parents, or else draconian work laws over what can be said and not said. You don't fluff up the opposition; the modern social dialogue, on either side of the political spectrum is about advantage, not truth.

The irony is that Slashdot's leaning is generally some blend of anarchist and libertarian; a position that I am very comfortable with. This general PC movement has the feel of "protecting our freedoms by restricting our rights".

Re:Moderators Aren't Strange

[Ch_Omega]

Amazing... :)

Re:Moderators Aren't Strange

[TRS80NT]

GP is now moderated funny, which seems correct. At least that's the way I took it.
The whole digg/slashdot dichotomy reminds me of the dial-up days when Compuserve was the professional, nerdy gorilla poking fun at the newby, upstart monkey AOL. By the time AOL swallowed CServe most of the elite had probably moved on but it still must have been a bitter pill.

Re:Moderators Aren't Strange

[tsa]

Pity there isn't a +1: Troll option!

Re:Moderators Aren't Strange

[oKtosiTe]

Definitely going ot here, but...
Dear parent, you must mean GGP?

Re:Moderators Aren't Strange

[oKtosiTe]

I'm pretty sure I've seen that happen before. Of course you can always set your personal troll level in your preferences

Re:Moderators Aren't Strange

[TRS80NT]

Oops. Right you are. Missed an indent.

Re:Moderators Aren't Strange

[WilliamSChips]

I thought it was a knee-jerk because of all the people who came onto Slashdot for the sole purpose of fluffing up Digg and insulting Slashdot with comments like "I SAW THIS ON DIGG THREE DAYS AGO!" and crap like that. At least, that's why I hate Digg now. If a Slashdot troll is the type of person who's on Digg normally, I don't think I want to be on Digg.

Why not combined with PirateBay torrent trackers?

[pacc]

It has already been noted that this is not a darknet,
using a VPN gateway only adds delays compared with a
real darknet with P2P VPN connections between trusted parts.

To give this some advantage if P2P traffic avalanches the VPN gateway
it should act like a tracker distributing both requests and
data packet responses, the difference being that each data
packet response may be multicast to all requesting parties
for a bittorrent. This should improve torrent efficiency.

The legal issue may be that the combined tracker and gateway
will in some sense not only have links to the data but in
a dynamic way have the data in its pipes.

1. WHISTLEBLOWER you ignorent fool/cia agent.

[cheekyboy]

What bout those people that want to take down their govt, if they know the insides and dirty secrets?

What if a person knows that everyone in a govt is corrupt or breaking 700+ federal laws, like GWB himself.

Actually, green lovers are wose than oil people

[cheekyboy]

Dude, who stopped the Anwar oil fields, greenies and wierdos.

FACT: the oil drilling would only use/effect less than 0.001% of all anwar land and supply enough oil
to never depend on iran/venezwela

Without the oil industry which is VERY capitol heavy, ie $2b platforms and pipe lines, you would not have
modern society, ie, plastics/fertilzers/fuels to run the country. You would be back in 1776 with horses and trains.

Reminds me of a saying

[JFMulder]

If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check.
This reminds me of a saying that is quoted in "Digital Fortress", a book from Dan Brown : "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes", which is latin and roughly translates to "Who will guard the guards?".

Re:Reminds me of a saying

[ajs318]

The first plot hole I noticed in that book was when he got the name of the Spanish currency wrong. Brown also doesn't seem to know the difference between data and executable code, let alone give thought to the fact that differences between instruction set / addressing schema architectures would mean code executable on one kind of computer would do nothing useful on another; he doesn't know the difference between an algorithm and a key, in fact I'm not sure he understands much crypto theory; and doesn't even seem to know the density of soil. If I had access to a copy of the book right now I'd give references, but I haven't, so I'm not going to.

I'm just glad I'd already read -- and enjoyed, in spite of lesser plot holes -- Angels and Demons and The da Vinci Code before I picked up Digital Fortress, because the plot holes really ruined my enjoyment of DF and soured my opinion of Dan Brown. Also, I thought A&D would make a better film than dVC.

Re:Reminds me of a saying

[JFMulder]

Yeah Digital Fortress was kinda embarassing if you knew about computers, but I thought it was a much better effort then, oh say, "Operation : Swordfish" or anything else computer based, at least that I know of. The idea behind the TRANSLTR super-computer was cool, he understood the concept of cracking code and how such a computer would make if faster, except well, you know, 1024 bit keys can't be cracked quickly, even if you have 3 million processors to do the job. :)

And for a woman with 170 of IQ, Susan sure was dumb. So were the other players in the story. It definitely was his weakest book. I'd say Deception Point was probably his best, tough I have to admit I know nothing about meteorites so it could have been all crap he was saying and I ate it all up anyway. I think that's what makes Dan Brown's book so engrossing : to the people who don't know much about a particular subject, he writes half-facts in such a convincing manner that most people think he's right. Reminds me of a certain president...

Re:Reminds me of a saying

[alexgieg]

For those that know medieval history and related subjects (Church history, Christian symbolism etc.), The da Vinci Code offers the same experience. You see where he got it wrong and that makes reading the book not much fun. The same applies to Humberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

By the way, I've read that some people that have a really hard time keeping suspension of disbelief with historical movies are typographic experts. That's because it's common for these movies to show signs, letters and the like with fonts that didn't yet exist at the time. Go figure...

Re:Reminds me of a saying

[ajs318]

The three holes that really matter are (1) If a message has been encrypted using a one-time pad, then it's absolutely unbreakable; every plaintext of the right length is equally plausible. There are other encryption systems that can lead to multiple plaintexts, including some that allow the sender deliberately to implant an innocuous message which will do less damage if discovered. (2) You can certainly brute-force a key, knowing that a particular algorithm was used; but you can't brute-force an algorithm. (3) If the only copy of the source code to implement the Digital Fortress algorithm had been encrypted using Digital Fortress, then you would still need a copy of the Digital Fortress binary with which to decrypt the source code. And it'd be quicker just to disassemble that {and guess variable and function names} than to piss around trying to decrypt it.

How likely would a real-life crypto expert be not to work out the meaning of "without wax" in one go {presumably she would know at least a few words in a few languages}, much less spot obvious anagrams such as NDAKOTA = TANKADO? Not knowing the name of the coin used in a country is hardly forgivable either! You can find out what the currency of Spain is in any travel agent. Clue: it's not the Peseta!

Re:Reminds me of a saying

[svkal]

I found the concept of "TRANSLTR" silly. They had the computer decrypting ciphertexts one-by-one, and the panic that ensued when one took longer than normal was a central plot point. Now, any good ciphertext will be indistinguishable from random data by most statistical means; what happens if a monitored person simply sends a random data file which enters the system?

There was also some nonsense about the only available implementation of the DF algorithm supposedly being "encrypted with itself", and only available once the key was found. Wouldn't the key be pretty meaningless without knowing the algorithm? (I know security by obscurity doesn't work in real life, and it's a common assumption that an attacker already knows your algorithm, but if an algorithm is completely unknown and completely different to all known algorithms, you would really have no idea how to apply that key, and you'd have a hard task ahead of you if you tried to find the algorithm by "brute force".)

Some guy's master plan was releasing the DF algorithm with a back door, and assuming that no one would ever thoroughly search through the code? (As the only unbreakable code in the novel's world, this would be code of great scientific and great commercial value, which it's fair to assume would be reverse engineered even if it was released as a binary or as hardware.) (Furthermore, wasn't the code supposedly already released in encrypted form, to prevent exactly this?)

The most horrible part of the book, however, was the blind acceptance of the NSA as "good guys". How can you use "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" in a book and still have a "hooray, now we can spy on everyone again, which is all right because we're saving the world all the time and none of us could possibly do anything bad" kind of ending? I'd accept that as a conclusion, but you can't just not discuss the problems involved.

Furthermore, there was no lack of flaws with the book that didn't pertain to the technical subject. The main characters were all supposedly extremely beautiful, athletic and intelligent(though the last quality is never actually displayed by anyone in the book - at at least one point, the author actually tries to demonstrate that a character is intelligent by simply specifying her IQ, which is pretty horrible writing).

The "heroine" is very passive both mentally and physically; her role is basically being confused, prompting other characters to explain the plot, and/or being used as a hostage. None of the characters have anything remotely resembling a personality, and the dialogue is stilted and constructed to suit plot purposes(A German tourist, when trying to express that a certain woman had a tattoo which said "Fuck off and die", simply says "Fuck off and die" to the male protagonist; this cartoonish misconception isn't cleared up until many, many pages later). The descriptions of Spain read very much like a tourist guide.

Furthermore, I've read the openings to some other Brown books and it seems they all follow a number of these conventions, suggesting he's pretty much writing the same book over and over again and cashing in on it. ("Christopher J. Whippenhopper, though a brilliant (linguist/entomologist/sociobiologist/astronomer) with an I.Q. of (153/236/304/435), was by no means a boring, bookish man, like most of his colleagues. He was in great physical shape for his age, and had been the undisputed victor of the university (tennis/ping-pong/foosball/Counterstrike) championship for (three/five/twenty/fifty) years straight. His (rugged good looks/roguish smile/fascinating tales/not-at-all-receding hairline) had always made him popular with his female students, but he believed he had now found the woman of his life: the young and stunningly beautiful new professor of Plotpointology; Phyllis Plotpoint.")

(If we are to believe the lawsuits flying around, of course, Mr. Brown only achieves his best work when he's ripping off a speculative "documentary" book for his plot instead of trying to thi

Re:Reminds me of a saying

[JFMulder]

Loved how you summed up the male protagonist of every story he wrote. :)

Re:Reminds me of a saying

[arevos]

This reminds me of a saying that is quoted in "Digital Fortress", a book from Dan Brown

I wouldn't admit to having read that particular trainwreck if I were you ;)

Re:Reminds me of a saying

[man_ls]

I read a work that proported to be non-fiction, about how ancient Egyptians could have had the necessary sailing technology to make contact with the Aztecs. Similar to what happened in Contiki (sic) where they rafted from South America to Southeast Asia on some trees strapped together with rope.

Re:Reminds me of a saying

[svkal]

Still, I think it would've been mentioned if Brown's character subscribed to that theory(I'm assuming it's rather speculative, as you seem to imply as well), rather than just casually mentioning the Aztecs as an important influence on Christianity in a discussion about religion with students.

As for the Egyptians, are you talking about one of Thor Heyerdahl's theories? I believe that he's more respected as an adventurer than as a scientist; it seems to me that he founded his theories on less-than-solid ground(Wikipedia mentions the similarity between pyramidal structures in Egypt and South America) and then tried to "prove" their viability by building boats with the technology of the appropriate time and sailing the distance in question. In the case of Egypt and the Americas, he succeeded on his second attempt(Ra II) - but still, his methodology is obviously not scientific.

To quote Wikipedia again on the accuracy of his main claim to fame, the assertion that Polynesia was settled from east to west(famously tested with the Kon-Tiki expedition), since you seem to accept that as fact: "Most anthropologists continue to believe, based on linguistic, physical and genetic evidence, that Polynesia was settled from west to east, migration having begun from the Asian mainland."

I'm not an anthropologist, though, so I can't really say anything about how much faith one ought to put in the mainstream position on these issues.

Re:Reminds me of a saying

[CopaceticOpus]

Ah, but over a darknet, he could have safely and anonymously admitted to reading it!

Re:Reminds me of a saying

[arevos]

Ah, but over a darknet, he could have safely and anonymously admitted to reading it!

Okay, that made me chuckle :)

But would he believe that such a darknet was safe? The premise of Digital Fortress is that the NSA has constructed a supercomputer so powerful, it can brute force any encrypted message in minutes! Seriously, if you want a good laugh I recommend skimming the book, or at least taking a look at the Wikipedia page.

Walk-around NAT too

[bjoeg]

Hmm

If you can do more than one PPTP tunnel at a same time, and Relakks offer public IPs, one could actually get a global IP for every machine behind the router. Neat.

However their FAQ does not say anything what kind of IPs that are being assigned. Wonder if Relakks does caching too to take off some of the bandwidth load.

Some people don't buy like that

[Jamie Lokier]

I can't speak for others, but only for myself: I recently paid for an interesting Firefox plugin that cost $5. It's a handy looking plugin that I might never use, but at that price, since it had clearly had a lot of work, I was happy to reward the author. In fact I've never used it, but I don't mind. But for $25, I would only pay that after spending some time investigating the software to decide if it's really worth the money. And usually, I don't have the time to do that, so I don't buy even if it would be worth it.

In other words, even if a higher price does suggest quality, it also says "this is not an impulse buy". And some of us like to investigate more expensive things before we buy them, even if it's not a rational use of time (I get paid well; rationally, I should just buy things and try them, but I don't).

Now, I do sympathise as I would also like to make money writing shareware. It's hard for me to imagine how though, as I haven't bought software (aside from the above Firefox plugin) in many years: FOSS being good enough for nearly everything.

Since the only software I've bought in years was a low-cost impulse buy, that tells me that maybe there's a market of people like me, who don't buy "real" software any more if there's a comparable free equivalent.

Since you've made relatively little from your program, you're obviously not dependent on the income. So perhaps it's worth experimenting with different pricing just to see what happens? Or maybe sell two slightly different versions with radically different pricing to see what happens?

Re:Some people don't buy like that

[Anonymous Coward]

I currently have no mod points, so I can't dole them out to the parent.

Which is too bad, since the parent is both insightful, interesting and consistent (to almost 100%) with my own experiences. To the ancestral author of said shareware program: You would do yourself a favor in seriously considering what the parent wrote. I promise.

You have my sincere sympathy, too, btw. And to make it clear: I will _not_ buy a program approaching Notepad's complexity for $25. I _might_ buy it for $10, if it fits my needs. In neither case will I pirate it. The difference for you, then, as program author, is either a sale for $10, or no sale. If this applies to a significant portion of your potential customer base, it's a no-brainer, don't you think? Try it.

Sigh.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Please see:

1. "The Watchmen"
2. Star Trek.
3. At least 6 million news stories about the CIA each year.
4. Bruce Schneier
5. About 6 hundred million blogs commenting about the news stories.

Oh, and

6. Decimus lunius luvenalis, better known as Juvenal.

Re:Sigh.

[JFMulder]

Stop being such an elitist, I was simply quoting a book I read last week.

Re:Sigh.

[henni16]

You just read "Digital Fortress"?
My condolences and I'm glad to see you have recovered.

Google

[edmicman]

So *that's* what Google is doing buying up all that dark fiber!

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[QuantumG]

"Properly due or merited" and combine with "democracy" to get "Law. Valid within the law; lawful:".. that is unless, of course, your policital system has been completely gamed by the rich.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[debrain]

And copying a King Kong DVD rip is not one of them. Its sad when people take the legitmate point about anonymity that you might need for political organisations, journalists and whistle-blowers, and just use it as an excuse to facilitate warez and music copying.

An interesting point you bring up. While on the one hand the guise of anonymity and capacity to organize movements in private, or more precisely without being subject to the scrutiny of a government with vested interest, is a tool designed to keep government in check (not corporations), on the other hand there is a blur between government and corporations.

Corporations of sufficient clout are subverting the role of government, both in its legislative form and in its scrutiny of private citizens. In particular, the intellectual property seems to be aiming for self-government (see, e.g. EU Patent Wars to Resume, 15 August 2006), and the judiciary seems to be the second hand of the RIAA of late. Are citizens not entitled to self-governance, at least insofar as they are entitled to organize without scrutiny or prejudice.

One might consider intellectual property to be of such a minor importance as to not warrant anti-establishment, however the very existence of a "Pirate Party" is evidence to the contrary. While they may be frivilous, I suspect they are a reaction to the concerted force of the IP industry upon their government.

I agree that it is sad when the masses use anonynimity only to pirate. However, there is something to be said for the right of the masses to act against any force that imposes itself as a governance upon the people. While I don't agree with opposing IP stakeholders through piracy, it is hard to deny that it will be an effective method of encouraging a re-evaluation of their draconian methodology of rent-seeking, as Ann Kreuger would put it.

As a final note, these corporations will never stop their policy of rent-seeking. In fact, they cannot: they owe a duty to shareholders to continue this policy (and they seem to lack the foresight to construct more savy revenue streams). They have saturated the market and their only perceived method of revenue growth is changing the market situation. They have every incentive to go down that path, and virtually no cost for failure ... save public relations, but how much would that really affect a monopoly?

You're paranoid and here's why

[BlackCobra43]

Relakks will hand over SUBSCRIPTION information ( that's all they keep). This means the Riaa gets "Why yes, John Doe uses our subscription-based internet service". This isn't a crime. If the RIAA sucessfully obtains this they have ALREADY got you on copyright infringement with OTHER evidence.

Re:You're paranoid and here's why

[mwvdlee]

From the translation somebody else posted higher up in the thread:

For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over "traffic data" including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment.

The fact that "traffic data" appears quoted, does not mean they don't have any traffic data.

Needs VPNI would take a comment like this as being

[brunes69]

The service is provided by the Swedish high-tech company Relakks, which offers a neutral IP on top of your existing ISP service through a strongly encrypted VPN connection. Basically, this gives users the advantage of a Swedish IP address from anywhere in the world.

So, how long until Ma Bell and Pa Cable make it against their TOS to connect to an "unauthorized" VPN provider (whereby darknet VPNs are conviently never authorized)? Of course they would only do this after a little "helful nudge" by the DOJ.

Serioulsy - the idea is great, but using a service like this is basically like putting a big "HEY, I AM OVER HERE, COME ARREST ME AND THEN DO AN UNLAWFUL SEARCH OF MY HOUSE!" sign on your roof.

The sad sad thing is - a few years ago I would take a comment like this owrth a grain of salt and offer up some tinfoil to the potser. Nowadays I feel like it could actually happen.

Problematic to the extreme

[Sqreater]

1.) You have to keep tabs on changes in Swedish law, European Union law, and USA law if you are an American citizen or risk being exposed legally at any time. If a terrorist bomb goes off in downtown Sweden, forget it.

2.) The very use of this service could expose you to conviction. I read a case in the news in which a judge instructed a jury in a porn case that even though no incriminating files were found on the suspect's computer, the jury could take the mere PRESENCE of encryption software as an indication of guilt. I can see mere use of this service being considered incriminating by some idiot judges.

3.) It's on Slashdot for crying out loud. Do you actually think law and government security geeks are not going to find it a challenge to break it legislatively or technically? I'd feel better if it were a privacy service existing in the internet twilight.

4.) There's the paranoia factor. What makes you think it isn't a trap?

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[Snaller]

Piracy is not what the party is about, it's a name they picked to be noticable.

Its also a stupid name which means they will never be take seriously by anyone but warez kiddies. Its like calling a political party "The terrorist party" - you just don't do that if you are serious what you try to do.
The consumer rights party would be a stupid name, as it would infer some capitalist values and the party does not take a stance in questions like that.

No, it would be a good name - you may not have the ability to see it, but that would cause them to be taken seriously. Regardless of what their goal is.

The party is here to counter the police state we are turning into with Bodström giving the lobbying organisations whatever they want, and to put a stop to the silliness of patents and eternal copyright.

And as long as they can't even pick a sensible name there isn't a chance in hell of them being able to effect such change.

Re:Question? - obligatory

[robizzle]

1. double post 2. ??? 3. Win lottery 4. Profit!!

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[Snaller]

The Pirate Party" is concise, provoking (to some), and easily remembered.

And easily dismissed as not being serious by real politicians.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[Threni]

> And easily dismissed as not being serious by real politicians.

I don't think they're after votes from other politicians, though.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[muffen]

And copying a King Kong DVD rip is not one of them.

Really? To me it sounds like a very good reason you want to be anonymous, I mean seriously, who would want others to know you've downloaded King Kong of all movies you could choose from in this world :)

mnb Re:Software piracy really is all that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not really admiting anything so long as you hide behind a Slashdot nick.

Anonymity and credibility?

[tsa]

I was wondering: this could be a great way for people who live under oppressive gouvernments like the Chinese to speak their minds. They are anonymous so more safe than on the 'regular' part of the 'Net. But this also presents us with a problem: say you want to make a blog, consisting of several files (one for each entry for instance). Every file is made by some anonymous individual. How can you make sure all these files are made by the same person whilst keeping sure you stay anonymous?

Re:Anonymity and credibility?

[ME-tan]

Futaba style imageboards (2chan, 4chan, iichan etc) can generate a hashcode to be posted with your displayed name known as a "tripcode". This code is based on a word or phraze you enter and is represented as italicised ascii text after your username following an exclamation mark. Only if you know the word or phraze it was based on can you reproduce that string. This can be brute forced but is still not easy to break due to the nature of the algorithm used to generate this string. The result is it provides a unique identifyer without requiring a login. A similar thing could be used on the blog, hell, the futallaby / wakaba / kareha software used by the aforementioned boards could be used by this blog and have support for this ready and waiting.

Re:Anonymity and credibility?

[tsa]

Cool! This is very interesting. Thanks for the info.

Re:Anonymity and credibility?

[makomk]

Unfortunately, the standard implementation of tripcodes is very much vulnerable to brute-forcing (not enough possible tripcodes). I think the only reason they're useful at all is that it's rare that anyone's sufficently interested in faking someone else's tripcode to put in the computing power required.

Re:Anonymity and credibility?

[ME-tan]

True, but most people dont normally want to spend that kind of time trying to impersonate an otherwise anonymous poster. I've brute forced them before but only to generate a tripcode that starts "aw11" (i'm an MR2 fan) and have generated more complicated significant tripcodes in the past. It still takes a week or so to crack a full tripcode with luck and a good processor though. Even the posters on the craphole of the internet (4chan's /b/ forum) who seem to be able to get your home phone number from a selfpic within hours cant be arsed to crack each other's tripcodes.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[thelost]

Would it be reasonable for me to start a party called the 'New Nazi's' in hope of making my new party more noticeable so I could actually promote my parties real values which are looking after fluffy animals, promoting Smiles and daily laughing exercises?

Whatever the Pirate Bay is here for, to the majority of users it's about getting stuff for free, not about changing dominant ideologies in the media industry, I don't exactly pat myself on the back for fighting the man when I download the latest telesync of Pirates of the Caribbean from TBP.

Some definitions...

[Analogy Man]

Democratic: Representative government where the people have free access to information about the government and the goverments access to information about citizens has checks and balances.

Authoritarian: Government based on manipulation of power where access to government information is limited and access to citizen information by government is unfettered.

Ask yourself which direction the US government is heading.

Re:Some definitions...

[Gospodin]

Those are supposed to be definitions? You failed PoliSci, didn't you?

For future reference: Democratic != Representative; "free access to information" is important but not the only differentiating factor distinguishing democracy from authoritarianism; the "right to privacy" has nothing to do with form of government. Other than that, your analysis is penetrating and insightful.

Re:Some definitions...

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Well I was an 'A' student in polysci...

1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority
b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

The fact is that the USA implements a representative democracy. We are in fact a Democratic Republic. Note that while a democracy doesn't have to be a republic, the two are certainly not mutually exclusive. From the very beginning the "Founding Fathers" had a distrust of abuse of power. They built in a system of checks and ballances which, while also not part of the definition of democracy, is certainly central to this one specific implementation (USA). I would suggest these checks and ballances where for the express purpose of avoiding any slippery slope back into an authoritarian form of government.

In terms of core differences contrasting authoritarian (i.e., "of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people") forms of government with constitutionally based democracies, I'd have to suggest your statement

the "right to privacy" has nothing to do with form of government

very naive. Civil liberties where historically the root cause of the "fork" from authoritarian forms of governments. The declaration of independence opens with an enumeration of rights. The constitution's first 10 amendments are even called the Bill of Rights.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

In response to 9-11 we here in the USA have seen our civil liberties distorted perhaps even to the point of peversion (pevert: 1 a : to cause to turn aside or away from what is good or true or morally right : CORRUPT).

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Therefor, I salute our new DarkNet Lords of (Civil) Liberty!

Re:Some definitions...

[cannon fodder 0109]

Quoth TheSalzar (945163) The US is a democracy? man i musta missed somthing. Should recheck the the constitution. And maybe then you will agrea that america is no democracy.

Correct: The United States of America is not a democracy it is in fact a constitutional republic

Re:Some definitions...

[Gospodin]

The fact is that the USA implements a representative democracy.

Of course it does. But they aren't equal, and you can have an non-representative democracy without resorting to authoritarianism.

Civil liberties where historically the root cause of the "fork" from authoritarian forms of governments.

Well, not really (cf Magna Carta - civil liberties or a bunch of tax-oppressed barons? cf 1776 - civil liberties or a bunch of tax-oppressed rich colonists? hmmm... maybe the "fork" has to do with taxes?). But it isn't important. Because there is no right to privacy in the Constitution (or at least not until 1973).

Note the difference between civil liberties and the right to privacy. The OP is not saying "civil liberties are important for a democracy" (a statement with which I agree), he is saying "government transparency and personal privacy equals democracy", which is absurd. Not that there's no connection between the two, but asserting equality goes way too far.

Re:Some definitions...

[Wildclaw]

Direct Democracy: People vote on laws
Democracy: People vote on People that vote on laws
Republic: People vote on People that vote on People that vote on laws.
Monarchy/Dictatorship: Self-Acclaimed Leader vote on Laws

Republic is basically Democracy with one extra step of indirection.

Re:Some definitions...

[iminplaya]

What do you mean heading? The American government has always been authoritarian. Nothing has changed. Individual rights has always met up with great resistance, and it has always taken a great deal of violence to acquire those rights. Try to think of even one that was wasn't. The only thing that seperates the American government from the rest is the amount of hypocrisy. But all governments are authoritarian. And most people think that's ok. If freedom lovers actually recieve a significant amount of votes, I will believe otherwise. But they don't.

Re:Some definitions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there is no right to privacy in the Constitution (or at least not until 1973).

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."

Try implemeting that without protecting privacy.

Re:Some definitions...

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Because there is no right to privacy in the Constitution (or at least not until 1973).

Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

You say, "Note the difference between civil liberties and the right to privacy." But then you don't suggest any difference. The United Nations recognizes the right to privacy. The US Supreme Court recognizes the right to privacy. De jure (as well as de facto), there is in the USA a constitutional right to privacy. It isn't spelled out directly, but it is implied (or so says the US Supreme court...)

Agreed, it is absurd to state that "government transparency and personal privacy equals democracy". What is not absurd is to state that without government transparency and personal privacy, democracy won't exist. These are conditions that are necessary, but not sufficent.

Then why log at all?

[brunes69]

I have never understood this really.

If a darknet wants to provide indemnity for it's users, then why don't they just disable all logging of information on the darknet? If there ar eno records, then none can be supenaed.

It would be pretty trivial to design a system whereby it is proveable that any given packet *did not* originate from within Relakks, but stil not know from where it did originate. Such a system would provide them protection from lawsuits and also protect their customers identities.

Re:Then why log at all?

[chris_7d0h]

Well the suggestion you provide has been tried and discarded on numerous occansions due to practicality. Freenet is to my knowledge the only surviving attempt at what you suggest, but it also suffers immensly from poor performance (throughput). The most likely reason why Relakks provides a simple proxy design is that they have almost unlimited bandwidth for dirt cheap price to and from their hosting location, thus the performance would likely be as good as the throughput between your location and the Relakks location.

Now as for the records. Relakks is a pay-up-front kind of service amd since you pre-pay a fixed amount they don't need to keep any records other than "Usar A payed the monthly fee". Since their business model don't require usage / traffic statistics for billing (contrary to many other ISPs) they don't need to keep traffic logs and thus it's impossible to correlate a customer's payment info to anything else. This means that even if they were forced to hand over the specific details of suspected individual "User B" all the government would obtain is what is already available in the white pages or in the records of the Swedish IRS (public information). No new information will be gleaned from subpoenas and the government is rather aware of that which should eliminate their desire for requesting such information from Relakks in the first place.

Flaimbat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, just keep burying your head in the sand deeper and deeper. If you bury it deep enough, Islamofascists actually become reasonable people who respect the commonly accepted values of civilization.

Cybercrime Treaty

[drakyri]

I'm all for a protected darknet, but wouldn't the recently signed Cybercrime Treaty compel Swedish authorities to hand over information demanded by other governments? It seems like the U.S. could ask for traffic information to be recorded (as under U.S. law), and that the Swedish ISP would be forced to comply. ...I hope not, (and I haven't had the time for an in-depth reading of the treaty articles) but that's what the overview makes it sound like.

./ story here,
List of signatories (Council of Europe site)

Sweden must suffer for they sold ironore to Hitler

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a nice occasion to test if the new swedish multi-purpose fighter jet, the tiny little JAS-39 Gripen is any good in combat. One Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carrier battle group vs. swedish airforce, squadrons of Gripen vs. F/A-18E/F. The outcome is predictable, Swedes will be suprised when all the AMRAAM missiles they bought for much money cease to work on remote signal issued by US forces. In the end GI Joes will march in the streets of Stockholm and the RIAA and USDoD will divide the war prize 50-50%. Condition of surrender will be to hang all pirates in public in Sweden and the re-unification of the two countries under the norwegian crown to humiliate swedes.

Message is clear: don't mess with financial interests of Uncle Sam or you will be punished. Music and movie industry is a very big US taxpayer.

Anyhow, Sweden should have been occupied and punished long ago. The WWII wouldn't happened if they refused to sell all their iron ore to Hitler to help build the mighty nazi war machinery. The current great wealth of Sweden is based on the blood of millions of gassed jews and tank-crushed european civilians. All those iron cross tanks were made of swedish steel and yet, Sweden was never punished for profitting of WWII so shamefully. Only Switzerland is more disgusting than Sweden, the swiss accepted crates of raw pulled golden teeth from gassed jew's mouth and exchanged to western hard currency for clandestine WWII nazi purchases. Switzerland was not punished either. Death to the nazis and their collaborants!

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[stubear]

THE RIAA DOES NOT HAVE A MONOPOLY ON FUCKING MUSIC JACKASS!!!!! I really hate reading this crap. If you want to make music and sell it on your own then go right ahead. What you cannot do is express ideas in the same or derivative manner as others but other than that they sky's the limit. If you are personally not creative enough to write express yourself through music or art that's your problem. Intellectual property laws protect the expression of an idea, not the idea itself - nothing more, nothing less. The RIAA has done nothing to change this by seeking to litigate those who willfully infringe upon their copyright through illegal distribution (file sharing is illegal distribution, period - it is not some contemporary form of sharing like you did in kindergarten).

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[GroeFaZ]

Question is, do they want/have to be taken seriously by established politics? Maybe all they want is to raise public awareness of the matter, and as far as I can tell, they sure do. Add a little help from the so-called "real" politicians who succumb to foreign business pressure, and they don't have to do much at all to strengthen their agenda, if it can be called that.

Now that is just...

[SQLz]

This is just down right, unamerican. 'If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check.' Its the governments job to watch over us and make sure we follow the teachings of jesus.

Re:Now that is just...

[Jakuta]

OMG you best read the constitution again, it's freedom of religion. I am a Christian but there are many many people who are not and Jesus loved them too. Where do you think "...just say the word, and he shall be healed" is from? A Gentile Roman asking Jesus to heal one of his servants, but knowing that Jesus being Jewish could not come to his home because it was unclean.
It is not the government's job to watch how we worship. IT is there to make sure everyone has a voice and is not subjugated or forgotten.
You better look up the meaning of Christian in the non-fanatical sense...
Chrisian: "somebody who believes that Jesus Christ was sent to the world by God to save humanity, and who tries to follow his teachings and example"
Besides money changers in temples, demons, spirits and Satan I don't think there is not a single person Jesus ever smote. He even forgave Peter and Judas, kinda goes with his teachings of "love thy neighbor as thy self"

Re:Now that is just...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you're joking (I looked up your previous posts) but you must realise that there are people who actually believe that, and people in power who WANT you to actually believe that.

It's the government's job to protect me from you, not to protect me from me.

And America's national religion isn't Christianity, it's Capitalism. We worship nothing but money here; at least, our leaders worship nothing but money and the power it buys. They use Christianity to keep the cows who think they're sheep in check.

Re:Now that is just...

[Fantastic Lad]

Besides money changers in temples, demons, spirits and Satan I don't think there is not a single person Jesus ever smote. He even forgave Peter and Judas, kinda goes with his teachings of "love thy neighbor as thy self"

Cute use of the esteemed double-negative :)

I always wonder why people take the stories in the bible as though they were not written by easily corruptible humans, sometimes decades after the reported 'facts'.

Propaganda existed 2000 years ago just as it exists today.

Jesus was most probably a Christed soul, but honestly. To be a Christian today is to follow a highly distorted version of reality which has distinctly "Kill and Rape your fellow humans" underpinnings.

You don't need to join a church or call yourself a Christian in order to work toward Service to Other ideals. In fact, it's probably a fairly important step. Not following is a key. You cannot grow your spirit unless you think for yourself and learn your own lessons.

-FL

Re:Now that is just...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's freedom of religion. I am a Christian but there are many many people who are not and Jesus loved them too.

Nice way to pretend you're tolerant.

"Let them have their views. Secretly, we know they are wrong and we are right."

In other people's views, Jesus never existed. That must be hard to accept for you fanatics, so instead you cover your ears and spew that "Jesus loves you anyway" crap.

Re:Now that is just...

[iocc]

All religons sucks. Its better to know and not belive. Very simple.

Re:Now that is just...

[Jeld]

Actually, most goverments do a lot to protect you from you. To name a few examples, the goverment protects you from poisoning yourself by strong medications, the goverment protects you from getting addicted to drugs, the a lot of goverments protect you from throwing your money away on gambling and from getting morally depraved by using prostitutes. There are a lot of other things goverment is protecting you from doing to yourself and a lot of people take these things for granted, just because this was always there.

Re:Now that is just...

[trupoet]

in other people's views, Jesus never existed.

Those people haven't even read secular history then.

Think of the... government!

[Columcille]

'There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet,' says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. 'If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check.'"

Oh please. 99% of the traffic will be illegal filesharing. This particular statement is quite ridiculous because what does "darknet" have to do with keeping government in check? Something like this can have nothing to do with government accountability. The argument is akin to the "Think of the children!" approach so often ridiculed here.

Re:Think of the... government!

[BalanceOfJudgement]

I prefer to look at it this way:

If and when the day comes when we really do live in a dictatorship, or totalitarianism of any kind, you will wish that there was a system that allowed anonymous political speech - even if it can be used for illegal purposes (at which point, of course, political speech would be outlawed anyway).

The purpose of systems like these is to ensure that day never comes - so long as a method of communication is free from subversion or surveillance, people will be willing to speak out against their governments.

It saddens me to know that so few people are left who can imagine that anonymity is necessary for freedom. What this means is that people are ripe for subjugation.

Re:Think of the... government!

[geekoid]

bull crap.

The ability to exchange information freely, without the government knowing(those are two different things) , is how people can be aware of what the government is doing.

I am really tired of this 'only used for piracy' crap.
Do some people use it for piracy? yes.

But that is no reason to not have privacy.

Could resurrect net neutrality?

[Mateo_LeFou]

This issue and the online-porn one represent -- in my opinion -- the best hope for network neutrality. When the ISPs begin peering into the network's packets, for the purpose of charging Google and friends a little extra, the possibility arises that they could be held liable for copyright infringement or obscenity in those packets. Since it looks like we're going to lose the NN fight, I think we should look at this angle

Sold!

[Kamineko]

^_^

Cliches and quotes are for non-thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not elitist to be tired of hearing the same quote over and over, especially from someone who should have seen it before on Slashdot. It's tiresome to see kids blabbing cliches as though they are some kind of wisdom. I feel the same way when someone trots out the Ben Franklin quote about freedoms. It's a cop out and ignores the real, dangerous and complicated issues of the 21st century world versus a world where the most powerful weapon one man could carry was a musket. There's a war for the future of this world going on regardless of the geek world shoving its collective head up its fat, conspiracy and ideologically addled ass.

Re:Cliches and quotes are for non-thinkers

[BalanceOfJudgement]

It's a cop out and ignores the real, dangerous and complicated issues of the 21st century world versus a world where the most powerful weapon one man could carry was a musket.

Great! So let's just throw the ideas of freedom, liberty, and limited government out the window, because by god the world is different and we would be much better off under dictatorships!

[/sarcasm]

next level

[Anonymous Coward]

And then next level of anonynimity would be Freenet.

Although the latest version is stupid to get hooked up. You have to find a trusted node to connect through which is a pain in the ass (how do you know who to trust?).

Plus, at least the last time I looked, it is saturated with kiddie porn and other crap I don't want to see or have anything to do with. I know it's all in the name of freedom, but your freedom stops where other people's rights begin and abusing children is just wrong.

Overall, although Freenet provides "good"(*) anonynimity it's pretty much a flop. I'm not convinced the authors know what they are doing with the slow code development and rewrites.

(*) I work in the security industry but I have never actually looked into how Freenet works. I don't really trust that the authors know what they are doing. Security is hard and very few people do it well.

Ohhh I got new Cliche and quote!

[disc-chord]

"There's a war for the future of this world going on regardless of the geek world shoving its collective head up its fat, conspiracy and ideologically addled ass."

I Like it! I'm going to paste this all over! Since you posted anonymously I'm going to assume you're William Gibson, that will give it some cred.

Good Uses of VPN

[wintermute1974]

There must be a thousand reasons why you might want to be completely anonymous, but right now I can't think of one

Okay, here's one for you: I belong to the largest ISP in Canada, called Sympatico. This summer, it sent all its users a message saying that it was going to log all Internet traffic. The reason for this change in Terms and Conditions was not given, but I cannot think of one reason that would benefit its users.

Now, whenever I surf the web, I feel like someone is looking over my shoulder. I start to wonder: Is it a crime to read Slashdot? What about any website with the work "anarchy" on it? Or an article on DVD Jon? I'm sure that given all my URLs, a clever prosecutor could put me in jail for completely innocent reasons.

For this reason alone, I really like this new VPN service.

Re:Needs VPNI would take a comment like this as be

[ebonkyre]

Most US broadband providers *already* TOS against VPN use, on the grounds that if you're using your personal-use connection for work, you should pay twice as much for the same bandwidth in order to get a little "business" flag on the account.

sure about this

[enjahova]

It's only a problem if you think freedom is a problem.

There is no balance, either you are monitored or you aren't. The balance actually comes in to play when the authority doing the monitoring decides to use the data or not.

So maybe you like trusting authority to decide what your balance between privacy and security is, but you do not like freedom.

Personally I am for freedom. Even if it means kiddie porn networks will thrive alongside ubuntu distributions and copyright violations, I think the net benefit to humanity comes from a compeletely free exchange of information. It's ok if you don't share that belief, it takes a lot of faith, and you are not alone at all in your fear of weirdos.

It's quite sad...

[rbarreira]

It's quite sad that to get true privacy one has to buy it... Isn't privacy supposed to be a fundamental human right?

Re:It's quite sad...

[alexgieg]

If you has a right 'x', then someone has a duty to provide you 'x'. That someone can be either: a) someone else; or b) yourself. In case it's someone else, then he will fulfill that duty either: i) voluntarily; or ii) forced. And finally, if he's doing it voluntarily, he'll either do it: 1) by charity; or 2) by profit.

It's not sad if what happens is "a.i.1", "a.i.2" or "b". It's sad if what happens is "a.ii".

Re:It's quite sad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when have fundamental human rights been easily and freely obtained?

Why Are Logged Lives the Default Position?

[wintermute1974]

There must be a thousand reasons why you might want to be completely anonymous, but right now I can't think of one.

Okay, how about this one: Human beings have a right to privacy.

Just because the technology exists whereby every IP address you connect to, on what ports, for what duration, and with a count of the data transferred can be logged does not mean we should do it.

The more data people have on you, the more they can abuse you, blackmail you, threaten you, annoy you, or any number of other undesirable things.

Just how intrusive does monitoring have to become before you say enough? You are already willing to have all the data into and out of your ISP monitored. If you were asked to place surveillance cameras in your home, would you consent, arguing that "I'm not doing anything illegal so let them watch"? Some of us refuse to be on display like in a zoo.

sig reply

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, I know, offtopic.

There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.

How about starting with 1, but occasionally using 0 for portable control data.

how many gigs you got?

[enjahova]

I got 13.2gigs of rhino pictures and video, how about you?

(hey, I'm PROUD of my rhino collection, I don't need to hide behind AC)

correct translation from swedish

[buddyglass]

says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. 'If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check.'

"If the government could check everything my friends and I do, we wouldn't be able to exchange copyrighted music, movies and software."

Re:correct translation from swedish

[the_REAL_sam]

I'm not sure if you are joking, but your insinuation that "encryption is only-to-get-away-with-crime" is not correct.

There are plenty of good, legitimate reasons to want your internet connection to be safe from wiretaps.

If you lived in China, for instance, and wanted to browse pro-democracy websites, or religious websites, or anything else under the allegedly-censored regime, then the pirate party's tool could be quite helpful until the government cracked it, at which time it could just give the user a false sense of security.

Re:correct translation from swedish

[buddyglass]

I realize there are legitimate reasons to exchange information anonymously. What I question is whether those reasons are as significant a motivating factor as Mr. Falkvinge suggests. I suspect [i]most[/i] people who will use this service will do so in order to break the law.

Re: your actual IP is logged...

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

So sign up using Torpark, IP addy problem solved.

What I want to know is (a) what traffic info is logged in the first place, given that "For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over `traffic data including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment," and (b) how are the details of your payment method related to "what you entered yourself when signing up for the RELAKKS Safe Surf service"?

Dark Side of Humanity.

[twitter]

It's not an awesome idea because as much as it has it's good use there is also the darker side with pedophile, snuff and other crap that should not be tolerated.

Yeah, better kill the children now. Afterall, some of them will grow up to be axe murderers and that's just horrible. Baby, bathwater, freedom what's the difference?

Re:Dark Side of Humanity.

[gold23]

> Yeah, better kill the children now.

But don't film it!

Order of Greatness

[convertxiii]

Pirates>Ninjas>Swedish Parliament

I see you're not getting it

[muyuubyou]

By billing even a small ammount, you get the billing information of the user.

A spammer can only use his identity and credit card once before is banned from the service. This works great as a deterrent, if only for the unability of creating a dozen new accounts after a bunch of clicks.

Re:I see you're not getting it

[mutende]

By billing even a small ammount, you get the billing information of the user.

The service is free for the next month, so at least spammers could spool out their sh*t for one month without paying a eurocent.

Legality of anonymous communication

[Anders Andersson]

How about: how does this bypass the Berne Copyright Convention?

It doesn't, nor does it bypass any national copyright law either. It's a service to deliver bits of information to a recipient without painting the sender's address all over the place, much like the U. S. Mail is a service to deliver atoms of matter to a recipient without painting the sender's address all over the place.

There is nothing in the Berne Copyright Convention requiring telecom carriers or mail delivery services to maintain logs of senders for the purpose of identifying those who distribute stuff potentially infringing someone's moral or financial rights. It's the obligation of the sender, not of the delivery agent, to make sure that the stuff being sent is in compliance with the law, copyright or other restrictions.

Sweden is a signatory. I know that most countries don't completely abide by all their treaties, Sweden seems to be the biggest violator of Berne in the developed world.

Can you back that statement up with some evidence? I believe our copyright legislation is quite in line with Berne, and I'm not aware of WIPO having any complaints about our way of enforcing it. The fact that the MPAA may be unhappy with the outcome of a number of lawsuits brought to court in Sweden does not make a treaty violation.

What about the appearant lack of moral rights of authors in the USA? As the author of that article points out, moral rights are specifically included in the Berne Convention, but there are doubts about how well these are protected under United States law. Of course, as those trying to defend their moral rights are seldom supported by big pockets of money, disputes like these are unlikely to result in international treaty reconsiderations.

Re:Legality of anonymous communication

[networkBoy]

-1 pedantic I know but:

"the U. S. Mail is a service to deliver atoms of matter to a recipient without painting the sender's address all over the place."

A return address may be required on certain parcels.
-nB

Re:Sweden must suffer for they sold ironore to Hit

[Fantastic Lad]

Anyhow, Sweden should have been occupied and punished long ago. The WWII wouldn't happened if they refused to sell all their iron ore to Hitler to help build the mighty nazi war machinery.

Perhaps if the Bush family had not helped out German coal production and steel fabrication through American-financed companies which used slave labor from Auschwitz, all that iron wouldn't have posed as much of a problem.

Just a thought.

-FL

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[Snaller]

Question is, do they want/have to be taken seriously by established politics? Maybe all they want is to raise public awareness of the matter, and as far as I can tell, they sure dobr>

In which case the real question is: Is there anyone who does not know this already? ;)

Scope, not barrel.

[Kadin2048]

In the GP's (GGP's?) story, the bullet didn't go down the other sniper's barrel, it went into his scope, presumably traveling through the scope, and into his eye, and from there into his brain. While it's possible that the optics and other parts of the mechanism in the scope might deflect the bullet's trajectory slightly, it probably wouldn't do so enough to prevent it from being fatal.

Now that I think about it, wasn't there a scene in Saving Private Ryan that was like this? Two snipers, and one guy shoots the other guy in the eye through his scope? Or was that in Stalingrad? Either way, I'm almost sure I've seen something like this in a movie. It smells a little of cliche.

Not that it would be impossible (I suppose if you're shooting at somebody's head, because that's the biggest exposed mass) and the other person is shooting back at you, sooner or later you're going to put a round through their scope) but it just seems a little hard to swallow. I guess I'll accept it as a 'good story,' though.

Re:Scope, not barrel.

[spun]

It was "Saving Private Ryan" and it was based on the true story. AFAIK, the kill was verified and occured just as evilviper stated. The sniper in question is a legend, with an annual award and a shooting range named after him.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[Snaller]

I don't think they're after votes from other politicians, though.

Well if you want to make change you have to work with other politicians - if you just want to make noise that's clearly not required of course *g*

Freedom, responsibility and anonymity

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Freedom has risks. If you have free elections, the "wrong" guys might win. If you have secure communications, "terrorists" might use them to make plans. If you have the right to keep and bear arms, "bad guys" may have guns.

Freedom does have risks, but the danger with issues like this is that for society to function effectively, with freedom must come responsibility, and vice versa. That means if the "wrong guys" win an election, they can be removed from office when they go too far. If "bad guys" walk down the street with a gun and shoot someone, then someone else is likely to shoot them.

While completely secure communication is no doubt a worthy goal in some respects, the danger is that it will be very difficult for society to hold those who abuse the system accountable for their actions if the system also permits anonymous transmission. Contrary to the claim in TFA, there really aren't that many places where anonymity is an effective requirement, and there are certainly plenty of damaging ways to abuse anonymity: think how much nicer the world would be without spam, viruses, phishing/on-line fraud, web sites offering bad advice on critical subjects like finances and medical treatment, and so on.

I have long been in two minds on this subject. On the one hand, I am not generally a supporter of complete anonymity for publicly available material, because for the reasons above I question whether the gains really outweigh the costs in practice. On the other hand, I am a strong believer in the idea that any technology is neutral and what matters is how it's used by those who have access to it. On this basis, we might suppose that even if we were to deny secure, anonymous electronic communication to "bad guys", those people will simply find other, less technologically "clever" ways of communicating privately. The problem isn't the secure communication; it's that bad people want to use it to discuss doing bad things.

I find my views on anonymity softening, however, in light of one inescapable fact: the one guaranteed constant in the debate is that different people will have different views, and not everyone will respect the same authorities to judge what is and is not responsible use of any freedom to transmit anonymously. In the absence of any absolute standard of authority, it is impossible to define what is and is not responsible in a universally applicable way. Thus we come back to freedom of expression and the threat to it posed by denying anonymity.

Perhaps a better way to deal with the problems caused by anonymity is for society to learn not to trust anonymous sources. If no-one ever gave up their details in phishing attacks, then no-one would bother attempting the attacks. Ditto buying things advertised through spam, etc. And if no-one trusted anonymous sources for important advice, then the damaging web sites would not arise. I suspect that there will always be problems with more personal issues like defamation, because it seems to be human nature to assume that there is no smoke without fire, but at least if we collectively grew up enough not to trust unsubstantiated assertions the problem would be diminished.

So I think my views are swinging towards the long-term benefits of absolute anonymity over the short-term benefits of disallowing it. Of course, this may all be a moot point anyway. If the people want anonymous communication, then they're going to get it sooner or later, whether any particular government likes it or not.

Right.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Stop taking pride in your cultural illiteracy.

Without net neutrality,

[empaler]

You could have servere speed issues, or worse, this:

Server not found

Firefox can't find the server at www.relakks.com.

        * Check the address for typing errors such as
                    ww.example.com instead of
                    www.example.com

        * If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
                    connection.

        * If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
                    that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

        * Check the address for typing errors such as
                    ww.example.com instead of
                    www.example.com

        * If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
                    connection.

        * If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
                    that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

Re: your actual IP is logged...

[cayenne8]

"So sign up using Torpark, IP addy problem solved."

Hmm...unfortunately, it appears to be 'MS windows' only???

:-(

Re: for Windows only...

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Torpark is really just a convenient flavor of Firefox with Tor-circuit proxy connectivity built in. Prolly Windows only because it's Windows users that need the extra help.

*nix and Mac users can just set up Tor itself and get the same privacy features:
http://tor.eff.org/
http://tor.eff.org/download.html.en

Timing Attacks?

[hweimer]

Unfortunately the website lacks any details about how they want to protect their users from timing analysis attacks. Even Tor is affected by them and I somehow doubt that they found the holy grail of anonymous networking, yet they claim that "nobody can track your communication".

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Thank you. My stomach turns whenever I hear the general public referred to as 'consumers.' Sorry, I'm a human being too asshole, I am not some number for you to put on your balance sheet.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Well if you want to make change you have to work with other politicians

I believe that's the part that comes after being elected - and the name "The Pirate Party" certainly seems to be wholly designed for the purpose of getting attention and garnering votes.

I only wish I'd thought of it!

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[BalanceOfJudgement]

What you cannot do is express ideas in the same or derivative manner as others but other than that they sky's the limit.

The whole of human creation is built on the derivative ideas of others. True originality is exceedingly rare - not because people are not original, but because there are in fact very, very few completely original ideas.

To extend copyrights to ungodly lengths serves ONLY to deprive a culture of its creative fodder.. and that's exactly what is happening.

Re:No Linux support !? (Read the FAQ at relakks.co

[cursorx]

From the Questions & Answers section:

RELAKKS running Linux
Q: Is it possible to use RELAKKS running Linux OS?
A: Yes, it should be possible. We hope to be able to publish a guide shortly.

Italian Fascism and anti-Communism.

[Valdrax]

1. Fascism isn't a product of the right, it's more leftist. You aren't even using the term correctly.

Never refute a point with an article that starts out with a logical fallacy in the very first paragraph.

There are few words the American Left loves to fling around with such abandon as the word "fascist." According to them, social conservatives, libertarians and the Religious Right are all various brands of fascism, that political ideology which came into such disrepute following the demise of il Duce, Benito Mussolini.

No one in the American Left thinks that libertarians are fascists. Perhaps doomed, naive, ideologues who cannot see the logical conclusion of their avowed economic policies, but people with a deep respect for freedom nonetheless that we can find no fault with. To claim as such is a straw man, or at the very least, the result of arguing with people that don't understand what a Libertarian is. Libertarians don't want the kind of social control that social conservatives want -- that's why they're on opposite ends of the classic two-way axis. They also rarely possess the mild xenophobia, militarism, and demand that the government shepherd them that the people the American Left is really afraid of do possess.

Now, as for the actual argument...

Fascism is an Authoritarian system. It often picks up traits from both the Left and the Right, but it's root are in anti-Communism during the economic and social malaise of the post-WWI period in Europe (and in the US to a lesser degree). Much of the Western world was in the grip of the post-WWI Depression, and many people were of the opinion that Western democracy was a failed and ineffectual form of government. Communist movement (and to a lesser degree anarchist movements) flourished. A lot people with right-wing tendencies rebelled against Communism and sought to create a strong dictatorial government that did not follow Marxist beliefs.

The Manifesto cited was not the core sets of beliefs of the architects of the Fascist Movement within Italy. It was the public, "Vote for us!" PR much like the "smaller government" trope of the modern Republican Party. (Medicare Part D, anyone?) You'll note that in the years to come after they rose to power, much of those Democratic prinicples outlined in the first section went away, and in both Italy and most other Fascist countries, the labor principles were put aside as they quickly formed government-sanctioned industry cartels. They would give people a lot of what they wanted, but they had ZERO tolerance for strikers and for collective bargaining outside of the structured framework they had set up.

Fascists pander to the people for popular support but keep their wealthy friends close and in power, just as the Republicans did with Medicare Part D which is a benefit for old people that is explicitly designed to preserve industry profits. Mussolini rose to power with the blessing of the monarchy who was afraid of Marxists. Hitler's rise to power coincided with the purging of people with more socialist than nationalist leanings in the Nazi Party in the Night of the Long Knives. Unlike Authoritarian Leftist movements, there is no deevolution of power from capitalists to labor.

You see, one core difference between Fascist Authoritarianism and Communist Authoritarianism is that while both believe in centrally controlled economies, Communists believe in the industries being wholly owned and controlled by the State whereas Fascists believe in letting oligopolies be independently owned by friends of the administration and to keep the benefits and ownership of business firmly in the hands of an elite instead of in the hands of the people. It is Crony Capitalism in practice, though with a good bit more state control of production, even if the wealth generated flows into a few hands.

At their end of the political spectrum, Fascism and Communism both start to

ummm is it similar in functionality to Notepad?

[BitterAndDrunk]

Because TextPad immediately jumped into my head as a functional amalgam that costs $25.

And if your program ain't TP, and it's a text editor, then chances are you're charging way too much.

If it is TP, then thanks for the great program, I use it a lot. (And yes, I have bought it once)

flying spaghetti monster?

[flipmack]

whoa. almost 600 replies and no references to the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the inverse relationship of pirates with global warming? what is this world coming to?

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[Wildclaw]

The Pirate Bureau( that runs the pirate bay) and The Pirate Party are two completly different entities.

You know, there is...

[Corwn of Amber]

You know, there is that thing called "common sense" that everyone else seems to be lacking. Or have a different version of than YOU do, which causes them to have different opinions.

Idea 1 :
What I, HUMAN, buy, when I buy anyTHING, it BELONGS TO ME, as in "MY book, MY cd-rom, MY computer, MY audio cd, MY dvd."
And I can do whatever I want with it, and the first thing I do with each and every data support is to rip and copy it, in hopes of gaining the ability to enjoy it when the support has become unusable (re-sold, given away, destroyed, lost, scratched, missing, stolen, borrowed). I buy a CD, not a nebulous right to play recorded music. I buy a round disc that holds many ones and zeroes, which represent music that can be played back when the round thing is inserted in a suitable device. That is a little far-fetched from buying a right to listen to music.
You see, THAT is what I call common sense: WHEN YOU BUY SOMETHING, IT'S YOURS.

Idea 2 :
"Information wants to be free" : bullshit. Information IS free. It belongs in the mind of each and everyone that wants it. Information is free because it can be replicated at no cost. Which leads to

Idea 3 :
Blah blah the cost of production blah blah : bullshit. A movie that does not return its initial investment in theater tickets many times over in the first week is a commercial failure. Oh, I know, the video market gains The Industry many many more $ even, but I say fuck them. They've earned enough money already. And they might earn even more if I could actually BUY the dvds ($30 a film? Yeah, right. Make that $10 and I'll buy them in six-packs.)

The production costs for a music album could be repaid many times over, too : The more people buy the hardware (i.e. the CD, or whatever other support) or the concert tickets, the more $ you get as a musician. The more people download your music, the more people will listen to it. THAT costs you NOTHING AT ALL.

Idea 4:
MY common sense tells me that, as there are zillions of people downloading exabytes of data on various darknets, the statistical chance anyone (i.e. you, reader, or me, writer) will ever be prosecuted for filesharing is very, very near zero.

Other ideas :
What "copyrighted material"? I can't copy a CD with its artwork, booklet, and sell the copies. Chinese industries do that, they have printing and CD presses. The ones where CDs get lawfully produced in the day and pirate-copied at night. That amounts to the same as printing money, then: the value of "copyrighted material" is non-zero at industrial scales.
Or distributed, as in "ten million BitTorrent users and counting" - the very same people that DO buy round plastic things in artfully decorated jewel cases. But they do not steal anyTHING. Thus, no theft, no crime.

Now, for software. Oh, make everything free for non-commercial use already, or so cheap that it would be more profitable for users to actually buy it instead of d/l'ing the crack from badly-coded, malware-infested and porn-ad-riddled crack sites. I'd have paid, oh, happily 10 to 20 for the whole Creative Suite 2, instead of waiting for a week for Azureus to DL it in English first and in French later. I'm a student and I'm not gonna see a ROI on that before the next version or the one after anyway. Now come sue me, Adobe, with your lawyers at [one year's student's expenses] a day. And it's not as if I didn't have to have the FULL version, not those castrated student editions. Yes, I know, I must still buy the hardware, but it's pretty hard to download it off the 'Net. And it CAN NOT BE COPIED AT ZERO COST. That's why hardware can be stolen. Not software. (Stealing the box in which the software comes IS theft, copying bits around is NOT.)

And while I'm at it, I'm gonna type another rant : hardware prices. Hey, nVidia, does a Quadro chip REALLY cost you one hundred times more to produce than a crippled GeForce *200? Didn't think so, either.

Re:You know, there is...

[Corwn of Amber]

Oh, I forgot... Who the hell is going to pay 5 to download copyrighted material? Or pay ANY money? I don't have a Visa card anyway, so it will be BitTorrent for the foreseeable future. Thank you, Bram Cohen.

this removes the need for the govt/ to eavesdrop

[Anonymous Coward]

everyone whose credit card number is used to pay for darknet services can simply be put in prison w/o trial, chemically castrated, sent to guantanamo bay, or exported to friendly dictatorships to be tortured.

Reciprocation

[Morosoph]

You know, you should keep a journal :o)

Just been through some of your comments. I don't totally agree with you, but you have many interesting things to say, and argue a good case.

As for scarcity, I think that oxygen is pretty valuable, despite its relative abundance. Also, in any volentary transaction, its value is higher than the price paid, so as to make the exchange worthwhile, which yields a major flaw in attempting to measure wealth; you hope that "all other things are equal" when making the comparison, but can never be sure.

Diamonds and the like are a different matter. Certainly they're pretty, but actually, they're a form of cash. A ladder is valuable because it helps you get to a rooftop; it would still have that value if there were an abundance of ladders.

In the end, this is about society verses nature. That abundance destroys value is a fairly accurate social observation: we evolved so as to value having an edge over one another, and the ubiquitous cannot help in that, but we do still have basic needs and desires, and indeed, this is essential in a justification of capitalism, or else we're all just spinning hamster wheels. Poverty can be alleviated, it's simply a mistake to think that it can be eliminated through ever more government.

Re:Reciprocation

[JesseMcDonald]

You know, you should keep a journal :o)

Just been through some of your comments. I don't totally agree with you, but you have many interesting things to say, and argue a good case.

Thanks. I don't require that anyone agree with me, just that one keeps an open mind. It seems that my views tend to draw the ire of all sides of the debate: the socialists, because I support the market economy and despise central planning; the communists, because I don't believe communism can scale to an entire society (although it may appear to work for a short time in small communities before evolving back into a market economy); and the statist capitalists, which is nearly everyone else, because I consider all aggression, including government aggression, a pure "deadweight loss" to the market. With so many opponents, it's nice to know that I've got a fan or two, even if they don't necessarily agree with me 100%.

As for scarcity, I think that oxygen is pretty valuable, despite its relative abundance. Also, in any volentary transaction, its value is higher than the price paid, so as to make the exchange worthwhile, which yields a major flaw in attempting to measure wealth; you hope that "all other things are equal" when making the comparison, but can never be sure.

Diamonds and the like are a different matter. Certainly they're pretty, but actually, they're a form of cash. A ladder is valuable because it helps you get to a rooftop; it would still have that value if there were an abundance of ladders.

First, I think we're using different definitions of "value" here. In economics, "value" usually refers to an individual's internal, unmeasurable scale of preferences (at a given time) as expressed through action. Thus, if a person chooses to buy a loaf of bread for $1.00, it expresses a value-judgement that the loaf of bread is worth more to it, at that moment, than the $1.00 given up in exchange. Thus, "value" is linked directly to "demand" (the total amount all such individuals are willing and able to give up for a loaf of bread).

The concept you are using, however, is typically labelled "utility": an (arbitrary) quantity assigned to the psychic satisfaction granted by a good. As it is generally estimated, oxygen does indeed have a higher utility than diamonds (diamonds being a luxury while oxygen is necessary for life), but few individuals would express through action the idea that, say, a liter of bottled oxygen (for breathing purposes) has a higher value than a diamond. Note that there are exceptions: extra oxygen may be worth something to someone who cannot breath properly, or to a mountain-climber unused to the thinner air. In such cases, the utility of the oxygen does not change (it remains necessary for life), but its scarcity, and thus its value, does (due either to increased demand in the former case, or decreased supply in the latter).

In the end, this is about society verses nature. That abundance destroys value is a fairly accurate social observation: we evolved so as to value having an edge over one another, and the ubiquitous cannot help in that, but we do still have basic needs and desires, and indeed, this is essential in a justification of capitalism, or else we're all just spinning hamster wheels. Poverty can be alleviated, it's simply a mistake to think that it can be eliminated through ever more government.

If I follow you correctly, I think I agree, with one caveat: even if we humans did not value "having an edge over one another", any non-primitive society must still have specialization of labour and thus trade and a market economy. Individuals engaged in trade often try to take advantage of the other's weaknesses and short-sightedness, but that is not an essential part of trade. It would, in fact, make for a more efficient market economy (with better allocation of resourc

Re:Reciprocation

[Znork]

JesseMcDonald wrote a pretty good reply on this, but as you brought up diamonds, there you have a very interesting example of value and cost abberations. Diamonds are, in fact, worth very little, their retail cost is largely due to the DeBeers monopoly/cartel price and supply manipulation. Take a look at the wikipedia article on them, and read the Epstein article from The Atlantic Online.

I wouldn't try using them as currency (the resale value is vastly lower than purchase price) and avoid any diamond investments like the plague; they're most likely scams.

"this is essential in a justification of capitalism"

The justification for free market capitalism is simply that it inherently optimizes for the maximum production of wealth within the economy (as a subjective value).

"Poverty can be alleviated"

Poverty as a concept for the economy as a whole is automatically alleviated by free market capitalism simply due to its nature of maximizing wealth.

The trouble is that as free market capitalism eventually leads to that lack of scarcity and full competition means that eventually you get zero ROI, you'll find a whole horde of investors and possessors of large accumulations of wealth trying their damn hardest to avoid competition. Thus you get monopolies, 'intellectual property', tolls, etc, etc, etc.

Re:Reciprocation

[Morosoph]

Okay, I'll hand you diamonds (the argument, not real diamonds! :p)

The justification for free market capitalism is simply that it inherently optimizes for the maximum production of wealth within the economy (as a subjective value).

I'd say that the real justification for capitalism is freedom; there are other good reasons too, but I'm afraid that the above justification doesn't quite work. It fails in the perenthesies, for people do not value wealth linearly; it would be less wrong to say that they value wealth logarithmically. That said, that does not in itself imply that you can beat the market: didn't a famous economist say that socialism eliminates wealth and redistributes poverty? Sum {log wealth} is an envy free measure that still wouldn't satisfy many egalitarians.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[Snaller]

I believe that's the part that comes after being elected - and the name "The Pirate Party" certainly seems to be wholly designed for the purpose of getting attention and garnering votes.

I only wish I'd thought of it!

It may be getting attention, which is the only thing its good for, but not getting votes.

In the way the democratic system is structered in the west, you can't get elected if you only have one point on the agenta - since people only get one vote, it would be a wasted vote to vote a such a party.

Two things

[Slashdot Parent]

Two things:

1. Use Google checkout instead of paypal. They give you credit toward CC processing for the money you spend on AdWords
2. You should link to your product in your slashdot sig and homepage. Free advertising.

But no free speech for military officers!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm actually in the same boat, and I'm a resident of the good ol' US of A. The catch is that I'm a (soon to be former) military officer, and I can be arrested and jailed for saying:

888. ART. 88. CONTEMPT TOWARD OFFICIALS Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

Take a look at the UCMJ sometime--there are parts that are truly scary. I figure I'm close enough to being out that I can post as an AC w/out /. being subpoened for my IP, but I have plenty of friends still active duty that would love to be able to voice their true opinions without fear of being persecuted/jailed. I think there's some level of irony that a US military officer would need to use a *Swedish* service to be able to exercise free speech.

Did not work for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I paid subscription for one month and followed their instructions to set up the VPN-tunnel on OSX (10.4). Connection to RELAKKS succeeds, but no IP:s can be reached via PPTP-pipe (pinging does not work, dns does not work).

I asked help from their support email, but got no reply.

It's quite frustrating to pay for service that does not work. Furthermore - if I want to keep my anonymity, I can not ask for refund.

MOD UP

[Lesson No. 25]

This may well be the best clarification of the breakdown in the analogy (copying vs. stealing, as typically presented) that I've seen.

I sure hope some people dig down this far to find your statement, because I'd like to see some discussion on it.

It's a service, not a product

[Mr2001]

Great plan you got there. So who is going to make new movies, tv programs, books and vidoe games and operating systems then?
Nobody, because you just removed their incentive.

I hate to burst your bubble, but copyright isn't the only way to provide an incentive for the creation of such works.

Think about it. What is a barber's incentive for cutting hair? Does he need a government-enforced monopoly on cutting hair in order to make a profit? No. He does a service and he gets paid for it. A customer comes into the barber shop and asks for a haircut; the barber cuts his hair; and then the customer leaves, and his business relationship with the barber is over. There's no law saying he can't show his new haircut to as many people as he wants, or cut his roommate's hair in the same style.

Authors, musicians, programmers, etc. can use the very same model. The fundamental thing today's artists (or at least their lobbyists) seem to have forgotten is you can get paid for your work with no hassle at all, as long as you wait until someone agrees to pay you before you start working.

Imagine this announcement going up on your favorite band's web site: "We know you've been waiting for our next album, and here's your chance to speed it up. It's going to cost us $20,000 in studio time and living expenses to record and produce the album, and we currently have $2000 of that. Click here to contribute to the production; we suggest $15 but you can send any amount. When the album is finished, we'll release it for everyone to download and share, absolutely free. We'd like to start work by January 1st, so if we haven't reached our goal by then, you'll get a refund and we'll ditch the project."

Ah Well...

[Morosoph]

Maybe it was, but you shouldn't moderate upon projected intent, IMO.

A bit of context and humour would have shown that it was the incorrect mod. Posts should stand or fall on their own merits. 'Social' context only matters for redundancy. Political correctness is a reversal of this policy.