Slashdot Mirror
House IP Leader Endorses P2P Blocking
Technical Writing Geek points out an Ars Technica report on comments from Representative Howard Coble (R-NC), who sits on the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. In a recent editorial, Coble attempts to discourage P2P file sharing among young people, and praises Ohio University for its ban on P2P applications last year. Coble also suggests that identity theft is a great danger from file sharing. Public Knowledge is running a similar analysis, which argues against the main points from the editorial.
Excuse me? Aside from the standard malware risks and stupid users, how is P2P an ID Theft risk?
Guns dont kill people, people kill people.
We should outlaw cars too, look at all the people they kill.
I know this has nothing to do about murder, but they are blaming the technology for the crimes. If you get rid of P2P, something new will replace it.
Thats assuming you can get rid of P2P. P2P will not go away any time soon.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
First thing they'll be doing will be sharing music files on P2P. Next thing they'll be handing out political pamphlets. Do we really want to have a politically active youth that cares about their rights--like France?
"Hey, X can be used in illegal ways, therefore we should make it illegal!"
Let's see, that can apply to everything from raw sugar to automobiles. Quick, file legislation to make them all illegal!
Compromised Windows systems are being used to flood the internet with spam in violation of various state and federal laws. Outlaw Windows!
Why cant these congresscritters get it through their thick skulls that there are plenty of legitimate uses for P2P, even in a university environment. A university in Holland is using bittorrent to manage 6500 workstations and it's saving them time and money. The university I work at uses SystemImager on its high performance research cluster to manage the software on all the compute nodes. SystemImager supports the use of bittorrent as a transport mechanism. If these aren't legal, legitimate, and highly useful implementations of bittorrent then I don't know what is. These are just two working examples of P2P being used in university environments in responsible ways, but I'm sure those stuffed shirts in Washington could care less.
Let me preface this by pointing out I'm a generally conservative young Republican. We're in a generational battle with our parents and grandparents and (more directly) the politicians that come from them over redistribution of our wealth and misappropriation of our technology. They want to put the screws to young people to maintain control, whether it's economic control (in the case of robbing the young to pay the old Social Security and Medicare), or entertainment control (draconian legislation in favor of the media cartels), or electronic expression control (clamping down on the freedoms enjoyed currently online). And we'll continue to lose this battle unless there's a shift in the political paradigms over these issues.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
If we're going to ban software used in identity theft I guess we can kiss the browser and e-mail client goodbye.
Some days I wish the Capitol Building had one of those carnival signs next to the door. YOU MUST BE THIS SMART TO RIDE THIS RIDE.
Really? Identity theft over P2P? Anyone who identity is so weak they could lose it by grabbing a torrent of Ubuntu probably has bigger problems than this congressdroid wants to address.
---------------------------------------
Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
At my university and it did not stop anyone from using P2P programs ... they just blocked certain ones and everyone just used different ones ... waste of time and money if you ask me.
Follow the money - Coble's just taking care of his patrons.
Hrm, who do I see here? The RIAA, ASCAP, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the American IP Law Association, all in his top 10.
The only surprise here is how long it's taken him to get around to taking care of them...
Your leadership in these past decades will be legendary.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
>> tax returns, credit reports, bank statements and student financial aid applications
>> These documents were stored on the computers of hundreds of victims, many of whom appear
>> to have been of high school or college age
If you're an Identity Thief, I guess you might be able to easily find a lot of tax records of high schoolers, but how is that gonna translate into loads of fast cash? You'd have to wait 6 to 8 years for them to graduate college, get good jobs, marry into wealth, etc. Then it might be profitable. Or maybe you're just stealing their ID to get the Student discount on MS Word?
Why not just ban IP communications altogether?
Or write-able drives? Or photocopiers? Or word of mouth... Or books.. Hell, lets ban knowledge.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How is using bit torrent to obtain data that you would otherwise have to pay for any different from gathering up a thousand people, walking into Best Buy and walking out with all the music and software on the shelves?
This is not a rhetorical question.
I occasionally use bit torrent to download software and music. The way I rationalize it because:
1) I would not actually pay for that data if it were not available by any other means. I actually do purchase software that I would pay for.
2) I have already purchased that data at one point in the past and either lost it or am too lazy to rip all my CDs.
I don't believe either is a legitimate excuse for theft, but I do it anyway now and then. I've also ended up purchasing data that I have obtained through bit torrent.
You should have put the sign on the voting booth. Would solve all your troubles. Offcourse it is the end of democracy, but hey, that is a small price to pay right.
Oh, and the fact that you put the sign in the wrong place, doesn't that mean it applies to you?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Unless they want to disallow encrypted traffic (i.e. any traffic that they cannot decipher) entirely or squelch the amounts then what are they going to do about it? Probably nothing. It is also useful to look at the whole P2P blocking issue from an economic standpoint. What are the interests of the ISPs in this? They would like to preserve, to the extent possible, the perception of "good speed" for all of their users which might imply some mitigation measures merely to improve that value proposition for their customers...up to a point. However, the mitigation measures will have increasing marginal costs as more and more detection, protocol analysis, and monitoring hardware and software is purchased and installed until it gets to a point where it is cheaper to add more bandwidth (i.e. network capacity) than it is to invest in ever more expensive mitigation and monitoring equipment. The ISPs would also like to be protected from liability for what happens on their networks (or at least they should want this if they are smart...the MAFIAA lawyers would LOVE to be able to sue AT&T and Verizon for "allowing" P2P to continue on their networks) both as a hedge against expensive copyright infringement lawsuits AND even MORE burdensome government regulation of their business (i.e they are regulated already but additional regulation and the attendant costs would be unwelcome indeed to the ISPs and their investors). Finally, they would like to increase their customer base and if "content" is what brings in more paying ISP customers then secretly (although these companies would never admit it publicly) they would probably prefer to preserve the status quo of P2P if that keeps their subscribers coming back each month with those fees.
This old man has gone senile. As a voter in his district I will vote against him and I'm a conservative.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Hunting animals for food comes to mind. As does collecting guns. Or buying and selling them for profit. All of these are non-violent uses.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
"Death Race 2000 fantasy aside, none of them are to kill people" Might want to rephrase that a bit there, sonny. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=charged+with+Vehicular+homicide&btnG=Search
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
Because in the latter example, you're stealing material property. That crime is called theft. In the former example, you're copying data illegally -- that crime is called copyright infringement, and the difference is that nobody was deprived of a physical copy of the merchandise. Thievery means taking something physical or otherwise tangible (money counts) and depriving someone else of it.
As for admitting that you engage in willful copyright infringement... well, that just wasn't too smart, now was it? But people like you do give a bad name to those who use BitTorrent for legitimate purposes.
>> ...and praises Ohio University for its ban on P2P applications last year.
Its one thing for some old politician to not properly understand the technology that he is trying to ban, but one would think a university would be better educated than to assume ALL p2p traffic must be copyright infringment.
feel that the "idiot" and "government" tags are redundant?
Oh yeah, power to the people and all that bullshit. You do realize that Howard Coble's is in NCs 6th district, right? Imagine taking a big piece of voter pie, carving out all the black voters and leaving nothing but whitey... that's the 6th district. District 12 is black and snakes right through the center of it. There ain't no way they votin' out whitey. You crazy as hell fool. Ruled unconstitutional as hell by the sue-preme court and North Carolina don't give a shit. Oh yeah, you ballot box real powful now, ain't it bitch?
how cheap they got him:
Assn of Trial Lawyers of America, $10,000
Recording Industry Assn of America, $6,374
ASCAP, $6,000
Wal-Mart Stores, $6,000
National Assn of Broadcasters, $5,360
American Intellectual Property Law Assn, $5,000
National Cable & Telecommunications Assn, $4,999
If we all took up a collection for, say, $30,000, maybe he would just shut the fuck up...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
"Member of Cuban government 1970-2005. Speaking of which, due to the recent health problems of our beloved leader, Fidel Castro, I wish to move some of my personal assets out of the country as insurance against any political instability that might arise. To do this I require a bank account out of country to receive this money. If you have such a bank account, and wish to receive a sizable compensation for your troubles, please email your banking details, social security number, name, address and phone number..."
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Hold on there skippy!
Guns were not invented to take lives and that is not their purpose, in this universe or otherwise.
Guns were developed as an extension to simpler projectile weapons. Their purpose is as a deterrent. They extend the reach of previous similar deterrents, that is all. A rock or a club can be just as deadly, just not at such a distance. But dead is dead. A club, a sharp stick... fists if nothing else is available; all are used to perform the same function. Decry the need for one human to find need to declare to another that "I will kill you if you cross *that* line!" if it makes you feel better, but let go the idea that the gun is somehow special.
I could blind you with a laser small enough to carry in my pocket. I could irradiate you. I could infect you with biological agent. The delivery mechanism for such weapons have yet to be popularized or mass-produced. Does your heart not recognize your brain?! These types of weapons would surely become "normal" if -assuming it were possible- all guns on earth were removed.
But it is not possible. Law means nothing to the lawless. Do you not get that?!
As to cars; I was riding with a friend one day when his ex-girlfriend drove by. There was a chase. There was a purposeful crash. Tell me again about cars -none of which- are used to (try to) kill people?!
P2P tools are no different. They will be used for the purpose at hand, legitimately by the lawful and illegitimately by the lawless. Perhaps something in-between when the use is not foreseen by the Law.
They really should educate the members of our government on what the internet really is, and how it works. P2P is not the problem, it is people using it for illegal purposes that is the problem. I would not issue the same praise. Not allowing University students to use P2P severely hampers Academic Freedom. Some large files are best downloaded with P2P programs. This goes for many Open Source operating systems. I am an adjunct professor at a Community College, and I often use these programs to get the latest Linux OS so that my students and I can use them. Limiting the use of programs that CAN be used for illegal purposes is not going to solve the problem. Should we also ban the use of security tools because hackers can use them for illegal purposes? Should we ban the use of web cams because THEY can be used to tape people illegally? Perhaps we should just ban the use of personal computers on college campuses, because they may contain illegal software, or may be being used to break laws.
Open Source: Eroding the Digital Divide
Ignorant representatives: limiting distribution of FOSS since their election.
Concealed carry permits aren't firearm-specific. They allow one to carry a concealed weapon, be it a firearm, long knife, or crossbow. I've had a CC permit for several years, and I've actually carried a concealed firearm on my person maybe twice. However, I carry a knife that would otherwise be illegal to conceal every day, and use it as a tool for my job all the time.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!