Well, in all fairness, people with money, hollywood stars, and politicians ARE the news. Until we decide they're not news anymore, that's what it will be.
It's hard to make a mistake in this instance. A fradulant site, linked from a spam email is pretty hard to confuse with the real thing, unless of course you're one of the morons that the spam was initially targeting anyway. It's pretty simple to identify a fraud site and taking it out hurts nobody but the one perpetuating the fraud.
Certainly, it's a grey area, and damage done should be to the site itself, not necessarily the entire server the site is hosted on, since that's where mistakes could happen.
The difference that you ask about is that it's legal, with legisation backing it up, to record tv shows broadcast over public or cable television, and tivo certainly falls into that category. Yes, there is quite a bit of grumbling about the ease by which commercials can be skipped through, but for the moment, all is kosher on that front.
However, nothing gives anyone the right to redistribute the recorded shows. If I download a show, I didn't have to buy a tivo, and chances are good I'm not going to have to even skip through advertising. Studio makes no money off of me as the advertisers aren't going to consider downloaded commercial free shows in their rating calculations.
For fear of overextrapolating, should the trend continue unabashed, they choose not to embrace a new distribution medium and instead look for other ways to cut costs, they'll instead create more shows that have low overhead budgets and appeal to a demographic less likely to use computers for obtaining and watching television shows. That's right, you'll probably end up with more reality TV.
I'd personally prefer a different distribution model. Even a subscription based service would work. As the trek fans were pointing out in their ill-fated effort to save Enterprise, even with the abysmally low ratings the show was getting, if everyone who watched it paid slightly less than 50 cents per episode, they'd have enough to fully fund a season. That's pretty cheap entertainment, and far far less than they charge for the DVD sets of the same seasons years later. Heck, millions of people willingly pay more than 50 cents for a SONG. It's not out of the question to assume they'd do the same for a TV show that was worth watching. But as long as they want to stick with the old medium, you can expect them to fight it tooth and nail until they're forced to either adapt or die.
The best buy people got excited because of the excessive number of perfectly legal, yet somewhat unusual bills. So they get the pen out and start marking all of them and manage to smear one and it comes out looking like it might be counterfiet. The cop overreacted a bit and decided, figuring he's not really qualified to determine if the bills are in fact counterfiet or not, considering the pen DID mark it as possible, they'd hold the guy until the secret service gave it their ok, which they did, and even offered up an explaination about the confusion.
The police probably didn't do anything wrong, although what they did was probably unnecessary. Best Buy on the other hand is going to keep a few lawyers employed for the near future.
The spyware critics need to make sure there's an industry standard definition of what type of software qualifies as spyware and the requirements to meet that qualification. They then need to point out how each instance of spyware meets that specification. Then the spyware companies can sue til they're blue in the face, but they won't have a case. By claiming disparaging information, that falls under libel (or slander depending on the medium), clearly documented facts will be all that's needed to knock the cases down to frivolous at the earliest stages, assuming it goes anywhere. Anyone can fire off a cease and desist letter. Going to court takes more of a committment. Not that it hasn't been done before, but frankly, sometimes it's better to fight those battles than to back down.
So the implied logic is that if someone is agitated they should choose which crime they commit as a result of it based upon the most likely sentence, rather than not comitting any criminal activity at all?
And of course, there's no evidence the guy in the story was agitated anyway.
AND.... he hasn't received 25 years, that's only the maximum sentence, and he's likely to only get a small fraction of that, if he gets any jail time at all. In fact, he'll probably get more time from an obstruction of justice charge for lying to investigators than he'll get from anything else.
No, it won't stop the flow, but it will restrict the flow to other "safer" mediums. P2P software and networks make it very easy for the copyright owner and/or representitives to amass a large quantity of evidence against a large number of infringers within a short period of time. They can spend a small amount of effort and money investing in an evidence collection method that's virtually automated. If they had to make the same effort for each individual person they go after, it wouldn't be worth it, even as a deterrant. Which is incidently why this sort of thing has been a rare occurance until recently.
The maximum sentence for rape is life. The maximum sentence here is 15 years. Both cases tend to get less than the maximum, especially for first time offenders. Federal sentences aren't subject to parole, and tend to have larger fines and more restitution attached, but the prisons are generally nicer and safer for the inmates. Rapists may get a shorter sentence, but they have to deal with lots of other inmates who are much larger than they are and tend to frown on rapists.
He hasn't been sentenced yet. You're looking at the maximum, which is rarely given, especially for a first offense. And since he plea bargained, it'll likely be significantly less than the maximum.
I run a similar site, even linked from that one. I have SO much trouble trying to convince the average techno-illiterate people of the world that computer controlled lamps ARE in fact not only possible, but extremely simple to implement. And up until now, I've tried to instill in them the fact that it'd be too much trouble to fake it and it'd take too much work.
Now it's gonna be just that much harder. Argh.
Do we really NEED another internet hoax? If the average clueless idiot wants to forward endlessly the Snopes fodder of the week, fine. Let the scourge of the internet propogate as they will. Forward their chain letters, buy their spam, and bug me endlessly about how my internet controlled lights MUST be fake, simply because they've never heard of X10 before. But someone who's obviously smart enough to know better has ruined it for the rest of us. And he seems pretty damned proud of himself too. Makes me sick.
Actually, I'm gonna get all that stuff working again once I move into the new house. I'm just horribly limited right now at my temporary location with only 128kbps of upstream and limited places to put stuff.
In any large investigation, law enforcement typically questions hundreds of people, some of whom may be suspects, some potential witnesses, and some who are just shots in the dark. Yes, having 50 different ip addresses, only one of which MIGHT be a potential suspect might seem like a long shot, but if the IP address they're looking for IS in there, they might be able to match it up with other evidence. Considering the fact that Fyodor has yet to actually submit requested logs to an agent, in spite of numerous requests, means that this IS a long shot, a time consuming one to aquire, with a very short lifespan, and likely not really worth the effort to aquire. But it's still a legitimate source of evidence, and if it shuts down a spammer or script kiddy, I'm not going to fault them for trying.
It wouldn't really be considered entrapment if they set up their own tracker, because if they did so, technically no crime would be committed. The copyright owner has the exclusive right to redistribute his/her IP. However, should the owner set up a tracker for distribution of his own content, then he is giving the content away, which he is legally allowed to do, and therefore any recipients are obtaining it legally so long as they only use the original tracker.
However, as numerous other posters have mentioned, there is no need to set up a tracker to catch people using BT. They only have to find one offering up content and monitor it indefinitely for IP addresses of those who are downloading, and since this is BT, they are also by definition sharing the same content. It's an efficient system, but it's not even remotely anonymous.
I hope most people don't actually think like that "Keck" guy.
How is that exactly? Taking a bomb threat seriously because based on past experience he knows that some kids really do have it within themselves to carry out such a thing. Maybe the kid just wanted attention. Fine. He has it now.
Actually... I just moved and haven't finished setting everything back up yet. I was hoping to have it all done by xmas, but nothing ever goes according to plan.
Don't worry though, in a month it'll be back up to where it was.
Odd that it was moderated funny. These ARE the conventional ways that most small businesses are funded. And don't forget that most of the founders work another job to put food on the table while the new business churns along for at least 3 years before pulling a profit. And 4 times out of 5, these new businesses will fail. BUT... if you succeed, and you pay off your startup debts, you owe no favors to anyone, contractual or otherwise. That's the tradeoff.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, in all fairness, people with money, hollywood stars, and politicians ARE the news. Until we decide they're not news anymore, that's what it will be.
-Restil
It's hard to make a mistake in this instance. A fradulant site, linked from a spam email is pretty hard to confuse with the real thing, unless of course you're one of the morons that the spam was initially targeting anyway. It's pretty simple to identify a fraud site and taking it out hurts nobody but the one perpetuating the fraud.
Certainly, it's a grey area, and damage done should be to the site itself, not necessarily the entire server the site is hosted on, since that's where mistakes could happen.
-Restil
The difference that you ask about is that it's legal, with legisation backing it up, to record tv shows broadcast over public or cable television, and tivo certainly falls into that category. Yes, there is quite a bit of grumbling about the ease by which commercials can be skipped through, but for the moment, all is kosher on that front.
However, nothing gives anyone the right to redistribute the recorded shows. If I download a show, I didn't have to buy a tivo, and chances are good I'm not going to have to even skip through advertising. Studio makes no money off of me as the advertisers aren't going to consider downloaded commercial free shows in their rating calculations.
For fear of overextrapolating, should the trend continue unabashed, they choose not to embrace a new distribution medium and instead look for other ways to cut costs, they'll instead create more shows that have low overhead budgets and appeal to a demographic less likely to use computers for obtaining and watching television shows. That's right, you'll probably end up with more reality TV.
I'd personally prefer a different distribution model. Even a subscription based service would work. As the trek fans were pointing out in their ill-fated effort to save Enterprise, even with the abysmally low ratings the show was getting, if everyone who watched it paid slightly less than 50 cents per episode, they'd have enough to fully fund a season. That's pretty cheap entertainment, and far far less than they charge for the DVD sets of the same seasons years later. Heck, millions of people willingly pay more than 50 cents for a SONG. It's not out of the question to assume they'd do the same for a TV show that was worth watching. But as long as they want to stick with the old medium, you can expect them to fight it tooth and nail until they're forced to either adapt or die.
-Restil
The best buy people got excited because of the excessive number of perfectly legal, yet somewhat unusual bills. So they get the pen out and start marking all of them and manage to smear one and it comes out looking like it might be counterfiet. The cop overreacted a bit and decided, figuring he's not really qualified to determine if the bills are in fact counterfiet or not, considering the pen DID mark it as possible, they'd hold the guy until the secret service gave it their ok, which they did, and even offered up an explaination about the confusion.
The police probably didn't do anything wrong, although what they did was probably unnecessary. Best Buy on the other hand is going to keep a few lawyers employed for the near future.
-Restil
The spammers probably think so.
-Restil
The spyware critics need to make sure there's an industry standard definition of what type of software qualifies as spyware and the requirements to meet that qualification. They then need to point out how each instance of spyware meets that specification. Then the spyware companies can sue til they're blue in the face, but they won't have a case. By claiming disparaging information, that falls under libel (or slander depending on the medium), clearly documented facts will be all that's needed to knock the cases down to frivolous at the earliest stages, assuming it goes anywhere. Anyone can fire off a cease and desist letter. Going to court takes more of a committment. Not that it hasn't been done before, but frankly, sometimes it's better to fight those battles than to back down.
"Criminal use of Internet" for those "Your Rights Online" articles for which it does not really apply.
Just a thought.
-Restil
So the implied logic is that if someone is agitated they should choose which crime they commit as a result of it based upon the most likely sentence, rather than not comitting any criminal activity at all?
And of course, there's no evidence the guy in the story was agitated anyway.
AND.... he hasn't received 25 years, that's only the maximum sentence, and he's likely to only get a small fraction of that, if he gets any jail time at all. In fact, he'll probably get more time from an obstruction of justice charge for lying to investigators than he'll get from anything else.
-Restil
If each of the 30 alleged server owners had 7 other computers, this isn't that hard to figure out.
-Restil
No, it won't stop the flow, but it will restrict the flow to other "safer" mediums. P2P software and networks make it very easy for the copyright owner and/or representitives to amass a large quantity of evidence against a large number of infringers within a short period of time. They can spend a small amount of effort and money investing in an evidence collection method that's virtually automated. If they had to make the same effort for each individual person they go after, it wouldn't be worth it, even as a deterrant. Which is incidently why this sort of thing has been a rare occurance until recently.
-Restil
The maximum sentence for rape is life. The maximum sentence here is 15 years. Both cases tend to get less than the maximum, especially for first time offenders. Federal sentences aren't subject to parole, and tend to have larger fines and more restitution attached, but the prisons are generally nicer and safer for the inmates. Rapists may get a shorter sentence, but they have to deal with lots of other inmates who are much larger than they are and tend to frown on rapists.
-Restil
He hasn't been sentenced yet. You're looking at the maximum, which is rarely given, especially for a first offense. And since he plea bargained, it'll likely be significantly less than the maximum.
-Restil
I promise, my site is real.
Of course, I can hardly blame anyone for thinking otherwise at this point.
*grumble grumble*
-Restil
I run a similar site, even linked from that one. I have SO much trouble trying to convince the average techno-illiterate people of the world that computer controlled lamps ARE in fact not only possible, but extremely simple to implement. And up until now, I've tried to instill in them the fact that it'd be too much trouble to fake it and it'd take too much work.
Now it's gonna be just that much harder. Argh.
Do we really NEED another internet hoax? If the average clueless idiot wants to forward endlessly the Snopes fodder of the week, fine. Let the scourge of the internet propogate as they will. Forward their chain letters, buy their spam, and bug me endlessly about how my internet controlled lights MUST be fake, simply because they've never heard of X10 before. But someone who's obviously smart enough to know better has ruined it for the rest of us. And he seems pretty damned proud of himself too. Makes me sick.
-Restil
Actually, I'm gonna get all that stuff working again once I move into the new house. I'm just horribly limited right now at my temporary location with only 128kbps of upstream and limited places to put stuff.
-Restil
Anyone else find it odd that the only other publication to pick up this story is a UK tabloid?
In any large investigation, law enforcement typically questions hundreds of people, some of whom may be suspects, some potential witnesses, and some who are just shots in the dark. Yes, having 50 different ip addresses, only one of which MIGHT be a potential suspect might seem like a long shot, but if the IP address they're looking for IS in there, they might be able to match it up with other evidence. Considering the fact that Fyodor has yet to actually submit requested logs to an agent, in spite of numerous requests, means that this IS a long shot, a time consuming one to aquire, with a very short lifespan, and likely not really worth the effort to aquire. But it's still a legitimate source of evidence, and if it shuts down a spammer or script kiddy, I'm not going to fault them for trying.
-Restil
He's a lawyer, but doesn't comprehend copyright law.
He won't burn CDs for moral/ethical reasons, but considers burning music on DVDs for "backups" to be ok.
Never gives away music, yet uses P2P applications that, by design, force him to do so.
-Restil
It wouldn't really be considered entrapment if they set up their own tracker, because if they did so, technically no crime would be committed. The copyright owner has the exclusive right to redistribute his/her IP. However, should the owner set up a tracker for distribution of his own content, then he is giving the content away, which he is legally allowed to do, and therefore any recipients are obtaining it legally so long as they only use the original tracker.
However, as numerous other posters have mentioned, there is no need to set up a tracker to catch people using BT. They only have to find one offering up content and monitor it indefinitely for IP addresses of those who are downloading, and since this is BT, they are also by definition sharing the same content. It's an efficient system, but it's not even remotely anonymous.
-Restil
You didn't sacrifice your goat, did you?
Didn't think so.
For shame.
-Restil
Only if you get paid to do it. :)
-Restil
I hope most people don't actually think like that "Keck" guy.
How is that exactly? Taking a bomb threat seriously because based on past experience he knows that some kids really do have it within themselves to carry out such a thing. Maybe the kid just wanted attention. Fine. He has it now.
-Restil
Unprecendented 1 terabyte capacity
Yeah, that was NEVER going to happen. We never saw it coming!
Ok. Enough sarcasm for today. Back to work.
-Restil
Actually... I just moved and haven't finished setting everything back up yet. I was hoping to have it all done by xmas, but nothing ever goes according to plan.
Don't worry though, in a month it'll be back up to where it was.
-Restil
Odd that it was moderated funny. These ARE the conventional ways that most small businesses are funded. And don't forget that most of the founders work another job to put food on the table while the new business churns along for at least 3 years before pulling a profit. And 4 times out of 5, these new businesses will fail. BUT... if you succeed, and you pay off your startup debts, you owe no favors to anyone, contractual or otherwise. That's the tradeoff.
-Restil