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Man Convicted For Helping Thousands Steal Internet Access
angry tapir writes "An Oregon man has been convicted of seven courts of wire fraud for helping thousands of people steal Internet service. Ryan Harris, 26, of Redmond, Oregon, was convicted by a jury in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He faces a prison term of up to 20 years and a fine of up to $250,000 on each of the seven counts."
don't to the crime if you cant do the time
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Courts are an odd unit to measure instances of wire fraud.
If this guy could build a business, complete with websites, forums and so on, it must have gone on for quite a while (6 years it turns out), so it is obvious that:
1) The ISP didn't know enough about their business to realize the giant holes this guy was exploiting.
2) The ISP was incompetent enough to let this guy and his customers steal service (which the ISP's other customers paid for) for a long time.
Any sentencing here should include a heavy fine to the ISP for technical incompetence.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Get your terminology right, please. There's no such thing as "intellectual property", there is a large body of laws and regulations that pertain to patents, trademarks, copyright and other related rights and mostly create various monopolies. "Intellectual property" is a WIPO marketing term for the weak-minded.
No, bandwidth requires infrastructure and maintenance, while "intellectual property" can be copied infinitely for a near-zero sum of money.
There a huge difference. You can indeed steal Internet service - you are not making a copy - you are actually taking something someone else paid for, i.e. theft.
When it comes to 'stealing' intellectual property - you are not taking anything away, nor are you taking something someone else paid for. You are making a copy that detracts nothing from the original. Any loss would come from the loss of a potential sale, but as must file sharing either is done by people who would never pay for the stuff they download (no lost sale) or by people that buys the downloaded material later when it becomes available, there's usually no loss involved and thus no theft.
Understand it now?
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
you are actually taking something someone else paid for, i.e. theft.
Are you sure it wasn't more like a free ride? It's not dissimilar to taking what somebody else invested R&D money to develop.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
My mom said my brain was intellectual Property, so what are you saying?!?
Writing tools to configure cable modems is what he got convicted for. He just wrote some tools so you could BOOTP your cable modem with a "valid" MAC and uncapped access speed. The cable companies knew they were putting the security in the dynamically configured end user device. They didn't fix the security flaw after it was publicly known. All the guy did was write an exploit for a publicly known bug, others (end users) were the ones that abused it.
Oh well, at least now there is jurisprudence to put gun manufacturers into jail. After all, they make the tools that others use to commit crimes, which is what this guy is going to do hard time for.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Tcniso uncapper to remove bandwidth restrictions http://www.cable-modem.net/dcforum/DCForumID5/205.html lot of interesting software still available by googling tcniso and on the torrents... stuff is really interesting how he wrote it
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Generally the assumption is that they'll never be caught and thus never have to pay. If they knew for sure that it was going to cost many years out of their life I believe they might choose otherwise. It's some of that "It can't happen to me" kind of thinking that results in so many bad ends.
Are you really as retarded as you are making yourself out to be, or do you actually not understand something this basic?
By using an ISP's connection without paying for it, you aren't piggybacking on another person's packets, you're using up the limited* space in the pipe. By not paying, and essentially being an unknown factor to the business providing the pipe, you are lowering the quality of service for everyone else. If not through using bandwidth that wasn't accounted for, it's by delaying their packets with your own, during an especially congested time.
* Regardless of how big the pipes are, the ISPs do need to calculate just how much capacity they have for the amount of people they are serving. Adding a few hundred extra people without accounting for them can be a big difference for their neighbours. Add thousands of unaccounted users, and you can have a massive congestion problem that will be extremely hard to track down, and costly to locate and fix.
probably that your brain contradicts his line of thinking
You are ok with a fine on you if your house gets broken in to and it is found you didn't do a good job securing it. After all, if we fining people for not doing security properly, then it needs to apply to physical security too, and to individuals too. So if you are like most people and have a cheap lock that is vulnerable to bumping and picking, single pane windows with no security screen or coating, no security locks on your windows, no alarm system, and so on then if you get broken in to, you get fined too.
After all, it is something you can fix. You can get high security locks from someone like Medeco or Assa that can't be bumped, and key controlled, hard to pick etc. You can have your windows replaced with coated glass and screens that are very difficult to break through. You can buy friction security locks for your windows that you take on and off when you want to open them and so on.
You probably don't choose to. Few people do. It costs more and is inconvenient. However it does make it much easier for someone to break in to your house.
Now if you aren't ok with that, then I have to ask why it is ok to fine the ISP. Could have the had better security? Most certainly. However they chose not to and that doesn't make what was done to them right. Same shit with you. You can choose to have better security. Just because you don't, doesn't make it right for someone to break in.
With all the effort and work that went into this thing, he could have built a legitimate business offering legal goods and services.
OTOH, the bits that you copy from me don't disappear from my hard disk by your copying, for information is being a virtual world entity.
Any loss would come from the loss of a potential sale, but as most [sic] file sharing either is done by people who would never pay for the stuff they download (no lost sale) or by people that buys the downloaded material later when it becomes available, there's usually no loss involved and thus no theft.
I'd actually argue that most filesharing is done by people who wouldn't pay for it and there's still a loss involved.
For example, let's imagine a thought experiment: if a company is selling 100,000 copies of some digital media product and then piracy comes along and now 1 million people are pirating it and only 50,000 copies are being sold. We could say that piracy halved the sales - causing a "loss" of 50,000 sales. However, since there are 1 million people pirating it, we could calculate that 95% of them (950,000/1,000,000) wouldn't have bought it. The fact that most of them wouldn't have bought it doesn't change the fact that it caused the sales to be cut in half. Heck, if piracy became the norm, and let's assume that all the sales disappeared (i.e. a loss of 100,000 sales) then we could still truthfully say that "90% of them wouldn't have bought it". My point being: even if you can truthfully say that most of them wouldn't have bought it doesn't mean that it doesn't produce lost sales.
(And just to head-off the "potential sales aren't real they're purely fictional" argument that someone might want to throw my way - if anyone believes that, then they should argue that copyright should never have existed in the first place and corporations should've always been allowed to print all the books they want and sell all the software they want and sell all the movies they can - because it only means a "potential" loss for the creators and corporations should be allowed to pocket all the money for themselves.)
No, it's not.
What did the customer pay for that these people were stealing? Do terrestrial/cable ISPs still charge per-hour or per-GB for bandwidth?
Last I checked every provider in my area was offering (truly) unlimited high-speed access for a flat rate, and they couldn't tell worth a damn if someone else was using my connection. They certainly didn't charge me more (for example) when my friends would stop by and use my WiFi.
This is no more stealing than using Coffee Shop WiFi, the only difference is how the connection was made.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Interesting how when it is internet service theft, nobody seems to mind the arrests but when it is intellectual property everyone bawws the fuck out about it.
What's interesting is despite how clearly the general view on piracy has been made around here for YEARS, there's always some dipshit who comes along and tries to raise some artificial hypocrisy and not only demonstrates that he doesn't understand what people have been saying, but that he doesn't understand the topic at hand either.
You would have gotten more mileage out of mentioning the Pringles can articles this site covered. (Do your homework, though, that's still an uphill battle.)
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Are you really as retarded as you are making yourself out to be, or do you actually not understand something this basic?
By using research without paying for it, you aren't piggybacking on another person's discoveries, you're using up the limited* funding in the field. By not paying, and essentially being an unknown factor to the business providing the R&D investment, you are lowering the return on investment for every other researcher. If not through reducing sales of a final product, it's by crowding their publishable papers out with your own, in a given issue of a journal.
* Regardless of how big the wallets are, the investors do need to calculate just how much return they will see from the research projects they are funding. Adding a few hundred extra competitors to a market without accounting for them can be a big difference for the feasibility projection of a project. Add thousands of unaccounted clones & derivatives, and you can have a massive marketability problem that will be extremely hard to track down, and costly to locate and fix.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Obvious troll, but I'll bite: the bits that you receive through my connection detract from the bits that I can receive through my connection for bandwidth is a physical world entity.
OTOH, the bits that you copy from me don't disappear from my hard disk by your copying, for information is being a virtual world entity.
I'm not trolling, nor the author of the grandparent post, nor interested enough to RTFA. But I kindof agree with your line of reasoning, BUT... You sound like the kind of logical ethicist who might be interested in this followup thought-
Suppose the hacker in question was _so good_, that they managed to write their tools and enabling hacks, such that the only bandwidth 'stolen', was known, with scientific and engineering accuracy, to have gone completely unused. Now that's a very, very big IF. But from skimming these comments, it does sound like this guy may have known the technical nature of the network even better than those who owned and operated it. In that hypothetical, his infraction seems about as ethically dubious as the seemingly less (by your expression) malicious copyright violation of getting a free copy of that tv episode you paid itunes for.
Lots of shades of gray, and very very big pictures to consider... I consider it best to reserve judgement, given I'm positive I don't know all the relevant facts, and it does seem incredibly unlikely to have seriously harmed anyone. (but who knows, its just as easy to construct a hypothetical where the interference interrupted 911 emergency services, but if so, the details of such things are for a jury of ones peers to decide).
I mean -- 20 years for a simple financial fraud thing. In other countries, murder is less.
No wonder you have a considerable fraction of your population in jail.
Scary.
sell the expertise then, not the product.
Any loss would come from the loss of a potential sale, but as most file sharing either is done by people who would never pay for the stuff they download (no lost sale)....
The car thief doesn't get let off the hook because he would never would have paid for the cars he stole.
Tell me why again why the geek with a PC and a broadband connection is entitled to freely download movies and games that others must rent from the Red Box or go without.
"File sharing" implies that you are both uploading and downloading files.
The Kazaa client made it explicit by displaying progress bars for both upload and download traffic. There was not so much as fig leaf to disguise that you were engaged in an unlicensed wholesale redistribution.
the guy did offer software to modify the cable modem firmware to get uncapped connections or clone the mac addr of some legitimate modem to access the nework (yes cable modems are authenticated with mac addr) . he didn't do it himself.
My point being: even if you can truthfully say that most of them wouldn't have bought it doesn't mean that it doesn't produce lost sales.
The reverse also holds, of course: It doesn't mean that it does produce lost sales, either.
Fact: People spend more money on entertainment in various forms than ever. A trend which continues year after year.
Fact: The entertainment budget for people in general is not unlimited.
Conclusion: All the money that could be spent on entertainment is spent on entertainment.
Consequence: No amount of increasingly harsh laws, DRM or other nonsense will have any positive effect on entertainment sales.
Reasonable reaction: Stop inventing silly law after silly law, the only effect of which is to lessen the freedoms of everyone for no positive reason.
Actual reaction: Continue the endless stream of freedom-restricting nonsense, since the actual purpose is control which is something entirely different.
Infinitely copied, yes. Infinitely produced, no; that also requires infrastructure and people's time.
Blank until
You haven't accounted for the pirates who then turn into customers, either.
Or pirates that tell their friends about how great of a program it is, and those friends purchase the program legitimately.
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No, let's operate off of the assumption that piracy never occurred. Who is to say your program will have as many paying customers? Don't think you can simply say, "HEY LOOK X PAID, BUT Y DIDNT, THEREFORE WE LOST PROFITS!" Which is mathematically wrong. It should be represented as:
x = customers who are customers regardless of piracy
n = customers who are customers because of piracy
p = pirates that who are not customers, but would otherwise be customers
r = pirates who are not customers, but would not otherwise be customers
If you're going to claim damages, please provide proof that x > p, not that x + n > p.
What about the right of the copyright holder to be forgotten ?
...
Endless copies of a piece of work that you hate and have chosen to stop distributing do detract from your right to not sell something that you own
This is getting off topic, apologies.
The. Car. Is. Not. Gone. If you have the technology to copy my car, leaving the original intact so I can still use it, feel absolutely free to do so.
How come Kevin Mitnick gets helicopter fucking triangulation but this guy gets a slap on the wrist?
So using a finite resource affects the physical world, but I wrote about things that apparently don't affect the physical world... so am I to understand then that R&D funding is an infinite resource? Please tell me where this endless fountain of funding is, so I can pass it on to my long-shot medical researcher friends.
By copying IP without restraint, something is physically taken away from the people who paid for it - they are no longer able to sell the product they paid for, because the sales market is drastically reduced.
Sure, it's comforting to think of information as being completely free and endless, and we'd all love to live in a world where art and science are pursued for their own sake - but that hasn't happened in the past 3000 years, and it's not going to happen anytime soon, either. There is a cost to producing the information that people want so dearly, and whoever foots the bill is going to expect some kind of return on their investment - be it fame, fortune, or simply the satisfaction of knowing their creation is widely used. Unfortunately, only the former two are easily turned into living expenses, and only the last inherently follows freely-duplicated IP.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
By using research without paying for it, you aren't piggybacking on another person's discoveries, you're using up the limited* funding in the field.
On the contrary, you are actually not using up the funding in the field. You would be, though, if you had to replicate research already done once and again. That's why researchers consider publishing your research a good thing: they get information quite more cheaply than if they had to research everything on their own and they may also get validation/refutation of their own research.
..you are lowering the return on investment for every other researcher.
Only, perhaps, if you don't share back. But if you don't share back you will get sidelined.
...investors do need to calculate just how much return they will see from the research projects they are funding.
Weren't we talking about ROI for other _researchers_? Investors putting money into research and looking at ROI means they don't care about research but its products... and will probably keep research results secret anyway.
Do you know how much the artist paid for the copies you take? They have donated both their time and their money into creating it. It's not like they come to them for free, it's just that most of the cost is incurred very early in the creation process.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I personally am of the opinion that it doesn't matter whether they were never going to become a customer regardless, they are "enjoying" the product nonetheless.
And along those lines, I don't like the Chicago Cubs, so maybe we can all just pretend they don't exist. Problem solved!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
The thing that people have yet to touch on in this thread is that the bandwidth used does not just affect the end consumer that is having their connection increased or hijacked - and I'm not talking about the effect on other users on the network.
Let's talk peering arrangements. No ISP has access to the entire Internet, so they peer with other networks and backbones to increase their reach - and those agreements are routinely based on an amount of data transferred per period. Go over that agreed amount and the ISP has to pay. Routinely go over that agreed amount and they have to renegotiate the agreement. Routinely stay under the amount and the ISP can renegotiate a less costly agreement.
So yes, there is a real effect here, it's just some way downstream from you.
That sounds fair, but only in principle.
Let's say you and I both run a web business out of our homes. You've got your website running on your local Apache copy, I've got mine. On that website, you're selling product X, and I'm selling product X as well.
As part of your at-home business, you pay your ISP for a 2GB/month upload cap, say, $100. You only ever use a maximum of 1GB, however. The ISP's next lower tier is 500MB/month, so you can't downgrade. So 1GB is left over.
I take that 1GB from you. You're not using it anyway, so no harm no foul, right? Except that I'm not paying that $100. I'm not even paying 'my share' of $50.
As a result, I price the items in my store lower than yours - as I don't have that additional expense, or I price them the same and simple take in a higher profit. Suddenly, ham/foul.
Now, this is a contrived example, and when you use other analogies (Food banks getting food for free, letting others eat for free while you had to pay top dollar for that same food. The kid next door using a pirated copy of Photoshop and doing their commercial web design while you paid for your legitimate copy.) the opinion of whether harm/foul comes into play is going to differ wildly even within the same person's mind.
But the point is that it's not a third party's decision whether it's okay or not to take any unused good without permission. In the example, you paid for the right to not use that 1GB. Is it a shame to let it go to waste? Perhaps. But that's your decision - you could give somebody permission to use it, for free or otherwise, but still your decision.
Grammar nit-pick - you use "[sic]" when correctly quoting a mistake in the original, not when correcting one when quoting.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Suppose the hacker in question was _so good_, that they managed to write their tools and enabling hacks, such that the only bandwidth 'stolen', was known, with scientific and engineering accuracy, to have gone completely unused. Now that's a very, very big IF. But from skimming these comments, it does sound like this guy may have known the technical nature of the network even better than those who owned and operated it. In that hypothetical, his infraction seems about as ethically dubious as the seemingly less (by your expression) malicious copyright violation of getting a free copy of that tv episode you paid itunes for.
_If_ the bandwidth was really unused I certainly would have no problem with his using it. But it would seem the software this guy's company developed was designed to clone other user access information, which would most certainly cause connection problems, as that usually happens when having repeated MACs or IPs in the same network.
Not directly related, but it seems the ISPs could have worked in some better kind of security in their authentication protocols, which would have probably defeated any easy attempt to break it.
We should never outlaw creating tools like lockpicks, knives, cable modem sniffers, or CPUs able to run unsigned code. We should only outlaw specific usages of said tool.
A priori, there is nothing wrong with explaining how such tools work either, but aiding customers with the specifics of their particular cable provider could eventually cross the line into conspiracy to commit wire fraud, just like helping a robber a house's door would become conspiracy to commit robbery.
I therefore hope they convicted him on specific instances of technical support he provided which unambiguously made him a conspirator in specific customer's wire fraud. And I hope he wins back his freedom on appeal if they convicted him on any other grounds.
In fact, we should discuss the physical plans for equipment and software which he sold here because I'm sure we're curious what exactly he sold. Anyone got links to DIY kits? We should add this stuff to thepiratebay.se's physibles section : http://thepiratebay.se/blog/203
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Those that walked in to various loans, eyes wide shut? Or those who took loans they couldn't afford because they figured they'd just flip the house and make money?
The idea that individuals were completely blameless in the financial crisis is silly. Sure there were some people who were suckered in. They were told one thing and given another. For them I have some sympathy (though really, there's a standard loan terms sheet that comes with every loan, it isn't hard to read). However there were plenty that got greedy and just ignored all good sense.
An example would be my cousin, call him B. He owned a house that he'd had for quite some time, around 8-10 years on a 30 year fixed mortgage he could afford. then things went crazy and he decided he's take all his equity out in a refinance so that he could buy a bunch of new toys like a truck, take an expensive vacation, shit like that. His loan amount went way up because he was taking out more than the original loan had been for since his house was allegedly worth more. He couldn't afford a fixed loan at that rate so he got a cut rate ARM. Then prices crashed, the rate went up, and he lost his house. Not only should have he known better, my dad (among others) told him this was a stupid idea.
Then there's me, I have a house that I had since before things went crazy, on a 30 year fixed mortgage that I can afford. It supposedly doubled in value during the craziness. I could have taken a ton of money out. I didn't, because I knew that was a bad idea. I still have my house, and I can still afford my loan.
We were both in a similar situation, he chose one option, I chose another. Nobody held a gun to anyone's head and forced the issue.
The crisis was caused by failures and greed at so many levels. The government, the bond rating companies, the investors, the banks, the loan officers, and yes the individuals. You can't just act like a certain group were the evil ones who caused everything. There is a lot of blame to go around.
Now if you just want to start locking everyone up, I guess that's a valid position, but you might want to ask how well that's work in, say, the drug war.
I can't see why I should care about some young animals, even if they are in the Chicago zoo. But what do they have to do with the fiction of "intellectual property"?
You're missing the point. To allow people to pirate because a small portion of them could potentially purchase down the road may be great for marketing, but is poor for revenue.
I am just unable to understand the intellectual lethargy that I find on Slashdot when it comes to piracy. You may disagree with how someone feels about piracy, but if it is their content, it is their prerogative.
Can we please stop with the shitty argument that one that has illegally downloaded something is not a lost sale? it is an insult to our minds. Someone who has downloaded and used something is a stolen sale, because that person is using something he/she should have paid for.
Shouldn't Oregon man be charged in federal court in Oregon instead of Massachusetts? WTF happened to our country? Federal failure.
Yes, unlimited for that person who signed up, on his plan, with a very specific speed that will essentially cap his total usage for a given period of time.
If you let thousands of people access service with a parallel cut of the speed, not just sharing the total speed of the person they're impersonating, then you're not just piggybacking another person's service, you're using speed and service that's reserved for other paying customers, present and future.
The infrastructure is limited and capacity depends on how many customers are accounted for. If thousands of people are using the service without being accounted for, that destroys the service for everyone who did pay.
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I am not addressing this. I am addressing the claim that they have suffered damages. Which the onus is on them to prove. I merely laid out an error in common reasoning about how they calculate damages.
You haven't accounted for the pirates who then turn into customers, either.
Or pirates that tell their friends about how great of a program it is, and those friends purchase the program legitimately.
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No, let's operate off of the assumption that piracy never occurred. Who is to say your program will have as many paying customers? Don't think you can simply say, "HEY LOOK X PAID, BUT Y DIDNT, THEREFORE WE LOST PROFITS!" Which is mathematically wrong. It should be represented as:
x = customers who are customers regardless of piracy n = customers who are customers because of piracy p = pirates that who are not customers, but would otherwise be customers r = pirates who are not customers, but would not otherwise be customers
If you're going to claim damages, please provide proof that x > p, not that x + n > p.
Don't you mean p > n? If there are more pirates would otherwise be customers than the number of new customers gained through pirate word of mouth, then damages have occurred. X and R and completely irrelevant to this calculation.
I am quite willing to see Timothy Geitner go to jail for his allowing all the shenanigans to go on in the banking industry when he had direct oversight http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/tim-geithners-amnesia/ (use it while you can, the Koch brothers are trying to take it over)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It's neither a contradiction nor self-affirming.
Where did he keep all those tubes?
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
The *ability* to be copied is the mark of nothing. It's a smoke screen for those who want to do so and break an author's copyright.
"you are not taking anything away"
Incorrect. You are removing the right of distributorship. The rest of your post isn't relevant to the crime.
Is it all right with you if I get you to install a trojan or something and make a copy of your PERSONAL data, then?
According to you, no harm is done because it's only a copy, so you should be ok with that.
Also based on your theory, it's ok for me or an advertising company to collect whatever data they want, because they're actually just creating a COPY of your surfing requests. So there's no harm, no foul, right?
I will never understand freetards.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
With all the talent this guy has, let's throw him in prison for 20 years (the sentence he faces for each count). Oh right, he is a super-dangerous hacker who defeated cable modem security (oh what a terrible crime!), so clearly he cannot walk the streets and endanger the general public.
The punishments for hacking are almost always out of proportion to the crime itself.
Palm trees and 8
"Unlimited" in the aggregate, limited in the moment of reality. That you don't understand this explains your confusion.
I am just unable to understand the intellectual lethargy that I find on Slashdot when it comes to piracy. You may disagree with how someone feels about piracy, but if it is their content, it is their prerogative. [Emphasis mine]
I think that is the disagreement right there: The idea that your can own content is a form of censorship* which a portion of the /. readership does not find reasonable (at least under the current terms). You do not share that view. I hope that explains difference.
*Censorship can be defined as prohibiting certain expressions, which is exactly what IP does. Some IP owners might allow you to express yourself in that way if you pay them, some will not. It is censorship regardless.
When people say that a copy pirated is not a lost sale, they are defining "lost sale" as "a sale that WOULD have been made, except for the pirating". You are using the definition: "a sale that SHOULD have been, except for the pirating".
A nice, bland statement that really doesn't apply to much. What would you type on if all computer companies sold their 'expertise' and not their products ... or eat, or live in?
And frankly, expertise, in and of itself, is worthless. You have to have something to apply it towards, and that always ends up being material... product.
That's exactly what I am saying, that my definition makes a lot more sense: when you use a product that you should have paid for, and you didn't, it's a lost sale.
The community has made a bogus definition in order to support its pirating habits. It's a simple as that.
Chicago Cubs is the biggest joke in baseball.
New Economic Perspectives
prison term of up to 20 years and a fine of up to US$250,000
...the real criminals in the banking and mortgage industry got away scoff free even after they caused damages in the trillions. Is the law blind?
I actually meant to say that the profits from x + p > x + n.
This is what I get for not sleeping. I can math, really. Promise.
That's not always true. I love a good show, and I do often borrow shows to watch. I do want to become a customer - and my very extensive DVD collection backs that statement up. However, when products aren't available here (such as Dollhouse even though it came out three years ago!) I will find other means of watching them. When it comes out, I will happily go out and buy it. Why? You ask?
Because as someone who enjoys watching good entertainment, the only way that I can, as a consumer, encourage the folks that makes what I call good entertainment keep making good entertainment is to let them profit from it.
I am not interested in reality TV. I am not interested in watching soaps or cooking shows. I am however interested in watching a show with a good storyline, good characters and see them develop over time and improve as people - albeit fake TV show people. If I find a product made by media companies that I enjoy, I speak with the only voice that they hear. My money, and I do it gladly. If by spending a few dollars on a TV series I can encourage more of that show, or type of show to be made, then I do it gladly - for there is benefit to me.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
And you're making a bogus definition in order to support the abuse that the content suppliers heap upon their actual paying customers. It's as simple as that.
See? We can pull mindless proclamations out of our asses, too.
I'm tired of "stealing" getting applied to every instance of "underhandedly doing something you weren't supposed to".
So, they are not really a baseball team, but are trying to convince us they are one? Well, then it is an apt comparison to the situation with "intellectual property" then, it isn't real too, but its fans are trying hard to convince everybody else otherwise.
Which really has nothing to do with copyright infringement since copyright infringers have nothing to do with the production.
I don't think most people get that kind of a sentence for murder.
I saw one case on this "I Survived" show they have on Biography channel: a woman shot her husband six times in the chest, and she was sentenced to six days for aggravated assault. Six days for unloading a gun into somebody's chest, 20 years for stealing internet; what a wonderful justice system we have.
Getting a free ride on the bus and not paying for it is actually an apt analogy.
Only if you take someone's else's seat.
By not paying, and essentially being an unknown factor to the business providing the R&D investment, you are lowering the return on investment for every other researcher.
You're not the one taking their money. They use it up all on their own.
We could say that piracy halved the sales
You could, but it would be a mere assumption.
And the only "loss" is a potential one.
if anyone believes that, then they should argue that copyright should never have existed in the first place and corporations should've always been allowed to print all the books they want and sell all the software they want and sell all the movies they can - because it only means a "potential" loss for the creators and corporations should be allowed to pocket all the money for themselves
Yes. I want copyright gone completely.
1) Whether they should have paid for it or not is subjective.
2) It's also irrelevant. It's only a lost sale if they would have bought it otherwise (pretty hard to prove).
The community has made a bogus definition in order to support its pirating habits. It's a simple as that.
Then how do you say that you lost the potential for a customer to buy something from you because they didn't like your company's practices? "Should" never come into a situation such as that (at least not for me).
If they knew for sure that it was going to cost many years out of their life I believe they might choose otherwise.
Certainly, but it is not always irrational for a person to be sure that they will get caught yet still commit the crime in some cases.
The people that calculate risk vs reward with regards to crimes are far worse for "society" than the people that just assume that they wont get caught. To this end it is precisely those that profit from crime in a business-like manner that should get the harshest sentences.
Remember that the individual (or corporation!) is in control. They can choose to only commit crimes when they have a positive expectation (using their own metrics of value) over many trials. The conundrum is that it is neither good nor evil to do so. Its simply rational.
"His name was James Damore."
So as a consumer already paying for cable (because I have an outlet to connect to, unless I've gone to heroic effort to run my own in from the street,) I choose to pay money to one guy's company to get internet access for free instead of paying an incremental increase in service fee for internet access that's "legitimate?" Seems like a fair amount of work and money to "steal" something.
I'm all for sticking it to the man, especially cable companies, but this seems to make not a whole lot of sense.
All property is intellectual, "property" is the deep rooted concept of ownership found in such diverse creatures as humans and hermit crabs, territorial behaviour is another example. It's meaningless without the "cooperation" of the majority of individuals, which is where we seem to be in the "information age".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Exactly. Copyright do not contribute to recouping the costs of production by paying, but still benefit from the result. How is this different from ripping off an ISP?
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That works so well that all the big software companies like Apple and Microsoft are doing it ... NOT!
All those expertise-sellers, and we're still waiting for the year of the linux desktop, because upgrades still break things on a regular basis (which is why so many of us distro-hop - in my case from slackware to redhat to mandrake back to redhat to suse to opensuse and now fedora 16).
Most people don't want to buy expertise - they want something that "just works". For the average consumer, if it needs support, it's broken ... and they're right.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
It's not intellectual lethargy - it's a hypocritical unwillingness to admit that what they are doing is unethical.
That's why they'll bend over backward to make the argument that it isn't stealing ("oh noes - it's just teh copyright infringement - they still have their original bits").
But watch those same ones whine if you take code licensed under the gpl and say "I'm going to modify it and sell a proprietary closed fork - I'm not stealing your work - you still have your original code". All of a sudden, licenses mean something.
And this despite the fact that RMS actively encourages people to pirate closed-source applications because anyone who writes closed software somehow deserves it for their "anti-social" behaviour.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Sigh. Copyright infringers...that's what I get for watching stuff on YouTube while posting.
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Trespassing.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Okay. In one example, someone is paying for their own internet connection. No harm done by using the internet connection.
In the other example, they're not paying for the internet connection. People say they're "stealing" bandwidth. Not only are they not helping recoup the costs of production, they're (according to some) actually harming the person.
Copyright infringers have no affiliation with the artists whatsoever. They aren't using their resources in any way. The copyright infringers generally use their own internet connections to download the material.
If it's been 30 years then I should be able to violate the author as much as I want. That's part of the bargain.
Genuine natural rights don't expire like that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Lars? Is that you? If you really think that way then give up all of your money and possessions now.
They only exist because of "piracy".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> That's why they'll bend over backward to make the argument that it isn't stealing
No bending is required. It's copying.
If anyone is suffering from "intellectual lethargy" then it is you and everyone else like you that can't make a good ethical argument without using a weak transparent lie as a crutch.
Your ranting only undermines what you claim to shill for.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> What about the right of the copyright holder to be forgotten ?
He has no such right. Never had. Any suggestions to the contrary are bad attempts at reconning Copyright.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Now, let's suppose they're selling 100,000. Piracy comes along, 1 million pirating, and they're selling 200,000. We could say that piracy doubled the sales, causing a "gain" of 100,000 sales. This is fun! Complete and utter bullshit, but fun!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
They aren't using their resources in any way.
Wrong, they're using the product of the artists investments in time, labour and necessary equipment, just like an internet connection is a product of an ISP's investment in time, labour and necessary equipment. Trying to separate the product from the investment is intellectually dishonest because in either case the former can't exist without the latter.
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Wrong, they're using the product of the artists investments in time, labour and necessary equipment
...Which I believe doesn't affect them in any way because the artist has already used their time and money to develop the product. They did that of their own volition, I might add. Even if it's copied a million times after that, the artist wouldn't lose anything except perhaps potential sales.
None of the artist's resources are being used by the copyright infringers. The artist already lost the resources making the product (nothing to do with the copyright infringer), so the copyright infringer can't use those again.
Trying to separate the product from the investment is intellectually dishonest
What does that even mean? I disagree with you, therefore I'm intellectually dishonest? A seemingly common theme among people who disagree with one another: the opposition is almost always "intellectually dishonest." Funny, isn't it?
The investment cannot be lost again since it has already been lost. Certainly, the copyright infringers aren't helping the artist out, and perhaps they should according to some people, but comparing this situation to copyright infringement is, I believe, an invalid comparison.
because in either case the former can't exist without the latter.
And?
No, your weak claim that taking something without the owners' permission isn't stealing is the lie.
Example from the non-virtual world - you take someone's car without their permission and return it a few hours later. They still have their car, but you're still a thief.
Another example - you photograph the questions for an upcoming test so you can cheat. You use this to get ahead of someone who doesn't cheat, so you get a scholarship they would have won. Not only have you stolen the questions, you've also stolen the scholarship.
I dump a load of garbage in your parking space - you still have your parking space ... but in real terms, I've stolen the use of your parking space from you. Now, you get fined by the city for having a bunch of garbage in your parking spot. You also have to pay to have it cleaned up. So, I've stolen money from you as well, and transferred it to me (I own the company that you pay to do the clean-up, and I'm also an elected official at CrookesVille). But - you still have your original parking spot, so I didn't "really" steal anything from you, right? And all those parking tickets you had to pay because your spot was full of garbage? They don't count either, right?
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
My point is this: If someone doesn't give me all of their money for no reason (a loss of potential gain), I don't treat that as the same kind of situation as when someone steals my money from me. In one situation, I merely lost the potential to gain something (certainly, it would be nice if I could've gained, but I don't think I really lost anything here, nor do I feel that I did), while in the other, I actually lost something I already had. Call me "intellectually dishonest" all you please; you're probably not going to get me to change my mind if you still don't agree with me.
I'd actually answer all your points, but I rarely feel any benefit is gained from engaging an Anonymous Coward in actual discussion.
Especially one that just insults me at the end of their post.
So, are you claiming that it is not illegal for you to use something you have not paid for, when you should have?
Ah, the troubles of form.
Weren't we talking about ROI for other _researchers_?
I wasn't. I thought we were talking about "taking what somebody else invested R&D money to develop." I was talking about the ROI for people who fund the research. Furthermore, I'm also using a fairly broad definition of the term "research", to include not just academic investigations, but also more industrial R&D like literature surveys, benchmarking, comparison analysis, testing, and so forth. I'm also trying to argue in such a way as to apply my argument to artistic creations (which I find very close to academic research in methodology and funding sources).
Academic research is far less restricted by IP rules than industry, and I think this is a good thing. I also think that certain IP regulations are too strict (copyright length), while others are too lax (artists giving all ownership to a label via a contract). I'm one of those folks who thinks that we should be able to find a set of laws that fits the current IP situation just right.
Unfortunately, the honor system that works so well in academic research doesn't seem to scale very well to the rest of the world. In academics, there are few enough researchers in any particular field that any copied work will be noticed, and a plagiarizer will be shunned. That provides an economic stimulus to produce original work, and to stay far away from derivative work unless it's clearly noted. Outside academics, the chance of two unrelated researchers working on similar projects is far higher, to the point where plagiarism can be easily and successfully passed off as coincidence.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
FWIW, Asgard is the "gard" of the "Æsir" (singular "As"). "Gard" is the root from which we get the modern English words garden and yard. In Norse, it apparently meant something similar, but with extended meanings of world or realm. More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asgard.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I imagine you're also lumping Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) loans into the culpability for the crisis. This is a thirty-year old law. You may want to look into that; CRA-approved mortgages were less likely to be subprime and less likely to be resold.
Also, Fannie and Freddie have rules that stipulate they would cover only 80% of a mortgage. Where did the other 20% come from? Ask Angelo Mozilo; Countrywide would just give you a second mortgage to cover the other 20%. Ta-da, 0% down payment home mortgages.
Fannie and Freddie also would not take Jumbo loans. So those McMansions could not be financed that by them.
As far as "liar loans"(or NINJA loans), the fault lies 100% with the broker. While consumers are morally obligated to be honest, it's supposed to be the broker's responsibility to keep liars from getting money they can't pay back. Instead we had brokers facilitating fraud.
The biggest cause of the problem was the large secondary market for mortgages. It's all basic Supply and Demand. If there had been no market for selling shitty mortgages, the brokerage firms would never have been able to get rid of the bad mortgages and they would have crushed under the weight of their own defaulted loans (as they did when the big banks finally stopped buying their trash). But back then Wall Street was more than willing to buy up this crap, so the fly-by-nights had a willing buyer for their doomed-to-fail mortgages.
And make no mistake; Fannie and Freddie were not big players in subprime loans until Countrywide said what amounted to "if you don't buy these loans, Wall Street will, and you will lose all your market share". Fannie and Freddie didn't really get into subprime loans until about 2005. And in 2010, their loans had a foreclosure rate 30% lower than the national average.
Oh, and let's not forget the SEC decision in 2004 that exempted the banks from the capital reserve requirements. Without this ruling, they wouldn't have been able to lever up their balance sheet as highly as they did.
And all the deregulation and mega-mergers that made banks too big to fail, and allowed a shadow banking system to grow in the derivatives market which then began to exceed the size of the real banking system. And the Credit Ratings Agencies which were complicit in labeling toxic CDOs which were designed to fail as AAA-worthy.
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we wouldn't even know about the ~$14 trillion the Fed loaned to the banks at ~0%
The Fed never loaned $14 trillion to the banks. What they did is make guarantees that the money would be there if the banks needed it. The Fed actually only loaned about $2 trillion to banks at the peak of the crisis.
http://timiacono.com/index.php/2011/12/07/when-guarantees-are-not-loans/
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If it's been 30 years[...]
Fifteen is the maximum number of years that I would agree to should copyright exist at all.
Countrywide went from an utterly bit player in the mortgage market in 94 prior to the CRA revisions to the largest holder of subprime mortgage loans by 2006. This was with direct collaboration from Fannie and Freddie. You think this happened through magic perhaps?
I'd love to see how you came to that conclusion.
It wasn't FREE internet, as people had to PAY him to get it (as he supposedly made millions).
As I see it this is more of a situation of a business that didn't pay for the lines it was reselling.
Anyway I am sure his argument will be "I have done nothing physically wrong myself, I only provided the information to do so", you want to prosecute someone go after all my customers, they are the ones that are doing the actual stealing.
I am sure they can get him on something like "facilitation", but that is a pretty slippery slope.
All he did was tell people how to modify cable modems to take advantage of security (LAZY) loopholes that large ISP's failed to do anything about.
Personally I would say what he did is ethically questionable, but illegal? I am not sure of that. Is it illegal to subvert a network for free internet access? Probably. Is it illegal to simply tell someone how to do it?
This reminds me of the time *I* got suspended from school for showing a friend how to encrypt a floppy disk, and then he went and accidentally crashed the whole computer lab network by encrypting whole computers. I also had to help wipe and re-install all the machines after school. I did nothing wrong, yet got punished for it, simply by sharing information, never seemed right to me. In this case, the "intent" isn't quite the same, as clearly the "intent" was to subvert and to make money by others doing so. Even still I have my doubts.
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/timeserv/annual/section2.html
The average time spent behind bars for someone who commits a violent crime in Florida is about 7.1 years.
Murder used to mean an average sentence of about 10 years. Lately it's an average sentence of about 20 years.
Sex crimes are around 6 years. This includes lewd acts on a child.
Armed Robbery is around 10 years.
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/violent_crime/index.html
Violent crime is declining, even during a recession.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p08.pdf
About 50% of state prisoners in 2006 were incarcerated for non-violent crimes.
About 90% of federal prisoners in 2008 were incarcerated for non-violent crimes.
America is very much a non-violent place. If you don't believe me, go live in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Sudan or Israel or Syria or Libya or Iraq or Burma.
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No, the legality of it never entered into it. Poor attempt at a strawman.
I'm claiming you're going to have to do much better than you did to make a case for a 'lost sale' in every single case, as you attempted to do.
In fact I believe I said "he crisis was caused by failures and greed at so many levels. The government, the bond rating companies, the investors, the banks, the loan officers, and yes the individuals."
I do not spare the loan officers from blame, nor the banks. No do I spare the government, who should have been regulating all this shit. There is lots of blame to go around.
However I don't spare the individuals either. I don't buy in to this narrative of how people who participated were poor defenseless victims who couldn't do anything. Bullshit. A great many share in part of the blame. They let greed cloud their judgement, they did things they should have known better about.
You are a good example of why I hold that position: Even when presented with a bad option you noticed it was a bad option and didn't go with it. Why? Well because the person ultimately responsible for your finances is you and you wanted to make a good decision regarding them.
Daniel Suarez writes about this in his excellent novels Daemon and Freedom. Here's a video by him along those lines http://fora.tv/2008/08/08/Daniel_Suarez_Daemon_Bot-Mediated_Reality
To be fair, usually such short sentences are reserved for cases where the 'victim' was a long time abuser who finally went a bit too far.Nevertheless, 20 years for each count of 'cable theft' is excessive.
If the CEOs of the crooked banks got even 1 day per $1000 worth of fraud they'd die in prison.
So, what you are saying is that it is OK for me to steal from you as long as I buy something eventually, right?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Yeah, because fiction is always a great representation of reality~
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Join the U.S. military go to another country kill many many civilians and maybe get a medal.
Your ignorance of military operations is staggering. Let me guess, every single civilian killed in Iraq was slaughtered by the U.S. military, right?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Is that what I said?
Why are there more U.S. Soldiers dying from suicide than have been killed in Iraq?
Why does not the military train its soldiers how to heal from the damage war does psychologically?
As to the topic considering someone is facing potentially life in prison for providing internet access to others vs. insane charges for texting over ...well.... http://consumerist.com/2008/12/nyt-text-messaging-virtually-no-cost-to-carriers.html
I really don't think the punishment fits the crime, only if they would apply the same crime/punishment ratio to persons called corporations.
Is that a better "putting into perspective" example (maybe not as extreme on a spectrum?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
He faces 20 years for a cyber crime. Had he molested a child, he'd only get 15 years! (*).
(*) 18 USC 2243. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2243
Where is our sense of priorities or of justice?
They need to rename the Department of Justice, it is a mockery. Call it the Department of Investigation and Punishment. Justice is dead.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
If he were convicted of this in Iran, they'd probably sentence him to having to murder all his friends and family with a belt-sander... Followed up by his own demise induced by stoning. Their gov't is nuts. Which sucks, cause there's some great people over there. Oh, yeah, by the way don't steal stuff. Helping people communicate while not paying others for enabling it is WRONG. And as such, you should be isolated and psychologically assaulted... You know.. For the greater good.
It is a shame you can't keep a coherent argument. First you say we are slaughtering innocent civilians. Then, when I call you out on it, you talk about soldiers committing suicide. You ignore the fact that war is traumatic. Oh, and have you ever actually served in the military? Have you met what used to pass for a service member? A bunch of soft whiners who joined thinking they would get a free education and never have to actually fight.
Comparing the carriers to what this guy did is comparing apples to fudge and you are an idiot for trying it.
And, the NYT was wrong. Mostly because Keshav didn't figure in the cost of 99.999% uptime, servers, licenses, sysadmins, ops and prod support, DR, data center costs, SLA payouts, the cost of tower and equipment upgrades, spectrum, etc. Do you work in telecom? Do you even work in the IT industry? Do you even work?
Want things put in perspective? You are so brainwashed, you failed to read the NYT article where they just guess at the costs.
Seriously, you shouldn't talk about things with which you have no experience or even knowledge.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Yes, that is your post basically says. Here, want me to make it clearer for you?
Your post is a variation of the broken window fallacy and it is just as false.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I neither condoned copyright infringement or stealing. Read it again if you're not sure.
--
And while we're talking about fallacies, how about strawmen?
Example from the non-virtual world - you take someone's car without their permission and return it a few hours later. They still have their car, but you're still a thief.
But that's a false analogy because, even if only temporarily, they lost the car.
Not only have you stolen the questions, you've also stolen the scholarship.
How did you steal the questions? Or, for that matter, the scholarship? I'm not seeing the theft in this example. You cheated, yes, but I don't see any theft.
I dump a load of garbage in your parking space
Suddenly your space is being used up. A resource. Not stolen, but used up.
You also have to pay to have it cleaned up.
What kinds of analogies are you trying to make here? Now I especially fail to see what this has to do with copyright infringement since nothing of the sort happens there.
So, I've stolen money from you as well
I'd say you harmed them, but I wouldn't say you stole their money.
But - you still have your original parking spot, so I didn't "really" steal anything from you, right?
Stealing a parking spot would be quite difficult. Rather, you used it up and inflicted harm upon them by doing so. Can we talk about copyright infringement now?
What do you mean 'the legality never entered into it'? once you use a product, you have to pay for it, period. It's the law.
It only takes 10 seconds of thinking to come up with things that are wrong to anyone sane, but are legal, and maybe 15 to come up with things that aren't but are illegal because they offend some scumbag politician (or more likely, his corporate overlords' bank accounts).
Legality and morality are orthogonal, and neither one has anything to do with your sweeping, unsupported statement that, in your exact words:
That's exactly what I am saying, that my definition makes a lot more sense: when you use a product that you should have paid for, and you didn't, it's a lost sale.
Go troll the Escapist. You're out of your depth here.
My house is not being sold, rented, licensed, or otherwise traded for value to members of the public. I make no contract with nor representation to others that they may use my property for any purpose or feel secure while so doing. I suspect that this was not the case with the ISP. While a large fine might not be in order (you'll note Sony got a slap on the wrist for their breaches last year, confirmed to have released millions of credit card numbers), something to discourage poor practices by commercial vendors isn't a bad idea. Think of it as a higher insurance premium for people known to be prone to break-ins who keep failing to lock their doors (or, if you prefer, a lack of a discount for a good alarm system and high-quality locks). Just because the person breaking in is unquestionably in the wrong doesn't make the corporation being broken into unquestionably in the right.
The feds encouraged the deal. While they didn't force it, they really pushed it. Now B of A was happy in general, it meant more money for them in the long run since they picked up Contrywide for a song. However it wasn't a case of them deliberately ignoring problems and saying "fuck it" it was the federal government going to both companies and saying "We think this needs to happen because Countrwide failing would be a problem."
No sir. You are making a big mistake. Paying for products that are not free is the cornerstone of modern civilization. If we did not pay, and we just took what we desired, economic growth would be impossible. Anarchy and violence would be the law of the land. The smaller guys would not have a chance to survive.
You, and people like you, have created in your mind your own legal system, in order to justufy piracy. I understand you. I too had a great time downloading music, movies and games illegally. It did not cost me anything and I had plenty of material to enjoy. But, we all have to undersrand that, what we did harmed a lot of people, and we broke the law, for the sole purpose of our entertainment, disrespecting the foundations modern society is based upon.
I understand your unwillingness to admit the above, but it is the sad truth. The free ride is over.
Again, besides being profoundly wrong -- which has never stopped people like you in the past -- that also has nothing at all to do with my original post.
At this point, it's even money whether you're a shill or just incapable of rational thought. Either way, I'm finished feeding you.