One of the reasons we have such a high percentage of our population in prison is the War On Drugs - "victimless" laws. Another is the huge percentage of laws on the books which are frivilous (thou shalt not take a bath in, what is it, Pennsylvania?).
Yeah. Great comment, and right on target. Damnation....(pun)
You know what really pisses me off, Gigs? Is that those fuckers are going after people who are the cream of the crop of our next generation of coders.
Fscking RIAA...Hey, "let's just do all we can to destroy our schools and our brilliant students".
IMO, so what if they share files? The social *good* these students could do during their lives far outweighs any nebulous bad they're doing now./end rant (not directed at you, I just had to vent;-) sorry!
I hope that judge bitchslapps them into the 21st century with a 120lb live Marlin. Not likely, I know, but I can hope.
No offense, but *MY* point was that SMB can be used to violate copyright. Whether there's profit involved or not, it still can be, especially among schools who use it (or other technologies such as NSF) to share files.
So for the sake of copyright law and the profits of an industry that has already been convicted of price fixing, are we going to kill those technologies, or are we going to fix an obviously badly broken law? Are we going to destroy the careers of brilliant CS students for those laws? The whole thing is ridiculous.
I think from the tone of your posts that you already agree that the law is bad; in that case, arguing points of the law is detrimental. It *needs to be changed* and we have to come up with a better solution (and no, I don't know what it is either).
1) Then they should be charging him with that, not the greater "contributary" amount. This is simply the RIAA trying to scrape whatever they can out of this case.
2) I doubt they could prove he knew about it. After all, if there *were* 650k music files indexed by his software, he could hardly have kept track of that, especially when you consider that there were probably 10x that or so in *legitimate* files. They *do* have to prove their case.
IANAL; but my personal feeling is that this is going to be the case that destroys the RIAAs credibility in court, especially among universities, considering how useful simple network file sharing is to them. Single universities may not have the resources to fight the RIAA; but a number of them together could deal a death blow; especially in the long run, as a lot of these students go out into the real world and gain more power than they have now. Let's hope that university authorities have the guts to stand up to this bullshit also; copyright infringement or not, it has the potential to end the use of many useful and necessary tools (or at least force them to be reevaluated in a way that destroys their basic usefulness).
Then, as has been mentioned, there's Microsoft....who wants universities to use their filesharing products (DRM notwithstanding).
He wasn't distributing it, he was simply indexing a filesharing service which has a much larger base of legitimate use (or do you think Microsoft created SMB to pirate music?).
Quoth Short Version: " Looks like the guy wrote an indexing service for Windows SMB file shares on the local LAN"
Yeah, like these here http://barillari.org/blog/
Quote: (sorry Joseph, hope you can handle a slashdotting)
------------ SMB search engines
SMB (Windows File Sharing) network indexing engines are software programs that trawl a Windows File Sharing network, catalog the publicly-shared files therein, and provide a facility for querying that catalog. While it is possible to find a file on a SMB network without one of these tools, it's much more time-consuming if the file is obscure -- one might have to manually inspect every machine on the network to find it.
The RIAA's latest salvo in their war on file-trading involved suing a Princeton student for allegedly running a publicly-accessible SMB search engine on his computer.
I've attempted to catalog some of the freely-available SMB search tools below. Apparently, running one of these programs may get you sued. Consider yourself warned.
Freshmeat, which bills itself as (among other things) "the Web's largest index of Unix and cross-platform software", lists eight: Zaval File Search, Fast File Search, FemFind, mp3spider, PySMBSearch, Samba Database, Seek42, and UntzUntz LAN Scan.
Niraj Bhatt suggested five more: Netropolis, Strangesearch, Celery/Stalk, Phynd, and Dormspider. Phynd and Dormspider both depend on Celery/Stalk. -------------
[ links are on the webpage, sorry guys, quick search [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&o e=utf-8&q=windows+smb+indexing+software&btnG=Googl e+Search])
Quoth Short Version: "start>search>files & folders"
Yeah. So, RIAA, sue fscking Microsoft. I dare you.
I'd be interested in knowing whether the RIAA has ever addressed simple windows/linux filesharing tools, or whether they simply overlooked them in their rabid pursuit of P2P.
I would *love* to see them try to explain why they *wouldn't* go after Microsoft. Scared, maybe?
Otherwise known as the year that the great experiment in Democracy/Representative Republicanism came apart, mostly due to attempts of the corporate hegemonies to take control of the citizens, with little or no historically noted resistance from the elected representives of said Republic.
This period was noted as being one of the greatest drivers of the Diaspora....
(From the Encyclopedia of History, Version 2, 2089)
Slashdot Mirror
But it's not necessarily better on society as a whole.
Cops know the risks when they take the job. If they can't accept those risks, they have no business being a cop (and I know several cops).
SB
Don't you mean MS. Bastardized HTML ?? ;-)
SB
4.
More laws?
One of the reasons we have such a high percentage of our population in prison is the War On Drugs - "victimless" laws. Another is the huge percentage of laws on the books which are frivilous (thou shalt not take a bath in, what is it, Pennsylvania?).
SB
Yeah. Great comment, and right on target. Damnation....(pun)
/end rant (not directed at you, I just had to vent ;-) sorry!
You know what really pisses me off, Gigs? Is that those fuckers are going after people who are the cream of the crop of our next generation of coders.
Fscking RIAA...Hey, "let's just do all we can to destroy our schools and our brilliant students".
IMO, so what if they share files? The social *good* these students could do during their lives far outweighs any nebulous bad they're doing now.
I hope that judge bitchslapps them into the 21st century with a 120lb live Marlin. Not likely, I know, but I can hope.
SB
Should have previewed.
So if he made no profit; and his liability is zero; what the hell is the whole point in bringing the case in the first place?
SB
Oh, and sorry:
"Profit is a factor in determining your liability, but not your guilt."
Which means that the students liability is ZERO unless the RIAA CAN PROVE HE MADE MONEY OFF IT.
Doesn't mean the poor bastard isn't already going to be spending $ to defend himself already....
SB
No offense, but *MY* point was that SMB can be used to violate copyright. Whether there's profit involved or not, it still can be, especially among schools who use it (or other technologies such as NSF) to share files.
So for the sake of copyright law and the profits of an industry that has already been convicted of price fixing, are we going to kill those technologies, or are we going to fix an obviously badly broken law? Are we going to destroy the careers of brilliant CS students for those laws? The whole thing is ridiculous.
I think from the tone of your posts that you already agree that the law is bad; in that case, arguing points of the law is detrimental. It *needs to be changed* and we have to come up with a better solution (and no, I don't know what it is either).
SB
1) Then they should be charging him with that, not the greater "contributary" amount. This is simply the RIAA trying to scrape whatever they can out of this case.
2) I doubt they could prove he knew about it. After all, if there *were* 650k music files indexed by his software, he could hardly have kept track of that, especially when you consider that there were probably 10x that or so in *legitimate* files. They *do* have to prove their case.
IANAL; but my personal feeling is that this is going to be the case that destroys the RIAAs credibility in court, especially among universities, considering how useful simple network file sharing is to them. Single universities may not have the resources to fight the RIAA; but a number of them together could deal a death blow; especially in the long run, as a lot of these students go out into the real world and gain more power than they have now. Let's hope that university authorities have the guts to stand up to this bullshit also; copyright infringement or not, it has the potential to end the use of many useful and necessary tools (or at least force them to be reevaluated in a way that destroys their basic usefulness).
Then, as has been mentioned, there's Microsoft....who wants universities to use their filesharing products (DRM notwithstanding).
SB
He wasn't distributing it, he was simply indexing a filesharing service which has a much larger base of legitimate use (or do you think Microsoft created SMB to pirate music?).
SB
Quoth Short Version: " Looks like the guy wrote an indexing service for Windows SMB file shares on the local LAN"
o e=utf-8&q=windows+smb+indexing+software&btnG=Googl e+Search])
Yeah, like these here http://barillari.org/blog/
Quote: (sorry Joseph, hope you can handle a slashdotting)
------------
SMB search engines
SMB (Windows File Sharing) network indexing engines are software programs that trawl a Windows File Sharing network, catalog the publicly-shared files therein, and provide a facility for querying that catalog. While it is possible to find a file on a SMB network without one of these tools, it's much more time-consuming if the file is obscure -- one might have to manually inspect every machine on the network to find it.
The RIAA's latest salvo in their war on file-trading involved suing a Princeton student for allegedly running a publicly-accessible SMB search engine on his computer.
I've attempted to catalog some of the freely-available SMB search tools below. Apparently, running one of these programs may get you sued. Consider yourself warned.
Freshmeat, which bills itself as (among other things) "the Web's largest index of Unix and cross-platform software", lists eight: Zaval File Search, Fast File Search, FemFind, mp3spider, PySMBSearch, Samba Database, Seek42, and UntzUntz LAN Scan.
Niraj Bhatt suggested five more: Netropolis, Strangesearch, Celery/Stalk, Phynd, and Dormspider. Phynd and Dormspider both depend on Celery/Stalk.
-------------
[ links are on the webpage, sorry guys, quick search [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&
Quoth Short Version: "start>search>files & folders"
Yeah. So, RIAA, sue fscking Microsoft. I dare you.
SB
I'd be interested in knowing whether the RIAA has ever addressed simple windows/linux filesharing tools, or whether they simply overlooked them in their rabid pursuit of P2P.
I would *love* to see them try to explain why they *wouldn't* go after Microsoft. Scared, maybe?
SB
"Signed" artists or Indies, or both together?
SB
My guess, just from reading the article, is they're probably a long way from breakeven. It's a step up, tho. Anyone know more? Links?
SB
Wouldn't MHD devices work for energy transfer?
SB
Oooooooooo.....
SB
Luke....I am your father.
... *
[ Luke stares, hypnotized by the blinkenlights on Darth Vader's chest]
Luke....I AM YOUR FATHER.
[blinkenlights]
Listen to me, you punk geekchild, I'm your f*cking father!
[BLINKENLIGHTS]
*Darth slaps Luke with a large trout, knocking him off the platform
It's *gnarly*, dude!
SB
Spam is advertising. I believe the rules are a little different there.
Can anyone clarify exactly how?
SB
Oh, and thanks w1r3sp33d, couldn't done it without ya ;\- /me know I am a Karma Whore.
SB
Thanks, guys.
If you like my writing, you might also like this
Sorry, fanfic.com seems to have dumped some stories, Thank you Google.
SB
Otherwise known as the year that the great experiment in Democracy/Representative Republicanism came apart, mostly due to attempts of the corporate hegemonies to take control of the citizens, with little or no historically noted resistance from the elected representives of said Republic.
This period was noted as being one of the greatest drivers of the Diaspora....
(From the Encyclopedia of History, Version 2, 2089)
SB
I find it more useful to use the gripping hand.
Disclaimer: IANA Motie.
SB
So we spam them
;-(
Subject: Your Rights Online
Your RIGHTS are being abused! Read about it here!!!
http://www.archives.gov
Hey, it's meant to be funny
SB
Hell, no, we're talking about a Keg Party
SB
Isn't it rather dangerous to use the term "smoking" in the context of this article?
SB