Slashdot Mirror
Russian Software Piracy Crackdown Restricts Free Speech
reporter writes "According to a report recently filed by the Washington Post, the Kremlin has finally begun to crackdown on software piracy ... with a twist. The Russian state agency is targetting political enemies with claims of piracy, including independent news media, political parties, and private advocacy groups. In particular, 'the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, one of the last outposts of critical journalism in Russia, suspended publication of its regional edition in the southern city of Samara on Monday after prosecutors opened a criminal case against its editor, alleging that his publication used unlicensed software.'" This doesn't even take into account our recent discussion of the Kremlin's grip on internet access in that country.
It's pretty funny that they're using this particular excuse to persecute political opposition. So I guess that's what how far they've come in the last 50 years - from malicious prosecution under the guise of national security, to malicious prosecution under the guise of protection against piracy.
Well... at least they're not being cliché.
If you think OSes really matter, get a clue.
The way they deal with things: Tell us what you were doing, or you're going to a Siberian gulag. Or we'll kill you.
As pointed out in the article, they're killing two birds with one stone. They get to appear more pro-active against piracy after all the requests from Western governments to try to stop piracy, and they get to silence critics. Criticism from Western governments could be met with appeals for funding if they want them to come up with a better way to stop piracy. Speaking of money, there might be some money changing hands from major software vendors to support anti-piracy measures.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
When I was working on a MMORPG years ago, this sort of behavior was a worry. It was a much smaller, less consequential worry, but it was there. Player A would call the company, and whine to mommy that Player B was breaking the rules. We had to be careful about policies so we didn't just disable Player B prematurely during the investigation, or it would become a new dynamic in the game. Want to invade a guild hall? Make sure their best players are disabled due to investigations.
It didn't catch on, but at the time I called this a DOS by TOS: a denial of service by (ab)using the terms of service; the terms of service can be a weapon if the environment is competitive enough.
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In this case, I don't think it mattered what OS was being used, they'd find something to charge him with.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
And guess what, on this side of the Atlantic, you don't risk government persecution if you call a spade a spade.
This attempt to make the US sound like Putinocracy or Communist China is absurd, and worse, bullshit. There are abuses, there are always abuses, but at the end of the day, where would you rather be right at this moment in time; Moscow or Detroit?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You're still a bit better off if they had to fabricate a charge than if you were really guilty of something as easy and obvious to demonstrate as software piracy. Looking at it from another angle, this is one of the reasons why it's socially detrimental to have poorly enforced laws against common activities (whether it be piracy, drug possession, low speed limits, whatever) - it gives abusive authorities the ability to selectively enforce those laws against people they don't like for some reason.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
The topic of the submission was "Russian Software Piracy Crackdown Restricts Free Speech". Again, emphasis mine. If we get rid of this article on the grounds that it is not news-for-nerds, then we might as well dismiss every article ever posted on
Also, Slashdot has a worldwide readership. It would be a folly to filter out every topic that does not relate to the U.S. Regardless how how you may feel about the foreign news, worldwide political events will affect people in the States as much as anywhere else. For instance, there are plenty of foreign companies that do business in Russia. If any one of them ever use their position as a pulpit to disagree with the Kremlin, then they too may get a knock at the door for software piracy.
Lastly, you claim this article is FUD, as you say everything Reporter posts is. I don't see anywhere in your post your rebuttals or WHY you claim that it is FUD. I even read the original Washington Post article that this post linked to, and it seems pretty clear that Russia is only selectively enforcing copyright laws against organizations that have spoken out against the government.
That's not anti-Russian FUD, it's reality! Please explain to us why it is FUD. And saying "Because it is anti-Russian" doesn't cut it.
Best "String" Ever!
"Ever since Gorbachev helped end the Cold War (and the USSR), the Russians have tried to fill a void left by that power vacuum."
Gorby helped end the cold war, what? Are you on crack?
This is exactly the revisionist liberalism that is pervasive today, crack smoking liberal delusion depicting the soviets or russians, whatever they are calling themselves today as anything but adversarial.
2 words for you liberal geek dopes, RONALD REAGAN
Let the events in Russia be a lesson to those left wingers that would have the federal government impose socialism, and to those right wingers who would have the federal government impose religion.
Every federal law has to be viewed as a potential for enslavement, another excuse for a would be dictator to trounce freedom. Those who are afraid of the government while Bush is in office, or if Hillary or Obama were elected, need to really ask, why do we have to have a government that -anyone- is afraid of.
The best federal government is the one where it doesn't matter which political party runs it.
This is my sig.
Actually, it's not just the ex-KGB people who are pining for the "good old days". It's a large chunk of Russia. Yes, there is a significant (even if badly beat up) opposition. However, there is a much larger contingent of ardent Putin supporters. His 80% approval rating is probably inflated, but his real numbers aren't all that far off.
It's been said that the prerequisite for Democracy is a strong middle-class. Guess what - Russia went straight from Feudalism with a complete lack of middle-class to Communism, with its similar lack of a strong middle-class. This means that the political tradition in Russia is one of central strong men (and one woman) who have near absolute power over everything. I don't see that changing anytime soon - the Enlightenment period is long past, and the current global atmosphere does not support its revival.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
...is that most Russians don't seem to care that their freedoms and rights are eroded away by Putin, as long as Motherland Russia's economy is looking strong.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Books, music and movies play a huge role in defining popular culture and currently US government and big companies have a virtual monopoly on shaping it. Some day Michael Moore's film studio will receive a call from Homeland security office to remove his films from circulation as they help terrorists and communists by undermining war effort and encouraging americans to visit Cuba. With all popular formats - DVD, HD, digital downloads - now covered by DRM, there will be no legal way for supporters to continue spreading the message. Activists will be jailed for breaking DMCA to spread popular "free speech" and public will be assured that all our freedoms are safe. It's only that pretty much any speech can be considered a derivative work of something in popular culture and as such belongs to some big company. Oh yes, and all the land is privately owned as well and as such the owners can impose restrictions on the speech within. It's too bad your homeowner's association has a policy against controversial public speech on the premises.
Although, on second thought, I don't know why they'd even bother declaring a new USSR when they can just as easily control their puppet states through other means, like economic pressure (Russia now supplies a third of Europe's oil and natural gas), "diplomacy" (like the recently ratified withdrawal from the CFE treaty and other scare tactics), and covert means (the KGB always was good at bribing and blackmailing others into doing their bidding). And leaving those people "independent" helps reduce internal and international tensions so, if anything, I'd say breaking up the USSR was a net win - if this is indeed true.
I doubt that the Perestroika was a planned retreat by the KGB. I do agree, however, that the KGB people are still smarting from what they saw as the loss of their position as one of the superpowers in the world. As is a large chunk of Russia. I believe that the Perestroika movement was genuine, but it ultimately didn't have enough support across a large enough swath of the population. The ex-KGB people though do have that support.
Russia is already a dictatorship (when was the last open election in Russia?) in all but name, and it's certainly working on the imperialism part. Anybody who's treating Russia as a friend or a partner will be in for a rude awakening. EU, I'm looking at you.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Not really. As laws don't really work in Russia, they may confiscate servers with false suspicion of piracy and then return them (of course) but down time is too expensive to afford, so people just give bribes or shut down.
How is that different than America?
That's a very good point: it's no different from America at all.
Of course, did anyone ever say that America was a country where people had freedom, and the laws actually worked? Any such person is a liar or an idiot.
Your president supports extrajudicial killings (among other things), though, and while you can demonstrate if you want to, you just might be locked up in a "free speech zone" if you do.
Yeah, the USA are a better place to live than Russia. But you're further from perfect than even you might realise.
You think these charges would go to court?
These charges are to put the dissenters out of business. I suppose that's better than being assassinated, but you've got to realize that most of the world does not operate the way the Western World does. If you criticize most governments, you die. We take for granted that we can say what we want about the people in charge. In reality, most people get killed. That makes martyrs, so the best bet is to discredit those who oppose you first. "Yeah, they were totally unscrupulous. Look at all the pirated software they're using. You can't believe a thing these guys say."
Look at Tienanmen Square - the Chinese murdered thousands of protesters, and now it's illegal to even mention it. I know, they aren't Russian. All the Russians do is inject you with plutonium, set off car bombs, and steal your computers. That's if you're a reporter!
The US may suck sometimes, but at least you've got a shot at a trial. Gitmo notwithstanding, of course, but imagine if reporting on Gitmo got you sent there for life.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I'm going to go out on a limb and state that I don't think Russia will ever be a liberal Western-style democracy. It won't be the quite the dictatorship that the USSR was, nor will it be quite as authoritarian as the Czarist regime, but it will ultimately remain a centrally-run autocratic regime with some of the trappings of democracy. I can't lay the blame on Putin so much as Yeltsin, who so thoroughly bungled the economic transition that a lot of Russians came to the conclusion that democracy wasn't all it was chalked up to be. Putin is giving the Russian people a familiar face; strong, authoritarian and dedicated to making Russia great. It's an incredibly common aspect of the Russian cultural motif; Peter the Great and Stalin are, to my mind, major inspirations for Putin.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.