The RIAA are just a bunch of opportunistic scavengers, and like that ilk, they're complete and utter cowards.
I'd call them vultures, but that would give vultures all over the world a bad rap.
While on the one hand I see no reason whatsoever for child porn-related sites to even exist let alone have anyone visit them, censorship by ISPs is a very obvious slippery slope. Unfair and damaging compromises without number have already been made "for the sake of the children"; it's as obvious a ploy as "..or the terrorists win", and I for one feel my intelligence is insulted whenever those cards are played. In the final analysis, I think this will be found to be a bad idea. Providers of bandwidth should not be allowed to decide what content will traverse their network any more than they should be allowed to interfere with P2P traffic. Determining the appropriateness should be the domain of hosting services, and the legality should be determined by the courts and by law enforcement; ISPs are neither -- which is as it should be.
This isn't in the least bit a new approach. The 1970's solution to it's energy crisis was compact cars. We do have a leg up on almost 40 years ago though, materials technology is a quantum level up from where it was.
Actually you're completely wrong. They switched to "dimensional weight", which means if you ship a 12"x12"x12" box empty it costs the same as if it had something in it.
The whole situation makes "voting with our dollars" impossible
Not impossible, just unsavory for you. Cancel the service and don't have internet at home. If everybody who was unhappy with them did that, they'd be out of business in a year or less.
That's bullshit. Their "problems" were self-created, by selling more bandwidth than their network can sustain, all in the name of profit. Either upgrade the network infrastructure or stop selling more bandwidth than they have to sell!
Then I tell them, "you, you, FUCK YOU, you FUCKIN' FUCKS, you!" and cancel the service -- or better yet, I get together with other people who are also pissed off about it, and work on ways to subvert their bullshit technology.
..oh, and BTW boys and girls, according to results of the glasnost test run not more than 48 hours ago, Comcast is STILL inserting bogus TCP reset packets into BitTorrent streams; TFA says that Comcast had agreed to stop doing that. Big surprise! They're LYING.
Hooray for signs of intelligent life in our government! They might just be starting to pay attention!
There are some commenters here (like always) who are saying that "the light users are subsidizing the heavy users". I call "bullshit" on you; how much is $ISP_NAME paying you to blog for them?:p The reality is this: If the ISPs actually had infrastructure to handle the bandwidth they're selling everyone at such high prices, then they wouldn't be placing unfair restrictions on it's use. Let me say that a different way in case you didn't catch it the first time around: If they (the ISPs) weren't selling more bandwidth to their customers than they actually have to sell, they wouldn't be scrambling to find someone to point fingers at other than themselves. It's high time that someone in a position of legal authority started taking notice of their (the ISPs) bullshit, greedy business practices, and did something about it, and it's high time that their customers got all up in their face about it in civil court. Hell, where do I sign up for the class action lawsuit myself, I want my voice heard too!
Part of my point was exactly that: they can't kill off P2P completely, not without killing the internet as a whole. For fuck's sake, you could run it in an HTTP wrapper, or likely a wrapper for any other garden-variety protocol you could name. You could enhance the encryption to the point where the fucking NSA couldn't decipher it, and then mask it as something entirely different. You can't stop the signal, Mal.
You, my friend, sound like you're smack-dab in the midst of a quarter-life crisis -- and while I sympathize with you, that doesn't mean I'm going to coddle you, either.
I'm 43 years old, dude -- you wouldn't know it if you met me, unless I told you so -- and I'm telling you right now, you're playing right into their hands with your attitude. They WANT you to not give a shit about anything that's going on. They WANT you to tune out , and stop reading the news stories (and by NEWS I mean from the non-sanctioned, non-controlled sources, like Slashdot, and FARK, and The Onion, etc) so you don't have any idea what's going on until it's too late to change any of it, too late to say "NO!" when they come to take your civil liberties away in the name of "safety". Don't you see? It's all a system of control, and they want to turn back the clock to the 1950's done in a George Orwell "1984" motiff! It sucks ass, I know! But you HAVE to pay attention, you HAVE to keep voting your conscience, you HAVE to keep fighting the power, because if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice! Sure, it all may mean nothing in the end -- but do you really want to go to your grave knowing that you COULD have voted against some asshole like G.W. Bush, who wants to tear up the Constitution and turn the whole country into one big prison? Do you really want to live in a world where some asshole at the CIA is reading all those text messages you're sending your friends, just so they can call you AND all your friends "subversives" and drop you in a hole somewhere, never to be heard from again? I could go on, but I hope you see my point -- these fuckers don't CARE about you or your life, just what they can extract from you -- but it's still not too late to stop it and keep the power of change where it belongs: in the hands of the people.
If I use P2P of any kind for any reason, legal or not, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I get for free, legally or not, what I could PAY for, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I don't spend every last penny I make on what corporate America tells me to, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I don't purchase a gas-hogging SUV every three years, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I ride a bicycle because gas is so expensive, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I don't consume, consume, consume, and CONSUME, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
I object to having to live in a fucking nanny-state, so OBVIOUSLY I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I don't live exactly like EVERYONE ELSE, then I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
...
Know what? The fucking bastards can fucking drop me in an oubliette in Gitmo then, because I guess I'm a fucking terrorist. I don't do everything I'm told to do, believe everything I'm told to believe, and keep my mouth shut because my opinions aren't "politically correct", so that makes me an "undesirable", worthy only of societies' scorn, and I should be treated like a dog.
Let them sign their fucking little treaty. It's all paperwork bullshit anyway. I say it over and over again like a mantra: You can't stop the signal, goddamnit! Outlaw BitTorrent? Let's see them try, and if they do, someone will re-tool it into something completely different. Make the public internet unusable for anything other than their corporate bullshit? We'll find a way to subvert it into doing what we need it to do, or we'll tell them to go fuck themselves and go back to SneakerNet -- or maybe we'll just start creating a mesh network of our own and SCREW the ISPs!
..Said it before, I'll say it again: If this is the shape of things to come, then they can KEEP their fucking fucked-up internet. I'll go back to PRINTED BOOKS and actually TALKING TO LIVE PEOPLE IN PERSON, and these fucking politicians and their ISP lap-dogs won't get a SINGLE PENNY more of mine.
</SOAPBOX>
*ransom note received composed of random letters clipped from newspaper*
"We have encrypted your illegally copied music files. Put $5000 in unmarked bills in a plain brown paper sack and mail it to: RIAA Washington, D.C. no later than midnight tonight or you'll never listen to your music again"
..but seriously, folks, this starts to sound like some sort of wierd 419 scam. They're not going to decypt your files even if you pay them, and I'll bet you a whole DOLLAR that if you're stupid enough to contact them, they accept only CREDIT CARDS as payment. Chances are that the data isn't even really encrypted, it's just plain overwritten and GONE, copied over with gobbledegook random data, and you'll just get your identity stolen on top of never getting your files back. On the other hand they think they're being really clever, I'm sure, and the ones that think they're clever are usually the ones that get caught quickly and go to jail for a long, long time.
ISPs complain that BitTorrent users are eating up all the bandwidth, and the MPAA and RIAA complain about "stealing" of IP through filesharing. Meanwhile, the RIAA and MPAA are breaking the law trying to turn a profit with their (pseudo) legal engine, and the ISPs are breaking the law with DoS/MITM attacks, and altering content on the fly! This is bullshit, complete and utter bullshit, and it needs to stop, NOW. Net Neutrality needs to be the LAW, and ISPs need to have the hammer dropped HARD on them over bullshit like this.
Slashdot Mirror
The RIAA are just a bunch of opportunistic scavengers, and like that ilk, they're complete and utter cowards.
I'd call them vultures, but that would give vultures all over the world a bad rap.
Nice try, and let them try.
While on the one hand I see no reason whatsoever for child porn-related sites to even exist let alone have anyone visit them, censorship by ISPs is a very obvious slippery slope. Unfair and damaging compromises without number have already been made "for the sake of the children"; it's as obvious a ploy as "..or the terrorists win", and I for one feel my intelligence is insulted whenever those cards are played. In the final analysis, I think this will be found to be a bad idea. Providers of bandwidth should not be allowed to decide what content will traverse their network any more than they should be allowed to interfere with P2P traffic. Determining the appropriateness should be the domain of hosting services, and the legality should be determined by the courts and by law enforcement; ISPs are neither -- which is as it should be.
This isn't in the least bit a new approach. The 1970's solution to it's energy crisis was compact cars. We do have a leg up on almost 40 years ago though, materials technology is a quantum level up from where it was.
This is already happening, and it'll just build up momentum until gas prices drop.
Actually you're completely wrong. They switched to "dimensional weight", which means if you ship a 12"x12"x12" box empty it costs the same as if it had something in it.
Not impossible, just unsavory for you. Cancel the service and don't have internet at home. If everybody who was unhappy with them did that, they'd be out of business in a year or less.
Stuff and nonsense!!! They need to either stop overselling bandwidth or build a network that supports the bandwidth they're selling, damnit!
That's bullshit. Their "problems" were self-created, by selling more bandwidth than their network can sustain, all in the name of profit. Either upgrade the network infrastructure or stop selling more bandwidth than they have to sell!
Then I tell them, "you, you, FUCK YOU, you FUCKIN' FUCKS, you!" and cancel the service -- or better yet, I get together with other people who are also pissed off about it, and work on ways to subvert their bullshit technology.
..oh, and BTW boys and girls, according to results of the glasnost test run not more than 48 hours ago, Comcast is STILL inserting bogus TCP reset packets into BitTorrent streams; TFA says that Comcast had agreed to stop doing that. Big surprise! They're LYING.
There are some commenters here (like always) who are saying that "the light users are subsidizing the heavy users". I call "bullshit" on you; how much is $ISP_NAME paying you to blog for them? :p The reality is this: If the ISPs actually had infrastructure to handle the bandwidth they're selling everyone at such high prices, then they wouldn't be placing unfair restrictions on it's use. Let me say that a different way in case you didn't catch it the first time around: If they (the ISPs) weren't selling more bandwidth to their customers than they actually have to sell, they wouldn't be scrambling to find someone to point fingers at other than themselves. It's high time that someone in a position of legal authority started taking notice of their (the ISPs) bullshit, greedy business practices, and did something about it, and it's high time that their customers got all up in their face about it in civil court. Hell, where do I sign up for the class action lawsuit myself, I want my voice heard too!
Could you please build my quantum computer with cubic zirconia instead? I'm kinda on a tight budget. :-/
Part of my point was exactly that: they can't kill off P2P completely, not without killing the internet as a whole. For fuck's sake, you could run it in an HTTP wrapper, or likely a wrapper for any other garden-variety protocol you could name. You could enhance the encryption to the point where the fucking NSA couldn't decipher it, and then mask it as something entirely different. You can't stop the signal, Mal.
I'm 43 years old, dude -- you wouldn't know it if you met me, unless I told you so -- and I'm telling you right now, you're playing right into their hands with your attitude. They WANT you to not give a shit about anything that's going on. They WANT you to tune out , and stop reading the news stories (and by NEWS I mean from the non-sanctioned, non-controlled sources, like Slashdot, and FARK, and The Onion, etc) so you don't have any idea what's going on until it's too late to change any of it, too late to say "NO!" when they come to take your civil liberties away in the name of "safety". Don't you see? It's all a system of control, and they want to turn back the clock to the 1950's done in a George Orwell "1984" motiff! It sucks ass, I know! But you HAVE to pay attention, you HAVE to keep voting your conscience, you HAVE to keep fighting the power, because if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice! Sure, it all may mean nothing in the end -- but do you really want to go to your grave knowing that you COULD have voted against some asshole like G.W. Bush, who wants to tear up the Constitution and turn the whole country into one big prison? Do you really want to live in a world where some asshole at the CIA is reading all those text messages you're sending your friends, just so they can call you AND all your friends "subversives" and drop you in a hole somewhere, never to be heard from again? I could go on, but I hope you see my point -- these fuckers don't CARE about you or your life, just what they can extract from you -- but it's still not too late to stop it and keep the power of change where it belongs: in the hands of the people.
Give me what I'm paying for, you bastards.
If I use P2P of any kind for any reason, legal or not, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I get for free, legally or not, what I could PAY for, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I don't spend every last penny I make on what corporate America tells me to, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I don't purchase a gas-hogging SUV every three years, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I ride a bicycle because gas is so expensive, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I don't consume, consume, consume, and CONSUME, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
I object to having to live in a fucking nanny-state, so OBVIOUSLY I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I don't live exactly like EVERYONE ELSE, then I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
Know what? The fucking bastards can fucking drop me in an oubliette in Gitmo then, because I guess I'm a fucking terrorist. I don't do everything I'm told to do, believe everything I'm told to believe, and keep my mouth shut because my opinions aren't "politically correct", so that makes me an "undesirable", worthy only of societies' scorn, and I should be treated like a dog.
Let them sign their fucking little treaty. It's all paperwork bullshit anyway. I say it over and over again like a mantra: You can't stop the signal, goddamnit! Outlaw BitTorrent? Let's see them try, and if they do, someone will re-tool it into something completely different. Make the public internet unusable for anything other than their corporate bullshit? We'll find a way to subvert it into doing what we need it to do, or we'll tell them to go fuck themselves and go back to SneakerNet -- or maybe we'll just start creating a mesh network of our own and SCREW the ISPs!
</SOAPBOX>
Eeek, that would suck! You'd be completely hosed with little chance of recovery!
Then send your cash liberally coated with anthrax powder.
"And only once they get your money, you don't get your decryption key."
There, fixed that for you. :-)
"We have encrypted your illegally copied music files. Put $5000 in unmarked bills in a plain brown paper sack and mail it to: RIAA Washington, D.C. no later than midnight tonight or you'll never listen to your music again"
ISPs complain that BitTorrent users are eating up all the bandwidth, and the MPAA and RIAA complain about "stealing" of IP through filesharing. Meanwhile, the RIAA and MPAA are breaking the law trying to turn a profit with their (pseudo) legal engine, and the ISPs are breaking the law with DoS/MITM attacks, and altering content on the fly! This is bullshit, complete and utter bullshit, and it needs to stop, NOW. Net Neutrality needs to be the LAW, and ISPs need to have the hammer dropped HARD on them over bullshit like this.
OMG, this is such a horrible idea. First they put effing wrestling on SciFi, now this unwatchable crap. Oh the humanity! When will the madness stop?
Are you saying that makes it OK? If so then I can't agree with that, won't agree with that, will fight against that.
I don't know who the hell modded me up as "funny", but let me assure you all: I'M NOT BEING FUNNY, I'M DEAD SERIOUS. :-/