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Don't Forget: "Six Strikes" Starts This Weekend

Dr. Eggman writes "If you don't recall, then Broadband/DSL Reports is here to remind us that ISPs around the U.S. will begin adhering to the RIAA/MPAA-fueled 'Six Strikes' agreement on July 1st. Or is it July 12th? Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Cablevision are all counted among the participants. They will each introduce 'mitigation measures' against suspected pirates, including: throttling down connection speeds and suspending Web access."

13 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Freenet is still here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I guess most people will probably still avoid it until their first strike, but Freenet's still alive and shuffling many TB of data between the nodes without the possibility of monitoring.

    https://freenetproject.org/

  2. Where's the money? by amoeba1911 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is that MPAA/RIAA somehow think they're going to get more money from what they think are "consumers". The overwhelming majority people they're going after have no plans on giving their money to media distributors because they either don't have any or know better. Yet, they continue to waste their resources going after these "pirates" - who aren't really pirates because they're not profiting from their activities in any way.

    The distributors are always complaining about how they're barely making ends meet.... perhaps if they didn't pay themselves millions of dollars they wouldn't have any problems? As I see it, they're just greedy assholes. They should do us all a favor and roll over and die. In a world where cost of distribution is very close to $0, there is no need for a digital media distribution company.

  3. One word for ya: Streamripper by Teresita · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. Record innernets radio with streamripper, a free CLI app ported for Unix and Win32.
    2. See how streamripper lays all the songs in your folder nice and neat with all the MP3 tag information intact.
    3. Sort the folder on size in your favorite file manager and delete all the sub-megabyte commercials.
    4. See how RIAA doesn't have a clue what's going on because it's like taping your songs on a boom box.
    5. ????
    6. Profit!

    1. Re:One word for ya: Streamripper by Teresita · · Score: 5, Informative

      You know what they do to music these days? First of all, they use auto-tune to make it seem like Lindsey Lohan can actually stay on key, then they record the track so hot if you import it into Audacity it looks like a solid blob. All those square waves, that's clipping, but it makes the "artist" sound "edgy". When all the popular music is recorded like that, it doesn't matter if you get it at 64 kbps and listen with Dollar Store earbuds. So I go USENET for lossless, and to grab entire albums, including the cover art.

  4. Re:a minority opinion by martin-boundary · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Except this "feedback" bypasses the courts, bringing posse justice to suspected "infringers".

    The old system of lawsuits is better for victims of the RIAA, as their rights are respected. The only reason this is being promoted as "positive" is because the vultures need to move onto a new strategy to keep ahead of the judges, as the courts are growing wise to the years of abuse of the law.

  5. Re:Don't Forget: "Six Strikes" Starts This Weekend by EdIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hardly.

    It's the beginning of mass amounts of hosted VPS/torrent solutions and SFTP traffic.

    Laws have never once curbed popular behavior without huge losses of life and civil war. So until there is the decapitation, or drawn-and-quartered rule, I sincerely doubt behavior modification will be the outcome.

    Trying to ban SFTP traffic is not going to work, and trying to play whack-a-mole with VPS/seedbox providers will be fruitless.

  6. Re:Hacktivism at its finest by LordLucless · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, it depends. If the target was a person who'd been instrumental behind, say, mandatory sentencing for drug possession, I'd be all for it. It's basically a way of showing the people who make these decisions the practical ramifications of them - because they either cannot understand basic logic, or don't care because they don't think it will apply to them.

    Likewise, if this was targeting, say, a participating ISP's CEO, or the family of an RIAA exec, I'd be all for it. They're introducing a process that punishes people while circumventing due process. Let's see it bite them in the ass a few times, like it will everyone else.

    --
    Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
  7. That's what they want by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They would rather deal with online services than P2P. That's what this has been about this the beginning of this ridiculous situation. The old media barons do not want to see a world in which people can be both consumers and distributors of entertainment or software, because that turns their whole business upside down. Peer to peer networks, and yes, that includes the Internet itself, are the targets; they want this to look more like cable TV systems, where consumers have consumption devices and where distributors have to negotiate deals and fight things out in courts.

    The RIAA and MPAA love playing whack-a-mole; they have decades of experience doing it, they have laws on their side, they have public sympathy on their side. Suing an service provider off the face of the Earth doesn't really get the public angry, and it can result in that service provider making a deal that rakes in cash. Suing some college kid, some working class parent, some old computer-illiterate grandmother -- those things get the public angry (which is only tolerable up to the point where they start voting for less industry friendly politicians), they have no chance of producing a profitable deal, and they involve a party that has little money to give.

    --
    Palm trees and 8
    1. Re:That's what they want by mysidia · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That is terrible -- the Internet is supposed to be for us, that is, for the computer users of the world. We are supposed to have a network where we can communicate freely

      It will be when someone develops a system kind of like FreeNet or ToR that actually works well for content distribution and consumption without revealing responsible IP addresses, doesn't require any advanced technical knowledge to publish and update content, is very fast, scales very well, and replaces BitTorrent and other protocols, which only provide file transfer, not content discovery and easy publication of media.

    2. Re:That's what they want by SeaFox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Blank media tax is not brilliant. It presumes a crime/civil infringement will absolutely occur. Should I have to pay copyright tax for taping my kids birthday?

      Well, the song "Happy Birthday to You" is copyrighted, so yes.

  8. Re:a minority opinion by Stiletto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The legal system is stacked against the common person in these situations.

    This is the same justification proponents of "binding arbitration" use. Surprise! arbitration is also stacked against the common person, and so will this gentlemen's agreement between huge corporations. At least, in theory, you have a fighting chance in the legal system. In this system (and in arbitration), you're punished, period.

    Rule of Thumb: Any agreement or contract that you were not part of writing is designed to screw you.

  9. The creative industry is being creative. by fufufang · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the land of the free, the creative industry finds creative ways to restrict people's freedom. How ironic.

  10. Make your vote count DON'T BUY SONY by deanstyles · · Score: 5, Informative

    I stopped buying anything with the Sony label years ago when they won a $250,000 suit against a 14 year old girl and her single mother on a disability pension for downloading a few songs. Unfortunately I already used up my vote so I couldn't stop buying when Sony when they recently jacked up prices on Whitney Houston music to cash in on her death. Start with the worst offenders in the RIAA/MPAA...put them out of business...then pick off the next. What they win in lawsuits they'll lose in sales. Sony used to be an innovative company with brilliant engineers and reliable products...then they fired their engineers and replaced them with lawyers...they figured they could make more money being copyright trolls...tell them they were wrong...vote with what you buy.