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Congress to Ashcroft: Go After Song Swappers
Posted by
chrisd
on Fri Aug 09, 2002 11:08 PM
from the the-fascist-states-of-america dept.
from the the-fascist-states-of-america dept.
saikou writes "Yahoo has published a news about proposal of 19 lawmakers to prosecute P2P systems' users. Allthough Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, said that FBI should not go for casual users but but instead to go after operators of "network "nodes", there is not enough info in the story to see if this "should" will change to "must in addition to", if or when trying to arrest major node operators fails to curtain song swapping online. Of course, questions of what to do about foreign users and foreign music are omitted. RIAA claps its hands. I guess we should expect network congestion because of users, downloading everything in their sight to beat this initiative."
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Congress to Ashcroft: Go After Song Swappers
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Shut down the whole WORLD WIDE WEB! (Score:4, Funny)
Just like we can blame doom creator john carmack for inciting violence at columbine, we can blame the creators of gnutella for inciting piracy.
Lets create new laws to slowly shut down the world wide web, I mean we capitalists worked hard ot gain control of the web, and if we cant have it, no one can!
Lets show those GNU pengiun loving open source pirates that sharing is bad! Lets make them so afrraid to share that they'll be forced to work for us!
Ashcroft (Score:5, Insightful)
The gallery of idiots... (Score:4, Informative)
Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden *
Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner
Virginia Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott
Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers
North Carolina Republican Rep. Howard Coble *
and California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. *
* We know many of these names by now, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the other payola-beholden media-whore "lawmakers" made up the other 13 signatures.
Re:Ashcroft (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree completely. I think the federal government should mandate at least one year of Rhetoric classes for every high school student. If we can develop an entire generation of adults who understand how they are being swayed and have been taught the skills for critical analysis of media and information, then politicians will have to focus on issues. Money can't buy issues like it can buy the swaying of people's emotions.
uh oh (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the rush to download everything in sight will be proportional to the rush to NOT be one of the major nodes. I mean, who wants to be arrested? That means it will get harder and harder for the average user to download his/her stuff, which is exactly what the RIAA wants. They know they can't stop the determined ones (I mean there is always usenet and IRC) but if they stop the masses it will be enough.
If they dont intend to go after individual users and I dont think they will (Napster had what? 20 million + world wide users? They cant arrest millions). How will they deal with regular users connecting to nodes based in other countries? Will they make it illegal for ISPs to allow access to certain ports?
and does this only affect P2p software? What about websites and ftp sites?
Re:uh oh (Score:4, Interesting)
Thar Be Network Congestion Ahead, Mateys! (Score:4, Funny)
Let loose the sails, mateys! Aye, we be setting course fer WinMX [winmx.com] fer one last pillaging, arr...
Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
With all these evil terrorists and executives roaming the streets, I'm appauled we're still busting all those poor innocent shoplifters and breaking up domestic disputes! Civil servants should be profiling foreigners and storming office buildings, not enforcing all those trivial matters that don't REALLY effect us! *end sarcasm*
Terrorism is a matter being dealt with. Big businesses are under the microscope. Are we to put down everything else until these matters are completely resolved? 'Cause y'know what? They won't be. Ever.
File sharing is a matter of concern. I think we all accept that illegal activity is the norm on P2P networks, and I'm not just talking music piracy (noting the bias hereabouts against the RIAA). Just because there're bigger things going on in the world, doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to all the smaller concerns.
Re:Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Alter or remove the laws regarding copyright until it's legal to "share" other people's work without their consent.
2. Enforce the laws regarding copyright and those who violate them.
3. Tolerate an increasing disregard for the law, and have yet another law on the books which
1, alteration or dropping, probably isn't going to happen until either the voters make it such a priority that they're willing to sacrifice their incumbents for it, or until SCOTUS says so.
2, is what they're going for.
3, leads to a situation where people may get used to non-enforcement and then get burned later if, say, a prosecutor feels like raising his profile, and where people may feel free to start disregarding other laws as well.
And law enforcement is
Oh, is the war on terrorism over now? (Score:3, Flamebait)
I'm so glad we have vanquished Al Qaeda and their like-minded brethren, so now we can go after the REAL threats to the American way of life-- the people who are depriving Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti from the cash with which they stuff their mattresses.
Those file downloaders can share prison cells with those kids who got 20 years for selling a shroom to a narc in the parking lot at a Phish concert. Meanwhile, the evil CEOs that have looted companies at the expense of their employees' livelihoods and 401K's continue to walk around free.
Memo to Congress: Get your fucking priorities straight.
~Philly
Re:Oh, is the war on terrorism over now? (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer:
Memo to Congress: fuck you!
I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
But it seems the suggestion is that the FBI uphold the law. They are not outlawing p2p. They are not prohibiting legal music trades. Instead, there's a suggestion that the FBI enforce the law against users who traffic in large amounts of illegal software and pirated music.
If I put up a web page with links to tens of thousands of dollars of pirated software, I should expect either my ISP to yank my connection, or to get a visit from the FBI. And I would expect many
If I do the same thing with a p2p server, however, there seems to be a belief that I had a right to break the law.
So, before we get hysterical about "protocols being outlawed", perhaps we should look at (a) the proposal, and (b) the ethics of those 'big fish' traders who traffic in warez and mp3.
Well, this will likely get a bad mod rating because it's not all "rah rah mp3 warez". But I'm an artist who needs these protections to feed my family. Sure, I've heard that sharing music and copyright-anarchy is supposed to increase sales in the aggregate, but it doesn't work for me any the genre I work in. So I need my audience to please be a *paying* audience.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:4, Insightful)
If I hear your music (assuming you're a musician), I just might want to buy your CD. Which ClearChannel station can I hear your stuff on? Or possibly MTV? With P2P out of the picture, those might be the only ways I'd hear you.
Well that's good... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously folks, when are we as a nation going to say enough is enough with this legal corporate bribery? Can anyone please explain the practical difference between bribery and massive "donations" ? I'm reminded of a remark made by George Carlin, who said "this country was bought and sold years ago". Was he right?
Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't this what we've wanted all along? Make the people stealing the music the ones who are culpable rather than outlawing the methodology... it seems like the right answer to me.
Of course there's the implicit requirment (in order for this to be a good thing) that legal activities not be persecuted under this initiative. For that I suppose I'll have to wait and see. Honestly though, I'm not upset in the least about this. When folks download songs they didn't pay for which weren't given away for free by the artist/copyright holder, whatever the downloader's philosophy about it that activity is still theft. And let's face it, that's probably the majority of what goes on with P2P music "sharing" networks... that's certainly all I've ever seen anyone doing with them!
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, no it isn't.
Sure, it's a horrible deal for the artists and should be corrected, but it's not theft. No matter how much it sucks, or how much people want to call it theft to justify their own actions, it just plain isn't.
The artists signs a (very likely terribly unfair) contract with a record company. That's an agreement between two parties who (should, if they are responsible) know exactly what they're getting into, and do it willingly.
A legal tranfer of rights is not theft.
WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
What kind of utter bullshit is this? Threat to culture? P2P trading actually helps to distribute american "culture", since we're also home to many of the content producers who are so eagerly traded. I'm sure the French and the Canadians would be more than happy for us to keep our "culture" to ourselves.
Threat to our economy? More of a threat than Al Queda and other nasty terrorists, willing to destroy physical infrastructure, and kill human beings?
I smell re-election posturing by politicians too stupid to know that they're posturing on the WRONG SIDE.
Intergenerational Warfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Under Nixon an older, reactionary generation declared a War on Drugs, which was essentially a euphemism for a war on the lifestyle of the youth of that era and the values it represented (chemical experimentation, casual sex, a healthy skepticism of authority, and so on). Indeed, the prohibition of drugs and the actions that have been taken to try and stamp out its use has caused far greater harm, in both a humanitarian and economic sense, than the abuse of the substances themselves ever did or could have.
A War on Ourselves indeed, or at least a war on the younger generation, one that began under Nixon, was escalated out of control under Reagan and Bush Senior, to the point where we now have over fifty beaurocracies fighting for the collected spoils seized from non-violent drug offendors.
Now, with the new War on Copyright Infringement, we are about to target today's youth, who trade their music, their movies, their videotapes online, instead of via cassette tape the way us older folk did when we were in high school and college.
Another front on an intergenerational war, between the dinasaurs of the Jack Valenti Generation of Greed and the emerging, technically savvy information generation they seek to repress and quite possibly destroy.
This escalation will likely claim even more victims, fill our prisons even more with people even less inclined to violence than the many drug offendors who account for half our inmate population today.
Worse, we'll have to listen to even more self-righteous tripe along the lines "but these fans are stealing bread and milk from the mouths of Lars and Britney," and "we'll win the war on copyright infringement! These pirates will never see the light of day again! God Bless America!"
What's next, a broken egg on a frying pan with the words "This represents your Life on MP3?"
Make no mistake, this is intergenerational warfare, waged by the parents and grandparents upon the children who have chosen to live differently than their elders, indeed, differently than their elders can comprehend. As we draw closer to the technological singuarity I think we can expect ever more extreme examples of the same.
Hell, I haven't even finished writing a novel [expressivefreedom.org] set in 2057 that depicts exactly these sorts of events. How close is one to the Singualarity I wonder, when real world events overtake science fiction faster than it can be written?
... star systems will slip through your fingers (Score:3)
This is a victory for P2P.
The more the United States congress thinks they have done something substantial that isn't, the better off the file sharers will be.
This will not have a chilling effect on P2P at all.
The first human face put on trial for this will inspire a journalistic feeding frenzy, particularly if he looks like you and me or the neighbor nextdoor, especially if he is filesharing documents such as "Declaration of Independence.txt " or "United States Constitution.doc"
Oh, my God! Did I just type Windows file extensions?!?
Irony. Hypocrisy. Congress. (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmm...this would be the same Joesph Biden who's 1988 Presidential bid was abruptly curtailed when it was revealed that he'd plagiarized passages in several of his speeches, and had also been involved in a serious plagiarism incident when he was at law school?
What an asshole.
This will help the REAL artists... (Score:5, Insightful)
- DOJ crawls through the P2P networks, scanning your file swapping list, and arresting everyone it can find which they believe is illegally sharing copyrighted materials. They prosecute a buch of big-time file-sharers, winning some, losing others. But they get enough that it scares most people.
- The big P2P sharers leave the networks. Usage drops drastically. However, the P2P software makers are still in business, as they are now left alone. Music is still being shared, only now its stuff that explicitly has been allowed by the Artists to be shared.
- Now that the P2P network isn't clogged with NSYNC tunes, people actually can find (and listen to) stuff that isn't on ClearChannel or the other big chain Radio stations. Bands have small successes - releasing 128Bit MP3s to the P2P networks, and selling 256Bit ones on their websites for a couple of dimes. It becomes possible for a regional band to make a few tens of thousands of dollars of MP3 sales per year (100,000 sales @ 40 cents each adds up), and people start to flock to the P2P networks again.
- Big-time artists notice it. Those which are in controll of their catalogue (through foresight, ownership of their label, or lawsuits), decide that its possible now. Somebody big tries it, and makes a couple million in sales on their back-catalog in the first month. The artists drool, as they see 75% profit margins on per-MP3 sales, with nothing going to the label (or other middlemen).
- Artists flock to the P2P networks to sell their songs, and the big labels are reduced to what they really are: promotional marketing houses. Artists contract with them for fixed fees (or precentages of gross receipts) to do promotion and such, and label no longer get ownership of the music, as Artists now have the means to say "Fuck You" if the label demands it.
I'd love to see this scenario, and I think it's realistic given two BIG "ifs":- IF they really start to clamp down on the big P2P users with huge illegal catalogs, so we can get all the infringing crap off the P2P networks. Once it's all legal and above board, you can start running real marketing analysis and do the business case studies that you need to make it a real sales market and distribution channel.
- IF the artists continue on the current road of fighting to get ownership of their music. If they quit (and continue with the Faustian bargain of their soul for 15 minutes on MTV), then it's over. I'm hoping they have the backbone to stick it out.
And realistically, isn't this what we want? P2P networks with LEGAL music for us to try out and see what we want? And an economically viable way for the artists to produce music and get paid for it in a reasonable manner?Call it what you want, but sharing copyrighted MP3s right now is definitely illegal, and in the long turn, harmful to everyone. Don't do it - it's NOT the Right Thing.
-Erik
Re:This will help the REAL artists... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, sure, Hilary and her sleazy friends will settle for that destiny. They'll never see that one coming. Naww. No way they'll react by doing something like this:
Paying their lackeys in Congress to force hardware makers to embed DRM that REQUIRES security technology that is owned by - guess who!! - which gets licensed to aspiring musicians for, oh, say the same-ish terms record companies have been imposing on them for decades. The industry retains control over the master access valve, we get to hear the same stream of big-hit bands selected for us by assholes in expensive suits, on computers and other machines that will no longer play just whatever we want, and 99.99% of the population of musicians grubs along like they do now.
Re:This will help the REAL artists... (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh? How naive can you get?
You think the RIAA will just be nice and leave P2P software makers alone once trading of RIAA 0wn3d music on P2P networks drops through the floor? You think the RIAA will just ignore all those independent artists that they don't have any control over but who would now have more relative exposure on P2P networks?
You've gotta be kidding me. What world did you grow up in?
The RIAA will not stop until all music distribution methods are completely under their control. Total domination is what they're after and they're not going to settle for anything less. And because they 0wn Congress, they have a reasonable chance of succeeding. Oh, yeah, they might destroy the Internet in the process, but everyone knows that the only people who use the internet as anything other than a glorified TV set are 3v1l h4x0rz and terrorists, right?
Sigh...
This is new folks (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyright infringement has never before been a crime committed by individuals procuring their own entertainment. Always before it has been a crime that could only be comitted by major distributors. After all, those were the only people copyright law applied to 50 years ago.
Stealing a song is not like stealing a car. One involves the deprivation of a personal property, and the other involves breaking a social contract.
This is new, and I wonder how long this new crime will be with us.
Re:This is new folks (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think this is either. While obtaining material that you know to be stolen (s/stolen/infringed\ upon) is illegal, I think everybody is wanting to go after the actual distributors. I don't think even Ashcroft would go so far as to say we should go after the kid who downloads a copy of a latest-and-greatest MTV single.
Always before it has been a crime that could only be comitted by major distributors. After all, those were the only people copyright law applied to 50 years ago.
Are you sure? I don't have any citations to back this up, but I doubt it was legal fifty years ago for someone to copy a book and distrbute it without having permission from the author/publisher.
Stealing a song is not like stealing a car. One involves the deprivation of a personal property, and the other involves breaking a social contract.
You're exactly right, and that's why someone who steals a car is probably going to prison for a short period, while someone who illegally copies a CD will most likely get a very minor punishment.
Its ok to steal stocks but not britney spears (Score:5, Insightful)
Manipulating and stealing Stock ok, downloading mp3's bad.
Same is true for packet sniffing and reverse engineering. Under the DMCA, packet sniffing to make a program compatable with something else is illegal and bad. However killing competetion and cutting tens of thousands of jobs who use to work for your competitors ok. If Microsoft never existed do you think Oracle, Borland and Watcom would have like 10x the staff they do now as well as enjoy healthy competition from companies that would of existed because Microsoft would never exist. My guess is that Netscape would be quite huge right now would and its software would be a whole platform and not just a web browser. Its a shame.
Scenario (Score:5, Funny)
Inmate 1: What are you in for?
Inmate 2: I blew this guys face off with a shotgun because he didn't have my money. And you?
Inmate 1: I downloaded some Weird Al mp3's and uploaded that video of the monkey sniffing his finger and falling over.
Inmate 2: Sicko. You disgust me, its people like you...
What the focus is... (Score:3, Funny)
Need a group on Kiddie Porn, check
Need a group on Kid Napping, check
Need a group on serial murders, check
Need a group on drug traffic, check
Need a group on tax fraud, check
Need a group on smugglers, check
Need a group on file swapers
Hmmm
Note to self: Dont pay taxes this year
Ammendum to note to self: Dont pay taxes this year and move to zanzabar and start taking opium rectally
Only the masses matter (Score:5, Insightful)
I am probably going to be stating the obvious, but here goes.
Look at the big issues today. War on terrorism, prescription drug programs, naturalization of Mexican immigrant workers, taxes, corporate crime (and for some odd reason, Martha Stewart specifically), and a few other issues.
What are those few other issues? Well, one might be environmental concerns, but those only interest the masses when they effect the masses... like how those concerns will impact the price of fuel at the pump. What about where nuclear waste will be stored? Only people near Vegas are actively concerned today, along with people along the transportation routes perhaps, but for the most part, that is a local issue.
What about P2P file sharing, DMCA, Palladium, DRM, the RIAA and the MPAA. These are local issues as well. P2P is to the general public what Jesse Ventura is to Minnesota... a local problem (sorry, MN).
Here's an interesting one, though. Energy issues were, up until last year, mostly centered on California, which had become too big a consumer and was thus subject to the evil market when it came time to power its excesses. BUT, when it was discovered that a major player in that evil marketplace was suddenly responisble for taking down a major chunk of the US economy, and that suddenly pension funds and 401(k) funds and stock portfolios of retiring (and other) Americans were in danger, the problem became one of National interest.
And that makes it a problem of political interest.
When large voting blocks become concerned about the issues that concern Slashdot readers (which is NOT a large voting block, which is probably good), they will become interesting to politicians. For now, many of those issues that concern us are of concern to the RIAA and the MPAA, and since those latter two groups have a lot of money, they win.
Money can only be beat by one thing, and that is a winning number of votes. A candidate will not address issues like DMCA, DRM, the rights of the average P2P user, or most other things that are of concern to "us" until a voting block large enough to lose them an election becomes interested in it.
When your mom can't play solitaire without paying her MS subscription fees, or your dad can't get his tivo to work anymore, or when a CD won't play in your uncle's car CD player because of the silly copy protection, and when these problems are happening to MILLIONS of people, we will begin to see serious debate.
For now, it is a war of morality (a reasonably fair but decidedly nerdy morality) versus money, and for the near term, the money wins. That sucks, but that is the truth. Watch it happen.
Douglas Adams solved this problem years ago. (Score:5, Funny)
1. we "find" a new planet to colonize some where a long ways away
2. build a fleet of three giant ships full of cryogenic bays to move there on
3. divide people as follows: Scientists, teachers, researchers, etc. go on the first ship. Lawyers, bureaucrats, hairdressers, music licensing managers, etc. go on the second ship*. Everyone else goes on the third ship.
4. make sure the second ship is ready to go first, and send them off.
5. forget about sending the other two ships.
Problem solved.
* note that telephone sanitizers should not be included in the second ship.
*Cough* (Score:5, Insightful)
A high priority, unlike billions lost and hundreds of thousands of people financially ruined because of coporate fat cat fraud. Isn't it funny that people who share stuff for free have to pay outragous sums in fines and worry about dropping the soap while the people that steal billions might, at the worst, get a few months at club fed? I would applaud them finally going after the source instead of the technology, except they are going after the source and the technology and getting taxpayers to pick up the tab.
A ludicrous waste of taxpayer resources . . . (Score:3, Informative)
It is for precisely this reason that the Congress provided for civil remedies for copyright infringement including awards of an attorney fee -- so that private copyright owners can pursue their remedies on their own dime -- if it actually creates a meaningful cost to them (and presumably to society).
RIAA would like for us to spend tax money to support them, and save them the costs of prosecution. These Congressmen are engaging in the worst kind of pork by suggesting that our Justice department should waste tax and precious law enforcement resources prosecuting penny-ante civil copyright infringement cases. RIAA neither needs nor deserves such public assistance. Save Justice resources for meaningful pirates, yet, or more important, for meaningful law enforcement matters. The RIAA should take care of itself.
So, will the FBI arrest our Senators?!? (Score:4, Interesting)
ZDNet posted an interesting opinion piece back in July about how we should quit using P2P now that the Senate has. Check it out here:
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/
The part that interested me most was this quote:
>> The Senate, which is now crafting legislation
>> that would further restrict the illegal sharing
>> of copyrighted works over networks, was
>> apparently a hotbed of illegal file sharing and
>> other peer-to-peer (P2P) networking activity.
>>
>> Last week, the Senate Sergeant at Arms clamped
>> down, and cut off all P2P networking within the
>> Senate. The reason? Such networking practices
>> were a security risk, and they were being used
>> to violate copyright laws.
As they say, "our tax money at work". The senators involved (it does not name names, but gives the idea that such activities were widespread) were not only breaking the law, they were using our tax money to do it. If you check the various news stories, at least two movies were illegally downloaded and watched by the senators during Senate hearings on legislation such as the Hollings bill. One of the videos was pirated by a senator, the other by the President of Disney.
If these congresspersons are correct (some of the ones asking for the FBI's "help" were senators), shouldn't the FBI take care of the most widely publicized cases first, the ones with easy proof, that involved public money?
After all, they are the ones who think this is such a henious crime that we have to pull the FBI off of child kidnapping cases and the "War on Terror" to deal with it.
Me, I think the FBI has better things to do than bother with people sampling music before a purchase and freeloading kids who wouldn't or couldn't pay for a CD anyway. But then our senators are the ones with all the file-sharing experience, not little old me. Surely they know better.
"Really, gentlemen, if that's the case, let's see the power of attorney given to you by Mothra."
Torahata "Mothra vs. Godzilla"