That court may consider it just transferring the medium the document is contained in, but I don't believe that will hold up in court. First off, the idea of something scanning in near real time, for something that looks like it could plausibly be an IP isn't going to happen. I'd like to know how they're going to look through every byte of every process involved with networking. As I understand that, whenever anything was executed by the webserver daemon, the scanner would have to look through everything, the stack, and any structures in the memory of that process or thread. What if the daemon just starts? They'd have to find the pointer to the segment it's running in, look through the segment to find something that looks like a request from the server, try to find the IP address in it. What if the process spills over into a new segment? And all this has to be done before the packet is sent back to the client so that everything is logged! If whoever codes this isn't fast enough, does the poor sap running the box get slapped with a destruction of evidence charge? I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that most people are running this on a non realtime, multitasking system. What happens when this memory-snoop dameon doesn't have its turn to execute? What about any request that gets processed when MemorySnoop isn't running? Does whoever wrote the task scheduler get smacked with a Destruction of Evidence charge? Chances are, the task scheduler and memory management parts of the kernel are going to get patched. What if they use a non-free license, and we all have to get our kernels through them? What if Linus or rms sues, since they created a derivative work of the kernel and didn't license it under the kernel's license? Or is there going to be some sort of chip embedded in the hardware, and they have to get new motherboards, or get the chip implanted?
Also, this is assuming that the logging is even legal. IANAL, but under the COPPA act, if the person using the site is under 13, since the RIAA counts IP addresses as personally identifiable information, wouldn't collecting that IP from a child under 13 without parental consent be against the law? At the very least, I can see that getting thrown out of court for exactly that reason. Secondly, if they are simply regarding any packets involving torrentspy.com as attempting to infringe on a copyright, what about the people that hotlinked an image on a forum? Technically, that would be accessing the site, as I doubt it is possible to log everything involving that IP's transaction with the webserver daemon. Or what if someone links to the BitTorrent FAQ on there, to help out someone who wants to download legal material? If simply visiting torrentspy.com is going to be considered possible CI, I can see them pulling the First Amendment, as they could just be reading a news item or the FAQ, and their First Amendment rights being violated as everyone who goes to the site is considered guilty of CI.
Just my.02$
While businesses do need to advertise, spam is the worst way to do this. Most of the time, spam just pisses off the user that got it. If anything, because of the irritation of dealing with the spam, then the user is probably going to not deal with that business, simply because they sent the user spam. In fact, whenever I get a spam email from a company, the last thing I want to do is business with them. Of course advertising is necessary in a capitalist society, but unwanted advertising that is actually disruptive to legit users is actually worse for the company.
I'm still at school, but the school could save some money if instead of using PC's for computer access in the labs, they just used terminals. Of course, most of the students here aren't computer experts by any stretch of the imagination, so a Unix/X11 solution is out. It's a shame, since most of the time, people just run a word processor and a web browser. If anything, schools are probably the best market for terminals to make a comeback, since in the lower grades, people are still learning and there wouldn't be much of a 'culture shock' moving over to an X11 environment. The only place where Wintel boxes would be needed is in the Computer Apps classes, where they have to learn MS Office.
Or better yet, just spend time teaching the kids to be net-savvy enough to understand that SeXYGrL69 probably isn't very sexy, or a girl, and then we won't have to deal with this. Frankly, it looks like the Georgia legal system is tired of listening to the parents of victims complain about how easy it is to track down children on the Internet.
If anything, that's an incentive to make people migrate away from browsers with poor standard support. Code the CSS for the standard, and then when Joe Sixpack sees the site looking like crap, perhaps somehow it will make them migrate to a better browser.
Either that or some poor sucker at MS tech support gets an earful of screaming.
Slashdot Mirror
That court may consider it just transferring the medium the document is contained in, but I don't believe that will hold up in court. First off, the idea of something scanning in near real time, for something that looks like it could plausibly be an IP isn't going to happen. I'd like to know how they're going to look through every byte of every process involved with networking. As I understand that, whenever anything was executed by the webserver daemon, the scanner would have to look through everything, the stack, and any structures in the memory of that process or thread. What if the daemon just starts? They'd have to find the pointer to the segment it's running in, look through the segment to find something that looks like a request from the server, try to find the IP address in it. What if the process spills over into a new segment? And all this has to be done before the packet is sent back to the client so that everything is logged! If whoever codes this isn't fast enough, does the poor sap running the box get slapped with a destruction of evidence charge? I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that most people are running this on a non realtime, multitasking system. What happens when this memory-snoop dameon doesn't have its turn to execute? What about any request that gets processed when MemorySnoop isn't running? Does whoever wrote the task scheduler get smacked with a Destruction of Evidence charge? Chances are, the task scheduler and memory management parts of the kernel are going to get patched. What if they use a non-free license, and we all have to get our kernels through them? What if Linus or rms sues, since they created a derivative work of the kernel and didn't license it under the kernel's license? Or is there going to be some sort of chip embedded in the hardware, and they have to get new motherboards, or get the chip implanted?
.02$
Also, this is assuming that the logging is even legal. IANAL, but under the COPPA act, if the person using the site is under 13, since the RIAA counts IP addresses as personally identifiable information, wouldn't collecting that IP from a child under 13 without parental consent be against the law? At the very least, I can see that getting thrown out of court for exactly that reason. Secondly, if they are simply regarding any packets involving torrentspy.com as attempting to infringe on a copyright, what about the people that hotlinked an image on a forum? Technically, that would be accessing the site, as I doubt it is possible to log everything involving that IP's transaction with the webserver daemon. Or what if someone links to the BitTorrent FAQ on there, to help out someone who wants to download legal material? If simply visiting torrentspy.com is going to be considered possible CI, I can see them pulling the First Amendment, as they could just be reading a news item or the FAQ, and their First Amendment rights being violated as everyone who goes to the site is considered guilty of CI. Just my
Now that's what I call a mess, seeing as how likely it is that many will 'upgrade.'
While businesses do need to advertise, spam is the worst way to do this. Most of the time, spam just pisses off the user that got it. If anything, because of the irritation of dealing with the spam, then the user is probably going to not deal with that business, simply because they sent the user spam. In fact, whenever I get a spam email from a company, the last thing I want to do is business with them. Of course advertising is necessary in a capitalist society, but unwanted advertising that is actually disruptive to legit users is actually worse for the company.
I'm still at school, but the school could save some money if instead of using PC's for computer access in the labs, they just used terminals. Of course, most of the students here aren't computer experts by any stretch of the imagination, so a Unix/X11 solution is out. It's a shame, since most of the time, people just run a word processor and a web browser. If anything, schools are probably the best market for terminals to make a comeback, since in the lower grades, people are still learning and there wouldn't be much of a 'culture shock' moving over to an X11 environment. The only place where Wintel boxes would be needed is in the Computer Apps classes, where they have to learn MS Office.
Nice report, though the Linux guy should have pointed out the DRM on Vista. They did a good job with the security portion too.
Or better yet, just spend time teaching the kids to be net-savvy enough to understand that SeXYGrL69 probably isn't very sexy, or a girl, and then we won't have to deal with this. Frankly, it looks like the Georgia legal system is tired of listening to the parents of victims complain about how easy it is to track down children on the Internet.
Looks like they won't be getting a home run tonight.
If anything, that's an incentive to make people migrate away from browsers with poor standard support. Code the CSS for the standard, and then when Joe Sixpack sees the site looking like crap, perhaps somehow it will make them migrate to a better browser. Either that or some poor sucker at MS tech support gets an earful of screaming.