If the artists discover that they can not make money by signing a contract with an RIAA member recording company, they will stop doing so and these companies will die.
If the smaller recording companies discover they are losing revinue because of their membership in the RIAA, they will eventually withdraw from that organization.
If the artists are smart, they will see the writing on the wall and do something proactive about it, like sell their own music (in mp3 format, as ready-to-burn iso images, or whatever) on their own websites, form a consortium of artists to market their products, etc.
Yes, the artists will be hurt in this battle. Unfortunate for them, but that is what happens to pawns of big, powerful entities such as the RIAA.
Want to avoid that? Get the hell away from the RIAA.
Apparently you missed the other big buzz in the record industry recently. Most labels are cutting back on their Classical and Jazz music albums, ceasing production, dumping contracts, and combining Classical and Jazz divisions. Some have even dumped their entire divisions. See the point?
You have actually made my point for me. Of the tens of thousands of different CDs being sold, only a few hundred were ever in the top ten. The rest continue being sold because they make money on them. If they do not, they cancel production and do exactly what you have described: close divisions and shit-can careers.
Clearly, by their own numbers, the RIAA makes money on a lot more than just the top ten best selling CDs of the moment.
Finally, no boycott is in vain. A boycott of one person who stops going to a store or buying a product because it offends their principles is a victor -- that person has taken proactive control of their own life, against a torrent of propoganda and marketing telling them to do otherwise.
Sigh... I remember when I was that idealistic.
It isn't idealism, it is mathematics. If you keep your money from flowing into the pockets of those you despise, and instead spend that money on something else (a competitors product, or a completely different thing) you have denied that person or entity real, hard income. If you spend it on a competitor, the damage is twice that. This is true whether your boycott costs them $5 or $5,000.
More importantly, if you take control of your own life and remove from it that which offends you -- in the case of many here, products of the RIAA (and the MPAA for that matter) you have won a victory, both for yourself, and against the offending party who now has a much reduced impact on your life. In effect you deny these people the one thing they crave more than money: power. This is no small or idle thing, and they know that even if you do not.
As an example, my boycott of the RIAA has cost them between one and two thousand dollars over the last nine months. My boycott of the MPAA has cost them four or five thousand dollars over the same time (I used to buy a lot of laserdisks and would have probably converted most of the collection to DVD).
If ten other people were to boycott the MPAA that would be enough to cost some MPAA flunky their $40,000 / year job. As it is, I, alone and acting by myself, quite possibly cost someone a portion of their year-end bonus or a raise.
Don't believe me? Spend some time with an accountant for a large firm. Even in multi-billion dollar companies bean counters make decisions like that based on very small changes in the bottom line (often each department and division is responsible for maintaining its profitability within very strict limits, which accentuates this affect dramatically).
One person makes a much bigger difference than you, or the mass media, would have us believe.
Just because you have allowed yourself to be lulled into a false sense of futility and bought into the apathetic, impotent brand of cynicism being old to the masses today, don't expect the rest of us to.
Now troll, I've fed you more than enough for one day...
Where are the grassroots efforts to boycott the MPAA?
I have been boycotting the MPAA for months now.
Slashdot has never been terribly consistent with respect to the DeCSS thing. When I tried to make them aware of Declan McCullagh's (a writer for Wired who hysterically screamed DVD Piracy when DeCSS and css-auth first came out) behavior and its affect on people like Derek (the original author of css-auth who had to quite the project under legal threats as a result of Declan's shoddy journalism) I was pointedly ignored.
Slashdot constantly inundates us with movie reviews and other "free marketing" of the very people who have declared Livid and the open source/free software community their enemy. Worse, they give one of the worst journalistic offendors, Declan McCullagh, very chummy introductions to any story of his they link to (most other authors are not mentioned by name when their articles are linked to by slashdot).
Frankly, I don't understand slashdot's behavior with respect to the DVD/MPAA/Declan/DeCSS thing either, but it sure does annoy me from time to time.
Really? I had a look at a number of other posts by you, for example here, here, here, here, and here. The last is rather interesting, in which someone accuses you of being an RIAA plant and you respond by admitting you are a troll.
Based on the content of your messages, it appears that that is all you are. In the unlikely event that you do work for the RIAA (and are a plant) I find it amusing that the RIAA would invest time and money discouraging a boycott they "don't care about." It is far more likely that you have succeeded in trolling slashdot very well this day, even getting a high +5 score doing it. There is no shortage of extreme Randian cynics on this site, and your post obviously appealed to some of them. Congrats.
(And shame on you pitiful fools who think it is somehow cool and worldly to espouse cynicism, apathy, and capitulation over standing up for your ideals.)
Where we make the money is in the Top 10 records - the stuff that most Slashdot readers (and other concerned citizens) don't listen to. We don't make much money off of your purchases. We make the money in the mass market. And by and large, the mass market doesn't care about your boycott.
First, that isn't true at all (and this exposes you as a simple troll and not an RIAA plant/spokesperson/whatever). The music industry makes a great deal of money on music of various genres which are not top ten. If they didn't, they would have no compunction in ceasing production of the material and killing the artists' careers. Such is standard operating procedure in the industry.
Furthermore, successful boycotts are almost never "mass market actions," they are activist actions taken by a minority. However, even a very small minority can make enough of an impact to threaten the bottom line, and this is as true with the RIAA as it is with anyone else. The difference is that the RIAA is defending a monopoly (of questionable legality), and monopolists often cannot see their business surviving the loss of their monopoly and will defend it to the death, even against all reason.
Finally, no boycott is in vain. A boycott of one person who stops going to a store or buying a product because it offends their principles is a victor -- that person has taken proactive control of their own life, against a torrent of propoganda and marketing telling them to do otherwise.
Your boycott will fail, unless what you want is to destroy the artists that you listen to - the artists who survive on a small but dedicated fan base. You are destroying the art that you love over a legal difference of opinion. We hope you're happy.
And you have the audacity to call us arrogant?
Resistence is never futile. It always costs the enemy something, and is always better than just rolling over and capitulating. There is a possibility we may lose the war, but it is certain that the RIAA is losing money as I type this.
Google results 1-10 of about 4,860 for espy joel klecker. Search took 3.91 seconds.
It's neat with todays technology on how we all can be remembered...
I regret to say that your own, personal memory of Espy will probably outlive his digital presence on the internet, except possibly in the form of his contributions to Debian.
Usenet articles expire and are deleted. Even Deja removes old material after three or four years, never to be seen again. Web pages change, lists of contributing authors change, software dies and is replaced, etc.
I suggest, if you really are interested in preserving Espy's digital memory, mirroring some or all of these references on a web page for just that purpose. Usenet postings in particular are vulnerable to vanishing.
Otherwise, the Debian dedication notwhithstanding, I think you'll be unpleasantly surprised at just how transient our collective "digital" memory is.
This is probably a waste of breath... err.. typing. Copyright is losing a lot of respect. This seems right given that the value that it once held for the public has been missing for quite some time.
You are not wasting your breath.
I happen to agree with you. I am trying to come up with a GPL-style approach to media copyrights, and am releasing some of my own work under a GPL-like Free Media License.
I agree that a more fundamental review (and perhaps repeal) of the proveleged copy restrictions we call copyright is long overdue.
I just think it's sad that when I introduce myself as being from Texas, the usual response is "oh, so what do you think about the death penalty?"
Believe it or not I know how you feel. As an American who lived in Germany for a number of years (exchange student, summer intern, itinerant traveler), when I would admit to being American I was generally asked the same question (or some other stereotyped variation).
What most Americans don't realize is that, as Texas is to the United States, so to is the United States to the rest of the world.[1]
We'd better just develop a sense of humor about it, because everyone else certainly has.:-)
[1] I think it is Robert Anton Wilson whom I am paraphrasing there, something about Texans being emberrassed about a (fictional) town called Bad Ass, while Americans in turn were emberrassed by Texas, while the Earth in turn was emberrassed by America.
No, they couldn't have. The way trademark law is written, it must be actively defended to be preserved.
With copyright the exact opposite is true, even if you never defend your copyright once, the copyright remains valid.
Napster is being hypocritical, but not because of their little encounter with Offspring (which was resolved cordially). They are hypocritical for the other reason you mention:
or open source programmers, tried to use anything Napster owned. Yet at the same time, Napster has no problem helping to distribute material that other people own.
They are hypocrits because they shout "share!" with one breath and then refuse to share technical info with those who wish to write compatible software (and even worse, do all they can to discourage independent efforts at supporting napster). This is counter to the "share and share alike" philosophy of information, be it software (free software/open source), news, or music.
It is OK not to buy into the "information wants to be free" paradigm if one doesn't want to. It is not OK to say "I believe in information being free, as long as it isn't mine!"
As I said in another post, do not count on a corporation to defend your freedom. Napster is as interested in making you captive as the RIAA is (they want to force you to use their product, and their product only). If you really want to insure your freedom, support the gnutella or freenet efforts instead, and trade your material there (and please respect copyrights when doing so).
You are correct with respect to copyright and trademark law, however, the spat with the Offspring was only a minor aside in the article.
More significantly, the company repeatedly has tried to stymie independent software developers working on Napster-compatible software and Web sites. While these programs could benefit the millions of music fans that Napster claims are its only constituency, they might also diminish the commercial potential of Napster itself.
The company has refused to share technical information about its software code, has made changes to its software that have prevented other programs from working with Napster's own and has blocked computers from outside music sites from accessing Napster's database of hundreds of thousands of songs.
Napster is hypocritical in that it is claiming to be a champion defending the right and freedom to share and then refuses to share its own information, including programing APIs, protocol speficiations, or simple access to the virtual net they've constructed from their users' PCs.
This is IMHO very hypocritical of napster.
The fact that Napster seems to sing a different tune when its own property is involved is just one of the ways the reality of Napster is at odds with its public image. The service's management and ownership structure, for example, is quite different than many users suppose, with Napster's highly publicized teenage founder, Shawn Fanning, playing only a minor role.
Herein may lie the problem. We have a bunch of suits in it for the money, and quite willing to toss a few platitudes our way to garner our short-term support, but in the end they have a vested interest in forcing us to use their product, and their product only.
If you want true freedom to share, don't rely on napster to provide, or even defend, it. Instead work with the folks at gnutella or freenet. You'll have much better odds of being able to run a client or server on the platform of your choice, and a much better chance of securing your own freedom.
In short, never send a capatalist to do an activist's job. The results will disappoint you every time.
I assume you're talking about kuro5hin and saying they are lusers. It's probably all a troll, but I'm having a hard time keeping myself from replying.
I think (I hope) you misunderstood what he was saying. I tool Lusers to refer to the script kiddies launching the DOS attacks, not Kiro5hin for being their victim.
Upon rereading the article it coule be taken either way. Perhaps the original author would care to clarify?
You are right, there were some very good articles on how to secure a system. I for one will miss kiro5hin very much -- it had become the first site I would browse in the morning while sipping soda and waiting for my compiles to finish.
[toung-in-cheek] Some anonymous coward said something about breeding these lusers (the attackers) out of the race. While manditory castration might be a little harsh, bitch slapping their parent's for doing such a poor job and foisting such scum upon the rest of us seems like a reasonable start. [/toung-in-cheek]
This was exposed and discussed on Technocrat two days ago.
Don't feel bad -- I saw one of the big network News organizations (I think it was ABC) get taken by a hoaxster during one of their live "crisis" broadcasts, where the person confirmed that somebody had indeed killed themself since "they couldn't be on the Howard Stern show."
If it can happen to them it can happen to slashdot.
Thanks a lump for furthering the stereotype that Texans are a bunch of unremorseful, 6-gun wielding cowboys who have nothing better to do than kill things.
I know humor is a difficult concept, particularly for the humor impaired, but try to follow me here:
Texas has an execution wielding, social throwback of a presidential candidate in the form of "dub uh yuh", which they want to inflict upon the rest of the country. This raises public awareness of Texas and its social policies, which are by most people's definition very far to the right (many would say "extreme").
Better get used to the stereotyping. The govorner of Texas and his policies have made Texas ripe for it, just as the Kansas school board made Kansas ripe for their brand of stereotyping.
No one seriously thinks all Texans are idiots, but that won't stop any of us from mocking their more blatant absurdities, and a blood thirsty penal system coupled with draconian laws (at least one couple recently served time in Texas for living together unmarried, and at least a couple of people are serving life without parole for selling hemp of all things) is a better reason than most.
As long as Texas insists on behaving like a collective political and social idiot, with throwback social policies remeniscent of the 19th century, the rest of us will continue to snicker.
The photo is of Goldstein expressing shock and dismay at how easy it is to find pirated VHS tapes. He's not selling them or doing anything else that could be defined as "ill-behavior."
As another noted, my dislike and prior experience with Declan colored my interpretation of the photograph and the message it was sending. mae culpa.
2. Posting a link to a photo of Declan's in a comment means that he "enjoys a rapport with slashdot"?!
I should have been more specific. I was not referring to you personally, or the photo in particular. Rather the photo (and my misinterpretatino of it) were the catalyst to expound on Declan's lack of journalistic ethics and the seemingly high (perhaps now cooled to medium based on the "olde tyme hacker" article) he appears to be held in by at least some editors at slashdot. I refer to previous slashdot articles, particularly those posted during the time when livid was under attack and developers were being forced through legal thuggary to withdraw from the project, largely because of Declan's irresponsible journalism. At that same time this was happening numerous articles of his were posted, with slashdot intros of the sort saying (paraphrased) "Declan has another interesting look at X" or "Declan McCullagh of Wired covered Y." Most other stories are not introduced with the author's name, but rather "an article at [publication]." In fact, the only author I'm aware of that enjoys such regular billing on slashdot, by name, is Jon Katz (apologies to Mr. Katz for mentioning his name in the same breath as Mr. McCullagh).
This implies rather strongly some kind of rapport or relationship between Declan and slashdot, which, if true, reflects poorly on slashdot.
I point that out as criticism because
slashdot may not be aware of Declan's reprehensible behavior on the livid mailing list
slashdot may not be aware of Declan's severe lack of journalistic ethics
slashdot may be aware, and may not care, for commercial/other reasons, in which case the readership should be made aware
public exposure and discussion of this kind of thing is in my experience the best way to get it cleared up
I still like slashdot, and would rather see things like this discussed and fixed than allowed to simply fester
Declan McCullagh (the site which hosts the photo implying ill-behavior on Goldstein's part) has never been a friend of DeCSS or open source DVD. That he enjoys a rapport with slashdot is IMHO one reason to seriously question the ethics of those who run this forum.
While this doesn't necessarilly exhonorate Golstein, I would suggest we all consider the source and be appropriately wary of assuming the truth is being told (or shown) here.
I suggest anyone who is interested check out the archives of the LiViD mailing list. I found Declan's behavior to be shockingly reprehensible, unprofessional and downright destructive, and truly regretted that I had previously defended him on the very same list.
Declan is in my opinion responsible in no small part for what has happened with DeCSS (and is directly responsible for the original author of css-auth quitting the project as an act of self-defense). He is the main reason I don't read wired, and a contributing cause to my reading slashdot less and less.
The idea being that artists should get paid and music should be convenient. To say that a you can not own a certain bit pattern if you get it from someone else even if you could legally, yourself, make exactly the same bit pattern seems a little silly.
You are right. It is not only silly, it is also untrue. The courts have found several times (for video AND for computer data) than you can even charge a fee to duplicate someone's copy of copyrighted material or convert it to another format. Examples of this include NTSC -> PAL video conversions, moving vidoe collections from Beta to VHS, and recovering software from outdated media such as 8" diskettes and moving it to a more convinient (e.g. 3.5" diskettes) medium.
If mp3.com is smart, they will appeal the decision against them, as there is precedent that strongly supports their position with regards to mymp3.
Either way, if you as an end user already own a legal copy of a track, you can legally download the same track from the internet. The RIAA may foolishly try to sue you, but if you can afford to fight the lawsuit you will almost certainly win -- there is plenty of legal precendence.
Of course, a lawyer I am not, but I do know that I for one will continue to save myself the hassle of borrowing a turntable and doing an analog -> wav, wav -> ogg conversion and keep downloading the music I already own, as playing mp3's is far more convinient than dealing with vinyl.
which said the purpose of a board of directors is to come as close as possible to breaking the law as they can.
There was a time when busines ethics were considered of some importance, even by many in top management/ceo positions. Not that there weren't plenty of abuses, but at one time such abuses were not considered acceptable business behavior.
Obviously, given the tone of your post (and many others) this has changed, IMHO for the worse.
Perhaps if, when boards of directors actually did step over the line, they did hard time in a real prison (and no, Club Fed doesn't count), their behavior might become a little more acceptable.
Hell, if half the victims (read: the people) weren't constantly apologizing and playing down their despicable acts as "just business as usual" things might improve. As it is, they hardly need PR departments to do spin control -- we ourselves are spewing their platitudes before they even write their press releases.
I find this trend absolutely despicable, and I think we need to wake up and reevaluate just what sort of behavior we are taking for granted in the business/corporate world.
Furthermore, I think we should react to this sort of unethical behavior vehemently and loudly. It is unacceptable, and we should communicate that fact in no uncertain terms to businesses who engage in this behavior. Obviously, the law isn't a sufficient check on these entities anymore (not surprising when they can routinely purchase legislation wholesale from our congress), so it is incumbent on us as consumers to step up and be counted.
An alternative, democratic heiarchy is OpenNIC, which you can find at www.unrated.net/projects/opendns/ or (once you've set yourself up to use the alternative root domains) www.opennic.
While this still doesn't help with injustices like this, it is a start. Personally, I would prefer a system which simply hijacks.com,.net,.org,.etc. and relegates the ICANN administered domains to.com.icann,.net.icann, etc.
That would put those power hungry f*cks in their place.
Whatever form a more distributed and democratic domain name service takes, it is past time for the netizens of the world to take it out of the hands of the beaurocrats.
Ok guys...time to stop freaking out over every last little thing like this.
I am profoundly weary of what appears to have become a kneejerk response in some quarters to any article (on slashdot or elsewhere) which attempts to raise public consciousness about unethical behavior going on which affects all of us.
That response generally goes something like this: "X is nothing new, don't get your panties all in a bunch over it" with the implication that the poster is therefor in some sense more worldly and less niave than those who are so "outraged."
Bullshit.
Murder is nothing new, it has been around since humanity came down from the trees, if not longer. Does this mean we should not be outraged when someone innocent is killed? Hell no it doesn't -- the fact that a crime or reprehensible act is "nothing new" is no reason whatsoever not be upset by it and respond accordingly.
No, unethical behavior on the part of industry is nothing new, whether that industry is making software, manufacturing 3d video cards, or reviewing such cards.
So what? If these people and their respective companies are behaving in an unethical manner we have a civic duty to ourselves and our communities (however you wish to define the latter) to express our outrage, both to the public and to the wrongdoers.
If we scream foul when this kind of thing happens, regardless of how old, or new, the behavior may be, there is a decent chance the perpetrators will change their offensive behavior.
On the other hand, if we are silent, or dismiss such behavior by succumbing to the kind of impotent cyicism some here seem to espouse, you can rest assured that not only will such behavior remain unchanged, it will probably grow in both frequency and magnitude.
Did you really mean to say that DeCSS has never been used to pirate DVDs?
According to the testimony of the Motion Picture Association of America in the ongoing DeCSS trial in New York, they cannot cite a single instance of DeCSS being used to violate DVD copyright.
I think it rather doubtful that this is due to lack of exhaustive searching for an instance, as they really do need a concrete example if they are to survive the appeal.
In a world of 6.5 billion people there may have been some guy, somewhere, who opted to decrypt and copy a $15 movie onto $25 media as a novelty. This hypothetical person might even have gone so far as to copy a movie they didn't own, which would make such an act an actual copyright violation (as opposed to the legal, fair use of copying one's own movie). However, the best, very well financed and highly motivated efforts of the MPAA have failed to produce even one example of such behavior.
Re:Additional Background and Perspectives
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MAPS vs. ORBS
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· Score: 2
I am afraid an article posted on June 25 won't be relevant to the current situation. Unfortunately, both ORBS's homepage and the following quote from a recent article by Paul Vixie in news.admin.net-abuse.email show that the situation has not clarified.
Ouch! For once I wanted to be wrong, only to have been premature in my euphoria. Indeed, it appears that above.net is behaving unethically and deceitfully, and that the appearance of "making up and shaking hands" was the result of an earlier incident in June, taken out of context as "spin control" to mitigate the justified outrage at their current behavior.
Shame on above.net (yet again), and many thanks for pointing out the discrepency (which I'd failed to notice).
Re:Additional Background and Perspectives
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MAPS vs. ORBS
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· Score: 5
Quoting myself: If you wish to follow up flat denials with hard evidence, I'd be interested in seeing it, but your flat denial of wrongdoing simply doesn't cut it in light of all the evidence to the contrary.
Allow me to save you the effort.:-)
As another post pointed out here the situation is clarified and apologies are given and accepted all around. Apparently it was an innocent ISP foul up, or else someone is very good at spin control (I tend to believe the former rather than the latter).
I am delighted to have been 100% wrong about this.
Re:Additional Background and Perspectives
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MAPS vs. ORBS
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The fix is for ORBS' upstream to stop advertising above.net as a route to ORBS.
Yes, and that is a reasonable fix.
However, my understanding is that ORBS went much further than that: they advertised routes with very low metrics designed to lure packets away from valid routes which wouldn't have gone through them at all. This had the effect of shutting down legitimate routes which had nothing to do with above.net.
The fact that there may be a fix (hell, pulling the plug on above.net altogether would be a fix) doesn't make what they did any less reprehensible and inappropriate.
I say this as an unaffected, non-ORBS using observer. If above.net was trying to destroy their own business, I can't think of too many ways they could have started more effectively. I am sure there are many thousands who are far more ticked off than I am.
Re:Additional Background and Perspectives
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MAPS vs. ORBS
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Right. But they're not doing that.
I am not an above.net customer. Nevertheless, they have taken the choice of whether or not to use ORBS away from me. Thus, they have denied a non-customer the right to use that service.
The fact that I have until now chosen not to use their service is irrelevent: I resent having that choice taken away from me as a result of above.net's behavior.
From what I have read above.net are denying others access to ORBS, by advertising null routes with very low metrics to the rest of the net. This has apparently caused links which could be routed to and from ORBS to non-above.net locations via either above.net or an alternate backbone providor to default to above.net (a lower metric says "I am the shorter route, use me!"), where they then get routed nowhere.
This has the effect of blocking ORBS from ISPs and users who are not above.net's customers.
Above.net denies this. ORBS broadcasts the assertion. Other observers who appear to be less involved (read: more neutral) have commented that ORBS assertions as to cause and effect appear to be accurate, even if their assertions as to motive may not be.
Add to this that ORBS has apparently shut down their service altogether. This could be a publicity stunt, but I think most reasonable people would suspect it has more to do with technical problems stemming from above.net's behavior than political fallout.
Taken as a whole, it appears that the accusers have offered significant evidence of wrongdoing, while the accused have responded with disclaimers and denials, but no evidence to refute the accusations. As a neutral but technically competent observer I am, for the moment, inclined to believe what others have apparently confirmed.
I'll reiterate: what above.net is doing is wrong. It is unethical. It is immoral. It is reprehensible. And it is destructive to the very trust model upon which routing throughout the internet relies.
They may not be in legal trouble (though I suspect even that stance is open to dispute), but they are in a whole lot of PR trouble, and they clearly deserve to be.
If you wish to follow up flat denials with hard evidence, I'd be interested in seeing it, but your flat denial of wrongdoing simply doesn't cut it in light of all the evidence to the contrary.
Commercial spats OK, private spats not?
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· Score: 2
From The Register:
We deplore blocking terrorism, and in this case, since it isn't even a commercial battle, these tactics would seem very inappropriate.
I find this comment more than a little disturbing, probably because it is a shocking mirror of just how deluded and two-faced our collective "corporatised" ethic has become.
The implication is that "blocking terrorism" (to use the Register's phrase) would be more palatable if commercial interests were involved, but because the battle "isn't even commercial" it is somehow worse! I find this notion profoundly absurd.
An unethical action is just as unethical if done for commercial reasons as it is if done for private reasons. This notion of "it's business" and "it's my job" vs. "but I'm a nice guy in private" is reprehensible. If an action is wrong in one's private life, it is just as wrong in public or professional life.
What above.net is doing is wrong. Period.
I appluad Alan Cox and Kiri5hin for getting the story out, and slashdot for belatedly picking up on it (and, as an aside, I agree with others that slashdot's gratuitious bashing of k5 was unnecessary and unprofessional). There may not be legal recourse, but with enough bad publicity and enough customer defections the same result can be achieved: punishment and future restraint on the part of ISPs who would abuse the internet's trust model and undermine the usefulness of the net for all of us.
As I said before, above.net needs to be bitch slapped. Hard.
Additional Background and Perspectives
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There was an interesting discussion about this yesterday on K5.
The views on this controversy are diverse and conflicting, to say the least.
My personal take: I don't use ORBS and I have no opinion on the quality or fairness of ORBS' anti-spam service, but for another entity to unilaterally deny users who are not their customers the right to use the service, however flawed it may or may not be, and to do so by undermining the very IP protocols we all rely on is reprehensible in the extreme.
That above.net offers a competing anti-SPAM product is not merely suspicious, it is damning.
Finally, what happens if other competitors start advertising bogus routes to competing web pages or services?
Slashdot Mirror
Don't make the artist become the scapegoat.
If the artists discover that they can not make money by signing a contract with an RIAA member recording company, they will stop doing so and these companies will die.
If the smaller recording companies discover they are losing revinue because of their membership in the RIAA, they will eventually withdraw from that organization.
If the artists are smart, they will see the writing on the wall and do something proactive about it, like sell their own music (in mp3 format, as ready-to-burn iso images, or whatever) on their own websites, form a consortium of artists to market their products, etc.
Yes, the artists will be hurt in this battle. Unfortunate for them, but that is what happens to pawns of big, powerful entities such as the RIAA.
Want to avoid that? Get the hell away from the RIAA.
Apparently you missed the other big buzz in the record industry recently. Most labels are cutting back on their Classical and Jazz music albums, ceasing production, dumping contracts, and combining Classical and Jazz divisions. Some have even dumped their entire divisions. See the point?
...
You have actually made my point for me. Of the tens of thousands of different CDs being sold, only a few hundred were ever in the top ten. The rest continue being sold because they make money on them. If they do not, they cancel production and do exactly what you have described: close divisions and shit-can careers.
Clearly, by their own numbers, the RIAA makes money on a lot more than just the top ten best selling CDs of the moment.
Finally, no boycott is in vain. A boycott of one person who stops going to a store or buying a product because it offends their principles is a victor -- that person has taken proactive control of their own life, against a torrent of propoganda and marketing telling them to do otherwise.
Sigh... I remember when I was that idealistic.
It isn't idealism, it is mathematics. If you keep your money from flowing into the pockets of those you despise, and instead spend that money on something else (a competitors product, or a completely different thing) you have denied that person or entity real, hard income. If you spend it on a competitor, the damage is twice that. This is true whether your boycott costs them $5 or $5,000.
More importantly, if you take control of your own life and remove from it that which offends you -- in the case of many here, products of the RIAA (and the MPAA for that matter) you have won a victory, both for yourself, and against the offending party who now has a much reduced impact on your life. In effect you deny these people the one thing they crave more than money: power. This is no small or idle thing, and they know that even if you do not.
As an example, my boycott of the RIAA has cost them between one and two thousand dollars over the last nine months. My boycott of the MPAA has cost them four or five thousand dollars over the same time (I used to buy a lot of laserdisks and would have probably converted most of the collection to DVD).
If ten other people were to boycott the MPAA that would be enough to cost some MPAA flunky their $40,000 / year job. As it is, I, alone and acting by myself, quite possibly cost someone a portion of their year-end bonus or a raise.
Don't believe me? Spend some time with an accountant for a large firm. Even in multi-billion dollar companies bean counters make decisions like that based on very small changes in the bottom line (often each department and division is responsible for maintaining its profitability within very strict limits, which accentuates this affect dramatically).
One person makes a much bigger difference than you, or the mass media, would have us believe.
Just because you have allowed yourself to be lulled into a false sense of futility and bought into the apathetic, impotent brand of cynicism being old to the masses today, don't expect the rest of us to.
Now troll, I've fed you more than enough for one day
Where are the grassroots efforts to boycott the MPAA?
I have been boycotting the MPAA for months now.
Slashdot has never been terribly consistent with respect to the DeCSS thing. When I tried to make them aware of Declan McCullagh's (a writer for Wired who hysterically screamed DVD Piracy when DeCSS and css-auth first came out) behavior and its affect on people like Derek (the original author of css-auth who had to quite the project under legal threats as a result of Declan's shoddy journalism) I was pointedly ignored.
Slashdot constantly inundates us with movie reviews and other "free marketing" of the very people who have declared Livid and the open source/free software community their enemy. Worse, they give one of the worst journalistic offendors, Declan McCullagh, very chummy introductions to any story of his they link to (most other authors are not mentioned by name when their articles are linked to by slashdot).
Frankly, I don't understand slashdot's behavior with respect to the DVD/MPAA/Declan/DeCSS thing either, but it sure does annoy me from time to time.
The RIAA does not care.
Really? I had a look at a number of other posts by you, for example here, here, here, here, and here. The last is rather interesting, in which someone accuses you of being an RIAA plant and you respond by admitting you are a troll.
Based on the content of your messages, it appears that that is all you are. In the unlikely event that you do work for the RIAA (and are a plant) I find it amusing that the RIAA would invest time and money discouraging a boycott they "don't care about." It is far more likely that you have succeeded in trolling slashdot very well this day, even getting a high +5 score doing it. There is no shortage of extreme Randian cynics on this site, and your post obviously appealed to some of them. Congrats.
(And shame on you pitiful fools who think it is somehow cool and worldly to espouse cynicism, apathy, and capitulation over standing up for your ideals.)
Where we make the money is in the Top 10 records - the stuff that most Slashdot readers (and other concerned citizens) don't listen to. We don't make much money off of your purchases. We make the money in the mass market. And by and large, the mass market doesn't care about your boycott.
First, that isn't true at all (and this exposes you as a simple troll and not an RIAA plant/spokesperson/whatever). The music industry makes a great deal of money on music of various genres which are not top ten. If they didn't, they would have no compunction in ceasing production of the material and killing the artists' careers. Such is standard operating procedure in the industry.
Furthermore, successful boycotts are almost never "mass market actions," they are activist actions taken by a minority. However, even a very small minority can make enough of an impact to threaten the bottom line, and this is as true with the RIAA as it is with anyone else. The difference is that the RIAA is defending a monopoly (of questionable legality), and monopolists often cannot see their business surviving the loss of their monopoly and will defend it to the death, even against all reason.
Finally, no boycott is in vain. A boycott of one person who stops going to a store or buying a product because it offends their principles is a victor -- that person has taken proactive control of their own life, against a torrent of propoganda and marketing telling them to do otherwise.
Your boycott will fail, unless what you want is to destroy the artists that you listen to - the artists who survive on a small but dedicated fan base. You are destroying the art that you love over a legal difference of opinion. We hope you're happy.
And you have the audacity to call us arrogant?
Resistence is never futile. It always costs the enemy something, and is always better than just rolling over and capitulating. There is a possibility we may lose the war, but it is certain that the RIAA is losing money as I type this.
Google results 1-10 of about 4,860 for espy joel klecker. Search took 3.91 seconds.
It's neat with todays technology on how we all can be remembered...
I regret to say that your own, personal memory of Espy will probably outlive his digital presence on the internet, except possibly in the form of his contributions to Debian.
Usenet articles expire and are deleted. Even Deja removes old material after three or four years, never to be seen again. Web pages change, lists of contributing authors change, software dies and is replaced, etc.
I suggest, if you really are interested in preserving Espy's digital memory, mirroring some or all of these references on a web page for just that purpose. Usenet postings in particular are vulnerable to vanishing.
Otherwise, the Debian dedication notwhithstanding, I think you'll be unpleasantly surprised at just how transient our collective "digital" memory is.
This is probably a waste of breath... err.. typing. Copyright is losing a lot of respect. This seems right given that the value that it once held for the public has been missing for quite some time.
You are not wasting your breath.
I happen to agree with you. I am trying to come up with a GPL-style approach to media copyrights, and am releasing some of my own work under a GPL-like Free Media License.
I agree that a more fundamental review (and perhaps repeal) of the proveleged copy restrictions we call copyright is long overdue.
I just think it's sad that when I introduce myself as being from Texas, the usual response is "oh, so what do you think about the death penalty?"
:-)
Believe it or not I know how you feel. As an American who lived in Germany for a number of years (exchange student, summer intern, itinerant traveler), when I would admit to being American I was generally asked the same question (or some other stereotyped variation).
What most Americans don't realize is that, as Texas is to the United States, so to is the United States to the rest of the world.[1]
We'd better just develop a sense of humor about it, because everyone else certainly has.
[1] I think it is Robert Anton Wilson whom I am paraphrasing there, something about Texans being emberrassed about a (fictional) town called Bad Ass, while Americans in turn were emberrassed by Texas, while the Earth in turn was emberrassed by America.
Napster could have just let it go.
No, they couldn't have. The way trademark law is written, it must be actively defended to be preserved.
With copyright the exact opposite is true, even if you never defend your copyright once, the copyright remains valid.
Napster is being hypocritical, but not because of their little encounter with Offspring (which was resolved cordially). They are hypocritical for the other reason you mention:
or open source programmers, tried to use anything Napster owned. Yet at the same time, Napster has no problem helping to distribute material that other people own.
They are hypocrits because they shout "share!" with one breath and then refuse to share technical info with those who wish to write compatible software (and even worse, do all they can to discourage independent efforts at supporting napster). This is counter to the "share and share alike" philosophy of information, be it software (free software/open source), news, or music.
It is OK not to buy into the "information wants to be free" paradigm if one doesn't want to. It is not OK to say "I believe in information being free, as long as it isn't mine!"
As I said in another post, do not count on a corporation to defend your freedom. Napster is as interested in making you captive as the RIAA is (they want to force you to use their product, and their product only). If you really want to insure your freedom, support the gnutella or freenet efforts instead, and trade your material there (and please respect copyrights when doing so).
You are correct with respect to copyright and trademark law, however, the spat with the Offspring was only a minor aside in the article.
More significantly, the company repeatedly has tried to stymie independent software developers working on Napster-compatible software and Web sites. While these programs could benefit the millions of music fans that Napster claims are its only constituency, they might also diminish the commercial potential of Napster itself.
The company has refused to share technical information about its software code, has made changes to its software that have prevented other programs from working with Napster's own and has blocked computers from outside music sites from accessing Napster's database of hundreds of thousands of songs.
Napster is hypocritical in that it is claiming to be a champion defending the right and freedom to share and then refuses to share its own information, including programing APIs, protocol speficiations, or simple access to the virtual net they've constructed from their users' PCs.
This is IMHO very hypocritical of napster.
The fact that Napster seems to sing a different tune when its own property is involved is just one of the ways the reality of Napster is at odds with its public image. The service's management and ownership structure, for example, is quite different than many users suppose, with Napster's highly publicized teenage founder, Shawn Fanning, playing only a minor role.
Herein may lie the problem. We have a bunch of suits in it for the money, and quite willing to toss a few platitudes our way to garner our short-term support, but in the end they have a vested interest in forcing us to use their product, and their product only.
If you want true freedom to share, don't rely on napster to provide, or even defend, it. Instead work with the folks at gnutella or freenet. You'll have much better odds of being able to run a client or server on the platform of your choice, and a much better chance of securing your own freedom.
In short, never send a capatalist to do an activist's job. The results will disappoint you every time.
I assume you're talking about kuro5hin and saying they are lusers. It's probably all a troll, but I'm having a hard time keeping myself from replying.
I think (I hope) you misunderstood what he was saying. I tool Lusers to refer to the script kiddies launching the DOS attacks, not Kiro5hin for being their victim.
Upon rereading the article it coule be taken either way. Perhaps the original author would care to clarify?
You are right, there were some very good articles on how to secure a system. I for one will miss kiro5hin very much -- it had become the first site I would browse in the morning while sipping soda and waiting for my compiles to finish.
[toung-in-cheek]
Some anonymous coward said something about breeding these lusers (the attackers) out of the
race. While manditory castration might be a little harsh, bitch slapping their parent's for doing such a poor job and foisting such scum upon the rest of us seems like a reasonable start.
[/toung-in-cheek]
This was exposed and discussed on Technocrat two days ago.
Don't feel bad -- I saw one of the big network News organizations (I think it was ABC) get taken by a hoaxster during one of their live "crisis" broadcasts, where the person confirmed that somebody had indeed killed themself since "they couldn't be on the Howard Stern show."
If it can happen to them it can happen to slashdot.
Thanks a lump for furthering the stereotype that Texans are a bunch of unremorseful, 6-gun wielding cowboys who have nothing better to do than kill things.
I know humor is a difficult concept, particularly for the humor impaired, but try to follow me here:
Texas has an execution wielding, social throwback of a presidential candidate in the form of "dub uh yuh", which they want to inflict upon the rest of the country. This raises public awareness of Texas and its social policies, which are by most people's definition very far to the right (many would say "extreme").
Better get used to the stereotyping. The govorner of Texas and his policies have made Texas ripe for it, just as the Kansas school board made Kansas ripe for their brand of stereotyping.
No one seriously thinks all Texans are idiots, but that won't stop any of us from mocking their more blatant absurdities, and a blood thirsty penal system coupled with draconian laws (at least one couple recently served time in Texas for living together unmarried, and at least a couple of people are serving life without parole for selling hemp of all things) is a better reason than most.
As long as Texas insists on behaving like a collective political and social idiot, with throwback social policies remeniscent of the 19th century, the rest of us will continue to snicker.
As another noted, my dislike and prior experience with Declan colored my interpretation of the photograph and the message it was sending. mae culpa.
2. Posting a link to a photo of Declan's in a comment means that he "enjoys a rapport with slashdot"?!
I should have been more specific. I was not referring to you personally, or the photo in particular. Rather the photo (and my misinterpretatino of it) were the catalyst to expound on Declan's lack of journalistic ethics and the seemingly high (perhaps now cooled to medium based on the "olde tyme hacker" article) he appears to be held in by at least some editors at slashdot. I refer to previous slashdot articles, particularly those posted during the time when livid was under attack and developers were being forced through legal thuggary to withdraw from the project, largely because of Declan's irresponsible journalism. At that same time this was happening numerous articles of his were posted, with slashdot intros of the sort saying (paraphrased) "Declan has another interesting look at X" or "Declan McCullagh of Wired covered Y." Most other stories are not introduced with the author's name, but rather "an article at [publication]." In fact, the only author I'm aware of that enjoys such regular billing on slashdot, by name, is Jon Katz (apologies to Mr. Katz for mentioning his name in the same breath as Mr. McCullagh).
This implies rather strongly some kind of rapport or relationship between Declan and slashdot, which, if true, reflects poorly on slashdot.
I point that out as criticism because
Declan McCullagh (the site which hosts the photo implying ill-behavior on Goldstein's part) has never been a friend of DeCSS or open source DVD. That he enjoys a rapport with slashdot is IMHO one reason to seriously question the ethics of those who run this forum.
While this doesn't necessarilly exhonorate Golstein, I would suggest we all consider the source and be appropriately wary of assuming the truth is being told (or shown) here.
I suggest anyone who is interested check out the archives of the LiViD mailing list. I found Declan's behavior to be shockingly reprehensible, unprofessional and downright destructive, and truly regretted that I had previously defended him on the very same list.
Declan is in my opinion responsible in no small part for what has happened with DeCSS (and is directly responsible for the original author of css-auth quitting the project as an act of self-defense). He is the main reason I don't read wired, and a contributing cause to my reading slashdot less and less.
The idea being that artists should get paid and music should be convenient. To say that a you can not own a certain bit pattern if you get it from someone else even if you could legally, yourself, make exactly the same bit pattern seems a little silly.
You are right. It is not only silly, it is also untrue. The courts have found several times (for video AND for computer data) than you can even charge a fee to duplicate someone's copy of copyrighted material or convert it to another format. Examples of this include NTSC -> PAL video conversions, moving vidoe collections from Beta to VHS, and recovering software from outdated media such as 8" diskettes and moving it to a more convinient (e.g. 3.5" diskettes) medium.
If mp3.com is smart, they will appeal the decision against them, as there is precedent that strongly supports their position with regards to mymp3.
Either way, if you as an end user already own a legal copy of a track, you can legally download the same track from the internet. The RIAA may foolishly try to sue you, but if you can afford to fight the lawsuit you will almost certainly win -- there is plenty of legal precendence.
Of course, a lawyer I am not, but I do know that I for one will continue to save myself the hassle of borrowing a turntable and doing an analog -> wav, wav -> ogg conversion and keep downloading the music I already own, as playing mp3's is far more convinient than dealing with vinyl.
which said the purpose of a board of directors is to come as close as possible to breaking the law as they can.
There was a time when busines ethics were considered of some importance, even by many in top management/ceo positions. Not that there weren't plenty of abuses, but at one time such abuses were not considered acceptable business behavior.
Obviously, given the tone of your post (and many others) this has changed, IMHO for the worse.
Perhaps if, when boards of directors actually did step over the line, they did hard time in a real prison (and no, Club Fed doesn't count), their behavior might become a little more acceptable.
Hell, if half the victims (read: the people) weren't constantly apologizing and playing down their despicable acts as "just business as usual" things might improve. As it is, they hardly need PR departments to do spin control -- we ourselves are spewing their platitudes before they even write their press releases.
I find this trend absolutely despicable, and I think we need to wake up and reevaluate just what sort of behavior we are taking for granted in the business/corporate world.
Furthermore, I think we should react to this sort of unethical behavior vehemently and loudly. It is unacceptable, and we should communicate that fact in no uncertain terms to businesses who engage in this behavior. Obviously, the law isn't a sufficient check on these entities anymore (not surprising when they can routinely purchase legislation wholesale from our congress), so it is incumbent on us as consumers to step up and be counted.
An alternative, democratic heiarchy is OpenNIC, which you can find at www.unrated.net/projects/opendns/ or (once you've set yourself up to use the alternative root domains) www.opennic.
.com, .net, .org, .etc. and relegates the ICANN administered domains to .com.icann, .net.icann, etc.
While this still doesn't help with injustices like this, it is a start. Personally, I would prefer a system which simply hijacks
That would put those power hungry f*cks in their place.
Whatever form a more distributed and democratic domain name service takes, it is past time for the netizens of the world to take it out of the hands of the beaurocrats.
Nothing new.
Ok guys...time to stop freaking out over every last little thing like this.
I am profoundly weary of what appears to have become a kneejerk response in some quarters to any article (on slashdot or elsewhere) which attempts to raise public consciousness about unethical behavior going on which affects all of us.
That response generally goes something like this: "X is nothing new, don't get your panties all in a bunch over it" with the implication that the poster is therefor in some sense more worldly and less niave than those who are so "outraged."
Bullshit.
Murder is nothing new, it has been around since humanity came down from the trees, if not longer. Does this mean we should not be outraged when someone innocent is killed? Hell no it doesn't -- the fact that a crime or reprehensible act is "nothing new" is no reason whatsoever not be upset by it and respond accordingly.
No, unethical behavior on the part of industry is nothing new, whether that industry is making software, manufacturing 3d video cards, or reviewing such cards.
So what? If these people and their respective companies are behaving in an unethical manner we have a civic duty to ourselves and our communities (however you wish to define the latter) to express our outrage, both to the public and to the wrongdoers.
If we scream foul when this kind of thing happens, regardless of how old, or new, the behavior may be, there is a decent chance the perpetrators will change their offensive behavior.
On the other hand, if we are silent, or dismiss such behavior by succumbing to the kind of impotent cyicism some here seem to espouse, you can rest assured that not only will such behavior remain unchanged, it will probably grow in both frequency and magnitude.
Did you really mean to say that DeCSS has never been used to pirate DVDs?
According to the testimony of the Motion Picture Association of America in the ongoing DeCSS trial in New York, they cannot cite a single instance of DeCSS being used to violate DVD copyright.
I think it rather doubtful that this is due to lack of exhaustive searching for an instance, as they really do need a concrete example if they are to survive the appeal.
In a world of 6.5 billion people there may have been some guy, somewhere, who opted to decrypt and copy a $15 movie onto $25 media as a novelty. This hypothetical person might even have gone so far as to copy a movie they didn't own, which would make such an act an actual copyright violation (as opposed to the legal, fair use of copying one's own movie). However, the best, very well financed and highly motivated efforts of the MPAA have failed to produce even one example of such behavior.
I am afraid an article posted on June 25 won't be relevant to the current situation. Unfortunately, both ORBS's homepage and the following quote from a recent article by Paul Vixie in news.admin.net-abuse.email show that the situation has not clarified.
Ouch! For once I wanted to be wrong, only to have been premature in my euphoria. Indeed, it appears that above.net is behaving unethically and deceitfully, and that the appearance of "making up and shaking hands" was the result of an earlier incident in June, taken out of context as "spin control" to mitigate the justified outrage at their current behavior.
Shame on above.net (yet again), and many thanks for pointing out the discrepency (which I'd failed to notice).
Quoting myself:
:-)
If you wish to follow up flat denials with hard evidence, I'd be interested in seeing it, but your flat denial of wrongdoing simply doesn't cut it in light of all the evidence to the contrary.
Allow me to save you the effort.
As another post pointed out here the situation is clarified and apologies are given and accepted all around. Apparently it was an innocent ISP foul up, or else someone is very good at spin control (I tend to believe the former rather than the latter).
I am delighted to have been 100% wrong about this.
The fix is for ORBS' upstream to stop advertising above.net as a route to ORBS.
Yes, and that is a reasonable fix.
However, my understanding is that ORBS went much further than that: they advertised routes with very low metrics designed to lure packets away from valid routes which wouldn't have gone through them at all. This had the effect of shutting down legitimate routes which had nothing to do with above.net.
The fact that there may be a fix (hell, pulling the plug on above.net altogether would be a fix) doesn't make what they did any less reprehensible and inappropriate.
I say this as an unaffected, non-ORBS using observer. If above.net was trying to destroy their own business, I can't think of too many ways they could have started more effectively. I am sure there are many thousands who are far more ticked off than I am.
Right. But they're not doing that.
I am not an above.net customer. Nevertheless, they have taken the choice of whether or not to use ORBS away from me. Thus, they have denied a non-customer the right to use that service.
The fact that I have until now chosen not to use their service is irrelevent: I resent having that choice taken away from me as a result of above.net's behavior.
From what I have read above.net are denying others access to ORBS, by advertising null routes with very low metrics to the rest of the net. This has apparently caused links which could be routed to and from ORBS to non-above.net locations via either above.net or an alternate backbone providor to default to above.net (a lower metric says "I am the shorter route, use me!"), where they then get routed nowhere.
This has the effect of blocking ORBS from ISPs and users who are not above.net's customers.
Above.net denies this. ORBS broadcasts the assertion. Other observers who appear to be less involved (read: more neutral) have commented that ORBS assertions as to cause and effect appear to be accurate, even if their assertions as to motive may not be.
Add to this that ORBS has apparently shut down their service altogether. This could be a publicity stunt, but I think most reasonable people would suspect it has more to do with technical problems stemming from above.net's behavior than political fallout.
Taken as a whole, it appears that the accusers have offered significant evidence of wrongdoing, while the accused have responded with disclaimers and denials, but no evidence to refute the accusations. As a neutral but technically competent observer I am, for the moment, inclined to believe what others have apparently confirmed.
I'll reiterate: what above.net is doing is wrong. It is unethical. It is immoral. It is reprehensible. And it is destructive to the very trust model upon which routing throughout the internet relies.
They may not be in legal trouble (though I suspect even that stance is open to dispute), but they are in a whole lot of PR trouble, and they clearly deserve to be.
If you wish to follow up flat denials with hard evidence, I'd be interested in seeing it, but your flat denial of wrongdoing simply doesn't cut it in light of all the evidence to the contrary.
From The Register:
We deplore blocking terrorism, and in this case, since it isn't even a commercial battle, these tactics would seem very inappropriate.
I find this comment more than a little disturbing, probably because it is a shocking mirror of just how deluded and two-faced our collective "corporatised" ethic has become.
The implication is that "blocking terrorism" (to use the Register's phrase) would be more palatable if commercial interests were involved, but because the battle "isn't even commercial" it is somehow worse! I find this notion profoundly absurd.
An unethical action is just as unethical if done for commercial reasons as it is if done for private reasons. This notion of "it's business" and "it's my job" vs. "but I'm a nice guy in private" is reprehensible. If an action is wrong in one's private life, it is just as wrong in public or professional life.
What above.net is doing is wrong. Period.
I appluad Alan Cox and Kiri5hin for getting the story out, and slashdot for belatedly picking up on it (and, as an aside, I agree with others that slashdot's gratuitious bashing of k5 was unnecessary and unprofessional). There may not be legal recourse, but with enough bad publicity and enough customer defections the same result can be achieved: punishment and future restraint on the part of ISPs who would abuse the internet's trust model and undermine the usefulness of the net for all of us.
As I said before, above.net needs to be bitch slapped. Hard.
There was an interesting discussion about this yesterday on K5.
The views on this controversy are diverse and conflicting, to say the least.
My personal take: I don't use ORBS and I have no opinion on the quality or fairness of ORBS' anti-spam service, but for another entity to unilaterally deny users who are not their customers the right to use the service, however flawed it may or may not be, and to do so by undermining the very IP protocols we all rely on is reprehensible in the extreme.
That above.net offers a competing anti-SPAM product is not merely suspicious, it is damning.
Finally, what happens if other competitors start advertising bogus routes to competing web pages or services?
IMHO above.net needs to be bitch slapped, hard.