Bittorrent Creator A Digital Pirate?

Alex_Ionescu writes "According to an article in Wired, the old webpage of Bram Cohen contained a manifesto stating that his goal for creating software was to 'Commit Digital Piracy'. Cohen argues that the quote is taken out of context and represents a parody. He argues having written it in 1999, 2 years before even coming up with Bittorrent. You can find the archived copy of his site at archive.org. From the article: "Cohen has never publicly encouraged piracy, and he has consistently maintained that he wrote BitTorrent as a legitimate file-distribution tool. That would seem to make him and his budding company, BitTorrent, safe under the Grokster ruling. But legal experts worry the newly discovered manifesto extolling 'digital piracy' could put him on less certain legal ground."

Bram is screwed

[nokilli]

It isn't just this quote that's the problem, it's the new search engine [bittorrent.com] too.

Together with the Grokster ruling -- and all happening within such a short interval -- he's just too likely of a target now. Once big media realizes that knocking down the Grokster's does NOTHING to stem the tide of wares being traded via BT, they have to go after Bram.

It really sucks that a guy who's given us so much is going to be made to suffer so, but it looks to be damn near inevitable.

Time to donate to the very-soon-to-be-needed legal defense fund. [bittorrent.com]

Promotion to Adjourn

[Doc Ruby]

The Supreme Court decided Grokster is liable for its users criminal abuses, because Grokster "promoted" criminal abuse. They decided that Grokster promoted abuse, because someone in Grokster sent someone else in Grokster a memo saying that they needed abuse for sufficient traffic, and because Grokster targeted old Napster users to use Grokster. So the standards for "promotion" are very vague, a very low bar: "intent" and "benefit" are apparently required, but "action" is not necessarily required.

The same court decided that the government cannot "promote" a religion, by hanging a paper copy of the 10 Commandments in a frame in a courthouse. But a 5 ton rock carving of the 10 Commandments on a courthouse lawn is not "promotion".

I suppose that when you're a million years old, your word is literally the law, and have a job for life, the meaning of "promotion" might be a little beyond your grasp.

Re:Watch what you print....

[idontgno]

It goes much farther back than this new-fangled web thing. This is ancient Usenet wisdom. I still find my flames and n00bness from the early 1980s mortifying, but there they are, courtesy of Google News. (Sheesh. Google news f's up everything good about Deja News, but they can't lose the embarrassing skeltons in my Usenet closet.)

I found an interesting article [jdlasica.com] from a journalistic perspective about the persistence of stuff YOU disseminate on the net.

Bram's Creative writing is a little disturbing...

[Anonymous Coward]

From Bram's archive.org site:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010812035637/bitconju rer.org/a_torturers_account.html [archive.org]

"I like the Isolation torture technique best. It crushes 'em every time.

I stand in a big open field. The girl's flown in with a helicopter. It's big and noisy in there, so she's real scared. Or maybe she likes it. She's getting fucked anyway. ...

Sometimes she runs and I get to fight her. Sometimes she stands there and makes it easy.

One.

Two ...

Life is good."

Could stories like this one be used as proof that his website was all "fantasy" and he wasn't expressing ideas he truely would act upon?

What's legal, and what'll happen

[famazza]

Legally speaking, Cohen is as guilty as a gun manufacturer. He simply provided the way to others commit a crime. If people using BitTorrent are supposed to make unautorized copies of copyrighted material, then people having a gun are supposed to kill.

But the reality is much more complex then justice would like it to be. RIAA and MPAA are lobbying so heavily that Cohen will be considered guilty and will pay for crimes that he didn't commited. In RIAA/MPAA conception he must sue the users.

Re:Bram is screwed

[nokilli]

Yeah, but if you read the Grokster ruling, it talks about how you can be busted if you could've taken steps to prevent copyright infringement, but didn't.

It isn't a question of Bram now having to look at every single download to see if it's legit and then removing it from the system. All he really has to do is look at the trackers he's linking to, take the two minutes necessary to figure out whether they're dealing in copyright violations, and then delist the tracker.

Re:Watch what you print....

[SatanicPuppy]

Heh. I learned that lesson a long time ago. I wrote for this college newspaper, pretty radical, and we had this huge "Fuck the Police" issue in which I had the cover story (excessive use of force, yadda yadda yadda, I was very indignant), and in which I ranted and raved like a preacher in a whorehouse.

About 2 months later I was working late in the office, and a silent alarm tripped elsewhere in the building. So the cops show up, and who is the only person around? Me, sitting in a office with a full stack of 500 anti-cop newspapers sitting on a desk beside me.

Bad Scene. But a very good lesson in the value of discression and circumspection, as well as the value of never ever having any illegal substances in your car, office, or clothes.

Re:Hey, look at me, I'm Wired!

[dirk]

Except if you look at the link from the archive (ie what he actual posted), the disclaimer at the top isn't there. I don't know when it was added, it may have just been added since this all came to light, I don't know.

I'm not saying whether what is happening is right or wrong, just that his disclaimer was added later, and was not a part of the original text.

Re:cleaner than a politician's past

[St. Arbirix]

If you haven't seen this [merkeylaw.com] already.

32. Defendant slashdot.org is an far-right wing Internet news website that posts libelous and defamatory content and is used by Open Source Community members to anonymously post hate speech, death threats, threats to murder and promotes and advocates acts of domestic terrorism within the United States. The address and location of defendants is believed to be within the State of California, but is unknown at the present time.

So yeah, Slashdot already has invited a lawsuit by cracking jokes. Then again, it's from Utah.

Re:No freedom without PERSONAL responsibility

[Chuckstar]

But what if Smith & Wesson published an article on its web site saying: "Our goal for manufacturing guns is to make it easier to kill your classmates at school"? And then someone goes and uses their new gun to kill their classmates at school.

Shouldn't Smith & Wesson be held accountable its actions?

Re:No freedom without PERSONAL responsibility

[maxume]

It will just take a while. Smith and Wesson doens't produce anonymous guns. The legal use of cars is subject to extensive regulation, including government registration of every car(at least in the U.S.)! Bittorrent, and p2p software in general, is still really really new, and the laws and regulations surrounding it haven't been worked out quite yet. Not everybody was thrilled when the first cars started to appear, even less so when cars became available to the average man. The law will catch up, and if history is any sort of guide, eventually we will end up with a reasonable solution.

Re:No freedom without PERSONAL responsibility

[dabadab]

"Welcome to America, everyday closer to a Socialist Republic."

Actually, America (or more precisely, the USA) get farther and farther away from being a Socialist Republic. In a socialist state, there would be no big difference between people's wealth, there would be a hospitable state with free schools, free health care, etc (this was true even of the so-called socialist states of the former Eastern Block) - clearly, the USA is not heading this way.
Also, a republic is a state where the power is exercised by the people by some means (and not, for example, by corporates).
So, I think, today's USA is becoming more and more the antithesis of a Socialist Republic.