Rapidshare Ordered To Filter Content

A Cow writes "TorrentFreak reports that the Regional Court in Hamburg, Germany, has ruled that file-hosting service Rapidshare must proactively filter certain content. Music industry outfit GEMA asked the court to ban Rapidshare from making 5,000 tracks from its catalogue available on the Internet." Reader biabia brings an update to a related case in Italy involving four Google executives. The issue in that situation revolves around Google's response time in taking down a video that was deemed to be a privacy violation. Google is worried that a verdict against them could lead to mandatory pre-screening of all public videos that are uploaded onto their websites. Those proceedings have now been postponed until late September.
Update: 6/24 at 17:45 GMT by SS: The article originally reported that Rapidshare was fined $34 million. No such fine has been imposed — $34 million was the estimated value of the tracks hosted on Rapidshare.

Comments

Fucking bastards...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's to the hope that they'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Re:Fucking bastards...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Yeah, revolution is what we need! How dare They stop us from doing whatever We want! All the time! We should line up those greedy bastards against the wall and shoot them all!

Grow up a bit, eh? The fact that you're quite likely some whiny overprivileged kid in the suburbs who thinks his "rights" have been violated isn't cause for revolution.

*sigh*

[Travelsonic]

As much as I have come to strongly dislike Rapidshare's glitches (saying something is downloading when it isn't, sometimes up to a day after a download has finished or been disrupterd for example), this is horseshit. Filtering doesn't work anyways.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Throw the stuff in a password protected archive or a TrueCrypt volume and problem solved.

Re:*sigh*

[Dan541]

How long until they damand Jungle Disk be filtered?

They'll try no doubt.

Imbeciles!

[jack2000]

Judges really have no clue of how internet hosting works, do they?

Re:Imbeciles!

[NeutronCowboy]

No, they're applying laws that were written before copying and distribution of intellectual work became an integral part of our lives. If anything, blame idiotic politicians. Once we have laws that make sense, we can move to blaming judges. I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Imbeciles!

[Anonymous Coward]

No you DO blame judges because they are only supposed to apply law based on the orginal intent of it when it was written. That means that these judges are idiots or activists; rewriting law how they see it should apply to cases that law has not been written for. Judges don't have to and are not supposed to only take dictionary meanings of written law and apply it, so it is their fault just as much as the idiot politicians and lawyers... basically anyone with a law degree is at fault.

Re:Imbeciles!

[Timosch]

If that was true, judges would have to apply the First Amendment only to messages transferred on horseback or directly, but not through the internet. Judges apply law as it is written, at least as long as it is clear.

Re:Imbeciles!

[phantomcircuit]

Where in the constitution does it say that my first amendment rights are limited? It doesn't but your first amendment rights are limited. e.g. you cannot yell FIRE in a movie theater unless there is actually a fire.

It is the responsibility of the Judicial branch to follow the intent of the law.

Re:Imbeciles!

[vertickle]

This is Germany we're talking about... They probably couldn't care less about the Constitution or your First Amendment.

Re:Imbeciles!

[phantomcircuit]

Possibly you should read the post I was replying too.

Re:Imbeciles!

[nurb432]

I think its that they know how it works, but must make judgments in the matter to 'enforce' the IP, even if they know its a lost cause. Otherwise the rights of IP go out the window.

Sort of like if you don't defend your copyrights, you lose them.

Re:Imbeciles!

[Anonymous Coward]

Retarded. If someone were to post copies of someone else's work on a publicly accessible cork board in someone's place of business, a judge would apply the law and order them to take the material down from the corkboard. Who cares how web hosting works? Someone posts something they shouldn't, a judge is perfectly reasonable in ordering that it be removed.

Re:Imbeciles!

[cliffski]

"copying and distribution of intellectual work became an integral part of our lives"

That would be YOUR lives. Not the majority of people.
You DO realise that YOUR life is only possible because other people are paying for movies, music and software to get made?

If everyone acted like the slashdot crowd, you really would be all legal, because you would only have linux distros to torrent. Someone has to make all this stuff, and they have to pay rent and buy food.

Surprised

[sexconker]

I'm surprised it took this long.

It should be just a matter of months before shit hits the fan with all the other ones.

Re:Surprised

[Zedrick]

And I don't get who they got so populair in the first place. I mean, in 1999 - on a 56k modem - I guess it was OK to download warez from websites, but today? Why would anyone choose that over Bittorrent or the thing that should not be mentioned (but starts with a "U")?

Re:Surprised

[Mastadex]

Once you start hitting the Obvious Targets - RapidShare, MegaUpload, etc - the content will be pushed further underground such as Torrent websites. This is the same thing that we saw with ThePirateBay when it was under fire. Mininova and other websites took over as the leading Torrent hubs.

Trying to silence the masses is impossible.

Re:Surprised

[bertoelcon]

It should be just a matter of months before shit hits the fan with all the other ones.

Good luck finding a way to stop all those file hosting sites, its getting to be a large business and would most likely just get more small setups if the "big" ones where taken down.

Re:Surprised

[1u3hr]

Why would anyone choose that over Bittorrent

Because with BT anyone can see who (or which IP) is downloading what. People have been busted for using BT, not for RS as far as I know.

Re:Surprised

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

What begins with a 'U'? Is it fun? Is it like fishing? Last time I went fishing I was able to get a lot of stuff because I used a net.

Re:Surprised

[bobmarleypeople]

Some of us simply can't use torrent services because of the ISP we use. Admittedly, last week, torrents started working, but there's no way I'm downloading anything illegal through torrents because ISP's track what you're downloading and then rage. HTTP downloads through Rapidshare/Megaupload/etc, not so much. Plus, I have to share if I want to torrent. I'm not a communist, so I don't share.

Re:Surprised

[morgan_greywolf]

or the thing that should not be mentioned (but starts with a "U")?

Pssst. How come we're not mentioning the thing that start with a "U"? O_o I mean, it's not like they'll kill us for saying U

Re:Surprised

[Dotren]

I wish I could remember where I read this (maybe one of NYCL's blog posts) but it seems not one court case has been brought regarding illegal downloads via bittorrent. So far, everything has been through the Gnutella and related networks.

For the ISP problem, with most bittorrent clients you can turn on variable levels of encryption. In Vuze (formerly Azureus) for example, you can have no encryption (default) all the way up to making sure you never connect to any peers or seeds that are not also using the same level of encryption.

For that matter, I've wondered lately why encryption isn't turned on by default in most clients after installation. Of course I realize that it may be a performance issue but I've never seen any numbers on the resources used when requiring encryption versus not.

Re:Surprised

[monkeyboythom]

You mean there's more than porn on RS?

Re:Surprised

[sexconker]

Of course shit will just go elsewhere. But there are real people making real money off of direct download sites' copyright infringement.

Those people will be fucked.

And the bay is still the king.

Re:Surprised

[sexconker]

I think encryption might be a legal issue.
Some countries don't let people encrypt shit.

Re:Surprised

[Killer Orca]

Speaking of fishing I am just learning to fish, anyone with useful how-to links would be greatly appreciated, and yes I have used the google.

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

The encryption won't help you stop the RIAA. The data has to be decrypted on the other end in order to be useful. The encryption is meant to make the traffic more difficult for ISPs to traffic shape.

Re:Surprised

[Zedrick]

It's a bit like fishing. Can be hard to get a good catch and you have to know where to look, but it's easier if you use something like nzbmatrix.com that indexes the fish.

Re:Surprised

[smitty97]

First rule of using a net: You don't talk about using a net

Re:Surprised

[Taagehornet]

Mininova and other websites took over as the leading Torrent hubs.

Just to correct an all too common misunderstanding, Mininova really cannot be compared to The Pirate Bay.

Mininova is nothing more than an index. Mininova does not operate a tracker. The majority (if not all) of the torrent files found at Mininova would be pretty useless if the Pirate Bay servers weren't around to do the heavy lifting.

The torrent network really isn't as decentralized as most people seem to think; torrent traffic would take a major hit if the servers at TPB were shut down ...at least for a while.

Re:Surprised

[larry bagina]

HBO monitors torrents and sends cease and desist letters. A buddy of mine has quite a collection of them :)

With torrents (and similar), the swarm (rather than individual people) are redistributing. There are seeders, obviously, with a share ratio > 1, but many peers will only upload a small portion of the file and may never upload the entire file. Can the RIAA successfully sue someone for redistributing 20% of a song?

Re:Surprised

[TheRaven64]

Can the RIAA successfully sue someone for redistributing 20% of a song?

It would have to be tested in court, and the result would depend on how well the councils for both sides presented their cases and the predisposition of the judge. If each peer uploads only a small fraction, then this would technically meet one of the requirements for fair use, but would fail the others. They would probably win, but it would be expensive. Better to wait until they've got all of the easy targets out of the way before going after the difficult ones.

Note, however, that in the RIAA trials to date, they have not proved redistribution occurred at all. They have merely showed that the files were made available and therefore it is probable that they were distributed. If they used this strategy in a BitTorrent case, the defendant's lawyer could enter logs as evidence showing that they only uploaded some small fraction of the song, however this would require admitting to copyright infringement and defending it as fair use (remember that fair use is copyright infringement, it's just a kind specifically allowed by the law) and so is not a strategy most lawyers would be eager to pursue.

Re:Surprised

[Dotren]

HBO monitors torrents and sends cease and desist letters. A buddy of mine has quite a collection of them :)

I haven't dug into this yet but I've been curious.. is it possible to get a list of clients without actually connecting to the tracker and sharing the material yourself? I've never tried to access a tracker directly to see what information you can get from it and I know that every bittorrent client I've tried so far seems to disconnect you from seeds and peers when you "stop" a torrent download. It would be interesting to see what methods the companies use to get the information on torrrents to send out those letters as it is hardly in their interest to share their own content, even in small bits, to discover who is connecting.

With torrents (and similar), the swarm (rather than individual people) are redistributing. There are seeders, obviously, with a share ratio > 1, but many peers will only upload a small portion of the file and may never upload the entire file. Can the RIAA successfully sue someone for redistributing 20% of a song?

Common sense would tell me no, or even if they can, that they'd only be able to sue for a fraction of the song's value. However, we all know this whole thing with the RIAA, MPAA, and copyright has little to do with common sense and the money they are suing for is massive compared to the value of the song anyways.

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

*looks at username*
*looks at post*

Bwhahahaha!

Re:Surprised

[0100010001010011]

Astraweb's deal for $11/month + NZBMatrix/TVNZB and I get stuff maxing out my cable connection.

They have quite a bit of older stuff. I spent my first day going through NZBMatrix looking through OLD movies, opening the IMDB link and DLing everything over 7. Quite a few comedies from the 30s-70s with 7.9-8s that looked good.

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Now now, there you go applying "common sense" to something that has never used it from day 1.

Re:Surprised

[compro01]

Most porn is also copyrighted material.

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Bittorrent is often slow due to crappy seeds and tons of leeches. Rapidshare always gives me my full 1200 KB/s... and my ISP does throttling on torrents, but not on HTTP...

Re:Surprised

[florescent_beige]

The thing about fishing with nets is that they put regulations on them. For example you can't use gill nets. Some places they ban them altogether.

Re:Surprised

[tepples]

First rule of using a net: You don't talk about using a net

Then how else am I supposed to catch bugs in Animal Crossing series?

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

You cant't beat Usenetserver.com right now. $10 a month as long as you stay signed up. $13.34 normally 3 months at a time.

    Unlimited Downloads
    Encrypted 256bit SSL Access
    99%+ Completion
    303 Days Binary Retention
    Global Search
    20 Concurrent Connections
    Dynamic Route Selector
    Referral Credits
    24/7 Support & Live Chat

They are also spooling to 400 days!

Also, that concurrent connections is per IP. You can share your account with your friends and everyone can connect with 20 connections simultaneously.

http://www.usenetserver.com

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Over here in Switzerland it's not illegal to download stuff. As soon as you start uploading, you cross the law. That's a good reason to go for ddls.

Re:Surprised

[florescent_beige]

Trying to silence the masses is impossible.

It's just my opinion that casting this as a freedom issue is to diminish the concept.

The underlying reality is that millions of people are obtaining things they have no right to. Most are doing it because they want it for free. Some may do it as a principled statement or as a protest of civil disobedience against the draconian *AA's but most don't.

Freedom is the right to say what you want to say and do what you want to do so long as it has *some* ethical justification. Downloading stuff isn't that.

I don't know how representative /. is of general IT community opinion but the vibes around here say "downloading can't be stopped and anyone who doesn't like it is stupid." That has to change.

Re:Surprised

[Kjella]

I haven't dug into this yet but I've been curious.. is it possible to get a list of clients without actually connecting to the tracker and sharing the material yourself?

Yes. That's how every client with 0% start out....

Can the RIAA successfully sue someone for redistributing 20% of a song?

1. They did just win a case (Jammie Thomas) where they definitively proved 0%. It was purely argued from the file's existance in the shared folder.
2. Even if that was not the case, there are only two classes - fair use and infringing. Once you've past whatever percentage could possibly be argued to be fair use (which may or may not be 0% in context), just like you couldn't quote 20% of the book. Oh yeah, and infringing is a 750$/infringement minimum.

Re:Surprised

[Omestes]

Freedom is the right to say what you want to say and do what you want to do so long as it has *some* ethical justification. Downloading stuff isn't that.

I could probably come up with some ethical justification for anything, no matter how heinous, and I'm sure some large percentage of the population actually believes their ethical justifications for strange things.

I personally have nothing against piracy anymore. I used to have some qualms, but I worked them out. A significant percentage of people still pay, and will continue to pay for crap. Its really hard to say that this ratio will change, since most pirates are young and tech savvy, and piracy is about as easy as it can get (give me 5 minutes, I'll find you a free copy of ANYTHING you want) right now. Distributing media is still VERY profitable, even with piracy.

Until the various industries move into the digitial age, piracy will be around at roughly the same level it is at now. By "move into the digital age" I mean COMPETE with the various mediums that allow piracy. Before we say that it is impossible to compete with free, I'd like to point to services such as Hulu, iTunes, and Amazon, as well as concerts, and self-distribution. How much money did Trent Reznor make off of his various free (in every sense) offering? A ton, buy adding priced options that contains value-added features that can't be pirated. Sure small artists can't do this as well, but, small artists are also the ones who make the least amount of cash from giant labels, and thus are hurt the least by piracy (and probably gain the most, since the name of the game at that size is to grow a fan base).

I owe nothing to record labels. It is not my job to support their business model, or give them money when I don't have to.

Re:Surprised

[Not The Real Me]

"...Why would anyone choose that over Bittorrent..."

Unless something is extremely popular on Bittorrent and/or has a lot of seeders, it can take days to download. And in cases of lack of seeds, not downloadable at all.

Re:Surprised

[Dotren]

Yes. That's how every client with 0% start out....

Yes, true, but the moment you have even one piece of that file you're also sharing. I'm wondering if it is possible to stop or pause a torrent at absolute 0% (no pieces downloaded yet) and still retrieve useful data identifying data about the seeds and peers. I'm not currently sitting at a computer where I can test this unfortunately.

Re:Surprised

[Kjella]

The torrent network really isn't as decentralized as most people seem to think; torrent traffic would take a major hit if the servers at TPB were shut down ...at least for a while.

It's always easier if there's one place to find everything, kinda like Napster was. But setting up a million little torrent trackers is more than possible - I mean, before torrents there were tons of DC++ hubs and whatever. It's like the big "win" they claimed after TPB was convicted and traffic dropped 30% - we'll we're basicly back on same ever increasing curve we were three months ago now. It's laughable.

Re:Surprised

[Zerth]

Yes, you can. I rewrote a torrent client that neither downloaded nor uploaded data. Just polled the tracker for information on connected users, the same as the various torrent indexes use to gather data on # clients, avg completion, etc.

It also made itself known as a client, so that other users would ask it for pieces, but that was just to gather statistics on how well a torrent spread across the swarm. You could write a client that none of the other clients would know about(ie, never told the tracker "hey, I'm participating", just asked who was participating).

Most anti-"known bad users" features rely on the investigator's client contacting you to see if you are really sharing(not just on the tracker list). If they didn't have to prove you were actually sharing something, they could just snarf the list from the tracker and no-one else would even know.

But then it would be trivial to spoof IPs onto the tracker and they'd be getting in even more trouble for falsely prosecuting little old ladies and printers.

Re:Surprised

[The Archon V2.0]

Speaking of fishing I am just learning to fish, anyone with useful how-to links would be greatly appreciated, and yes I have used the google.

Get an e-mail address like ebay-customer-support-for-realz@hotmail.com

Send a zillion messages saying "Our records indicate your account information contains an error please click here and reenter your information."

Make a sort-of realistic looking copy of the site at your chosen URL.

Oh, wait, you meant fishing, not phishing. Sorry.

Re:Surprised

[TheP4st]

I have to share if I want to torrent. I'm not a communist, so I don't share.

So, you are a greedy selfish fuck who gladly benefits from other peoples bandwith without givin anything in return, so that you won't have to pay money to greedy selfish corporations. You are not a capitalist as you probably like to call yourself (just like I do, but rightfully so) but a parasite.

Actually you do not have to share when using BT although it is considered good practice and manners , but I am sure as hell am to tell you how not to share on BT, leech!. Another definition of leech.

I suppose that your mates can not expect a beer in return another day if they treat you to one in the bar tonight.

Re:Surprised

[larry bagina]

Bittorrent, simplified:

• torrent file contains tracker and file information (sha1 for verification)
• client connects to tracker (http/https)
• tracker sends list of peers (up to 50, randomly selected)
• client connects to peers, determines what pieces peers have
• client uploads/downloads

So it would be straightforward to have a custom client poll the tracker for peers and then connect to determine if they have the full file or not. If they do, you can download entirely from them (they won't request any chunks from you) to prove full redistribution.

Re:Surprised

[khellendros1984]

With a standard client? I'm not really sure. I think that some of the companies used modified BT clients that don't send the *real* data...they send packets of random data. When you first connect, other users begin to offer small amounts of starting data, so that you can become a productive member of the swarm as soon as possible. Anyone that connects under those circumstances could get their IP logged and get in trouble.

Re:Surprised

[Cross-Threaded]

I want to know why it's not being modded as trolling...

Re:Surprised

[JesseMcDonald]

This can be answered without any specific knowledge of the protocol. In order to start downloading that first piece, you have to know where to direct the request. That means you need information (an IP address and port) for at least one peer before the first block can be downloaded.

In practice BT makes no attempt to hide connection information from other peers. Transport encryption is only used to limit third-party observation and filtering, e.g. by an ISP. The trackers will happily hand out every peer's IP address to anyone who asks--perhaps not all at once, depending on the implementation, but that just forces one to issue multiple requests. The only way to avoid publishing your real IP address for all to see is to use a proxy or darknet for all communications (tracker and peer). Private trackers can limit your exposure somewhat, but they're high-profile targets, and only work so long as no unwanted observers are granted entry.

Re:Surprised

[wagnerrp]

Without extensive analysis, there is no way to tell something is encrypted, versus someone just dumped /dev/rand onto the internet. Of course that assumed you're in a country where the onus is on the prosecution.

Re:Surprised

[hairyfeet]

Well, I can say that for me it is a nice place to get more off the wall stuff, like the XP driver DVD that I am currently downloading. There is a whole bunch of stuff on places like Rapidshare that isn't really copyrighted, it was just put together by some guy in some backwoods place where bandwidth is a concern. For example the above DVD was put on by some guy in the middle of nowhere but is nice to have because it contains not only the usual drivers but just about every piece of hardware out there that has an XP driver for it. Certainly handy if you are a repair guy like me to just download a DVD a couple of times a year and have all the drivers in one central location. And before anybody asks I have scanned his disks in the past for viruses and will scan the latest one as well. never any bugs, just a buttload of drivers ;-)

So for whatever reason(bandwidth caps, bad connections, etc) the guy that makes the DVD I use puts it up on places like Findfiles or Rapidshare instead of BT. And let us not forget that ISPs in the past have throttled the living hell out of BT, whereas I don't think I've ever heard of anybody throttling Rapidshare. So maybe their connections were Comcraptastic?

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

People have been busted for using BT, not for RS as far as I know.

Never heard of a downloader being busted, but the same can't be said of uploaders: http://www.rlslog.net/rapidshare-hands-over-uploaders-details-house-raided/

Re:Surprised

[macbeth66]

Freedom is the right to say what you want to say and do what you want to do so long as it has *some* ethical justification. Downloading stuff isn't that.

HUH?

That is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. And it sounds like cereal box drivel. You need no ethical justification of any kind. I don't need to justify what I say and do. You need to prove that I can't say or do it. Your freedom ends where it infringes on the next guy's freedom. And then we could go on and on about where that line is drawn.

Re:Surprised

[initialE]

People use these sites because they either don't want to or can't seed the stuff 24/7. A few of the manga translation groups don't even have an IRC channel to hang out on, they just use a blogger site and rapidshare account to publish their material.

Re:Surprised

[totally bogus dude]

I think the freedom argument is because it's not possible to stop downloading without massively infringing on people's legitimate, ethical freedoms. In short, you can't effectively stop individuals downloading copyrighted materials they have no rights to without monitoring them 24/7. Nobody is suggesting that yet -- the closest is automated filters which people just work around. But that's the end game, and any move made towards that is alarming to many people.

Even in the case of things like Rapidshare, they provide a useful service to the internet but how can they reasonably provide an equivalent service if they HAVE to filter all content for potential copyright violations? Aside from logistical problems, there's technical ones: many of the things uploaded are in password-protected RARs, so Rapidshare are completely unable to check its contents, even if there was a technically feasible means for them to do so. Ban all password-protected stuff? But why shouldn't I be able to upload some of my own data with a strong password that I provide to whoever I want to have access it? What about uploading content that Rapidshare doesn't recognise? It'd be easy to, say, flip a few bits around and have a small file on another site to flip them back. The version Rapidshare would seem to be "data" of some kind and useless; but with the small bit of extra info it can be converted into a FLAC-encoded Top 40 album.

Finally, there's economics. The argument against piracy is that it costs content-producing industries so much money. The amounts they claim are often dubious, as people do buy things they've pirated sometimes, or they might pirate the first one in a series, get hooked, and then buy later ones which they otherwise wouldn't have been interested in. This can occur for music records, TV shows, games, and so on. So it's very hard to quantify the actual loss, as some piracy is unquestionably beneficial, even if only in the long run. Some is, of course, a loss in the sense that the person pirating it would've paid the requested price if they'd had to.

But it should also be realised that trying to protect against piracy has an economic cost, too. Consider how much time/money would be spent retooling sites like Rapidshare to enable copyright filtering. Now expand that to any site that accepts any kind of user content, and the sheer amount of inefficiency introduced is mind-blowing. Is the economic cost of piracy actually greater than the economic cost of preventing it?

Then back to freedom. Even if you can implement effective measures, how do you prevent them from being abused? Unless you decide that "privacy" is an antiquated notion and teach people not to expect to have any kind of privacy ever, this is a real problem. Someone has to do the watching, but who watches the watchers? What's to stop the copyright enforcement technology being used by governments or other powerful entities to control the other information that is available? Or simply fabricating claims of copyright infringement against people who are in there way?

So while combating piracy isn't itself a bad thing, the cost to society of actually preventing it may be much higher than the cost of the piracy itself.

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

I see bunches of these discussions (copyright, sharing etc) and was wondering if the client that you wrote could connect to hubs that require a sharing minimum? If so then companies monitoring would have to at least share something. If they were stupid and shared something copy righted then:
1) they share their own stuff and there would be a whole argument about why other should not share it if the holder does.
2) they share copyrighted material that they don't own (obvious problems)
Last is one of the many options for sharing non-copyrighted material (linux images, etc) and that would seem to support people like TPB doing what they do and justify the whole bit-torrent service.
It would seem to me that this is a bit like police doing drug stings where the are exempt from prosecution despite having purchased drugs. Only issue is that RIAA and MPAA are not the law so should not be exempt. All of this rests on the premiss that you have to share in order to view/monitor and by doing so they would weaken all their own cases?

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

> give me 5 minutes, I'll find you a free copy of ANYTHING you want

Oooh, ooh a challenge !

How about the complete series of Marine Boy ?

Or for that matter The Herbs

I've started the clock ;)

Re:Surprised

[sexconker]

You can tell what it is very easily.
Just connect to the same tracker yourself.

We still know who's sending data, to who, on what ports, etc.

Just log on to the tracker, download shit you own the copyright to, list yourself as a seed, and then sue the shit out of anyone trying to get shit from you.

It's harder than getting morans who use limewire, sure, but it's not rocket science. The encryption is not a security feature (since we know that the RIAA/MPAA/etc. never need actual proof), it's more of a FUCK YOU to ISPs who shape and block bittorrent traffic.

Re:Surprised

[skeeto]

I do have the right to copy whatever published data I want. You have it backwards in that no one has the right to stop me.

Re:Surprised

[wagnerrp]

Just log on to the tracker, download shit you own the copyright to, list yourself as a seed, and then sue the shit out of anyone trying to get shit from you.

If you they don't actually upload anything to you, or upload garbage data, you've done nothing wrong. Remember, this is an all-or-nothing thing. You can't get hit with 'Intent to Infringe Copyrights'. If you download a file named as the latest Transformers, and you just end up with another gig of gay porn, Dreamworks has no legal basis to come after you.

If they do upload the actual content to you, they're the copyright owner, and they have intentionally given you the content. Once again, you're in the clear.

Re:Surprised

[sexconker]

They connect, become a seed, and anyone who sent them that data (to become a seed) is guilty.

They have the file that you sent (parts of) and they know it isn't gay porn.

As a seed, they can monitor and get a list of IPs, and they can go after people specifically.

Anything they send out as a seed doesn't matter. They're the copyright holder and they have the right to make available. But they can easily show that others were sending to you, as well, and that you were sending to others.

Fire up another client and manually add IPs from your list, don't connect to a tracker at all. Even if they only get pieces, they can show that the pieces are almost certainly pieces of their work, since they passed the hash check.

eeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is rubbish. Rapidshare is teh best place to leech my 1337 warez. :(

The value of the tracks was $34 million

[Anonymous Coward]

http://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-rapidshare-to-proactively-filter-content-090624/

The Regional Court in Hamburg, Germany, has ruled that file-hosting service Rapidshare must proactively filter certain content. Music industry outfit GEMA asked the court to ban Rapidshare from making 5,000 tracks from its catalogue available on the Internet. The court estimated the value of the tracks at $34 million.

Re:The value of the tracks was $34 million

[LuvlyOvipositor]

A bit low if you go by the calculations of the US courts: 24 songs == $1.8 million.

Re:The value of the tracks was $34 million

[Kabuthunk]

That's exactly what I was thinking. If recent court cases are any indication, that would imply that Rapidshare had about 453 songs on it in total. Seems... a touch on the low side.

Re:The value of the tracks was $34 million

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

So each music track, which you can estimate, generously, as being around 10MB in size, was worth on average about $6800. That's a lot of money for something which takes up so little space, and which is so easy to copy.

Can we just fix copyright?

[realcoolguy425]

Hell I'd go out of my way to protect everything and anything if there was a reasonable time before it fell into public domain. I keep thinking about this issue a lot, I think the solution needs to involve the copyright owner paying in money, very very small sums for the first few years, but leading to much larger sums as time moves forward. Hopefully until they opt to just let it fall into public domain because they have already made a profit on their works. (Anyone else sick of the current Mickey Mouse copyright laws we have now?)

Anyway, maybe something like years 1-4 $100 years 5-8 $1000 years 8-10 $40000 then we could just say something 1 million per year for every year there after. So either way, the work will benefit the general public (as was the original intention of copyright law). If the work is so wildly successful it will raise money. If the work isn't that great, it gets put into public domain sooner, so it can be built upon. Anyway, maybe I'm crazy, I don't like to see this kind of over-regulation of thought anyway. However if we WERE going to provide the protections that copyright holders want, I would greatly prefer a system based on this.

Re:Can we just fix copyright?

[JustinOpinion]

I'm very much in favor of copyright reform, including shorter terms.

But, while interesting, the "tax copyrights" idea brings in a new set of problems. Like many regulatory systems, it can end up favoring the big players (big business, rich people, etc.) because they are usually best able to game any system you devise (because they have the money and lawyers necessary to "work the system").

The system you describe would restore some balance in the competition between medium and large corporate copyright holders. It is self-correcting: only truly valuable copyrights are maintained, and the rest are freed to the public. But in this system, small players (small businesses, individual creators, struggling artists) are marginalized. For instance the vast majority of amateurs wouldn't bother to (or, really, be able to) register. This means that their creativity would be fair game for massive companies to use as they will. Some content may be so trivial that it doesn't matter. But there is a huge middle ground where the creator won't really be able to pay the fees (because they are not big and powerful enough to monetize it), but it would be grossly unfair to then let big companies monetize the works (even though other big companies could compete by also monetizing it).

There would be innumerable blog posts, essays, photographs, music samples, and so on... that would be unprotected. Again as a copyright reformist I actually think laxer protections are often a good thing. But in the "tax copyright" system the problem is that it becomes asymmetric: the big players can maintain their control but the littler players cannot. The notion of an artist maintaining some measure of artistic integrity, even for a short while, will be gone... unless the artist aggressively monetizes their work so as to pay for the fees (which, in many cases, would result in another kind of "loss of integrity" for the artist).

One can then go back and further tweak the rules (exceptions based on size of work, estimated value, artistic vs. commercial intent, etc.). But adding more and more rules often continues to favor the big players, who have the time to mine the laws for loopholes, argue their cases in court, and lobby for legal tweaks. Meanwhile the little players are left utterly confused by the labyrinthine laws (as is currently the case). My point here is only that these issues are actually quite delicate, and we have to be rather careful with what new system we put in place. Every system will have drawbacks. We need to make sure that the new drawbacks are not worse than the old.

In that vein, I think a more gradual reform is safer. It is also, pragmatically, much more likely to be doable.

Re:Can we just fix copyright?

[realcoolguy425]

You bring up some interesting points. Really any system would have to be unbelievably simple to correctly change how we handle copyright. The example I gave before was obviously a bit oversimplfied. The actual numbers that would be most effective would have to be researched. Perhaps a free period of 2 years could be included for all works. It might actually create an interesting market, when a work about to hit the next copyright cost 'tier' the artist or creative person would likely be looking for a buyer. If it's not worth it like I said though, it goes back out for the rest of us. If it is worth it, copyright is maintained, we provide unusual protections for the works; however there is a trade there as the works themselves help pay for these unusual protections. Personally, getting rid of copyright entirely might be preferable, but I'm just trying to come up with practical, workable solutions that are not the run-away Mickey Mouse laws we have now. [Disney will still pay to keep Mickey Mouse, which is part of the reason copyright has become such a large number of years before falling into public domain].

Copyright law does drive me nuts. I still remember, my scanner broke, I was tasked with just making simple copies of a collage of items on a piece of paper. One item included a photo of my brother who was going to graduate high school. Anyway, long story short, the person would not let me make copies of the collage, because she claimed the photograph was taken professionally, and it was protected by copyright. Obviously since this was just for a graduation party invitation, and was mostly other items, it should count as fair use. However Walgreens didn't seem to care that I thought it was fair use. A trip to Kinko's later and I got it done. [had to drive 30 miles since I'm in a fairly small down]. Regardless, copyright has become a 10 headed monster that's running out of control, and there is no end in sight.

Re:Can we just fix copyright?

[JustinOpinion]

A no-cost grace period would be a very good idea in any "tax copyright" system.

I've often thought that the protections of copyright should be related to the license the author selected to release the work under. The more "useful" the license is to society-at-large, the greater the protections would be (e.g. length of term). This brings copyright back to the notion of a contract between the public and the artist: the public provides incentives to produce work on the condition that the public benefits in the long term.

So, for example, a work released under a fairly liberal license that permits derivatives (e.g. creative commons or GPL) would be given longer protection (e.g. 14 years) than a work released under a highly restricted license (e.g. "all rights reserved" would get a 10 year protection). There could be a small number of classes (public domain, derivable-with-attribution, all-rights-reserved) and perhaps the default case would be "derivable" unless the artist/company explicitly labels it as "all rights reserved". This appeals to me because it forces everyone (from starving artists to big companies) to explicitly consider the tradeoff between short-term control and length-of-term (whereas right now it is a hard sell to get companies to be free with their content).

My suggested "graded licenses with graded protection" could conceivably be combined with copyright fees, with the fees depending on time and the license (e.g. derivable works get a longer time of no-fee protection).

But again my main worry, even with my own proposal, is that when the laws become complicated, it can be hard for "the little guy" to compete against the big players. Thus I think it is critically necessary for copyright law to be cleaned up. Rather than adding a bunch more exceptions (like fair use), the law should be cut back in scope so that common uses are no longer presumptively illegal. (In a digital age, fixating on "copies" doesn't make sense... it's really "distribution" that is the issue here.)

And I totally agree that current copyright law is out of control.

Re:Can we just fix copyright?

[sanosuke001]

5 years and then it goes into public domain. no loopholes, no exceptions, no greedy lobbyists.

oh, and outlaw lobbyists....

Re:Can we just fix copyright?

[baKanale]

Anyone else sick of the current Mickey Mouse copyright laws we have now?

Hear, hear! It's funny calling our current copyright laws "Mickey Mouse", what with Steamboat Willy still under copyright, and continuing to be so until 2023.

Re:Can we just fix copyright?

[Grishnakh]

I don't see the problem. If Disney wants to keep Steamboat Willy under copyright, they should have to pay, say, $100 million/year to do that. This doesn't favor the rich, because probably no rich person is alive who could have created something valuable back then (if there is one alive, he's probably in a nursing home on a respirator about to die, and won't care about copyrights).

The original copyright term in this country, 13 years, was plenty. We need to return to that. If you, an individual artist, can't come up with something new after riding 13 years on a profitable work, then that's just too bad. And 13 years is probably too much. 5 years is a better term, and after that you should start paying to keep it protected. If it's so valuable, you can certainly afford to pay some "copyright tax" to keep your copyright intact. If it isn't valuable enough for that, it needs to fall into the public domain.

The current system of basically perpetual copyright only benefits corporations, because they don't die a few decades after they publish a work like humans do.

Re:Can we just fix copyright?

[blackest_k]

There is one problem with public domain and that is it's near free and in competition with current works.

Imagine a world where copyright ends after 30 years. So now anything 1979 or earlier can be legally downloaded watched read or listened to. Thats a pretty good cache of media, Led Zepplin hendrix the beatles the stones to name a few, most if not all of asimovs books, a huge catalogue of film Star wars would be PD (i think that was 77)
The great escape, the italian job, and many many others.

Now don't get me wrong for me I would love it, and there is more than enough available to mean i'd never have to spend a single cent on media again. Thats what today's content makers would have to compete with or would they?
because even with silly length copyright laws I still rarely buy up to date media

maybe current media will have to be supported largely by the young, pretty much as it is anyway.

Re:Can we just fix copyright?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. But the problem now is that the MAFIAA wants everybody to police their IP for them, for free. See, unlimited police for free? and for their profit!

If they want us to police, then let them pay. Perhaps the first 10 years can be for free, but after that let the artists/labels make a new remix (and let the public decide if it's better than earlier release) or pay up for extended protection.

Re:Can we just fix copyright?

[MozzleyOne]

It seems that most of the outrage over copyright is over the length of the term.

But would shortening it really help? The main reasons for downloading music because

(a) it's convenient! - don't have to physically visit the shop (I'm sitting here in my underwear and I just heard an Iron Maiden song, 3 clicks later I have every single Iron Maiden song ever written), don't have to rip the music yourself, it's already tagged/organised etc.
(b) it's free!

Neither of these have anything to do with copyright terms.

I think that arguing about the length of copyright is really irrelevant compared to the real issue - trying to enforce scarcity on a good (via copyright) when the good is infinitely available (via the Internet) does not and cannot work. It has worked in the past - that's because the goods WEREN'T infinitely available. Copying a record was practically impossible for home users, copying tapes required you to have a physical copy of the tape, so in the majority of cases not an easy option.

We need to come up with alternatives to copyright, and I haven't seen a good proposal yet. Some form of "arts levy" citizen's pay to have access to the arts that everyone desires would be a rather obvious system, but the implementation seems impossible - how do you decide who get's what money? Quality - no objective measure. Quantity - just encourages people to push out shit. Some form of voting, through a mechanic like website hits or radio requests - seems impossible to implement in an un-gameable fashion. Some form of "arts council" that divides up the money with strict rules and regulations to prevent abuse is about the best I can come up with, but I can still see several huge and obvious flaws to it.

I'd really like to see someone come up with a good idea that I could stand behind - right now, the whole system just seems untenable.

Re:Can we just fix copyright?

[blackest_k]

In some ways its a pity its so easy, take your iron maiden example, every iron maiden song thats a lot of bad songs a few good ones admittedly but your getting a lot of crappy music. It's murder on the ears no matter what artist, after the first few albums back to back, some sooner than that, it isn't called filler for nothing. Still even the best tracks can get tiresome after a while, especially if you have a DJ with an inability to pick anything other than the track from an artist. Probably the best reform to copyright would be attitude on all sides really, do you really want to rip of the artists you really like? Probably not you can justify paying for some of it at least. But the copyright holders need to get real also, relax and stop going after the fans, let them develop the market for the music your selling. Theres a huge back catalog which should be explored, don't worry about the mix tape the people downloading random music, some will become fans and that will lead to sales. maybe put the squeeze on the new st

Re:Can we just fix copyright?

[jesset77]

I believe you've hit the nail on the head so far as the unwinnable challenge of copyright, Mozzley.

We need to come up with alternatives to copyright, and I haven't seen a good proposal yet.

On this end of the equation however, I submit to you that "we" don't need to come up with anything.

Content producers (artists, musicians, videographers, entertainers) need to explore ways of making money that do not rely on copyright. This is of course more challenging while copyright law remains on the books: it's normally easier to gouge money from an audience whose freedoms are being abused, and it's much more difficult to produce legal content to begin with when all intellectual raw material under the sun is owned by a faceless bureaucracy of copyright owners with conflicting agendas.

I am one who believes the best final arrangement is one where copyright has been abolished, anyone can create works leveraging previous works with no bureaucracy, and canned media is recognized as a non-commodity; so money is made from direct effort (gigs, concerts, custom recording work), from related commodities (merchandising, printed books, prints, painted originals) and from services (impulse buys of otherwise freely available canned content being one example). Content producers already swim in a sea of viable revenue stream options that not only work in spite of copyright, but work better without the interfering influence of copyright.

Working towards such an arrangement will be complicated however by the sea of middlemen who posses power they never earned, and will use their influence to ensure that they can continue exacting ill gotten gains in perpetuity. Add to that any legitimate content producers who have built their castles on the shifting sands of copyright, whose power is being eroded by the fundamental nature of digital information.

While getting there will be complex, I believe the first step is education. Shine a light on what is obvious, and get people to consider that which we've been culturally brainwashed not to think about. Infinitely reproducible media is not a scarce commodity. No good comes from governmental or cultural oppression creating a false scarcity. Work from here as an axiom, and the knots just untie themselves.

But How?

[Voyager529]

What is the viable solution to this? If they solely delete known instances of the data in question, they will be uploaded again in no time. If they add a keyword-based filter, then it'll just become like Napster in its dying days where files are intentionally misnamed enough to skirt the filters, or given random names entirely and linked to elsewhere. If they do hashing, uploaders will use RAR/passworded RAR/encrypted RAR archives. It's a cat-and-mouse game that becomes the prime example as to why, in one of the few glimmers of common sense in the DMCA, services like Rapidshare are exempt from getting brought to court for hosting copyrighted content, as long as they take it down if asked by the copyright holder. Hosting the files is the job of Rapidshare. Policing them isn't.

Re:But How?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the viable solution to this?

You could try paying for the files instead of stealing them. Ass holes -- all of you.

Re:But How?

[Rysc]

We already know exactly how this will go. RS already bans certain types of 'objectionable' porn, so such material is routinely uploaded as password protected RARs. The intended audience does not report it, so it remains up.

Re:But How?

[Kjella]

I think I know what you're thinking of, but I've seen music, movies, games, warez and tons of shit uploaded there password protected already. I guess it'll just kill what little "public" scene is on rapidshare.

Re:But How?

[haruchai]

It's not theft unless the uploader has somehow removed all instances of the file / song
from all media in the world.

It's copyright infringement. And, the proper term is assholes not ass holes.

Re:But How?

[phantomcircuit]

It's a very interesting problem. There is basically no way for copyright holders to find content being shared illegally on RS unless they find a link somewhere to the file.

RS has no index, so how are copyright holders supposed to notify them of copyrighted material?

This is slightly unrelated but there is an awfully large amount of child pornography on RapidShare. I was a moderator at an image board website with a porn board and every single day there would be multiple posts linking to child pornography on RapidShare. I reported all of the links but I have no idea if they were actually taken down.

Re:But How?

[AmberBlackCat]

They'll pay ISP's to ban the people who participate, or get some law passed that requires ISP's to ban the people who participate. And if they're in the United States, there ISP monopolies will ensure they only have to make a few payments to shut down every option.

Re:But How?

[cliffski]

The solution is preventing anonymous uploads. You need a paid account , say $1 a year to upload. That way if you upload copyrighted stuff, you are traceable and thus you would be mad to do so.
If you really need to share top secret whistle-blower stuff, you use tor.

BTW, you say hosting the stuff is their job, not policing it. That is true. However if your business is knowingly and overwhelmingly being used by the same people to break the same laws, you should co-operate with the police. If you ran a self-storage warehouse and it was obvious 90% of the people using it were storing stolen goods, you can bet your ass the police would demand your co-operation tot rack down who was depositing stuff.

As it should be.

Re:But How?

[Voyager529]

I think that your $1/year-to-upload works is a good idea, but that could easily make the swapping of stolen credit card numbers even more lucrative. Use a stolen credit card number for the Rapidshare account, upload the new unreleased Metallica album, and have Mrs. Jones go to court for it. This will also yield the effect whereby if Rapidshare goes pay-to-upload, MegaUpload or ZShare or NewEvenRapiderShare will become more used, until the cycle starts again.

I agree that if Rapidshare is made aware of a specific file containing copyrighted content, that they have the responsibility to remove it. I'll also agree that they should cooperate with law enforcement such that they shouldn't impede the investigation. I'll even go so far as to say that if the RIAA wants to get special accounts whereby they can streamline the process of identifying and removing confirmed infringing material, that I'd even concede (hate them or really hate them, they do, in most cases, own the copyrights). To continue with your warehouse analogy, if I were running a self-storage warehouse and it was brought to my attention that there was reason to believe that it was a hub for stolen goods, it would be my responsibility to honor any search warrants and answer any questions asked by the police. It is my responsibility to evict one of my clients if they are convicted of theft and using my building to house it. It is *not* my responsibility to start running serial numbers against the police database of known thefts.

BTW, to the AC above in the thread, I *do* pay for my music, movies, and software. With the exception of some DJ mixes and Creative Commons-licensed media, I have nothing on my hard drive downloaded from Rapidshare. This doesn't directly affect me. It's the principle of private enterprise A using the government to subpoena private enterprise B into spending additional time, money, and manpower to provide a service which solely benefits enterprise A while causing severe disruption to the business of enterprise B. This has implications that far outreach whether or not the new Britney Spears album is on Rapidshare or not. Expecting a company to comply with a criminal investigation is perfectly reasonable. Expecting a company to PERFORM a criminal investigation is quite another.

Re:But How?

[jesset77]

It's not fair for troll to call me an asshole, though. D:

I tried paying, there were no payment options. I ask "how much for a copy of XYZ song in mp3 format?" and they said "you can't have that. How about a nice wma/DRM at a low bitrate instead?"

So I said "No, you don't understand, /. user Anonymous Cowardon said I had to try and pay for these files which happen to be mp3, high quality and well mastered. So how much will I have to pay for these?" and they said they would have to get back to me, but they never did.

So, I've met your criteria. I've "tried to pay for the files". IP holders won't let me. So now I have your blessing to just pirate them instead? :D

Finally

[mister_playboy]

Indeed! The torrent sites have been getting all the flak, but direct download sites seem like the low hanging fruit to go after.

The only reason to pay for their services is to access copyrighted material... that seems like monetizing copyright infringement to me.

I'd like to see Google get caught up in this, because they have more than enough money to defend themselves.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the politicians and courts screw up the internet so bad that nothing but flash ads and porn are left, then we can can all use darknets. out of site out of mind.

fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they keep the ebooks which you really can't find anywhere else...that's the only reason I use Rapidshare. It's a goldmine of history books, some of them out of print but not out of copyright. In any case, via AvaxHome and Filestube it's saved me a lot of trips to the local university libraries.

How to filter?

[EvilToiletPaper]

For a typical rapidshare download, the files are names something weird, fragmented into multiple tars/rars and they're mostly password protected. The user gets all this info from the site that provides the links. The rapidshare servers themselves seem oblivious to the content of the files.

How will rapidshare enforce filtering? crack passwords for every rar, open the content, view it, check it against existing copyright works? I doubt if filtering will deter any illegal file-sharing on rapidshare at all.

Re:How to filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way I can see Rapidshare counteracting this is to deny downloads of anything that appears encrypted, so if someone uploads a RAR file or a data blob that doesn't correspond to a known format, it would be automatically removed.

However, it wouldn't be hard at all to get around this by attaching a header onto an encrypted blob and telling people to just cut off the first x bytes off the front of the file.

Re:How to filter?

[jack2000]

Here is a system check the referer to the dl page, use spider to harvest all strings from page, try every password till you unlock the archive. I know this an arms race, this method can be circumvented very easy and the nature of this arms race the policing force can't win.

Re:How to filter?

[Rysc]

The accepted way to do this is with JPEG + RAR. rar files with a garbage header are valid, jpegs with garbage at the end are valid. You simply rar your data, make a simple jpeg, cat simple.jpg data.rar > innocent.jpg and then upload.

Re:How to filter?

[tepples]

jpegs with garbage at the end are valid.

JPEGs with more data after the End Of Image tag than before it are valid but suspicious.

Re:How to filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most places do not even give rapidshare a referer as they list it as text and expect you to use your own download managers/etc. I paste my links into a text file and use aria2c

Re:How to filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

How would one go about splitting the jpeg and rar files afterwards?
I concatenated a .png and a .zip of an .odt into another .png. That did indeed open with image viewer. After renaming it to a .zip I could indeed extract and open the .odt but is it always that easy? I guess these programs just ignored the extra data but I doubt all programs do that?

Re:How to filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

how do you unrar?

Re:How to filter?

[Rysc]

For a JPEG+RAR just pass the file through unrar. You may rename the extension first if you prefer.

Which Rapidshare?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would this be rapidshare.de or rapidshare.com ? They are significantly different.

Re:Which Rapidshare?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all in Deutschland, Süsse. So no, they're not significantly different.

of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately for GEMA, Rapidshare placed a dog/cat CAPTCHA to access the check. That is, of course, after they've waited out the time delay for free-users.

Re:of course

[Kushieda Minorin]

Not to worry, they have the $34 million premium account.

That beats...

[Anonymous Coward]

That beats being fined $80,000 per song like they do over here in the states.

Serves them right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys, stop whining!

Rapidshit is *the* hub for swapping pirated works and software. I mean i'm all for net neutrality and against condemnation of technologies (bittorrent), but this is a business that somehow manages to distribute huge amounts of stolen material.

Re:Serves them right.

[nicolas.kassis]

They don't just do this for pirated crap. They actually are used for legal purposes. They don't promote it even near the level the piratebay was. They are beeing agnostic to what is uploaded to their servers. They shouldn't be required to police the data users are uploading because they frankly are no different than an ISP who offers webspace.

Re:Serves them right.

[Spyware23]

Not sure if you're trolling or not, but you realize that when a site like RapidShare goes down, it's users will just move to another hosting-service and "abuse" that one, right? It's not RapidShare's fault, they aren't uploading any material. They can't prevent any illegal material from being uploaded, so they really have no fault in this matter.

For every HTTP-based upload service you take down, you'll get ten in return. You can't prevent this from happening.

Re:Serves them right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once president is set, it will be trivial for GEMA or other *AA organizations to just go after the sites one by one. A new download site comes up? Once the ball starts rolling, it would only be a matter of 30-45 minutes from a download site coming online to being shut down via a call to the ISP and a motion of discovery. Give 2-3 hours for filling out the legal pleadings, and a lawsuit might be filed the same day.

Remember after the Napster win by Lars, the total destruction of AudioGalaxy and many other file sharing applications until they moved their servers offshore. Even then, all it did was get the *AA to focus on suing (and winning) multi-million dollar cases against individuals.

Re:Serves them right.

[Anonymous Coward]

The President is set already.

Re:Serves them right.

[alfs boner]

Once president is set

Hahahahahahahahaha you are so fucking STUPID. Haw haw haw haw haw! "President" Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. You went to a public school, didn't you?

Pointless....

[psycho12345]

1) Encrypt content in whatever manner seems suitable (TrueCrypt, password protect RAR, etc.)
2) Link to second download on same site, with textfile containing password.
3) ???
4) Profit!

That's a lot of money to pay

[Dunbal]

Considering all I have ever managed to download from them is the same damned Rick Astley video.... MAN I hate that song... never gonna gi---

Re:That's a lot of money to pay

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh you BASTARD!!!
I can't believe I got Rickrolled by a /. comment!!!

Re:That's a lot of money to pay

[Icegryphon]

Rick Rolled in a Slashdot story.
BTW, I lost the game and so did you!

So it's about censorship, is it?

[Hurricane78]

For the gain of an industry, not bigger than that of the industry of toilet seats or brushes, Internet utilities and places are forced to do, what is the job of the police and government, and additionally censor things.

Well, luckily, according to their own calculations, the RIAA has only 5-7 years more to live. :)

On another note, I am a bit happy that Rapidshare will be killed. It was a horrible step backward from modern systems like Gnutella. In terms of modernity, Rapidshare was here:
Rapidshare, FTP, alt.binary & Co. -> Napster & Co. -> BitTorrent & Co. -> eDonkey & Co. -> Gnutella, WinMX/NY & Co. -> Darknets & Co.
(Yes. BitTorrent also is a step backwards, because the search function is not inside the application, and you have to download little header files, instead of ed2k/magnet/etc. links, which makes it unnecessarily complicated.)

Re:So it's about censorship, is it?

[melikamp]

BT is better than Gnutella, imho. The search happens on a website, which can also provide feedback (boards) and some form of authentication. Here, for example, you can see little green and purple skulls indicating that the torrent was uploaded by a "trusted" person, whatever that means. Decentralized for the sake of decentralized is nice on paper, but the actual result is often significantly less efficient than a more structured platform. Freenet & Gnutella vs. torrents, YACY vs. Google, etc.

Re:So it's about censorship, is it?

[Killer Orca]

I was under the impression that eDonkey and Gnutella were in the same group/protocol, also I have never heard of WinMX/NY and have yet to actually get to a darknet.

Re:So it's about censorship, is it?

[steelcaress]

I don't care if it was positively stone-age. It was the fastest thing I'd used in forever. All of those other systems you mentioned ran slowly or not at all on my rigs. If I paid a pittance I could download scads of stuff, with no waiting. It didn't matter what my router was set to, how many seeds or peers there were, or whether I was sharing, or even what client I was using. Unlike the darknets (like DirectConnect) there was no idiot moderator who banned you if he didn't like you or didn't understand what he saw in your files. It's not the tech that's important here -- something can be the coolest thing in the world, but if it doesn't work it is useless to me. Rapidshare, Megaupload, etc work, and work well.

Re:So it's about censorship, is it?

[thalassinos]

Rapidshare has its legal uses and personally I find it very convenient.

I have a premium account and I use it to share very large files with clients instead of using FTP. Bandwidth costs would have killed me if I was hosting my own files. Rapidshare is also much faster than my FTP site.

A friend of mine uses Rapidshare to share files used in large civil engineering projects with dozens of subcontractors and the local government. Perfectly legal.

You upload your (preferably encrypted) file once, share the link and stop worrying about it.

Now, if you are looking at Rapidshare from the point of view of (ahem) sharing questionable material, then yes, Rapidshare is a step back (more akin to FTP). They even try on purpose to make the content that they host difficult to index in search engines. They offer a single point of failure. But, as I mentioned earlier, they did not start with the aim of becoming the-next-big-thing-after-torrents.

Re:So it's about censorship, is it?

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, but when you change your metric to performance, then RapidShare beats just about all of those. A single, fast server generally gives you much better download speeds than any P2P application. The only exception is BitTorrent, IFF you're downloading something that's extremely popular (meaning it's also very new). P2P applications like eDonkey and the like generally have horrid performance, because you're fighting for bandwidth from some guy who's sharing something over his slow cable-modem connection with even slower upload speed. Add to this the performance of the P2P application itself; talking to all those different peers at once puts a sizeable load on your system.

There's a reason they call it "RapidShare".

Of course, if your metric is indexability/searchability, then I think eDonkey & Co. lead the way here (Napster used to, but they're defunct now), since you can do string searches for whatever interests you. You can't do that with RapidShare, since everything is in password-protected RAR files with names bearing little similarity to the contents, and you can't do as easily it with BitTorrent since you have to go to a search site like MiniNova.

And if your metric is finding obscure files, then eDonkey is definitely the winner here, because it's easy for a user to share entire, giant directories full of tens of thousands of files. You can't do that in BitTorrent, where you're expected to create a .torrent file for every single file you want to share, and upload this to a tracker site. What a PITA.

end of an era

[parallel_prankster]

I have used rapidshare quite a bit. I liked it because most of the stuff on there was clean. It was easy to download. There is actually a website rapidlibrary or something that you can use to search for stuff on rapidshare and you will not believe the kind of stuff thats on there and by that I mean everything you can think of, someone has uploaded it on rapidshare, especially ebooks, music and movies. I guess this means an end to the free downloading era for me. I am little skeptical about getting stuff off from torrents because of the viruses/malware either on the torrent files or on the sites that hosts these torrents. Anyway, I also know of other sites that will popup, however, usually such sites have lots of annoying flash/porn ads on it.

Just a thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a new and innovative idea: Why don't you actually pay for the copyrighted material that you wish to use instead of worrying about how you'll skirt the copyright laws.

Re:Just a thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the stuff is out of print and not sold in stores? Or one lives in a part of the world that major stores like Amazon or iTunes sell for way outrageous prices, or just don't sell at all?

Same tired old argument, just like "if you are not doing anything illegal, why would you mind xxx", "xxx" being some intrusive technology or method.

Re:Just a thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the stuff is out of print and not sold in stores? Or one lives in a part of the world that major stores like Amazon or iTunes sell for way outrageous prices, or just don't sell at all?

BS. A small percentage of the copyrighted files that are downloaded might be out of print, but the vast majority of files are for relatively new material that can be easily purchased and used in a legal way.

And why exactly does it matter that the material in question is sold for outrageous prices? Does that mean any time you feel that something is overpriced, you have the right to steal it? If you think that shiny new car you want is overpriced, you're going to steal it? Or that new top-of-the-line laptop costs too much money (in your eyes) so that gives you the right to just walk out of the store with it?

And don't get me that shit about downloadable files being different because there's no cost associated with them. Bullshit. Regardless of what the file contains, someone worked very hard to produce the material contained within the file -- perhaps devoting months or years of their life to the work. It is their intellectual property and they have every right to be paid for its use.

You're looking for excuses to justify stealing, that's all.

Re:Just a thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're looking for excuses to justify stealing, that's all.

What if I just want to borrow it for a bit? My library has a pretty decent collection of DVD's available. Recently, I wanted to watch a particular film by a director I've been getting interested in. Went to the library, they didn't have it, but could get it for me, the woman said. It'd take about a week. No thanks, I said, and went home, found a torrent, made dinner. By the time I was ready to eat, the file was ready and waiting. It was, as I expected, a pretty good movie. A few days later, I'd seeded enough, and deleted the file. From my perspective, the effect was exactly the same: I watched a movie I wanted to see, and didn't pay for it. That I ended up getting it from the internet and not the library seems irrelevant to me, as I wasn't going to pay for it to begin with. I simply found a service that allowed me to do so faster than my library would have, so I used that instead. If you have some ethical problem with that, well, fuck you.

Re:Just a thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you can borrow a DVD from a local library, that doesn't mean that the movie is suddenly free for the taking. It's still copyrighted material that has been licensed to the library for its use, in the form of a physical DVD. The library can't make a thousand copies of the DVD and give them away -- that's not allowed. Someone actually had to pay for that copy of the DVD, or in the case of a library, it might have been donated. But in either case, copyright law still applies. The key point is that only one copy of the movie (the one that was paid for) can be viewed at any one time.

On the other hand, if you take that same movie and place it on a download site, who knows how many people can download it without paying any royalty. In my view of the world, every download of that movie is stolen because those folks that made the movie were denied a royalty payment.

So no, it's not the same thing as borrowing a DVD from the library. If you can't see that, then yeah, fuck you.

Re:Just a thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, it's not the same thing. It's even better! Apart from the traditional critique that, no, it's not stolen, as no one's been deprived of something, and that you assume anyone who downloads would otherwise have paid for it (spoiler alert: most wouldn't), my point was simply this: from an end-user's perspective, I see no *ethical* difference between the two. What the law has to say is ethically irrelevant. So what if the library paid for their copy of the film? Whoever first seeded the DVD rip I downloaded probaby did too. That more than one person can use the later copy at a time is a technological advantage, rather than an ethical issue. Content producers who weep for lost profits, a suggestion: you might consider saving money by hiring actors who work cheaper than $20 Million per film. Not only will you save some money, but maybe I'll feel at least a little bit bad about downloading your movie.

Re:Just a thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

What an ass hole. Obviously you don't do anything remotely creative for a living, assuming that you even have a job and are not sucking on the public tit for handouts.

I sincerely hope for the following scenario:

1) You eventually grow up and decide that it's time to support yourself instead of living off mommy and daddy.
2) In order to earn a living and provide for your family, you are involved in producing something that other people can consume (a movie, a song, a book, anything really).
3) You realize that you aren't earning as much as you expected -- not nearly enough to support yourself and your family. You begin to investigate why sales of your product are much lower than expected.
4) You find your product, the thing that you worked hard to design, author, create, produce, package -- that thing that you hoped would help you scrape out some minimal existence -- it can be found everywhere for free on pirate sites.
5) Your sales dry up completely and you are now one of those "content producers who weep for lost profits". Lost profits in this case are the meager earnings that you were hoping to receive from your creative work.
6) Desperate and depressed, you steal a Glock 17 (remember you can't afford to buy one), load it with 9mm hollow points, raise it to your head and blow your fucking brains out.

End of story.

Small potatoes

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"No such fine has been imposed â" $34 million was the estimated value of the tracks hosted on Rapidshare."

Amazing, this figure means that there are only at most about four hundred illegally uploaded American tracks. That's not even noteworthy. ;-) *hides*

Mail you a song?

[DeadDecoy]

Just imagine if we all started mailing each other burned copies of music over the postal system. The RIAA would then demand to open all mail and screen for it. This whole business of screening all content seems to be bordering on unconstitutional to me. If I'm a copyright holder, does that give me the right to root through downloads and uploads on your personal computer for possible violations? It's certainly an interesting gray area for the legal system. On one hand you have the copyright holder's rights and on the other the computer user's rights. Whose rights are more important?

Re:Mail you a song?

[jesset77]

On one hand you have the copyright holder's rights and on the other the computer user's rights. Whose rights are more important?

The "rights" that you compare here aren't the same kind though. One is the natural, god-given right for an author to control what information cannot be copied or transmitted by every digital device on the planet, while the other is nothing more than the rapacious whims of greedy computer owners who feel entitled to move bits from one part of their machine to another, willy-nilly.

Opera Unite!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I love Opera Unite! My family is always asking me to 'fix' their computers for them... for free. Yeah, well, now any files I want to share on sites like RapidShare I just put in a hidden folder on their computer and then install Opera Unite as a startup service to run in the background!

Might take a while, but I think once they've had the RIAA raid their house a couple times, they might put it together and stop asking me for computer help. :)

Cost of Compliance

[Ohio Calvinist]

I often wonder when governments of small markets (state/providence/prefecture or national) if smaller companies like Rapidshare who aren't competing on the level of MS or Google ever consider simply blocking access to that region that has laws/rulings that challenge the profitability of their business model. As much as it seems anti-thetical for a "world wide web" it seems from a business perspective a real option.

Even more so, how would you do it to satisfy the court... block by IP, geotraceroute, TLD, a message saying "Due to Company vs. State, if you are a resident of region, you are not permitted to use this site.... [legalese]...".

425 songs is that all?

[AmigaHeretic]

>>$34 million was the estimated value of the tracks hosted on Rapidshare.

$1.92million / 24 songs, that's $80,000 per song...

$34million / $80,000 = 425 songs.

I thought rapidshare had a much more diverse collection of music than that.

Re:425 songs is that all?

[T Murphy]

425 is what you get after you subtract all the songs that sound the same.

thank god

[Darth]

Music industry outfit GEMA asked the court to ban Rapidshare from making 5,000 tracks from its catalogue available on the Internet.

thank god....when i read the headline i was afraid this might affect my ability to download porn.

on a more serious note, can we please get a court to force restaurants to stop playing '80s music as well?

Re:thank god

[thalassinos]

If Rapidshare is hosting, say 20000 songs, does this means that the remaining 15000 songs are fair game now?

Thank you GEMA!

Safe deposit boxes

[MobyDisk]

If I put a CD into a safe deposit box, and I share the key with people - and they go to the box, copy the CD, then put the CD back... is the bank liable?

Re:Safe deposit boxes

[guybrush3pwood]

You beat me to it... I was going with the warehouse analogy. Or even further: should the owner of the appartment I rent be hold liable for printouts of the ebooks I make at home? Nonesense.

Re:Safe deposit boxes

[MobyDisk]

I want to design a download protocol that does this:
- A user uploads a file to the service
- A user can download the file - as the file is transferred to them, the bits are deleted from the source
- The client PC then copies the bits, and sends them back

This would waste bandwidth, but it means the service is not making a copy of the file - it is moving the file. It just happens to be that the user is making the copy, then sending it back to the source. This should eliminate the liability of the service, since they are not doing the copying.

Re:Safe deposit boxes

[jesset77]

This would waste bandwidth, but it means the service is not making a copy of the file - it is moving the file.

One of the biggest reasons that Copyright fails when applied to digital information is that, unlike the physical analogue, digital information cannot be "moved" (short of moving the physical medium, that is..).

Protecting a person's right to "copy" something is only vaguely sane when the alternative of moving the content exists. "I can't let you copy my book, but I'll sell you the copy I have." fosters a grey market which is vital to keeping prices in check. Digital information cannot be "moved", however. It can be "copied" and then "deleted", but that necessitates the initial "copy" step which violates the law. Furthermore there is no proof the original ever really gets "deleted", or that alternate copies were not made (what of your backup tapes?)

The only reasonable solution is to abolish copyright.

Re:Safe deposit boxes

[MobyDisk]

The only reasonable solution is to abolish copyright.

That conclusion does not follow from your above statements. Copyright has nothing to do with technology. Someone should be able to create something and sell it. The only ones who disagree are "consumers" who want everything, and contribute nothing. Or who think their contributions somehow entitle them to everything everyone else created.

I am a programmer. My wife is an artist. Many of my friends are writers. Without copyright, we would all be destitute. If you need proof - just look at history prior to copyright - authors made nothing, and artists existed only at the whim of the wealthy.

Re:Safe deposit boxes

[jesset77]

Copyright has nothing to do with technology.

I flatly disagree with this statement. Copyright, by definition has to do with copying. The very nature of copying has been changed significantly by every advancement in information technology since man first painted in caves.

The state of the art is that, as my previous post points out, every single time information is digitally transfered from one location to another it is copied, in virtually all instances breaking the letter of copyright law.

When you purchase a song from the iTunes store, the iTunes server is rubbing off a fresh copy for you (which I would imagine the vendor gets specifically licensed to do these days, in contrast to record stores which are afforded no such liberty). While the data is delivered to your location, it is copied again on every router in the internet that it passes through. The "original packets" are irretrievably lost each hop, however few things prevent the routers from storing extra copies of the data for their own uses. Most notably for deep packet inspection and for protocol throttling, but I'll leave net-neutrality to a separate thread. There is also cached proxying for performance benefit, multicast for popular streaming performances like internet radio and IPTV, and buffering for redelivery in network congestion. These copy operations are neither licensed nor protected by fair use by the farthest stretch of imagination, yet content producers would never dare to hobble their customers' experience by interfering with such common practices. So long as the producers somehow get to step 4 PROFIT, they don't mind that the law they rely on is being shredded in step 3 ???.

On arrival at your computer, the download exists in memory and then is copied to the hard drive. Were you granted license for that copy operation? Each time you play the file, new copies are made from the hard drive and transfered back into memory. This without even beginning to discuss getting the song to play on other media players (aka other devices, normally copy operations without the original being deleted), personal backups, playing media at a remote location via RDP, or public performances of ringtones.

Are these personal copy operations covered by fair use? Apparently not all of them, and it's never been tested in court. The DRM content producers try to root your personal devices with certainly doesn't think so. If they had their way, you would be required to pay for a fresh copy every time you listen to the song, and every time you jog 5 seconds back to re-examine a misheard lyric. And why not? They have no stake in the matter short of how many feathers they can pull from the goose with a minimum of hissing.

On the other hand, let's say I encrypt my "copy" of the download in a RAR with a password. Now I have this encrypted RAR, and I know the password. I copied the song from my hard drive to memory, no differently from when I play the song, but then I bake a new encrypted file based upon that data.

The encrypted file is not a copy of the song, because lacking the password one cannot retrieve the song from the RAR. What would one call this from a legal standpoint, a "derivitive work"? I ask because the next question becomes obvious: would I be breaking this antiquated law by sharing the encrypted RAR file or not? Prior to also disclosing the password, I am in no substantial sense "sharing" the song. Also, I am in no sane manner "copying" the song. How can I be said to be in violation of copyright short of overstepping my rights by making an unauthorized copy?

That is the heart of my point. I contend that the application of copyright does break down where the rubber of digital technology meets the road. Even as you move away from the bare metal it takes no effort to see the detrimental effects of trying to enforce such a law where it is inapplicable. There is no grey market and fair use is a distant memory simply because the big players in media distribution have taken it upon thems

Re:Safe deposit boxes

[MobyDisk]

Your complaints with copyright give me pause to think: but the complaints are along impractical cases. Yes, every router makes a copy - but then, doesn't every molecule copy the vibrations from the neighboring molecule? Where do we draw the line?

Reasonable application of copyright is not impacted by technology. By "reasonable" I mean, copies along a wire, copies in memory, etc - are not true copies. No more than my brain cells hearing and processing the sound are copies. The difference between my stance, and yours, appears to be that I assume a reasonable justice system would conclude these things. But as you say, this has not been adequately tested (well, it has, with a few cases - but very narrowly). But this failure is not a problem with copyright, it is a problem with our system of justice.

I am also a programmer. For every application I write which is released to the public, I voluntarily release the source code and selected binaries into the public domain...I am not destitute as a result..

Just because everything you choose to release your personally created software into the public domain, does not mean that all copyrightable works should be released into the public domain. It seems unlikely that you work as a programmer professionally, since very few companies can succeed by releasing software into the public domain. If you are profiting from writing public domain software, I would be intrigued to learn the business model.

Please propose to me a way to eliminate copyright, and still allow companies that make for-profit software to exist.

Re:Safe deposit boxes

[jesset77]

Hello MobyDisk, here is a level headed response if I have ever seen one. Please accept my apologies if my previous post came off as pretentious or caustic at all.

I concede to your point that law does not always require a perfectly obvious trail through which to draw a boundary (such as what constitutes copying and what does not) in order to be applicable. However what I was hoping to illustrate was that globally available perfect-fidelity (digital) data transfer honestly demolishes the foundational assumptions of copyright, such that the perceived rights of the producers and consumers can no longer be simultaneously honored by this model.

The key to the change is the act of commoditization. A physical book or sheet of music can be treated as a commodity. The producer can spend money creating copies, and consumers can purchase and then optionally resell these physical copies. If the information inherent to these copies (text of the book, notes of the song) are reprinted by a rival who seeks to dodge the creative cost to undersell at retail, then the law can punish the rival who must invest, therefor recoup marginal costs to create their copies and therefor has difficulty remaining below the radar.

In a world where information is expensive to broadcast or to transmit from one location to another, this was relied upon as an economic bandaid and acted as a subsidy for creative effort. The US constitution initially provided a limited timeframe for this copyright protection, so that the fruits of this subsidized creativity would pass into the public domain to enrich the pool of available ideas from which new creative minds could draw.

The initial purpose of Copyright was to subsidize a wellspring of creativity in order to enrich the public domain, much like scientific grants are meant to subsidize research which is then made public for the benefit of all. The twentieth century has seen copyright provide an overbalance of power to content producers, who have then perverted the law to cover virtually all creative works in a clever form of perpetuity.

These wrongs must not only be rectified, but the underlying market landscape has changed sufficiently to obviate copyright entirely. Today, even short copyright terms are detrimental compared to the benefits of outright abolition, since there is no longer significant cost in distributing canned creative work, and non-canned work.. custom work, online services, in-house development.. have no need of copyright protection.

We now live in a world where information rarely needs a medium more tangible than a binary representation, which can in turn be transmitted between virtually any pair of willing parties spanning the globe with insignificant marginal cost. Furthermore, burning physical optical media and even printing books have plummeted to nearly as cheap levels.

As a result, any consumer of digital media can choose to redistribute the data they have purchased to any willing parties in the world almost instantly. The cost of doing so is so low that no recoup is needed, most individuals who choose this (presently illegal) path do so for no more profit than peer recognition and tit for tat.

Digitally encoded copies of information, as opposed to physically bound copies, are not and can not be treated as commodities. By their very definition they are not scarce whereas physical commodities are. One can complain about the existence of a "counterfeit" book devaluing yours, of counterfeit paper money inflating your economy, but pure (digitized) information traded in the wild is in a form where the concept of that which is "counterfeit" no longer applies. Digitized data's very essence is of mitosis and redundancy. This is the same reason that there does not exist tradeable electronic currency: there exists no provision to prevent it's counterfeiting and thus devaluation.

Just because everything you choose to release your personally created software into the public domain, does not mean that all copyrightable work

34Million?

[Dan541]

$34,000,000 worth of tracks is less than 50 songs.

4chan

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't this tagged 4chan?

I'm thinking they aren't... thinking

[suitepotato]

So they've got a technology to scan inside RAR files with obfuscated names now? If they start putting password lock so you have to have the password to even see the archive content what then? These courts really don't bother consulting actual Internet people, just some lawyer doing intern clerk duty on the way to their own judicial posting who happened to use the Internet a few times to try to score on craigslist. Oh well, good luck enforcing it.

Only $34 million worth of tracks?

[noidentity]

No such fine [$34 million] has been imposed -- $34 million was the estimated value of the tracks hosted on Rapidshare.

So they were hosting only 425 tracks. I would have figured they'd had many more than that.

"street value"

[aminorex]

That 34 million is, of course, street value of the goods--after they've been "cut" with powdered sugar and strychnine, to a purity less than 10% of the original.

Justifying piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Fellow pirates,

I implore you to continue your campaign on Slashdot to make me feel less guilty. I know that not paying someone for their work is wrong, but if Slashdot posts enough articles bashing the RIAA/MPAA/copyright law/whatever, it's easier for me to accept what I'm doing emotionally by visualizing someone else as the bad guy. Once on the forefront of relevant IT news, Slashdot is now a lame repository of mainstream pseudoscience links and pro-piracy articles to appease a dwindling readership. I am overjoyed.

Even though the open source community is about giving back as much as it is taking, I'm just going to take. I'm a human leech with self-serving beliefs and an inability to empathize with content creators who are trying to make a living.

I don't believe John Carmack should be paid for his work. I'm going to sit on my ass while he spends years coding the next advanced 3D engine from id Software. When their game comes out, I'm going to pirate it without giving a second thought about paying John Carmack for his work. I'm just so used to pirating things now that I take it for granted. If anyone mentions John Carmack to make me feel guilty, I'll look for Slashdot articles that bolster my viewpoint, such as this one, amusingly posted in the Your Rights Online section even though none of my rights are being violated.

According to that study, it's okay to not pay people for their work because there's some vague hope that they'll make up the difference in income through "concerts and speaking tours." Artists are now forced to take time out of doing what they want to do. John Carmack must stop programming in order to make money from programming. It's genius. The study does exactly what I need it to--make me feel less guilty when I pirate. We've managed to stretch the truth so far that we're actually telling ourselves that we're helping artists by not paying them for their work. Excellent job.

I look forward to Slashdot telling me everyday who the bad guys are. Even though Slashdot has sued websites in the past for copyright infringement, and they've pretended to care about plagiarism, we're supposed to go along with Slashdot's anti-copyright agenda. I'm okay with that hypocrisy because it serves me. It makes me feel less guilty when I pirate something. Remember, I'm not the bad guy--the RIAA/MPAA/whatever is. That makes it okay for me to not pay people for their work.

EULAs and copyright licenses are wrong, yet the GPL is good. Piracy isn't theft, yet GPL violations are referred to as "stolen GPL code." I accept all of these double-standards because it serves me. I pretend not to notice when someone points out that the GPL relies on copyright law, and if I want to get rid of copyright, my beloved open source code will no longer be protected by the GPL. I don't care, because I'm too busy concerning myself with what I want for free, not about the consequences. I want to get rid of copyrights because I've been told that copyrights are the bad guy, and they are an obstacle to my rampant piracy.

Fellow pirates, let us continue our selfish leeching. Let us paint others as the bad guys to absolve us of our emotional guilt. Our goal is to convince people that piracy is something the good guys are doing in a fight with the evil corporations. Making money is wrong, even though Slashdot displays ads, and it cost me money to buy the computer I'm using to pirate stuff.

Yours truly,
A fellow Slashbot

Re:Justifying piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, someone on Slashdot who is intellectually honest.

Fantastic, well-written post. You speak for many of us.