Multiple problems. First, if you created it, then regardless of what restrictions you intended to place on it, if they download it from you because you shared it, they've done nothing illegal. Second, even if you didn't create it, since you're sharing it, the liability is yours.
Don't confuse "nobody has managed to explain what a particle is" with "nobody has explained *to me* what a particle is". Particles are neither poorly-defined nor assumed a priori.
Likewise, I guess the trivial response to "what I'd really like to see is..." is "start looking". Such subjects are already of significant interest to theoretical physicists.
They don't need to use LimeWire -- it's just the Gnutella network, and that's all information LimeWire happily and freely provides to anyone on the network. Technically they could use (or are using) a custom Gnutella client.
First, all Gnutella clients are the same for their purposes; it's one network. Second, tons of people still use LimeWire for whatever reason.
It may be a fairly straightforward system, but it's also potentially quite effective. The point of the Gnutella network is to search the network, and people label files to help searchers find them (otherwise, little point in sharing). Harness that and collect IPs from them, and you have a list of potential infringers. Sure, there are plenty of ways to "beat the system", but they're after large-scale effectiveness, not ensuring that Joe Thinks-he's-leet doesn't escape their wrath.
It's pretty trivial with torrents, but it's probably less effective because there isn't a search mechanism that spans the "whole network". Finding people downloading / sharing a particular (predetermined) torrent or using a particular tracker is fairly easy, but it doesn't facilitate making an enormous sweep for "anyone sharing one of these hundreds of files".
Actually, all standard computer forensics software support ext2/3, at least, and every forensic examiner I've met could tell you if the subject was running Windows or a Unix.
Never mind that using "rm" to delete all of the downloaded files has bought you almost zero protection.
I don't know anyone in the NSA, but FBI computer forensic examiners don't use this technique and consider the practical usefulness of the technique to be laughable.
"Among those that are, I bet a higher proportion are within FBI jurisdiction than the general mass of criminal investigations."
To be fair, it wouldn't even have to be within FBI jurisdiction; if a local criminal was really important enough, the evidence could be transferred to a federal forensic lab.
You're aware that "criminals" are primarily investigated under local government, not federal government, yes? The NSA certainly could have the capability to do this, but there's almost no chance they've made it fast or cheap, so the number of drives they could use it on is incredibly small, if it all. Local police, regional police forensic labs, and organizations like the FBI do not have this capability.
This is exactly what I mean -- it can be done once, with enormous resources in a scientific environment. It's not a technique that can be actually used by police forensic analysts in investigations.
This is not actually true. Any ability to read data once the entire disk has been overwritten with random data a single time is purely theoretical -- no forensics or law enforcement group can succeed in practice.
Yes; the problem with discretion is that lots of factors can push the "discretion line", meaning inconsistently-applied laws. A small town with a minimal police force probably has tons of unused police time, making it more beneficial to spend that time ticketing motorists. Even better if they have access to a large pool of out-of-town people likely to be speeding (e.g., a nearby highway).
Arguments about the efficacy of the TSA aside, you seem to be confusing the inability to be 100% effective with being 100% ineffective. Reducing the likelihood of X happening is a nonzero effectiveness.
People in security know full well that no method will guarantee 100% attack prevention. Reducing the likelihood and frequency of attacks is the goal.
As another commenter alludes to, our laws are written under a number of assumptions about the system: that "perfect" law enforcement is not available and that police and the judicial system are able to use reasonable levels of discretion at multiple levels in the system.
The idea of having 100% effective law enforcement isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself, but it would require very different laws.
There is actually quite a lot of wiggle room even with theoretically-perfect law enforcement, as there's hardly the time or money to prosecute or enforce truly petty crimes, and both police and the judicial system can exercise discretion and not prosecute an individual for a sufficiently meaningless crime. Removal of discretion would require fairly significant legal changes as well.:-P
To take speed limits as your example, speed limits aren't there because they really expect everyone to drive below that speed. However, if the speed limit is 55 and people are driving faster than is safe, lowering it to 45 will lower their average speed. So, I can get the results I want even though I'm making a law I don't expect people to strictly follow.
As mentioned elsewhere, the hydrogen frequency is chosen because other frequencies are too noisy for long-distance communication. Whether aliens knew that or not, long-distance signals from them wouldn't get to us on other frequencies very well.
As far as mode of communication, SETI is blind to that -- it's independent of *how* such communication is done, only that the aliens are sending some kind of EM energy at that frequency. (It is again by necessity that they look for signals above the background level.)
You also fail to properly appreciate the difference between the extreme environments that "extremophile" bacteria live in and the environments of "non-Earthlike" planets.
Certainly the NSA doesn't. I'm not sure about the FBI.
You're making a slippery slope argument. Next you'll be claiming that those agencies also have books that they'll make illegal. Gun regulation is fairly tough to get passed, and guns are directly involved in a considerable amount of violent injury and death.
It's true when discussing the added abilities of this Microsoft tool, though -- it doesn't give access to anything that a person with physical access to your machine didn't already have access to.
This is very true. Nobody that has the power and resources to effectively hunt down copyright infringers cares at all about them. The police certainly don't -- they're overbooked as it is investigating actual crimes.
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Multiple problems. First, if you created it, then regardless of what restrictions you intended to place on it, if they download it from you because you shared it, they've done nothing illegal. Second, even if you didn't create it, since you're sharing it, the liability is yours.
Don't confuse "nobody has managed to explain what a particle is" with "nobody has explained *to me* what a particle is". Particles are neither poorly-defined nor assumed a priori.
Likewise, I guess the trivial response to "what I'd really like to see is..." is "start looking". Such subjects are already of significant interest to theoretical physicists.
They don't need to use LimeWire -- it's just the Gnutella network, and that's all information LimeWire happily and freely provides to anyone on the network. Technically they could use (or are using) a custom Gnutella client.
You must've missed the part in the article where they describe how they determine if it's actually one of their songs or not.
Hint: neither file name nor first few seconds being the same will do it.
First, all Gnutella clients are the same for their purposes; it's one network. Second, tons of people still use LimeWire for whatever reason.
It may be a fairly straightforward system, but it's also potentially quite effective. The point of the Gnutella network is to search the network, and people label files to help searchers find them (otherwise, little point in sharing). Harness that and collect IPs from them, and you have a list of potential infringers. Sure, there are plenty of ways to "beat the system", but they're after large-scale effectiveness, not ensuring that Joe Thinks-he's-leet doesn't escape their wrath.
It's pretty trivial with torrents, but it's probably less effective because there isn't a search mechanism that spans the "whole network". Finding people downloading / sharing a particular (predetermined) torrent or using a particular tracker is fairly easy, but it doesn't facilitate making an enormous sweep for "anyone sharing one of these hundreds of files".
There are already quite significant criminal penalties for both sexual predators and identity thieves. Both give you two fewer than "three strikes".
I think you're confusing "estimated" and "invented".
A common problem among people who are bad at estimation.
You mean people eventually die? Now that's a revelation!
Actually, all standard computer forensics software support ext2/3, at least, and every forensic examiner I've met could tell you if the subject was running Windows or a Unix.
Never mind that using "rm" to delete all of the downloaded files has bought you almost zero protection.
I don't know anyone in the NSA, but FBI computer forensic examiners don't use this technique and consider the practical usefulness of the technique to be laughable.
"Among those that are, I bet a higher proportion are within FBI jurisdiction than the general mass of criminal investigations."
To be fair, it wouldn't even have to be within FBI jurisdiction; if a local criminal was really important enough, the evidence could be transferred to a federal forensic lab.
Unless they die stacked up in an area somewhere, become buried, and turn into some kind of condensed sequestered-carbon solid or liquid.
Nobody that's used it has reported that it has these magical features. Just looks like a collection of forensic tools with a UI.
You're aware that "criminals" are primarily investigated under local government, not federal government, yes? The NSA certainly could have the capability to do this, but there's almost no chance they've made it fast or cheap, so the number of drives they could use it on is incredibly small, if it all. Local police, regional police forensic labs, and organizations like the FBI do not have this capability.
This is exactly what I mean -- it can be done once, with enormous resources in a scientific environment. It's not a technique that can be actually used by police forensic analysts in investigations.
This is not actually true. Any ability to read data once the entire disk has been overwritten with random data a single time is purely theoretical -- no forensics or law enforcement group can succeed in practice.
Yes; the problem with discretion is that lots of factors can push the "discretion line", meaning inconsistently-applied laws. A small town with a minimal police force probably has tons of unused police time, making it more beneficial to spend that time ticketing motorists. Even better if they have access to a large pool of out-of-town people likely to be speeding (e.g., a nearby highway).
Arguments about the efficacy of the TSA aside, you seem to be confusing the inability to be 100% effective with being 100% ineffective. Reducing the likelihood of X happening is a nonzero effectiveness.
People in security know full well that no method will guarantee 100% attack prevention. Reducing the likelihood and frequency of attacks is the goal.
As another commenter alludes to, our laws are written under a number of assumptions about the system: that "perfect" law enforcement is not available and that police and the judicial system are able to use reasonable levels of discretion at multiple levels in the system.
:-P
The idea of having 100% effective law enforcement isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself, but it would require very different laws.
There is actually quite a lot of wiggle room even with theoretically-perfect law enforcement, as there's hardly the time or money to prosecute or enforce truly petty crimes, and both police and the judicial system can exercise discretion and not prosecute an individual for a sufficiently meaningless crime. Removal of discretion would require fairly significant legal changes as well.
To take speed limits as your example, speed limits aren't there because they really expect everyone to drive below that speed. However, if the speed limit is 55 and people are driving faster than is safe, lowering it to 45 will lower their average speed. So, I can get the results I want even though I'm making a law I don't expect people to strictly follow.
Care to show your math? Looks like rather egregious misuse of units to me.
I remember how successful that was.
As mentioned elsewhere, the hydrogen frequency is chosen because other frequencies are too noisy for long-distance communication. Whether aliens knew that or not, long-distance signals from them wouldn't get to us on other frequencies very well.
As far as mode of communication, SETI is blind to that -- it's independent of *how* such communication is done, only that the aliens are sending some kind of EM energy at that frequency. (It is again by necessity that they look for signals above the background level.)
You also fail to properly appreciate the difference between the extreme environments that "extremophile" bacteria live in and the environments of "non-Earthlike" planets.
Certainly the NSA doesn't. I'm not sure about the FBI.
You're making a slippery slope argument. Next you'll be claiming that those agencies also have books that they'll make illegal. Gun regulation is fairly tough to get passed, and guns are directly involved in a considerable amount of violent injury and death.
It's true when discussing the added abilities of this Microsoft tool, though -- it doesn't give access to anything that a person with physical access to your machine didn't already have access to.
"No one's out to nail you for your WaRez."
This is very true. Nobody that has the power and resources to effectively hunt down copyright infringers cares at all about them. The police certainly don't -- they're overbooked as it is investigating actual crimes.