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Senator Proposes to Monitor All P2P Traffic for Illegal Files
mytrip writes "Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) has proposed an ambitious plan, costing on the order of $1 billion, aimed at curtailing illegal activities via P2P networks. His plan involves utilizing new software to monitor peer-to-peer traffic on an ongoing basis. 'At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders."
Fuck them. Fuck them both.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
. . . this dragnet surveillance "for the children" would never be used to enforce copyright. Right, Senator RIAA?
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. Ok, so all my Metallica files will be relabled (Not Metallica_Not Illegal file_Ignore). That should keep the feds off me.
I've never seen a better use for the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag in my life.
There is a war going on for your mind.
The guy just likes to hear himself talk. He's had more failed attempts at the presidential nomination than Ralf Nader running for the Presidency.
Wait... so all I have to do to transfer kiddy porn via p2p is change the name of the file?
And here I have been giving you credit for not being a total tool. How wrong I was...
Post Attachment: Cowboy_Neal_Riding_Congressman.jpg
I understand how these politicians can't get a handle on terrorism, crime, drugs etc.
They think the people that deal in them are as stupid as they themselves are.
What light through yonder window breaks? Tis the clarity of seeing people for what they truely are: idiots.
He wants the filtering done on file names?? Is he serious? That would be one of the easiest filters to get around.
Give them all names like "Senator Joe Biden's Personal Photo and Video Stash.tbz"
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Think twice (and then three or four times for good measure) the next time someone tells you to vote Democrat in order to protect your rights. The Republicans may not be more than a couple of hairs better, but at least this boner didn't come from a Republican.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
encr, lbhgu, puvyq, nff, shpx, cvff, yvpx, gbegher, encr, crrcrr, qhatrba, fubj, gryy, gbhpu, gvr, ovaq, fgevc, fcnax, fyvpr, oyrrq, qevax, fvfgre, oebgure, 8, 11, wvmm, ovgpu, fhpx, onfu, xvyy
Seeing that you could quite arguably claim that TCP is a "peer to peer" network he may need some storage space...
I hate it when they can't keep the script straight. The dems are supposed to be the stupid ones, the republicans are supposed to be the evil ones. Quit horning in on their territory!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Joe Biden has an overinflated sense of importance. Thats what this comes down to. He loves having his name in the news and doesn't seem to mind if its over being dumb.
Don't you just love when politicians try to pass a "law" on a subject they have absolutely no idea about? This leftwing dingbat probably thinks the internet is a bunch of tubes, has no idea how to use a computer or even a cell phone.
I see two approaches here... name every file you transmit a) fluffykitten.jpg or b) underageSexDrugsRockRoll.mpg depending on the actual content
Of course they can do this... They can also stop spam dead in its router or switch feeds... We know where the viruses are originating from, and spam and and and... Since these greasy rogues produce over 90% of the e-mail, then one can take from that that they're also paying big bills to do this... The Golden rule persists, and this InterTubeTechnocrat hasn't a clue.... The thing is probably a work around for the FCC accounting which states that ISP's cannot restrict (reads choke P2P) network feed or else they lose their blanket immunity to prosecution on content.... this guy is trying to build them a trap door...ain't gonna work.
End of Line.
An excellent use of the senator's time.
To paraphrase Will Rodgers -- The Country is now safe, the senate is focusing on reviewing P2P traffic.
If encryption is used, you can't do it.
If monitoring is heavy-handed AND encryption isn't illegal, it will be used.
The net effect: Wasted CPU time for encryption/decryption.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
MetallicasGreatestHitsCrackedByJoeBiden.mp3
:)
I wonder what Sen. Biden will do now.
...I suppose I should stop sharing the file US_Govt_Rapes_Citizens_Rights.doc lest I be marked as one of "the most egregious offenders"
He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders.
it is pronounced "egregious"
(sorry for the quality, best i could do on short notice)
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
Real issues: economy, environment, crime, international relations
Distraction issues: file sharing, gay marriage, abortion, drugs, bosnian snipers
If I was an ISP who wanted to slow the use of P2P on my network, I only have a few options.
Comcast tried the first option, which is to drop the connections. The outrage on tech sites was massive, and eventually led to them being investigated by the FCC.
Barring that option, why not put the burden on the government to handle the filtering. Heck, that is even better because now you don't have to pay for it anymore, your customers pay for it through their taxes.
Java has no friends.
My god, it's so simple! Why didn't anyone think of doing this earlier?
Let's hope the perverts and cirminals out there aren't as smart as he is, they may try changing filenames...
Quick! Everyone get a Rick Roll clip on your Limewire named ViolentRape.mpg!
He's the senator from MBNA and Citibank.
Totally different.
From now on, I'm renaming all the tarballs I package.
tar -cvf XXX-9yo-boys-blowjobs-and-crystal-meth.tar dovecot-1.0-stable/
~Wx
sig?
Remember when search engines used to rely on Meta tags? Yeah this is a brilliant plan. There should be a new rule: if you don't know what your talking about when you make a *law* then you get five lashes.
Shh.
I propose we monitor all government communication for evidence of corruption.
If everyone starts putting their crappy family videos of their kids online, I can see a ton of false positives.
But if there's any good, preexisting reason for this to be stopped, This could start happening in America too:
Having Your ID Stolen Leads to Job Loss, Prosecution
... we wait for the Senators to open the file "report_on_perverts_downloading_rape_and_molestation_files.doc" and then BAM! arrest the whole lot of them.
Genius, I tell ya!
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
Because no one at all knows about using TOR or encrypting your connections.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can't imagine this reasonably passing legal muster. I'm sure our legislators will be happy to pass laws on it anyway, to be quickly overturned by the judicial branch. But the problem here is that in most cases, there's no way to know that the real contents of a file are before downloading and viewing it.
If you see a file on p2p (or a link on a website) that says "hot teens" or "rape" or "incest", how many of those are in any way illegal? I'd say less than 5%.
Most "hot teens" are 27-year-old porn stars with their bleached blonde hair in pigtails. Most "rape" videos are fantasy videos recorded by porn studios as "teacher and student" or "boss and employee" and are pretty obviously porn stars making a not-remotely-passable performance as a rape victim?
But then, there's still that 5%. How many of us have clicked on a random link or downloaded a random torrent only to find a picture of a donkey or a 10-year old doing things that really are (and should be!) illegal? It's been a lot rarer since I stopped checking usenet porn groups, but still.
I can't imagine a conviction on "this person clicked a link that just happened to turn out to be illegal" being held up in court.
that we trash all those idiots who voted for this man.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Where he creates a (filter or firewall or program) to stop a 12 year old in finding 'naughty pictures' on the net. Then you hear a boinging sound and Dilbert says "I hope that is not his eyes popping out'. Lets face the facts. Anyone can build something to get by any type of restrictions on the net. Period.
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
As much as I'd love to register as a Democrat, it's boneheads like Biden that keep me from doing so. When I read the DNC platform I get excited. When I hear Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, et. al. pontificate, I remain registered as a Republican (in the RHINO or Southpark sense only).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My first thought when I read this was 'Whiskey Tango Foxtrot'. (Well. Not exactly, it was actually the terms that those letters stand for, but hey).
This is really sad, because I just know he's serious about this, and he really does think this 'saves the children'. And he's giving the exact proof why people with no knowledge about these sort of technical things, should not be allowed to even propose a law about it.
You're not going to let a truck driver design your house. You're not letting a CEO have root access to your core machines. You don't accept financial advice from a bum. You can't accept truth from a politician. Uhm. Well. You get my point.
Why the hell would we accept a senator to make laws about something he simply doesn't have the knowledge about? Why on earth do these people even think they can make sensible comments about this?
It's so intensely sad that in a wat it gets funny, if I didn't realize that they're dead serious, and we're going to be stuck with the bullshit.
Can't we forcibly 'retire' these sort of politicians from their position... Bleh.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
As a Delaware resident I'd like to formally apologize to the series of tubes that is the internet. We Delawareans do not support the boneheaded flailings of our laissez-faire-bashing pompadour.
Heh, and Wasted CPU time translates to an environmental issue, so the EPA will probably be able to ban that with some bureaucratic regulation rather than going thru the bother of law.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
And this one sentence proves the whole idea is ill-concieved and been given virtually no "real like" though. Never mind that porn sites spam p2p with name-spammed files
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
I am sure that Sen Biden's idea has nothing to do with the fact that he has taken $178,358 from the TV/Movies/Music lobby in this last cycle. The ROI on paying off a politician is insane. Just look at Orrin Hatch and the DMCA.
Doesn't the Senator know that the logical response to this will be millions of files with names like 'loli-rape.avi' that contain wonderful Rick Astely videos*? Is Biden up for reelection yet again or is this his normal level of cluelessness.
Don't blame me. I'm writing in Bruce Schneier and Lawrence Lessig!
*Wait. What am I saying. This is already happening...
Um, seeing as the USA is slipping (slipped?) into recession and has a 9 trillion dollar debt, maybe your government should be planning on spending tax dollars a bit more conservatively? (say on public housing for the recently evicted, food stamps etc). Just my 2c.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
And Joe Biden is one of the very worst. He's been a stooge for the credit business in his state for years. So, all we have to do now is send all of our file names as hashes, and pretty soon we can get back to fucking children, which is after all the lone purpose of teh internets.
Can we reverse the age requirements for Congress, so no one over the age of 45 is allowed to serve? Jesus Christ are old people increasingly useless in our culture.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
that george orwell (1984) was right. it is their playbook, and now, they are following it to the fullest.
If people can get past, can they get future? Best way to confuse a stoner
This is only the beginning, citizens. Every election year, someone proposes this kind of lame idea, hoping that they'll be seen "stalwart defenders of public decency taking a stand against the evils of the Internet" instead of "idiots proposing stupid solutions to minor nuisances in an attempt to garner votes."
Last year, it was then-presidential-contender Senator Brownback of Kansas who was re-proposing the "Truth in Ratings" act, (although I'm sure that it was in NO way related to his "more-family-values-oriented-than-thou" appeal.)
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
So who wants to join me in animating goatse into movies and then naming those files after every popular movie and tossing them on P2P? Let the idiots monitoring this system enjoy their work for once...
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
US Government Will Assume All File Traders Are Criminals
Just looked like it needed fixing.
IOTM = Idiot of the Month With most illegal p2p startin to use encryption and if they start with that even more will, it makes that money spent just a waste when that network can't decode the data.
And America is full of morons. Do you see the problem?
- Which is
- 192.168.1.1
- Excellent Bob! Let's go catch this bastard!
1. guy who has no idea how the intertubes works makes stupid proposal. as if he could matter to p2p traffic
2. guys who know how the intertubes works vent their fury. as if they matter to the political discourse at hand
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Does somebody want to update that Anti-anti-spam form letter doohickey for P2P grievers? I'm not quite savvy enough with internet & P2P protocol to not screw it up (I'm on here for being a MechE, give me a break). This could be done very well and perhaps show some of these otherwise smart people how useless and/or destructive this kind of legislation would be.
Thanks.
I hear the snow is starting to melt in Canada at this time of year. :-)
Canada took a misguided right turn a few years ago and currently has a government in residence (albeit, thankfully, tenuously) that is nothing more than neocon-lite. We're still better off than you, but the current government likes nothing better than to oil the slippery slope and herd the Canadian sheeple in its direction on behalf of its big-business masters. One can keep hoping the people will wake up and smell the frog sweat, but Canadians tend to be too trusting and easy-going and thus ripe for abuse.
I wonder which lobby group has this senator's ear?
miles of internet tubing with clear plastic tubing making it easier to watch for porn files.
I assume you are reacting to the summaries statement:
But in reality, it invovles FBI agents trying to download the files, then getting the IP of the computer that sent them, and calling the ISP.
The only moderately automatic thing that is done (which is actively ignored by most people in this discussion) is that they are hashing the file to prevent renaming. Since they have to have already downloaded the file, I assume its to try to track it's propogation over the P2P network, presumably so they can target the major distributors/creators.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
.. Ubuntu release their "Sexy Sheep" update?
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
File name checks are unreliable, I once got banned by a moderator from a DC server because I had nirvana's "rape me" on my pc. (which apparently qualified as an illegal rape video)
"Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names."
Sure, because people would never rename files with illegal content to "CPAN April 17, 2008, 0900-1200.mpg" or "Film of Sentator's idiotic and uninformed rant.mpg".
Muahahaha, you all fell into my trap. By reading this comment you have displayed your intent to abuse children. FBI agents are on their way.
make thousands of copies of goatsee and tubgirl, then rename them to random filenames (using keywords like "kiddie", "preteen", etc)
Any guesses what step 2 of my cunning plan is?
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
So a senator said something stupid about a subject outside of his domain of expertise. Every slashdotter, if elected to the senate, would say stupid things about SOMETHING. This is not a proposal for a law, or Iâ(TM)d be seeing it on my opencongress.org feed. Just kindly wite to the man and inform him that within a week of any such law coming into play, P2P programs would be randomizing the filenames.
rename hardcore.wmv to fluffybunny.wmv....bunch of douchebags!!!!
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
One billion dollars! (puts pinky to lower lip) I see the tip of an ice berg, but ok since ... "It's for the children"!
Ah! The rest of the iceberg! Now how will we pay for it?
No matter that it cannot possibly work, it is for the children you see. So naturally if it's not working, we'll simply need to provide a bit more funding in this year's budget, and the next, and the next...
That's a great plan, burn more tax dollars on this stupidity, so that all P2P starts using encryption, which will happen sooner or later.
Meanwhile, people in New Orleans are still living in trailers or other temporary housing, and the national debt continues to blast off into space.
I wonder how many people in New Orleans could be helped with $1,000,000,000.
I know, just for fun... a very small house costs around 80K. So... 1000000000/80000 is...
** 12,500 new homes ** Say on average the house contains an adult couple and one kid. That's 37,500 people that could be re-housed for the cost of this plan.
Now who's thinking of the children?
Monitoring traffic on the internet is as simple as putting a road check system on the suspected tube, and inspecting the contents of that truck individually.
...because "2girls1cup" and "tubgirl" are completely indicative of the mental scarring that takes place when you view them.
Didn't congress rule that digital files where considered personal effects just like phone conversations? Seems like this bill is unconstitutional. Not to mention this technology would be abused with warrentless wire taps. Mean while pedophile p2p networks start using encryption and snail mail. Personal privacy is the only thing this technology will stop.
The net effect: Wasted CPU time for encryption/decryption.
And also the tax dollars (MY MONEY) wasted on trying to stop me from using my hardware as I see fit.
(note, I am referring to file sharing, which I consider to be morally and economically appropriate; NOT child pornography, which I consider to be harmful and properly illegal...though the problems of enforcement still apply. I shouldn't have to give up a whole host of legitimate abilities just so one illegitimate kind of action can be policed).
This will finally make encryption in P2P mainstram. About time. And it might also make anonymisation mainstream, again good. Note that there are already networks that have both (GnuNet) and the technological problems are largely solved.
"Looking at filenames" is, however, about the dumbest approach to P2P monitoring I have recently heard of. Anybody can publish anything under any filename. In the ed2K network, for example, filenames are only returned on search, everything else is via file-hash. And quite a few files (hashes) are available under misleading names. My guess is that this will just lead to more disgusting stuff being findable as disney movies and the like.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Why not do what the fine gentlemen at Bang Bros do and name the file something like "BMF350500k"? You get the name of the site (BMF) the episode (350) and the quality (500k). Not that I have a membership or anything. My friend told me about that.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
What does it take to foil a billion dollars worth of Joe Biden P2P security?
mv violentanalsodomyincestrapetorturekillkillkill.flv happykittens.flv
How the fuck does a moron like this get elected? Oh, yeah -- fucking morons like us vote for them.
Let's not let Joe Biden EVER design a maximum security prison.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
I live in Delaware. If I ran as a Republican, I would:
a) Protect students from being sued out of an education for silly copyright violations. We need to protect the internet from a storm of lawsuits and so I would bar the likes of RIAA from trying to bully citizens out of their livelihoods.
b) open up everything for drilling but under a mechanism which allows the benefits of high oil prices to be spent upon the people of the United States. Basically, we'd drill ANWR and offshore but would use the money to pay for a few fiscal priorities that seem rather urgent. These include:
1. national health insurance. American manufacturers and small businesses are so screwed by health insurance that it is now sapping american competitiveness. government is rationing of course. real wages have gone up and by a lot in the USA but its all getting sucked into health care. That's crazy.
2. alternative energy. regardless of what you feel about AGW, the USA needs to have a more diversified energy portfolio for its basic national security. We cannot let the threat of terrorists in the middle east or hurricanes in the gulf continue to hold the USA hostage. The compromises the USA is currently making to get energy are beating the goodness out of our national character just as much as a crack junky makes bad decisions to feed his or her habit. We need energy independence. We need a diversied mix of vehicles to fill in around the single fuel portfolio we have - a mix of electric, biofuel, hydrogen...We need to build nuclear plants like they are going out of style, and we need massive research and engineering in all of these technologies.
3. rail everywhere. we need to switch from the overhead electric caternaries in the northeast to more modern hybrid locomotives and upgrade all the passenger rolling stock. we need to upgrade the rails themselves in some places. tearing down all the wires and switching to hybrid locomotives would be more efficient, and would add to property values in every city located on the rails. also, we should encourage superstores to be located near rail lines and have money for cities that are depopulated to tear down blighted buildings.
4. better unemployment retraining. sometimes in the global economy, your job just evaporates. we can't just have 20 weeks of unemployment for people whose job just evaporated and they need to go back to school to learn a new skill.
d. withdraw us military forces from everywhere. The perception of the USA as some sort of an empire is hurting sales of American products. this is a long term thing and we can't just pull up from iraq immediately and we can't quite leave afghanistan, but, ultimately, the USA needs to have its troops leave every base, everywhere around the world. We want to have US businesses with offices around the world, engaging in friendly trade, not US military bases.
e. be pro-free trade. free trade works and has made the world very wealthy, and it is a system that the USA imposed. For the USA to turn its back on free trade will spawn many, many wars throughout the world, as every other attempt to restrain trade has, and the only time I want to see war is on the History Channel, not CNN.
f. aggressively challenge presidential signing statements. The job of a President is to enforce the laws that Congress passes, period. Presidents do not get to pick and choose what laws they are to enforce, except in due course of fiscal priorities. If the President uses a signing statement to violate a law, regardless of political party, then undo pressure must be brought upon him or her to change their tune or face impeachment.
g. Pro 2nd amendment as a right to keep and bear arms and as ultimately a popular check against government. I would oppose all gun control legislation.
h. I'm a global warming skeptic but I would support a cap and trade system so long as it was illegal to purchase CO2 credits from outside the USA. Our republican criticism of AGW is that it is a back handed att
This is my sig.
We need more parties. This huge nation is too diverse to fit into A or B, we need like 20 different parties! Unfortunately, there is little incentive to do this because the politicians who can make the change benefit way too much from the status quo.
I wonder if anyone has a viable stratergy for getting more parties into the mix.
I feel a strong affiliation to the beer and cartoon party.
Blar.
We keep seeing the same thing over and over again. They pull something like this which would cause peasants and pitchforks if they did it with snail mail or monitored all internet usage, or put tracking devices on people physically. So instead, they target one part where MOST people think they won't be affected, and it's for the children and all. So nobody complains because if you do, you're clearly supporting pedophiles or something.
One step forward for the Cardassian States of America. Next step: monitoring all searches 'for the children'. And then the internet. And then, you know, we might as well monitor the children themselves for the parents. And then we must monitor the parents, for the children. And why not snail mail too, since it's the same thing as the entire internet except slower, right? Heck, why not monitor everyone? It's for the good of the children. Handy we happen to get lots of power and money while we're at it, but that's just a side effect. We're really thinking of the children.
I'm (maybe) obviously exaggerating (only) slightly and I don't think every one of these is some conspiracy to control, but seriously, we're slowly giving up our rights little by little for stupid things. The founders of the US country took on their entire country and empire because they felt their rights were being trampled. The same thing's happening again, but now we have TV to distract us and nobody does anything to stop stuff that doesn't seem to directly affect them. So we have stuff like DRM, Patriot Acts, etc, etc. They had serious balls two centuries ago. We, however, have apparently lost them and are losing everything else inch by inch.
"His plan involves utilizing new software to monitor peer-to-peer traffic on an ongoing basis."
New software to the rescue!!
With any luck it'll be as good as all the department level software theyve paid hory clap money for lately and eventually decided was worse than the 50's mainframe crap they went back to.
Smack that easy button again.
biden's plan is idiotic. how many times have you downloaded an MP3 that contained a different file than the one you intended? or which was tagged with false or mis-spelled words? the only way to accurately filter content is to put people in charge of the project, which is something that only criminally oppressive societies like China can afford to engage in.
for the record, most of the mp3's i download are of songs i already own on vinyl. so fuck the recording industry. i'm tired of paying taxes on cassettes and cd's for blank media -- tax money which goes to the RIAA -- when i'm using that media specifically to record my own music and videos of my own songs. to hell with those dinosaurs. may they rot in hell.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
All web searches and all online purchases as well. After all states need their taxes and the fed needs to tuck you in at night. Or we could monitor all politicians receiving payoffs to propose stupid, costly, unnecessary legislation....
I wonder, if these people are only naive or just downright stupid. Monitoring files names will never solve problems like this, is easily circumvented and just a waste of money.
You are preaching to the choir, man!
When voting, I ALWAYS end up selecting the lesser of two evils.
I would like to see more of a parliamentarian form of government in the U.S.
Most of all, I would like to see the abolishment of "winner take all" rules for electoral votes that some states have.
I could rant for days about different ideas and suggested changes, but this is the gist of it.
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
Why isn't this much effort being put into making sure our election process / voting is secure?
It's a lie...
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
Did you bother to read TFA?
File sharing? DRM circumvention? hollywood/music industry??
The only thing that the FA mentions is child pornography, molestation, rape, abuse, etc. Not once do they speak about any of the illegal things you've mentioned.
I'll admit that I've a fear of a legitimate child-porn-tracking system being used to combat other activities, esp. for people in no way involved in such horrific fetishes, but that isn't the point of the system (as stated) that Biden wants.
Further more, you mention why you don't like the two big parties, but in no way explain why you do support another candidate (who, afaik, isn't even running.)
So then, Why is it that you do support Ventura?
What you want would just result in tyranny by the largest plurality.
The entire senate should be ashamed of this waste of senate time.
Until every citizen of the United States has the ability to get an education, a good paying job, live in a safe neighborhood, access to excellent healthcare, and a comfortable retirement none of these "distraction issues" should even be brought up in the senate.
Fix the big problems first - effectively and permanently.
Only then will our legislators have earned the ability to debate lesser issues.
-ted
He's one of the guys that groused about FISA and that was for catching terrorists. But now he wants to track ALL files. Can you imagine..........he even ran for President.
Last time I did that all I got was a bunch of viruses.
Zing! (No, I really don't download child porn)
Senator Biden doesn't LOOK like a retard, but then he opens his mouth....
how can you possibly claim that file sharing doesn't come under the 'economy' tag?
Billions of dollars are spent on digital products, and on products that are increasingly becoming digital ocer time. Eventually the majority of entertainment will be delivered over the web. want to take a guess how many hundreds of thousands of US workers are employed by those industries? and how many people are dependent on them in secondary industries?
If you aren't going to ensure that the digital economy is working correctly (ie, people are paying the producers of content for making content they wish to consume) then you are effectively letting a massive 9and growing) chunk of the future US economy collapse.
You can't say "ignore file sharing and worry about the economy". In the 21st century, the digital economy IS the economy. The sooner they find a way to prevent the basis of that economy collapsing the better.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
It's got a dirty old goat in it!!!
If they do implement this filter it still wouldn't know l337 speak. Which is fine since I've been naming all my files things like: T3h_Ul71m473_ch1ld3_pr0ns!!!!1.avi regardless of content for years anyway.
When stories along these lines (politician identifies problem, proposes unworkable solution), the resulting comments invariably turn into a mixture of mockery and paranoia. This always leaves me wondering - is it just the proposed solution that is being objected to, or the identified problem?
So, to the mockers and paranoics, I ask the following simple questions:
Do you approve of child pornography? That is, do you consider having sexual relations with a child not old enough to give any kind of informed consent, and the distribution of images / videos of these acts a reasonable thing to do?
If you feel that on the whole this is a bad thing, the followup question is fairly obvious - do you think anything should be done about it? If so, do you believe that Sen. Biden's desire to prevent the exchange of such material on P2P networks is reasonable in principle (even if it's infeasible in practice)? If not, why?
For those who agree that this is indeed a problem, are there any constructive suggestions for tackling it? Or do we just give up, let child abusers swap pictures and videos with impunity and shrug our shoulders about the whole thing?
Right Joe, all P2P traffic is used to propagate kiddie porn and allow those child raping Mooshlum terrorists to convert your virgin daughters to abortion-having car bombers.
I'm really starting to hate this fucking country.
because I need someone to protect me from Bush and his cronies...
oh wait, they aren't!
Contact this senator and let him know what you think:
http://biden.senate.gov/services/contact/
I already sent him my opinon: this is a blatant violation of our freedom and covering it with "it's for the children" is only gross negligence.
He's up for re-election this fall.
Bring it bimbo, we'll just encrypt and tunnel our connections. SSH FTW.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
I agree with this idiotic proposal because let them filter all this, lets all just stop downloading (stealing) their products. What will they do when NOBODY is stealing their products AND nobody is buying them? Call their bluff. Stop stealing and stop giving them money. Best way to defeat all this crap. Ignore it. TOTALLY.
Create open source free alternatives. What happens then? What do they cry then?
Call their bluff.
Just watch in a year or two the newspapers will be reading "Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) has been arrested for trafficking illegal files."
Could this be anymore disingenuous? Could this be anymore bullshit?
So is is about violence? Take a look at TV. I don't see him concerned about that.
SO this is about porn? I think not as P2P is one of many ways to obtain porn and has nothing to do with the production of it.
So this is really about lobbyists and big business buying support for an assinine policy that goes against the interests of the people this man is supposed to serve.
Now let's look at the technical side. Doe he even know what he is talking about? Obviously not. MAC addresses and IP addresses can be spoofed; neither of them can definitively ID a person.
Does he even understand general technology concepts? Obviously not, because if he did he would realize that the second one technological avenue is closed, the tech community will create a new one. Innovation cannot be stopped by repressive minded politicos who are in the pocket of consortiums.
This is an important issue - one that could be used to basically take away the privacy you have on your computer and internet connection. When this government uses things like this they will take advantage of them to the hilt.
Although his stated intention is to monitor the internet for exchange of child pornography, the same said software could also be used to monitor for illegal exchange of copyrighted material.
Isn't he the very same Senator Biden censured back in 1988 for plagiarizing a paper during his law school years?
P2P Users Propose to Monitor All Senators for Illegal Activity:
Including:
Taking of bribes or payment for votes/policy quid pro quo.
Hiring of prostitutes
Possession of Child Pornography
Violation of Campaign lows relating to finances
Violation of Federal "do not call" registry
etc, etc, ad infinitum.
We're straddling one of those moments in history when technological advances are at odds with received social and political constructs. Information flow used to be controlled by a few with agendas. Now, due to technological advances, message control has largely gone out the window.
Naturally those who have a vested interest in the status quo, like Joe Biden or the *AA's, either in terms of identity or raw economic reality, will fight the ensuing changes tooth-and-nail. The traditional media, which has for centuries grown accustomed to controlling the public discourse, have been complicit in the effort to shut down the reality of changes on the ground.
It's no small source of consternation for those of us on the ground. But please take comfort in the knowledge and evidence that the tide of history and progress can't be ignored or reversed. The traditional powers-that-be know their time is drawing rapidly to a close and are fighting it, but even they, with all their accumulated power and influence, can't counter, in the end, the teenage girl downloading music files to her laptop.
The struggles will intensify over the next five years, but the traditional power brokers will collapse as suddenly as their influence seemed eternal and ineluctable. Recall: the Warsaw Pact never seemed so indomitable as the eve before they completely collapsed and people streamed across the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
So fix your courage and resolve. The powers-that-be are fighting as hard as they can now, which means that they're about done. In a couple years they'll be gone, and we'll all breath easier.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Post your tech ideas on /. before you open your mouth in public.
Anon for pedantry. The word for movies/music is 'ripped'. Cracks are for software.
Real issue: Making the most lucrative business in the world -- the trillion-dollar business of government -- even more lucrative.
Distraction issues: All the rest.
Who says? About 200 years of steady expansion of government, both in revenue and power over the people. You simply cannot look at that and say "for the people" with a straight face.
24/7 Video Monitoring/Hair Drug Testing/Breathalyzer required before voting for all elected officials. It is clear that we need to watch them closely and since they are paid by our tax dollars, we should have more rights than employers do over us as individuals.
It has gone from children engaged in sexual activities, to pictures which focus on the genitals of children, to fully clothed teenagers in "sexual poses". As the penalties for simple possession are made ever harsher, so too the definition of what qualifies as child pornography becomes more flexible. Current enforcement practices are not holding true to the original intention of the law.
They also have to answer to the state that elected them. In this case it is Delaware which is a notorious shelter for corporations. I'm not surprised that he is from Delaware and kissing coprorate ass.
Why vote for lesser evils?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Oh look, there it is:
13 TV/Movies/Music $178,358
What a surprise!
What else do i have to say?
Wallace S.
13 Ways of Seeing a Blackbird
Would were! Should is! Could be! And live a hundred times three.
Idiot.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For the sake of argument lets say that the goal of this is actually to stop the distribution of child porn. Now wanting to view child porn is unbelievably sick and these people are in need of some serious help but that isn't the part of this crime we should be overly concerned about. What we need to be looking into is stopping the creation of this shit. The only way you could hope to save any children by stopping distribution is to close down all forms of distribution, I don' think this is possible. So shouldn't this money be better spent trying to stop the creation not the distribution.
Did you want a warrant with that surveillance Senator?
C47CH ^^3 N0\/\/ j03 8id3n
Memo to politicians: Give it up! You're wasting taxpayer money. Want to be smart about this? Find a way to tax it instead! Then everybody gets paid, and everybody gets what they want.
Memo to Big Business: Stop your bellyaching and get into the 21st century already.
Memo to the inevitable, whiny, "I produce $CONTENT and everybody rips me off" guy: STFU, if your content was worth anything then you'd be getting paid for it, and I don't give a rats ASS about what you have to say on the subject.
He's never been right in the head since about a year and a half before his brain surgery. Why do you think he keeps running for president?
I am one of Joe's constituents, and someone who has met him many many times over the years. And I am NOT kidding about this.
But we've had voting machines in Delaware for decades. Y'know what I'm sayin'? I think you do.
PS: Recently his son Beau got elected Attorney General, and is now slated to be shipped to Iraq with his Guard unit. Gee, what a smart thing to do, elect somebody on active duty to a statewide office during an endless war!
It's fairly obvious that most of the poeple posting comments here didn't bother to RTFA, or read as far as "Senator" and "P2P" and just assumed the rest. Those that didn't, and still decided that this is a privacy issue (or decide to RickRoll any such system)need thier heads checked.
This is not about monitoring P2P/Bittorrent traffic since all they're doing is logging on the same as any other user. This is not about going after people that download the material, but about going after the people that distribute it. If you "accidentally" download a video of a hillbilly and his 9 year old daughter and then decide to share it, you deserve no sympathy.
This is not the Senator's brainchild - he didn't write the software system being used, so just because he doesn't understand the technobabble involved doesn't automatically mean the system must be junk (After all, tracking a file back to its source isn't that hard, even if verifying it may be).
He also quite plainly states that:
A) They're not going after P2P as a technology - bad car analogy and all (actually, for the many proponents of ISP's being "common carriers" it's a pretty good analogy).
B) They are aware that the person they identify may not actually be the culprit (ie: spoofing, open wireless etc).
I'm also not sure why slashdotville has also decided that anyone involved in distributing the material in question must by default be savvy enough to take the required measures to avoid being tracked. Yeah, and all drug dealers are criminal masterminds...
Unlike RIAA cases, this is criminal. Which means a much greater burden of proof. Which means when the FBI rock up at your door with a warrant to search your PC you'd better be damned sure you haven't got anything incriminating to be found. "I wasn't sharing!" and "That's not my IP address!" isn't going to cut it as a defence when they find the stuff on your system.
I swear, I'm gonna' root Joe Biden's laptop, and run a script that appends the string "JoeBidenSucksDonkeyDicks" to every filename on his system, then launches Kazaa.
Now isn't that ironic. I generally love "fringe" presidential candidates since they tend to be more candid and spent time listening to what he had to say. He came off as a libertarian conservative. I am rather surprised now.
Time for someone to look at some of the things that "didn't happen" in Stone Harbor or Avalon?
Not that such things would ever happen. Besides, all we gots t' do is reroute a few of da internet tubes an' nobody sees nutin'
In light of the Senator's comments, I suggest that a file (with random or even blank content) should be widely circulated, with this filename:
"Senator_Joe_Biden_rapes_little_girls.mov"
Let's see how accurate he believes filenames are, after that makes #1 on the filesharing popularity charts.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
tags: democratswantpolicestatetoo or getridofrepublicanstosaveusfrom1984
Obviously just getting rid of Bush is not going to save us. Both democrats and republicans want big intrusive governments. The only difference seems to be that the republicans are in favor of borrowing and inflation to feed their spending addiction while the democrats are quite content to use old fashioned taxes more (in addition to the other methods). Both parties want to be spending a lot more of our money with each passing year. Both parties are funded more than adequately by Big Business. Do the democrats still talk about class warfare while at the same time proposing raising taxes on the poorest segment of the population with regressive tax schemes? I don't see the point to listening to anything they have to say. It is all lies and they will do whatever they please once elected. Idealists, however naive, are not elected anymore. Only pragmatists whose only beliefs are in serving themselves and saying whatever they think will get them elected.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
What annoys me about this article is the glorification of the system that they have created. P2P networks use open protocols which are exceedingly well documented. Almost every bittorrent client that I've ever seen has a specific window with which to view the peers you are connected to. Literally, someone could copy and paste code from an OSS project, couple it with a dictionary of keywords, and then end up with this system. It's infuriating that someone could be taking so much credit for it. Finally, and most egregiously, they fail to point out that this entire system is ineffective in monitoring people with even the least bit of intelligence (you would imagine if you were transferring one of the only types of illegal content on the internet, that you would use an encrypted session), further indicating that this system is probably just a totally behind the scenes funded starting point for the enforcement of copyright through active federal monitoring of open P2P systems.
Intrusion is good, extrusion is bad, inclusion is ....
... it is all for their grand, bland, and fleeting glory.
... are just things to play with in a clueless life that has no sense of reality. ... (so they think) or CEO/CFO plutocrats and law breaking holy dogmatist.
... decline for the last 40+ years. Politicians accept corporatists and plutocrats funds and play the almost have some (wealth) folks against the have nothing (need help) folks ... always to the benefit of the PTB members. Fewer more wealth individuals every year and corporate/government and religion (catholic/mormon child molesting) accountability is close to nonexistent for US.
... get use to it ... more to come ... just before ... more to cum in your ears.
... than what has been happening to US for decades.
Government Intrusion into personal life is good for plutocrats and dogmatist.
Government extrusion up your ass is a fact of life in totalitarian countries.
Government body inclusion in the public body is a poison to personal freedom.
Public body exclusion from the Government body is totalitarian decapitation.
Government, Corporatist, TeleClerics, Plutocrats want to get in your pants, under your skin, break your bones, suck your marrow, eat your heart, rot you brains, and finally fuck the dead fetid corpses of the public.
Corporatist/oligarchy government is big business with public resources to exploit, squander, and destroy. Like rich kids with toy soldiers
Depression when it hits is bad for US never them. Toy-soldiers, Suzie-homemaker
Intrusive constant warrantless P2P searches and virtual home invasions for US, does not mean politicians, judges
Have you ever noticed how detached Cheney/Bush or Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon look/act when answering questions about our dead and wounded Warriors? To fools such as they and other PTB members we are just toy-Soldiers for play and fun. Look at the education system, health care, economic, telecommunications
Anyway,
This (P2P intrusion) is not any more obscene, troll
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
We really need some Bittorrent devs to step up and make heavy encryption (AES anyone?) an option, and for all traffic generated, not just peer traffic.
OMG, another example of a politician who wants to use this story to help push his popularity, but has no clue what he is asking of his community, just do this and it will work...
Dude, don't you think if it was that easy, it wouldn't have already been done by now?
I've had C&D letters for distributing files which apparently had the same name as Symantec's firewall or something... but had the same checksum as Openoffice.org... as I was sharing a file full of OSS windows binaries to boost my emule score.
Someone had listed OO.o as Symantec-firewall-whatever.exe, they searched for there products (obviously only checked the filenames), and then sent nasty letters to everyone who could provide that file... I could have gotten pissy, but I decided I didn't want to loose my liberty as well as my good name in my ISPs eyes on the same day.
I was a bit young at the time, but I seem to remember reading that they tried this in the 80's too. That was the birth of the word "pr0n".
to name my album "Violent scenes of rape and molestation"
This is so obviously RIAA. The anti porn aspect of it is front and the ultimate goal is to prevent anything copyrighted being shared; to fine the parents of misbehaving children - no matter how much profit the entertainment industry makes.
I missed the middle part about there was a hearing, so my first impression was, "How does he know its easy to find this stuff just by looking at the file names?"
What we need is for the federal government to back off and give back some of the power that they've taken from the states. That way, we can move to the state which fits us best politically, and everyone's happy. It would work only if federal taxes were flat (for lack of a better term). No more should New York, Connecticut, California, Michigan and New Jersey have their monies redistributed to New Mexico, Arizona, Louisiana, Missouri, etc... This is important, as I for one don't like giving welfare to people who say welfare is bad (as an example)
It's a tough choice. The Fed makes the nation act as one, giving us much power and leverage. Reducing Fed power might result in non-productive squabbling amongst the states.
More parties would make it harder for Federal power grabs like PATRIOT and Warantless Wiretapping to occur.
Blar.
This will surely not end in total failure. 1 Billion dollars for something that has failed before it began? I love the US govt.
ill rename a recorded video of you, sen. biden, making a speech to senate, and then rename it 'fookey child porn senator fucking underage teens' and release it to wild. then let me tell how this 'monitoring filename' is going to work.
if you are THAT ignorant in regard to technology, senator, SHUT THE F@CK UP, rather than making a total fool of yourself.
Read radical news here
But I thought that pedophiles used tor or freenet or wi-fi slurping?
So, what, the goal is to catch pedophiles that aren't tech-savy?
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Did you bother to read TFA? File sharing? DRM circumvention? hollywood/music industry??
The only thing that the FA mentions is child pornography, molestation, rape, abuse, etc. Not once do they speak about any of the illegal things you've mentioned.
I'll admit that I've a fear of a legitimate child-porn-tracking system being used to combat other activities, esp. for people in no way involved in such horrific fetishes, but that isn't the point of the system (as stated) that Biden wants.
Whenever law enforcement at any level says of a tactic or system or program, "Don't worry -- we're only going to use it to go after [insert category of criminals here]," always assume an unspoken "NOT" between "we're" and "only." Hello??? Patriot Act, anyone? Warrantless wiretaps? National Security Letters?
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Yeah, I think you hit the nail right on the head.
It's not about actually catching pedophiles, that's more like a side benefit if it actually happens.
This is about keeping the flow of federal money flowing. Reminds me of how I read somewhere that there's at least one component of the B-2 bomber built in every single state in the US. That way, who wants to cancel it?
Alexis de Toqueville said something about how the US republic will survive as long as congress doesn't figure out they can bribe the people with their own money.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
You guys should know that biden4congress.com and bidenforcongres.com are not registered domains. Redirect to one of the *chans or to 2girls1cup, or to Rickroll. Don't forget to googlebomb his domain to show up for kiddie porn and the like.
It's not about violence, or porn, or catching pedophiles. If it accomplishes anything on those fronts, that's a side-bonus.
Reminds me of how for the B-2 bomber, at least one component is manufactured in every single state. Who wants to run for re-election saying they closed a plant and cost X number of jobs?
Alexis de Tocquville said something about how the US will remain a republic, at least until congress figures out that they can bribe the people with their own money.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Sometimes I boot up eMule, type something like 'sex' as a search. I don't even look at the results, I just select them all in a block, and download. I minimize it, and I come back hours later and sort through the mess. And sometimes, it IS a mess. I've seen pedophilia, rape, heck, I saw a video that disturbed me pretty badly watching a woman get shot in the head. It sure LOOKED real, but who knows.
But now... I'm a criminal. I obtained, shared, and had child porn on my computer. It's pretty scary. And I delete this stuff that disturbs me, but now I'm not only a criminal, I'm attempting to hide the evidence?!?!
Why can't the FBI and friends track down the actual people harming other people. Like they did with the guy who photoshopped his face in a swirl. Look at some of these disturbng videos, occasionally you can see the guy's freaking face. Why isn't he in jail? Or maybe he is, just the porn is left over on the internet. But who cares? Why is this a huge problem? Why am I a criminal depending on the order of 1's and 0's that go over my connection, or that sit on my harddrive.
10101011111101010101011110101110101101010101011101010101 is illegal. Putting the numbers in that particular order is criminal. what the fuck?
I use RHEL 4 on my desktop and it works just fine.
Sorry, I think Biden may mean well, and politically, he isn't all that bad, but this kind of incompetence simply shouldn't be allowed in a decision maker. People like him should be retired at the next election.
Except that it only works if the third party is approximately the same size as the other two parties.
Right now there are *at least* four viable parties in America: the Dems, Reps, Libertarians and Greens. So far there has been *no* appreciable change in the political system. Your theory falls on the facts.
This is the same reason that IRV doesn't really work: The parties have to all be near to the same size for people to conceive that their candidate (if he/she is from a smaller party) has a chance, and thus is worth voting for.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names.
... he's not so much ignorant as he is dissembling. Frankly I'm not sure which is worse.
It really is heartening to know that our lawmakers invest considerable time and effort understanding the complex technical issues put before them.
What an ignorant ass. Actually, Biden is no Ted Stevens
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Music, Movie, and TV companies paid Joseph Biden $178,358 (plus $193,310 from lobbyists) 2003-2008. But that is just a coincidence.
The solution to the child porn problem is to make it illegal to upload any picture of video of anyone under 18 to the internet.
This means making all sites such as MySpace and Youtube 18 and above, and arrest anyone who posts or uploads any picture of a teenager or child anywhere on the internet for any reason.
The banning of children from the internet makes more sense than having illegal filenames and unlawful poses. ""The sexy teenager is sort of a mainstream trope. It's very different from babies being molested, and child pornography law doesn't make a distinction."
Define illegal pose
In a 1986 case called U.S. v. Dost, a federal judge suggested a six-step method to evaluate the legality of images. Here's an excerpt from the opinion:
1. Whether the focal point of the visual depiction is on the child's genitalia or pubic area.
2. Whether the setting of the visual depiction is sexually suggestive.
3. Whether the child is depicted in an unnatural pose, or in inappropriate attire, considering the age of the child.
4. Whether the child is fully or partially clothed, or nude.
5. Whether the visual depiction suggests sexual coyness or a willingness to engage in sexual activity.
6. Whether the visual depiction is intended or designed to elicit a sexual response in the viewer.
That's no exaggeration: The same section of federal law punishes a pedophile who makes a video recording of a baby being molested, as well as someone who possesses an image of a 17-year-old striking an unlawfully racy pose. "
Rather than have subjective laws which apply to certain pictures defined by the DOJ to be childporn. Let's assume any picture of any child is child porn and ban the posting of any of these pictures anywhere.
I know if I had a site or ran a server and any member of my site were to post anything which can be subjectively interpreted as child porn (any picture of a child fits this definition), I'd ban them from my site. I think this is what website owners will have to do to avoid legal liabilities.
Also, every site and chatroom should ban all individuals under 18 who enter. Anyone entering a chatroom who is under 18 should be in a legally defined chatroom designed for under 18s. There should be no sites which mix adults with the under 18 community. That should be illegal as well.
Just my opinions, but doing it this way makes more sense to me than what they are currently doing.
So, what, the goal is to catch pedophiles that aren't tech-savy? Now, I'm not saying children shouldn't be able to access certain sites designed for them, but if we really want to protect our kids from the internet, rather than letting kids have full access to the internet and dealing with all the legal consequences of this, it's easier to just segregate the internet, ban children from accessing sites like Slashdot for example.
If you allow children and adults to mix in chatrooms, it's just asking for problems. All chatrooms should be legally rated between R and PG13, or whatever rating system. Adults should be legally allowed to enter all chatrooms but teenagers should be banned from entering chatrooms which are adult oriented.
Often there are situations where teenagers deliberately go into obvious adult chatrooms LOOKING for trouble, and the only way to solve this is to keep these teenagers from having access to adults, and adult sites.
The website owners should shift the liability to the parents by putting a legal disclaimer on their site explaining that their site is an adult only site.
On this adult only site, all pictures of teenagers, or children of any form should be banned to protect the site owners from the subjectivity of the DOJ's definition of child pornography. All who are under 18 should be banned from posting or chatting on any site which also has adults posting or chatting on it. That should be a law.
And all internet communication between an adult and an under 18 should be reported to the under 18 individuals parents by the ISP by law. When you segregate the internet, a lot of problems will be solved and you'll free up the courts to go after the child pornographers and molestors.
I'd rather we segregate the internet and save the internet, rather than allow an unsegregated internet to be completely regulated by the government and thus destroyed in the process.
It's a democratic republic. We vote for some laws sometimes. We vote for representatives sometimes.
I don't know why we lack more than two real political parties, it has always been a mystery to me how we're the only "free" modern nation with only two political parties.
Sounds like a retarded idea to me unless the USA plans to shell out millions to each isp to constantly fight the 10000x ways that you can hide your net traffic. GG tor project...
Congrats on a 2 party system....
TSIA
When he was fucking with pro-life protesters, how many of you didn't care because you weren't pro-life?
When he was fucking with gun owners, how many of you didn't care because you didn't own guns?
Now that he's fucking with P2P, we have to do something about it?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I certainly understand your anger toward the Republicans and the Democrats... I am a songwriter
by trade, or at least I was until illegal file sharing cost me my job, and I have fought for ten years to get the government to protect my property
on the internet (my songs) and they wouldn't lift a finger.. However, the few times I have actually managed to write a hit song they taxed me into the poorhouse and took away any chance I had to actually save anything for retirement. Plus, I have no health insurance and no pension because I am classed as self-employed even though I have always worked for a music publisher (who took half of my earnings in return for paltry advances) Plus the government, thru the use of compulsory music licensing, sets the rate that I can earn on record sales so low that I only make about 16 thousand dollars per one million sales!! SO I am living under State socialism... And then every day I read posts like yours from people who think that illegal file sharing is striking a blow against 'the man'... Ha! You have no idea who you are actually hurting.... and that is just sad, because
you are being manipulated by giant corporations like Google who are making billions off the work of creators and not paying them a cent. But the next time you complain about how bad the music sucks nowadays, just stop and think about all the great songwriters that were run out of the profession by illegal file sharing. Of course, you are right that the music industry is full of weasels and snakes... but those aren't the guys getting hurt. They are already wealthy. It is the poor songwriters that have taken the real hit.
You aren't fucking them, you are fucking yourself, out of a lot of great music. It is a Karmic thing. When you try to hurt others in anger, the suffering always comes back to you somehow.
So you would apply US law, and your arbitrary age limits, to the whole world? At the expense of freedom? Sheer idiocy. Please mode this troll down.
Law #1: When people want IT work done by someone else, it is always incredibly easy to do and just takes x amount of money. Law #2: Those same people can not update their own AV software even after you give them a how-to document with screenshots.
I predict a marked increase in transfers of cute_kitten_video.avi across the P2P networks.
When you format your disks, this also creates a unique number that can be used to specifically ID a computer as well.