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German Police Seize German Pirate Party Servers
fph il quozientatore writes "The German police have seized today the servers from the German Pirate Party after an attack on the French company EDF. Apparently they are looking for evidence of allegiance with the Anonymous group. In completely unrelated news, the website of the German police was down this afternoon."
This would've been better if Police Pocket Pirate Party Processors Punctually.
Idiots on both sides.... But we can say: the police started it...
Taking down the central server of political party just 2 days ahead of elections is not nice.
CU, Martin
What a bunch of Nazis!
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The official state apparatus being used to harass opposition parties? In Germany? Days before an election? No, I'm not touching this one with a ten foot pole.
Point a finger at your competition/enemy and make some unfounded claims about 'crimes against the state', and the police come in and take care of the problem for you.
This remind anyone of something? Like Poland late 1939?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
all i have to say about this is thank god. i welcome our new jewish overlords.
Two days before the elections. Coincidence?
So when some group attacks some company we seize the property of a random pro-liberty group?
Is that your understanding of democracy?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not newsworthy?
The servers of a party that has online liberty as one of its core agendas have been seized, with an allegation of being involved in an attack against some French nuke power company (who, in turn, has been accused of rather questionable security and even more questionable garbage disposal). From what it looks now, ONLY this party's servers, despite being most likely nothing more than the equivalent of a TOR exit node that has been abused.
And all of that a few days before an election.
Sorry, if that's not newsworthy, I guess personal liberty and its limitation by certain "interest groups" really isn't an issue for nerds anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The summary is very uninformative. This needs to be mentioned:
- The reason for the seizure was topic of speculation all day long. It was very soon suspected that the reason was abuse of the "piratenpad", a publically available etherpad installation operated by the pirate party. Apparently this platform was used to coordinate a DDoS attack against the french energy and utility company (according to Wikipedia the largest of the world) EDF. Pirate party later stated that a SSH key for there webserver was posted on the piratenpad. See http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Polizei-kapert-Server-der-Piratenpartei-1246963.html (german).
- This service was only running on one of the servers but the police took all servers nethertheless which includes their mail and other important infrastructure.
- The seizure was not the result of some german investigation but rather a reaction to a judicial assistance request by the french police.
- As well-known german lawyer Udo Vetter points out (http://www.lawblog.de/index.php/archives/2011/05/20/ein-akt-der-deutschen-behrden/ - german) the german police was not required by law to react in this way. Furthermore political parties are somewhat protected by law and it is very arguable that the measures taken were adequate as required by law.
- There is a state election in the German state of Bremen on Sunday. The pirate party is running there. This seizure is of course very unfortunate in light of this. This has promptly caused conspiracy theories that the reason for the seizure might be political.
Pro-pirate is not pro-liberty. Look up the meaning of the word "pirate" that these guys are trying to emulate.
They are not trying to "emulate" the term Pirate -- The pro-copyright corporations began using the term as a derogatory label (hopefuly having negative connotaion), the term stuck, and so we throw it in their faces.
These are pro-liberty only in the sense that they wish to have more liberty to break the law and enable others to break the law.
The "law" is unjust. Copyright is not required, per constitution, it is allowed, solely for the betterment of society as a whole. It is an outdated and over-broad, in the time that it was first allowed the founding fathers thought thought it should last only around 10 to 14 years. Now, in an era when not only big businesses have copy machines (nearly any one has many), the laws have been twisted to harm society, and extended for TWO GENERATIONS. My lifetime +70 years -- Beyond the life expectancy of my children!
If they actually wish to change the law instead of merely breaking it, then they should boycott the media that is copy protected. That is do not steal the music/games/video but instead refuse to listen/play/watch.
Yes, we want "free" stuff, like our freedom of speech and freedom of expression back. We don't want the restriction of only being able to legally share information that is over 100 years old. Freedom to sing songs publicly and share knowledge and information with our neighbors. The black people of America, and their supporters, had to stand up for their rights when Jim Crow was the LAW. Occasionally this means breaking the fucking unjust, oppressive, ridiculous law -- you dolt! Rosa Parks; Ring any bells!?! (sorry, excuse the rage -- ignorance is abhorrent to me)
As long as they continue acting like common thieves they will get zero respect from the public but if they start a boycott that catches on then they'll start making headway. But this won't happen since the vast majority of pirate party supporters just want the free stuff.
When your civil rights are abused it is your duty to peacefully protest -- What a better way to protest peacefully than to participate in the free sharing of ideas and information with your friends. No one is "stealing" anything. The only thing that has been taken away is the freedom to sing, say, write, or copy anything you want. We allowed aurthors a limited monopoly over their works to keep the greedy publishers in check. Now, the publishers force contracts on the authors or else the work doesn't get published, and these contracts take the rights of the authors and give them to the publishers.
We've tried the civil protest route... Hell, it this case We Have A POLITICAL PARTY, and yet the pockets of the corporations are deeper still than our own. Not participating in the society we helped create is not an option. If you can think of any more peaceful a protest than having a network connection and two computers duplicating 1s and 0s, please, FUCKING LET ME KNOW!
If it weren't for free sharing of ideas human society and the very languages we use that enable us to be more than just emotional animals would not have formed. It is in our very nature to share knowledge and information, to outlaw such things is the very definition of a police state. (Now, there's a fucking term it would do you well to look up!)
In Heaven: The cooks are French, The policemen are English, The mechanics are German, The lovers are Italian, The bankers are Swiss.
In Hell: The cooks are English, The policemen are German, The mechanics are French, The lovers are Swiss, The bankers are Italian.
46137
You clearly have no clue what the Pirate Party is about. It is not pro-pirate, as defined by the MAFIAA; it is anti-IP. The concept of Intellectual Property is fundamentally abhorrant, and severely infringes on peoples intellectual liberties. This is about far more than the copying of movies, it is about the liberty to think freely. To invent or create freely, without being mired in lawsuits, where the parasites who "own" some idea demand rent for any and everything.
One may be the first to have an idea, but chances are nearly certain that they won't be the last. Granting the first-to-file or first-to-invent (which is more often not debatable), an unlimited monopoly is starkly in opposition to the public good. It puts a huge damper on what could otherwise be exponential progress, in order to enrich a select few.
Granting a monopoly on an idea is extremely detrimental to society.
Why do governments love chasing what they can't catch?
Because you can do it for as long as you want, and no particular results are expected. See "war on drugs" - there is no metric that is commonly used to show that "the war" is successful or not.
For a cubicle dweller it would be equivalent to reporting to the boss every day that "I'm working on it" year after year, and still being paid in full for delivering nothing but appearance of effort.
Then try a Belgian or a Dutchman. Then maybe a Frenchman or a Russian.
Brits are off, I'm afraid.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What's in a name? Have you looked at party names throughout the times? When has a party ever stood true to its name? Most of the former communist parties had "people's" somewhere in their name. Have you looked up the meaning of "people" and how little it had to do with how these parties acted?
The name "pirate" was adopted when the copyright holders started their blanket accusations of everyone who dares to think invasive copyright and reduction of consumer rights is a bad thing must be interested in "pirating" their content. And everyone who refused to buy it and hence reduced their sales must have "pirated" it as well because it's unthinkable that we can exist without their hypecrap. The term "pirate" was thrown at us, the consumer who dared to do what you suggest: Abstain from buying things we do not want, refuse to pay for content we cannot use the way we enjoy it.
The Pirate Parties just picked up the term and ran with it. In this context, a "Pirate Party" is a party that takes this (I don't like the word "battle" in this context, but it has turned into one) battle between content creator and content user into a political agenda. In a quite similar way how the Green parties turned the ecological movement of the 80s into a political platform.
What "Pirates" want is not a free pass to break the law. What they want, and this is an agenda I can and do support, is to return to a copyright law that does what it was supposed to do: Protect the interests of producers AND customers, so both can coexist as supplier and consumer of content.
A boycott first of all requires unity. And that is something you will not be able to achieve, this is why the free market system doesn't work: The demand side is too weak.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Maybe some of the more "radical" PP proponents consider IP-laws a horror, but please try to see the whole party, not just its fringe groups.
Most PP members don't want to throw IP-laws out the window (some of them are actually protecting YOU, the customer. At least they still do, don't count on it after the next change), but they want a reform back to the balance IP-laws were supposed to grant, to balance the interests of producer and customer. Until the advent of IP-laws, inventing and content creating was a tricky business where time was essential. You had to get a head start on your competitor or he'd simply take your research and use it, and in the end nobody would research but simply wait and copy.
IP-laws and copyright are not by themselves a bad thing, but they are out of check. 70 years after a creator's death is simply insane. No other business can enjoy this kind of protection. Could you see a bricklayer's grandson charge rent from you from your own house because his grandfather built it?
The problem isn't so much that an inventor gets the exclusive right to his invention for some time. The problem is that this time is stretched too far. When copyright started and distribution took a lot of time (you had to get your manuscript printed, it had to be distributed...) copyright protection was a few years and you really had to hurry to benefit from it. Today, with instant creation, multiplication and distribution, copyright protection is longer than ever before. THIS is what's out of sync with reality and this is what needs changing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
" I don't see many modern activists with the same attitude. "
Yeah, they all comment anonymous.
I can not post a video to youtube expressing my like or dislike of a few short clips of a moive/song....
I can get hassled by the "owners" of a large metal object in the middle of a public park (the bean in chicago), for taking pictures of it, to share with those that are unable to visit the free park.
Suppose that you have an idea for a new way to produce energy that you worked really hard all your life on. Wouldn't you like to be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor?
Make a working prototype, and patent it. This has nothing to do with copyright at all. Also no patents on ideas, methods, or other non physical goods.
illegally enjoying digital goods is no different than stealing? in both cases, someone is derived from something. When you steal something, the owner is deprived of the item, when you pirate something, the owner is deprived of the value of the pirated item.
But the stream of 1s and 0s does not it's self have value. It can be recreated at any time for marginal cost(you could argue that if I did download it from a server of the artist, that I should be responsible for the bill for the bandwidth used to do that. That would be fair, so here is the $0.002 that I owe for the 2MB song. I would be unable to otherwise aquire the "thing" how did I do any harm? In fact i may end up helping if i like it and share it with many friends, and some of them have the means/will to buy it, but would not have otherwise known about it. There are a great many music artists making a decent living while giving all their songs for free on the internet in high quality.
Now I would not say that there is not a place for copyright, patents, trademarks, "freedom of expression", and whatnot, but there needs to be some balance there. 140 years (unless assigned to a company that lives for 400) is a bit extreme, why should you make money all your life, and for the entire lives of your children just because you thought something. I think lots of things at work everyday (Custom HVAC equipment), but yet the company only gets paid when the gear is sold to the customer. Maybe we should try leasing out or gear with terms like,
"A fee of no less than the value of 1oz of gold on ${DATE} shall be paid for every person hour that this equipment provides service. If this is a process application, the fee shall be the value of .25oz of gold on ${DATE} per hour of service. If this is a datacenter application, the fee shall be the value of 2oz gold on ${DATE}, per server per hour of service. All fees shall be provided at the first of the month, and shall be no less than 60 hours of service per month for 140 years from date of purchase or final comisioning which ever is later, and shall start on date of shipment to authorized agent."
If we tried that we would be laughed out of the market.
You do know why no restaurants sing "happy birthday" don't you? right because it is under copyright and they would need to pay up to sing it.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Leaving the individual and your rather cheap ad hominem at him aside: The Pirate Party is one of the few smaller parties here in Germany with the potential to bring really disruptive change to the political landscape; Not so much through their own share of votes, they do not usually fare all that well in elections, but because they almost single-handedly brought matters formerly at the fringe of public interest - freedom of information and expression in the digital age, a sensible approach to compensating artists, governmental transparency and accountability - to the centre of attention for all parties. And by now they have left the initial image of an anarcho-nerdy kindergarten behind. People above the age of twenty are beginning to recognise them as a serious political movement.
And now, two days prior to a state election (that in and of itself is not really important considering it is "only" about a rather small city-state but that is closely watched as a barometer of public opinion for the next federal elections) police take their whole infrastructure offline under very questionable circumstances. I am biased as I am both German and a Pirate Party supporter, but I do consider such an act newsworthy even for such a diverse audience as slashdot's.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.