I'd rather blame some of the private sector lobby groups who infleunced some of those provisions in order to 'protect' their position and powers in the marketplace.
Here was a law, by all intents and purposes, created in order to deal with potential domestic terrorist-related threats, and here it is being used to go after a citizen in a situation that has everything to do with the domestic marketplace and damaging the image of a corperation.
I don't condone what he did, but it is rather amusing to see the Patriot Act being used as a means of persecuting somebody that, by all accounts, could and should be prosecuted in a judicial system untainted by the broad powers of the Patriot Act.
More like don't let your government become too dependant on private interests and lobbying, because then.. gasp, it ain't a (representative) government any more.
One reason that the government is going after him is that private interests have lobbied to have laws set that make what he did a very severe crime under law. I recall reading that he committed the very same thing with a few other companies' networks, and they worked with him to correct what he found, not took a spazz and sic'd the FBI on him.
For those who don't think the Patriot Act was influenced by private interests.. well, lets just say priotism was a very good smoke screen under which was slipped legislation that private sector lobby groups wanted. (The RIAA is a very public, obvious example of this.)
Is the government people for the people, or is it people for the industry/economy? It's hard to tell anymore.
Lots of 'discoveries' should be read as 'confirmations'. You wouldn't want to build the foundation of science and technological progression on assumptions, would you?
Mind you, of course that happens, but I always think this way when people say 'duh'. Remember, at some point, somebody would have said 'duh' had you concluded that the earth was the centre of the universe.;) Garret
> Actually AMERICA is known as the 'root-for-the-underdog' country
You must be joking. America seems to be the #1 blue collar conservative country; a country where blue collar workers have no difficulty laughin at the misfortunes of other blue collar workers, because, as blue collar worker #1 assumes, they inevitably 'deserved' it.
America has a 'just world' mentality, due to its pride in its political/economic systems (which, granted, are more progressive than many many places in the world).. but its a mentality that makes it difficult for a majority to believe two points that would appear to be mutually exclusive:
1. We've got a great, fair system here, a country more free than anywhere in the world, where Joe Schmoe can be rich (this is what you're confusing for rooting for the underdog)
2. Thus, those who are in power today deserve it, those who are the underdogs deserve it. If Joe Shmoe cant make it in our Great country, then he was never meant to be the heroic underdog in the first place.
I think America loves people in power who LOOK and ACT like underdogs, because it allows people who ascribe to both points 1 and 2, as stated above. Hello, George Bush?
None of this is an attack. I'm making an unbiased evaluation here. I have nothing against America or Americans. I just think they get confused as to whom the real underdogs are. People assume the system works (which I charge it does not, much of the time), and thus the 'underdogs' are really just the folks in charge who manage to appear relatively lovable and common.
>"Nope. Remember: you are the employee. You work for the employer. What do you get for coming in early? You get to fucking keep your job."
I know you can't legislate respect, ethics, manners, morality and any number of other things that make humans worth interacting with and living among, but in your case, I wish we could at least surgically implant it.
In fact, we dont need ANY laws! If you don't like anything, go elsewhere! Don't like getting killed? Just dont interact with any murderers! Don't like being robbed from? Don't buy anything! Don't like being docked for being late? Come in early!
Had it even OCCURRED to you that nobody would post an ask/. concerning this without considering the "Do what youre asked to do" part? The question was asked, because he DOESNT WANT TO DO IT. Foruntately, its a free country, and he's as free to seek alternative courses of action as you are to stop and realize how incredibly useless and moot your kind of 'suck it up' rheotoric is.
Simply untrue. Current economics dictate that if I want to become popular, I'll need people around me supporting.. even online. If I pour my life into music, I need a webmaster, promoter.. distrobutors do fill a need that musicians have; the problem is that they shouldnt have as much control over the market as distributors currently do.
This is a common see-saw power cycle in the history of copyright law and the publication of artistic works.
The point isn't that I need somebody to market for me. The point is, the more marketers working for me, the more I can influence my ability to become popular and profitable. So the answer is to ensure that the markers are not so powerful as to garauntee their own jobs by rigging the utopian goal of a meritocracy in the music business.
Nice job, and congrats americans! Looks like the peeps have got a say in matters like this. Take THAT, clear channel! This musician dances with happiness, and its not even my country.
Since corperations vote with their dollars, I'd rather combat them by voting with my dollars. The more of my money my government depends on to represent me, the less my government needs/wants from corperations to represent *them*.
Neither system is perfect, but I really do think that the US is basically like Canada; only corperations are the benifactors of government-supported welfare (for things like entering foreign markets risk-free or controlling the market by 'purchasing' policy/law makers) instead of people.
With that said, it should be a free world. I don't think either system is 'right', but I'd rather be in Canada, and know what I'm paying upfront and what I'm getting for it, rather than fighting tooth and nail every day, everytime a corperate interest decides it wants the rules changed.
I see higher taxes as a form of insurance against corperate oligarchies, and I'm all too happy to pay as long as I believe it's working to a reasonable degree.
Smug asshole, lol. This from the guy who responded to "why should he go to jail" with the nicely glib "cause he committed a crime."
Thats just as smug. We can both be smug. Together. Its fun!
But back to the point, I think you forgot to prove that he, in fact, broke some laws. Thats what I was asking.. most hackers are charged for stealing information or causing damage. Clearly he'd done this a few times before and the people he committed *those* crimes against actually paid him for it! Sounds like evidence that his actions might not actually constitute the sort of action we should neccessarily criminalize 100% of the time.
The US is the world's sole military super power right now.
So don't be surprised that US policy and military policy is world news.
It appears US centric only because the US is so powerful that their intentions, policies, mistakes, achievements, etc happen to impact other countries in exactly the same way that other countries' policies are *not* terribly important news to americans.
The bigger they are, the more they do, the more weapons of distraction they have.
Combine that with people's natural and understandable implicit trust of authority figures (ie, they are the most powerful, therefore they are good, no two ways about it).. and you can see why when authority figures abuse power (communists arn't the only ones who've been known to abuse power, donchaknow) they often dont even need crazy conspiracies to cover them up.
Peoples need to believe in the 'goodness' of their authority figures causes them to ignore or avoid personal investigation into authority figures' faults and errors.
So basically, when I log onto newyorktimes.com, I'm on private property? (It being a connection, and all.) I imagine you'd say that I have permission to make this connection.
And when I'm behind the scenes (say, somewhere the admin doesn't want me to be), I'm still on private property, but I dont have permission to be there, right?
So, strip the 'common sense' argument away, because common sense doth not make an enforcable legal code, and how do I know I've made connections that I'm *physically* able to make, but yet, shouldnt be making, according to network admin? The "You shouldn't be here!" signs posted up by the command prompt?
Furthur more, my lawn is private property, but I hardly think that I could prosecute you for having spent ten minutes on it half an hour ago, even if I had gotten it on video tape. Is setting up a camera on the private property and then suing anybody that takes a shortcut through it an undiscovered way to make easy money?
Protecting private property is not like giving you an exclusive license for how that property is ever interacted with by anyone other than the owner.. ("Stop breathing! Thats my private property, and your breath molecules are settling on my driveway!").. private property laws are designed to protect other people from taking or damaging your private property. Its a shitload harder to sue somebody for touching your car, even for sitting in it if its unlocked, if it isn't damaged or stolen. Go ahead, try it.. maybe you can get rich on this, and buy even more stuff to worry about whether or not anybody is close enough to touch your (I will grant you hard earned) toys without your permission.
Yeah, he's really lucky that newyorktimes.com and all those other domains he hacked didn't turn out to be mob operations. One wrong fortune 500.com client, and he could have lost appendages.
Judge: Should this man go to jail? Prosecutor: He committed a crime! Judge: Well, nobody has explained what the law is, nor the specifics of what the defendent did, nor reflected on any previous precendents.. but if you say he committed a crime, well thats good enough for me!
Are you pickin up what I'm putting down? The real question is, for those authority-lovers out there, explain to me what he did that was criminal, and then explain to me whether or not you feel that it *should* or *shouldnt* be criminal.
Secondly, you clearly havn't even thought for a moment about whether all crimes deserve jail times (you seem to imply they should.) Thats a pretty at-the-teet-of-insitutional-thinking party line, but I happen to believe that the punishment should fit the crime. There are plenty of crimes for which jail time is not a suitable or socially benificial punishment.
Sorry to make you think. You're right. The magic 8 ball says that he committed a crime. It also says that criminals should all go to jail. You're right not to engage in any sort of debate beyond the itellectual trappings of a Parker Brothers' issued "Go To Jail" card.
Its a group (the RIAA) calling file trading immoral and criminal, and then paying somebody to use file trading in order to beef up their marketing data.
Whether its cars/tv shows/etc.. the point is, they are associating with the very people they identify as criminals and aquiring self-professed marketing data. Its hypocricy. That's all. Analogies are flawed but useful. They become less useful the more literally people insist on taking them. If somebody can't pick out what parts of analogies a person is relying on to prove their point, and which parts of analogies a person expects you to ignore, they they probably shouldn't be arguing in the first place.
In my example above, it should be obvious that its not important *what* commodity or copywritten work we're talking about, only that a group is associating with the very community it says is illegal to associate with. Whether or not the people in that illegal community are providing you with useful data/service is completely besides the point; at the extreme end of the point, the RIAA is moronic and is wasting their money anyways.
Its not up to somebody pointing out their hypocricy to credit or discredit the likelihood of the RIAA achieving their intended goal of aquiring solid, representative market research, nor is it a particularly relevant or interesting point to think about. Who cares if the the money the RIAA gives these guys is worth the market research they get back. The point is that its hilarious that the RIAA is paying people to interact in the filesharing community they claim is 100% cancerous to their business.
The RIAA is USING p2p networks to determine which files are popular. USING.
A more appropriate anology would be for General Motors to hire some criminals to hang out with other criminals to figure out which cars are the best and use that aquired data as a marketing tool. ("We spent 3 days with Jimmy Fingers, and man do those dudes love stealing our cars!")
Doing that would be, in part, sanctioning theft by associating with those that commit it.
Thats effectively what the RIAA is doing, if we are to believe their argument that file sharing is theft and not copyright infringment. They're HIRING somebody to use and observe a community and activity they deem is highly criminal.
Then again, the RIAA has acted as if they have been above the law for awhile tho, so this shouldn't really be a surprising development in the whole file sharing issue.
Jail that obviously highly intelligent individual!
Yes, I'm joking. This kid sounds like a bright fish.. why jail him? Surely he can contribute in a positive way to society? It sure sounds like he doesn't have any malicious intentions other than prove what every engineer knows - you often need to experience failure before you address a weakness in your design. Better to have failure 'encouraged' by a guy who's willing to help you lock down your network after the fact than some dude who gets in the door and heads straight for client lists, credit info, etc..
>The family paid the money, they just paid the wrong people.
Sorry to be pedantic, but the RIAA or its members are still incapable or unwilling of delivering a service (legal or not) such as Kazaa. Which is why families like this will continue to pay the Kazaa's of the world. Despite the fact that they didn't realize they wern't legally aquiring the songs, they clearly felt that 30$ was worth the value that a service like Kazaa offers.
If only the RIAA would loosen up and stop screwing with the market. Stories like this show their is demand. Apple has shown that there is a demand. If a cartel doesn't want to meet a demand, in the form the market wants, they'd better not cry foul when people hit the grey market to have that demand fulfilled. (See the prohibition.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'd rather blame some of the private sector lobby groups who infleunced some of those provisions in order to 'protect' their position and powers in the marketplace.
Here was a law, by all intents and purposes, created in order to deal with potential domestic terrorist-related threats, and here it is being used to go after a citizen in a situation that has everything to do with the domestic marketplace and damaging the image of a corperation.
I don't condone what he did, but it is rather amusing to see the Patriot Act being used as a means of persecuting somebody that, by all accounts, could and should be prosecuted in a judicial system untainted by the broad powers of the Patriot Act.
More like don't let your government become too dependant on private interests and lobbying, because then .. gasp, it ain't a (representative) government any more.
.. well, lets just say priotism was a very good smoke screen under which was slipped legislation that private sector lobby groups wanted. (The RIAA is a very public, obvious example of this.)
One reason that the government is going after him is that private interests have lobbied to have laws set that make what he did a very severe crime under law. I recall reading that he committed the very same thing with a few other companies' networks, and they worked with him to correct what he found, not took a spazz and sic'd the FBI on him.
For those who don't think the Patriot Act was influenced by private interests
Is the government people for the people, or is it people for the industry/economy? It's hard to tell anymore.
Not: Any formal system must be based on all theroms.
IE, something that is provable should be proved. To be safe. Of course, the axioms can't be proved, but this is hardly an axiomatic case.
Lots of 'discoveries' should be read as 'confirmations'. You wouldn't want to build the foundation of science and technological progression on assumptions, would you?
;)
Mind you, of course that happens, but I always think this way when people say 'duh'. Remember, at some point, somebody would have said 'duh' had you concluded that the earth was the centre of the universe.
Garret
> Actually AMERICA is known as the 'root-for-the-underdog' country
.. but its a mentality that makes it difficult for a majority to believe two points that would appear to be mutually exclusive:
You must be joking. America seems to be the #1 blue collar conservative country; a country where blue collar workers have no difficulty laughin at the misfortunes of other blue collar workers, because, as blue collar worker #1 assumes, they inevitably 'deserved' it.
America has a 'just world' mentality, due to its pride in its political/economic systems (which, granted, are more progressive than many many places in the world)
1. We've got a great, fair system here, a country more free than anywhere in the world, where Joe Schmoe can be rich (this is what you're confusing for rooting for the underdog)
2. Thus, those who are in power today deserve it, those who are the underdogs deserve it. If Joe Shmoe cant make it in our Great country, then he was never meant to be the heroic underdog in the first place.
I think America loves people in power who LOOK and ACT like underdogs, because it allows people who ascribe to both points 1 and 2, as stated above. Hello, George Bush?
None of this is an attack. I'm making an unbiased evaluation here. I have nothing against America or Americans. I just think they get confused as to whom the real underdogs are. People assume the system works (which I charge it does not, much of the time), and thus the 'underdogs' are really just the folks in charge who manage to appear relatively lovable and common.
"People are torn between their desire to stand out, and their need to blend in." - I forget Who
That says it all.
you cant support evil for evil. end of story.
Well jeez, if you put it that way, I'm sure you wouldn't mind working from 2am to 9am!
>"Nope. Remember: you are the employee. You work for the employer. What do you get for coming in early? You get to fucking keep your job."
I know you can't legislate respect, ethics, manners, morality and any number of other things that make humans worth interacting with and living among, but in your case, I wish we could at least surgically implant it.
Yeah, completetly lame.
/. concerning this without considering the "Do what youre asked to do" part? The question was asked, because he DOESNT WANT TO DO IT. Foruntately, its a free country, and he's as free to seek alternative courses of action as you are to stop and realize how incredibly useless and moot your kind of 'suck it up' rheotoric is.
In fact, we dont need ANY laws! If you don't like anything, go elsewhere! Don't like getting killed? Just dont interact with any murderers! Don't like being robbed from? Don't buy anything! Don't like being docked for being late? Come in early!
Had it even OCCURRED to you that nobody would post an ask
Simply untrue. Current economics dictate that if I want to become popular, I'll need people around me supporting .. even online. If I pour my life into music, I need a webmaster, promoter .. distrobutors do fill a need that musicians have; the problem is that they shouldnt have as much control over the market as distributors currently do.
This is a common see-saw power cycle in the history of copyright law and the publication of artistic works.
The point isn't that I need somebody to market for me. The point is, the more marketers working for me, the more I can influence my ability to become popular and profitable. So the answer is to ensure that the markers are not so powerful as to garauntee their own jobs by rigging the utopian goal of a meritocracy in the music business.
Ah crud on a stick, I didn't catch that. Okay, thanks for the correction. Sorry for the knee-jerk 'me too' post. Somebody should mod me down, above.
Nice job, and congrats americans! Looks like the peeps have got a say in matters like this. Take THAT, clear channel! This musician dances with happiness, and its not even my country.
Since corperations vote with their dollars, I'd rather combat them by voting with my dollars. The more of my money my government depends on to represent me, the less my government needs/wants from corperations to represent *them*.
Neither system is perfect, but I really do think that the US is basically like Canada; only corperations are the benifactors of government-supported welfare (for things like entering foreign markets risk-free or controlling the market by 'purchasing' policy/law makers) instead of people.
With that said, it should be a free world. I don't think either system is 'right', but I'd rather be in Canada, and know what I'm paying upfront and what I'm getting for it, rather than fighting tooth and nail every day, everytime a corperate interest decides it wants the rules changed.
I see higher taxes as a form of insurance against corperate oligarchies, and I'm all too happy to pay as long as I believe it's working to a reasonable degree.
Smug asshole, lol. This from the guy who responded to "why should he go to jail" with the nicely glib "cause he committed a crime."
.. most hackers are charged for stealing information or causing damage. Clearly he'd done this a few times before and the people he committed *those* crimes against actually paid him for it! Sounds like evidence that his actions might not actually constitute the sort of action we should neccessarily criminalize 100% of the time.
Thats just as smug. We can both be smug. Together. Its fun!
But back to the point, I think you forgot to prove that he, in fact, broke some laws. Thats what I was asking
The US is the world's sole military super power right now.
So don't be surprised that US policy and military policy is world news.
It appears US centric only because the US is so powerful that their intentions, policies, mistakes, achievements, etc happen to impact other countries in exactly the same way that other countries' policies are *not* terribly important news to americans.
The bigger they are, the more they do, the more weapons of distraction they have.
.. and you can see why when authority figures abuse power (communists arn't the only ones who've been known to abuse power, donchaknow) they often dont even need crazy conspiracies to cover them up.
Combine that with people's natural and understandable implicit trust of authority figures (ie, they are the most powerful, therefore they are good, no two ways about it)
Peoples need to believe in the 'goodness' of their authority figures causes them to ignore or avoid personal investigation into authority figures' faults and errors.
>Hardly a credible report.
Right up there with that loony who claims that the Earth isn't the center of the universe.
So basically, when I log onto newyorktimes.com, I'm on private property? (It being a connection, and all.) I imagine you'd say that I have permission to make this connection.
.. ("Stop breathing! Thats my private property, and your breath molecules are settling on my driveway!") .. private property laws are designed to protect other people from taking or damaging your private property. Its a shitload harder to sue somebody for touching your car, even for sitting in it if its unlocked, if it isn't damaged or stolen. Go ahead, try it .. maybe you can get rich on this, and buy even more stuff to worry about whether or not anybody is close enough to touch your (I will grant you hard earned) toys without your permission.
And when I'm behind the scenes (say, somewhere the admin doesn't want me to be), I'm still on private property, but I dont have permission to be there, right?
So, strip the 'common sense' argument away, because common sense doth not make an enforcable legal code, and how do I know I've made connections that I'm *physically* able to make, but yet, shouldnt be making, according to network admin? The "You shouldn't be here!" signs posted up by the command prompt?
Furthur more, my lawn is private property, but I hardly think that I could prosecute you for having spent ten minutes on it half an hour ago, even if I had gotten it on video tape. Is setting up a camera on the private property and then suing anybody that takes a shortcut through it an undiscovered way to make easy money?
Protecting private property is not like giving you an exclusive license for how that property is ever interacted with by anyone other than the owner
Listen to yourself.
Yeah, he's really lucky that newyorktimes.com and all those other domains he hacked didn't turn out to be mob operations. One wrong fortune 500 .com client, and he could have lost appendages.
LOL
Man, can you imagine if court works this way?
.. but if you say he committed a crime, well thats good enough for me!
Judge: Should this man go to jail?
Prosecutor: He committed a crime!
Judge: Well, nobody has explained what the law is, nor the specifics of what the defendent did, nor reflected on any previous precendents
Are you pickin up what I'm putting down? The real question is, for those authority-lovers out there, explain to me what he did that was criminal, and then explain to me whether or not you feel that it *should* or *shouldnt* be criminal.
Secondly, you clearly havn't even thought for a moment about whether all crimes deserve jail times (you seem to imply they should.) Thats a pretty at-the-teet-of-insitutional-thinking party line, but I happen to believe that the punishment should fit the crime. There are plenty of crimes for which jail time is not a suitable or socially benificial punishment.
Sorry to make you think. You're right. The magic 8 ball says that he committed a crime. It also says that criminals should all go to jail. You're right not to engage in any sort of debate beyond the itellectual trappings of a Parker Brothers' issued "Go To Jail" card.
Its a group (the RIAA) calling file trading immoral and criminal, and then paying somebody to use file trading in order to beef up their marketing data.
.. the point is, they are associating with the very people they identify as criminals and aquiring self-professed marketing data. Its hypocricy. That's all. Analogies are flawed but useful. They become less useful the more literally people insist on taking them. If somebody can't pick out what parts of analogies a person is relying on to prove their point, and which parts of analogies a person expects you to ignore, they they probably shouldn't be arguing in the first place.
Whether its cars/tv shows/etc
In my example above, it should be obvious that its not important *what* commodity or copywritten work we're talking about, only that a group is associating with the very community it says is illegal to associate with. Whether or not the people in that illegal community are providing you with useful data/service is completely besides the point; at the extreme end of the point, the RIAA is moronic and is wasting their money anyways.
Its not up to somebody pointing out their hypocricy to credit or discredit the likelihood of the RIAA achieving their intended goal of aquiring solid, representative market research, nor is it a particularly relevant or interesting point to think about. Who cares if the the money the RIAA gives these guys is worth the market research they get back. The point is that its hilarious that the RIAA is paying people to interact in the filesharing community they claim is 100% cancerous to their business.
The RIAA is USING p2p networks to determine which files are popular. USING.
A more appropriate anology would be for General Motors to hire some criminals to hang out with other criminals to figure out which cars are the best and use that aquired data as a marketing tool. ("We spent 3 days with Jimmy Fingers, and man do those dudes love stealing our cars!")
Doing that would be, in part, sanctioning theft by associating with those that commit it.
Thats effectively what the RIAA is doing, if we are to believe their argument that file sharing is theft and not copyright infringment. They're HIRING somebody to use and observe a community and activity they deem is highly criminal.
Then again, the RIAA has acted as if they have been above the law for awhile tho, so this shouldn't really be a surprising development in the whole file sharing issue.
Jail that obviously highly intelligent individual!
.. why jail him? Surely he can contribute in a positive way to society? It sure sounds like he doesn't have any malicious intentions other than prove what every engineer knows - you often need to experience failure before you address a weakness in your design. Better to have failure 'encouraged' by a guy who's willing to help you lock down your network after the fact than some dude who gets in the door and heads straight for client lists, credit info, etc ..
Yes, I'm joking. This kid sounds like a bright fish
>The family paid the money, they just paid the wrong people.
Sorry to be pedantic, but the RIAA or its members are still incapable or unwilling of delivering a service (legal or not) such as Kazaa. Which is why families like this will continue to pay the Kazaa's of the world. Despite the fact that they didn't realize they wern't legally aquiring the songs, they clearly felt that 30$ was worth the value that a service like Kazaa offers.
If only the RIAA would loosen up and stop screwing with the market. Stories like this show their is demand. Apple has shown that there is a demand. If a cartel doesn't want to meet a demand, in the form the market wants, they'd better not cry foul when people hit the grey market to have that demand fulfilled. (See the prohibition.)