Slashdot Mirror
RapidShare Urges US To Punish Linking Sites and Not File-Sharing Sites
hypnosec writes "RapidShare has said that the U.S. government should crack down on linking sites rather than punishing file-sharing sites and strangling innovation. The file-sharing site is understandably a little worried about the recent crackdowns on sites involved in or found to be promoting piracy. Daniel Raimer, RapidShare's Chief Legal Officer, is to meet with technology leaders and law enforcement at the Technology Policy Institute forum. Responding to a public consultation on the future of U.S. IP enforcement, the company emphasized that linking sites are the real problem. It wrote, 'Rather than enacting legislation that could stifle innovation in the cloud, the U.S. government should crack down on this critical part of the online piracy network.'"
The problem with cracking down on "linking sites" is that it's way to broad. When you start attacking sites that provide users a collection of links, you're effectively attacking the basis of every web site on the Internet. It will no longer be safe to provide links. Further, it will undermine search. What is google but a collection of links?
How about we don't go after file sharing or linking sites and instead go after the RIAA and MPAA for buying our politicians and extorting money out of people by their frivolous lawsuits. I buy my content, but when they go after the basic foundation of the Internet, it makes me rethink that. No revenue means no buying politicians.
I doubt anybody would punish linking somewhere without punishing outright sharing too.
The problem isn't that I'm offering fake Rolexes for sale, it's that some law breaker is telling people about it!
It is hard to go after the linking sites, they are way too much. The storage sites are just a few, and is easy to go after them.
Shouldnt they actually go for the uploader and not hosting company or the ones that link? Ahh going for uploaders would hurts their business, so they would rather have the authorities going for the ones that link.
"Rather than enacting legislation that could stifle innovation in the cloud, the U.S. government should crack down on this critical part of the online piracy network.'"
I guess that's Newspeak for "Do it to Julia, don't do it to me, do it to her!"
But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
As the first poster mentioned, it's not a crime. I can even link to a criminal site if I want, with the link saying "Look! Here's a criminal site! The bastards!"
If they start regulating what you can link to, the internet is doomed. Don't go there.
Besides, at least in the U.S., free speech is very much an issue when it comes to links.
The "problem" isn't file sharing. That's legal. It's not linking. It's legal. What's against the law
are violations of the law (e.g. copyright).
HOWEVER, in saying "don't come after us, go after linking sites" rapidshare has thrown the
babies to the wolves in hopes that they can evade a similar fate.
Rapidshare, for that, deserves to die. Linking sites and sharing sites are legal. The US Federal
government and its ICE dogs will sooner or later be brought to task. (Rojadirecta probably).
We'll still remember that Rapidshare threw everyone else to the dogs.
E
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative (X) government ( ) market-based (X) finger-pointing (X) political
approach to fighting illegal file-sharing over the Internet. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws.)
(X) There is no centralized authority that will force people to carry out your plan
(X) Your plan is incomplete or contains too much "needs to be further discussed." phrases
(X) Requires a consensus on whether a problem actually exists
(X) Requires a consensus on the definition of where the problem lies
(X) No one can agree on the definition of the problem
(X) Proposal is philosophically inconsistent in mulple places
(X) Computers and frequently people can't tell if a copyrighted item is being hosted legally or not
(X) The item at the end of a link can change over time
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) Existing court decisions protecting the very activity you want to restrict
(X) Scalability
(X) Extreme opportunity for mischief when abused
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Stupidity on the part of some people who do business over the Internet
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) A near-consensus that the activity you want to restrict should not be restricted
(X) Many people download illegally because it is not feasable to obtain content otherwise
(X) If file-sharing ended tomorrow and everything else remained the same, gross revenue wouldn't increase all that much
(X) Is this really the purpose of government?
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
Looking forward to similar posts by others who can do "funny" better than I can.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
OKAY EVERYONE, we just all need to stand in a big circle and each blame the person to your immediate right.
Cops, please follow the chain of blame until you reach the end and find your culprit.
It's the guy who posted the file! No, it's the guy providing hosting for the guy who posted the file! No, it's the blogger who posted the link to the file! No, it's the guy who reblogged the link! No, it's the guy who aggregates blog links! No, it's the guy who wrote a Google custom search which spiders links from those link aggregators! No, it's the guy who figured out that math can be used to obfuscate the "original source" of a data leak! No, it's the guy who came up with a distributed data storage model based on it! No, it's the guy who figured out that the Streisand Effect applies to every piece of published data! No, it's Barbra Streisand herself!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Only a united front can beat back the MAFIAA. Winston Churchill's statement on appeasement seems apropos here: "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping it will eat him last".
RapidShare, MegaUpload, Demonoid, etc all provide competition to the distribution monopoly of the RIAA members. That's their real problem. It isn't about piracy. The RIAA member/cartel are more worried about artists deciding that the middlemen are no longer necessary.
As long as the RIAA has their way, it will be impossible to operate a file locker/linking service without being arbitrarily shutdown by the "piracy" boogeyman. That's what they want, and right now they're the ones writing the laws.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
much bigger problem.
I think this pretty much sums it up. http://i35.tinypic.com/o9mtf4.jpg
Quit thinking about business models, and start thinking about models for society and for culture. A world full of piracy may be a shitty place to try and make money as a publisher, but it's a marvelous place to grow up as a child with a love of music or film or literature. No one has ever said that publishing has to be a profitable business in order for a market or a society to thrive, except for publishers.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Everybody is making jokes when the simple fact is just like the VCR there are plenty of non copyright uses for these sites. lets take myself for example, i have used sites like Rapidshare to send some of my own musical works to someone halfway across the planet so they could load it up and add their own tracks, I've used them to send .reg files for basic fixes like the PITA "Windows no sound device even though the drive is installed" bug, used them to store zip files of family photos so I can send them across the country to distant relatives, plenty of things other than the latest Titney Spears you can use these sites for.
In the end it shouldn't be their job to have to constantly go through everyone's stuff to make the *.A.A happy, we've already seen that doesn't work as you can simply change the name of the files and you are back to square one. No they should be treated no different than Google who takes things down when they get a request. Problem is the *.A.As are lazy bastards and want to pass all the expense to everyone else and they have no problem with bribing officials to write the laws to let them pass on the expense.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.