Senate Takes Aim At P2P Providers 869
thejoelpatrol writes "The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by everybody's favorite senator, Orrin Hatch, is moving to outlaw P2P entirely by making it illegal to produce such applications. Hatch says such firms 'think that they can legally profit by inducing children to steal. Some think they can legally lure children into breaking the law with false promises of "free music."' So, when was the last time that Kazaa told kids to steal music? Shouldn't the parents be the ones looking out for their kids? The RIAA is (surprise!) in favor of this, while P2P groups are (surprise!) opposed."
Foreign jurisdictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:4, Funny)
I bet RIAA would be in favor of that as well
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:3, Insightful)
Orrin Hatch is just one member of my list of people that would make the world a better place by simply changing location to roughly six feet closer to its center.
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously, every major tech company in the world is going to come out against this because there isn't a single one that doesn't have some piece of peer-to-peer technology. Without P2P, modern computing couldn't exist. As far as home computing is concerned, it started with AppleTalk in the 1980s---a self-configuring supernet on top of an existing network. We now have similar technologies for finding out about printers and servers on your network. Do you want to go back to having to manually plug a single computer into a single printer? Then vote for this bill.
And then there's FireWire. It's an entirely peer-to-peer communications standard. If it weren't, you couldn't plug a firewire camcorder into another one and copy your home movies. Want to go back to anlog video? Vote for this bill.
Let's not forget iChat's Rendezvous support. Want to stop using that LAN chat software? Vote for this bill.
Don't forget Microsoft. They have zeroconf networking, though they call it uPNP. That would be illegal. So would your wireless router.
And what about the internet itself? Border Gateway Protocol? Illegal. RIP? Illegal. Your collection of Cisco routers? Illegal. I guess it's back to manually maintaining router tables for the entire internet. But wait.... The internet itself is an example of a peer-to-peer network by its very nature. Two computers talk to each other without going through a central server. But I'm guessing Mr. Hatch uses AOL anyway, so he won't notice the difference except that the Internet went away....
And lest we consider going back to what we had before the internet, Bitnet is the same way, and UUCP doubly so. In short, if a bill like this were to pass, technology as we know it would cease to exist.
Hell, your telephone is a peer-to-peer mechanism, as is the U.S. Mail. Two people talking to each other are engaging in P2P communication. Guess Mr. Hatch will have to kill all the people on Earth and let God sort 'em out, because that's the only way he can really eliminate peer-to-peer communication. Or we could just lock Orrin Hatch up in a rubber room and tell him that peer-to-peer communication was outlawed. He would perceive roughly the same effect, and in anyone's book, it's certainly a good start.
It's nice to see such enlightened senators. I remember one time when senators couldn't spell the word Internet. Now they can spell "P2P". Baby steps, one letter at a time, I know. Maybe one day they'll be able to spell words like freedom. Until then, does anybody know of cheap apartments in Canada?
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:5, Interesting)
It becomes difficut to do when people have already gone so far off the deep end. Hatch has stated that he wants to remotely destroy people's computers. He has introduced legislation to outlaw ordinary computers. Hatch has has sponsored or co-sponsored no less than SIXY-SEVEN attempts to ammend the constitution, often various attempts to STRIP AWAY PORTIONS OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS. And those are just the antics I can think of off the top of my head.
Attempting to parody Hatch is like attempting to parody White Supremacists or fanatical religious fundamentalists (of any flavor). Anything short of "lets eat the children" winds up looking just like the genuine and sincere words of those you wish to parody. It is frighfully hard to successfully parody some people.
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Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:5, Insightful)
This law is trying to let people sue the company for the actions of the customer. I don't care if it's a gun maker, the guy who sold you a duel tape deck, it doesn't matter. The customers actions are the customers responcibility.
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:5, Informative)
1. Last year, Hatch proposed creating black-ice like software that would destroy the hardware of people who download music illegally.
2. One of Hatch's staffers illegally cracked several Democrats' computers in the Senate.
3. Hatch's staff illegally used software for hosting a website at the same time Hatch was proposing destroying the PCs of those who would do similar.
4. Hatch is routinely involved in passing laws to reinforce copywrite protections, even if there might not be any grounds for the lawsuit.
5. Hatch's boy is a lawyer, one of who's clients in the SCO.
6. Hatch is constantly trying to amend the Constitution. For example, he keeps introducing an amendment to ban flag burning over and over and is now talking about amending the Constitution so Schwarzenegger can run for President. But he opposed the ERA.
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:4, Funny)
Or even better... (Score:5, Insightful)
That isn't a new idea. Frighteningly, it used to even be one that was explicitly stated. When a bill was proposed to introduce public libraries, there was massive opposition from the Tories (closest equivalent in the US being the Republicans). Favourite quote from one being: "the people have too much knowledge already: it was much easier to manage them twenty years ago; the more education people get the more difficult they are to manage."
Education equates to being difficult to control. Always has, but it's necessary for the health of society - the eternal dilemma of the ruling classes.
Re:Or even better... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are really concerned about public education get involved at the LOCAL LEVEL. No amount of federal money (not even an infinite amount) can solve the problems of public education. The only solutions worth a damn that will bring any positive impact are all local inititives, like getting parents involved, knowing and talking to your kids teachers, knowing the material they are teaching with, helping your kids learn, and supporting you local school (through taxes, donations, or both). Federal money always has too many strings attached or a hidden agenda, or both.
Re:Or even better... (Score:4, Informative)
The keys to understanding the problems with public education are 1) understanding assessment (What are you trying to measure? What tools do you have to measure it? What do the tools really measure?), and 2) understanding where the money is going.
The per-student cost of public education went up significantly a couple decades ago due to a single cause. When you find out what that cause is you'll understand why Republicans don't like to talk about it when they're bashing public education.
No society in history has become literate through private education. Private education is a failure.
Re:Or even better... (Score:5, Informative)
That is almost always a lie. In Missouri, gambling was supposed to help fund education. We all want more money for education, right? Think of the children! What happened was that the education budget was, say $1B. Gambling raised, say, $500M for the schools. $1B + $500M = $1.5B of highly-funded learning, right? Wrong! The school budgets didn't increase at all. The money coming in from gambling replaced taxpayer funds - it wasn't added to them.
So Missouri taxpayers got a lower tax bill that year, right? Wrong! The first rule of governmental spending is that it almost never goes down. The state found some other project that coincidentally needed $500M (probably For The Children). The gambling proponents sort of told the truth: the money did go toward education. What they left out is that an equal amount of money from other sources came out of that budget item.
Good luck in PA. I hope it works out better than it has for any other non-gambling-centric state (ie, excluding NV) that I've ever heard of.
Re:THE BOTTOM LINE (Score:5, Informative)
see here [wikipedia.org]
-lk
Re:THE BOTTOM LINE (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:THE BOTTOM LINE (Score:4, Interesting)
Trying to redefine "peer-to-peer" network as "mechanism for wholesale IP theft"** will of course net make it so. This strikes me as one of those bills whose purpose is to make it look like Congress is doing a Good Thing(tm), only to have the law struck down in the courts so the congresscritters can say they tried, it's not their fault.
* But hey, they tell me I remembered the origins of PHP wrong, so what do I know?
** Yes I know it's copyright violation, not theft, but that's the way they'll try to present it.
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:4, Insightful)
Why stop at copyright violations then? Timmy's mom should have the right to sue gun makers for "inducing and procuring" gunshot wounds. That way if Timmy get's mad when someone makes him share his juiceboxes - his parents can sue the Gun makers. It obviously isn't Timmy's fault.
I could have sworn that it was already illegal to aid, abet or induce any crime. A completely useless law.
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:3, Funny)
And a paid lobbyist for the RIAA and the MPAA.
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:5, Interesting)
There are Peer-to-Peer uses of IM, FTP and EMail, but these uses are being degredated by firewalls.
That is to say that every hacker that decides they want to try their hand at cracking, or play with some script kit is directly causing the further segmentation of the internet into discreet networks connected only by the proxy servers hardened for use on the "open" internet.
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:5, Informative)
ISP firewalling and port blocking still chills, of course, but I don't think the sky is black yet.
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:4, Informative)
And how is it that the Digital Imprimatur is happening right now? Well take a look at this Slashdot story Cisco Working to Block Viruses at the Router. [slashdot.org] But guess what? The Slashdot story completely missed one vital point. These new Cisco routers DO NO BLOCK VIRUSES. No, what they really do is check that you are running a TRUSTED COMPUTER and then they remotely scan the software running on your computer. If you are not Tursted Computing compliant, or of you are not running the approved and mandated software (or if you are running prohibited software) THEN THIS ROUTER DENIES YOU INTERNET ACCESS.
Of course it is being billed to enforce that you are running an approved and up-to-date firewall and/or anti-virus software and/or that your operating system has the latest patches. That's how it supposedly "fights viruses".
Of course enforcing that you are using a Trusted Computer means that you no longer own/control your own computer. Of course enforcing that you are running all of that approved software and latest approved operating system patchs also means that you are forced to run only the approved operating system (Palladium anyone?). It also means that if you attempt to change any of your settings or modify your software in any way you get locked out completely, you lose your net connection, you can't open any of your 'secure' files, and most of your software will refuse to run.
It's true that ISP's can't start installing these new Cisco Routers unless most of their customers already have Trusted Hardware - they'd be locking out almost all of their customers. However the plan is to simply include the Trust Chip as standard hardware on all new motherboards sold, starting this year. They don't have to convince you to buy a new Trusted Computer, they simply HAND you the new hardware when you replace your old PC. There's no reason not to accept a computer with the Trust Chip in it, you can simply leave the chip off and the machine can do everything a normal computer can do and run all existing software. Over the course of 4 years or so essentially all PC's get replaced as obsolete. Around 2008 or so pretty much everyone is expected to have a Trust Chip. Then the ISP's can install the new routers and lock out anyone that has failed to comply. It will only be a few percent, and the company will simply say "Your Fault, you have an incompatible computer, go buy a modern machine to replace your obsolete hunk of junk."
At a Washington DC Global Tech Summit, Richard Clarke Special Advisor to the President for Cyberspace Security called on ISP's to enforce exactly such a policy. See the PDF here. [bsa.org] His speech starts on page 7, but you can skip to the last two paragraphs on page 11 through the end. He says TCPA(Trusted Computing) is a "Good beginning, but not enough", tells ISPs to use TCPA to enforce the use of firewalls and other software in order to get a hookup, asks them to implement a National Strategy to Defend Cyberspace. He asks them to do so "in the spirit of 9/11", to do so for our National Economy, to do so for our National Defence, to do so for Our Way Of Life For People Around The Globe, and even to defend us against Osama bin Laden himself. And the PDF notes that the audience responded with applause.
If there is no massive public backlash against Trusted Computing it will simply be dumped in our laps and the sky will become very dark indeed.
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Next Year... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh boy, I am on a soapbox today.
Re:Next Year... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Next Year... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Next Year... (Score:5, Funny)
And with the Internet routing around it (perhaps through Belgium?), it can be no more effective than the Maginot Line.
I'll have some "freedom fries" with that, please... ;-)
Re:Next Year... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Next Year... (Score:5, Insightful)
The origin of the word "Firewall" isn't a wall made of fire, but rather a wall that can block fire. Like "blast door" isn't a door that blasts everyone that tries to pass it, but rather a door that can withstand blasts.
Therefore a "freedom wall" is a wall that blocks freedom.
Re:Next Year... (Score:3, Insightful)
Only reinforces an existing trend (Score:4, Insightful)
Plan ahead (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Plan ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
There are orders of magnitude more file sharers then there are drug users violating the drug laws. Just put it this way about 50 million people elected the president in the last election. It has been estimated that that many people have used p2p for file sharing. The politicians schilling for the RIAA are playing with fire. A voter backlash on this issue could be enourmous.
I know that even though I am a conservative, I have very strong libertarian leanings. There is no way in hell that Hatch would ever get my vote. The Republicans have to be very careful with this, there are a lot of closet libertarians in their midst who do not like this kind of legislation.
And since when does a private company get to use the government's resources for its own civil suits? No citizen would be allowed to do that. It is so costitutionally wrong it makes me sick to think that some scumbag senator actually though it up. Do those idiots even read the constitution?
Oh. Nice. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:4, Interesting)
I was always told republicans were about less government intervention into personal and business sectors. In the last 4 years I've seen more laws passed where the government takes an active role in propping up the powers of big business while legislating away so many personal rights and privileges. This doesn't seem like the hands-off approach they like to pat themselves on the back so much for.
Madness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Madness (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just like so-called open container [dot.gov] laws. It is already illegal to drive drunk. But, the very act of having an open bottle of booze in my car is illegal. Why? By itself, there is nothing wrong with it. The only problem is when I, as a drive, start drinking from it. But then I'm breaking an already existing law!!!
How about we just start enforcing the laws we already have before we start writing new ones.
Re:Madness (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Madness (Score:3, Insightful)
In your country.
(as it should be).
I don't think so. There are many legitimate uses of copyright material that don't need the copyright holder's consent: I can borrow a book from the library. I can photocopy parts of it. I can quote parts of it in my own work.
In Canada, I can make a complete copy of a music recording for my own use. [justice.gc.ca] This is as it should be, because I pay a levy on recording media which
Re:Madness (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you stop to consider that maybe, just maybe, a passenger was drinking from that container? The driver could be (and usually is) cold sober.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Madness (Score:5, Interesting)
In the old world there was a simple distinction: either a band was signed to a label, in which case the label dictated their term, whether they were promoted etc; or the band wasn't signed to a label and had no channel to get their music to listeners.
In the new world, P2P is an alternative channel between producers and consumers in which record companies have no control - the process has become disintermediated. In this world you have the appalling prospect (for the companies) that talented, affluent people will make music because they enjoy it, and and then distribute it via P2P networks so that people can listen to it and enjoy it without paying them.
In essence, the scarcity of music distribution has ended, and the beneficiaries of this scarcity (the record companies) are seeing their business model starting to fail. They're doomed, and they know they're doomed, but they're also keen to prolong their dominion as long as they can.
Dunstan
Re:Madness (Score:4, Informative)
The failed business model in question is the record companies' stranglehold on the music industry.
Few people seem to realize the hypocrisy of their sudden rush to "protect the rights of artists." (When did an "artist" become someone who makes music, not someone who paints? When did "musician" become a dirty word?) The biggest threat to those rights is, and always has been, the record companies themselves.
"The artist formerly known as Prince" didn't change his name to a weird symbol on a whim; he did it because before he was famous, a record company had gotten him to sign a contract so one-sided that they even owned his real-life name. (yes, it's Prince ... talk about child abuse) Going back a few years, the singers and songwriters of some of the real classics of modern music, especially (though far from exclusively) those who were not white males, were paid a pittance for their work that record companies made a fortune from. In court, the record companies have insisted time and again that $100 was more than fair compensation for all rights to a song that they made tens of millions of dollars off of.
Even today, most musicians see only a tiny fraction, if any, of the money from the sales of their CDs. They earn their money primarily from concerts. The money from that overpriced CD -- the one that sells for twice what a DVD of a movie that cost a hundred million dollars to film -- goes straight to the record company, and stays there.
The record companies have a lock on the distribution of music. Anyone can rent a studio and make a CD ... even me (William Hung move over!) ... but if they want to get it in the record stores and on the radio, they have to sell their soul to a record company.
That's why P2P scares the living shit out of the record companies. They know what the real numbers are, not the doctored ones [theinquirer.net] they show Congress. They know that their serfs are deserting them for independant labels and self-distribution. They know that the massive consolidation of radio station ownership [azoz.com] since Orrin Hatch and his buddies threw out rules that had preserved competition for decades and handed the market over to their supporter [surfingtheapocalypse.net] and propaganda wing [interventionmag.com] Clear Channel is costing them a fortune in payola. And I'm sure they know that they're turning out endless streams of overpriced music that, fundamentally, sucks.
But they can't do anything about that. (except maybe the sucky music) They know they're dinosaurs. The know the industry has changed, and their chosen business model -- total control of production, distribution, and sales of music -- is going the way of a business model based on total control of buggy whips. So they're getting people like Orrin Hatch to pass laws to force the market to continue to support that model.
It isn't fans sharing music by the record companies' serfs that the companies fear ... they know, their public statements to the contrary, it isn't hurting their sales, and quite possibly either increasing them or offsetting what would be a greater decline. What leaves them terrified is the existance of a distribution channel that they don't and can't control which will free musicians from being serfs of the record companies in the first place. They fear a system that will allow musicans to keep on doing what they already do -- making their money off of concerts and other sources of revenue -- and not have to sign their lives and their rights over to any record company. They know a system which connects the producer and the consumer directly will have no place for parasites that have gotten fat from feeding off both ends of the line.
This is the sa
The Children (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The Children (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunatelly not many know, who will really benefit from this legislation.
Let's extend Godwin's Law (Score:5, Insightful)
Incidentally, I'd love Godwin's Rule to be adopted in politics. For a very good reason: when someone makes a comparison to Nazi's or feels a need to protect The Children, you can be sure that the rational part of the discussion is over, and that all that's left is emotions and name calling.
Why not outlaw client-server apps too? (Score:5, Funny)
ARGH!
Uh Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Their argument is that DL'ing copyrighted works is violating the rights of the artist and copyright holders.
I say they are violating the rights of the people by placing undue restrictions on our property!
Oh, the children... (Score:4, Funny)
so, what does that mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:so, what does that mean? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:so, what does that mean? (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably. And they'll also ban SMB file sharing, since that clearly enables copyright violation.
Of course, this will make Windows boxes a lot more secure, so maybe it's a Good Thing.
And who'd have thought that Orrin Hatch would be the one that would finally force Microsoft to remove a major security hole from their software?
Actually, when you consider that unix-like systems are multi-user systems with a file system that encourages shared files and enables cooperative development, I'd wonder whether this bill would ban unix file systems.
Maybe what we should do is check out the computers in use by Hatch's political organization, and demand that they remove all software that enables copyright violation, starting with their email software. Maybe that would get the message across.
As with Guns. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As with Guns. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)
Both products, of course, can be used without breaking the law.
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but what good will P2P do you when the King of England starts pushing you around? Well? That's what I thought.
-m
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but what good will P2P do you when the King of England starts pushing you around? Well? That's what I thought.
Actually, as any experienced grass-roots activist, political dissident, resistance fighter, insurgent, terrorist or law enforcement officer knows, the key to successfully opposing those in power is a secure communications network. Encrypted P2P comes pretty close to that. That may be part of the reason it's being outlawed.
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that the gun nuts may actually have a use here.
If computer hardware can be restricted under munitions export laws, then computers are weapons.
If computers are weapons then they come under the Second Amendment.
If computers come under the Second Amendment then all this godawful stuff about federally-mandated DRM is unconstitutional. You'll take my general-purpose programmable computer from my cold, dead hands!
Re:I'm confused (Score:3, Interesting)
Hunting (you need a big handgun).
Protection... from animals. I WILL NOT hike in certain parts of the country without a gun, or at least a big can of police/military grade pepper spray.
Target practice. Granted, this can be argued to be a form of practice for killing humans... But, many people find it, in and of itself, to be fun, challenging, and a good stress relief.
This'll get shot down quickly as being too vague. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, no! Now there's this FTP program people are using! Better shut that down, too.
Zounds! Someone just e-mailed me a song! Bye-bye, e-mail...
Certainly. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm confused... (Score:3, Funny)
Kjella
The Bill Itself (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Bill Itself (Score:5, Informative)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S
Skip the Middle Man (Score:5, Funny)
Profit? Uh...no. (Score:5, Informative)
"Hatch says such firms 'think that they can legally profit by inducing children to steal."
Thankfully I only use P2P programs that are GPL, and thus free as in beer, so little if any profit motivation there.
The best p2p applications are usually free / open source like eMule [emule-project.net], Freenet [sourceforge.net], and how apparently even Shareza [shareaza.com] 2.0 is open sourced [shareaza.com] under the GPL.
We control the horizontal We control the vertical. (Score:5, Informative)
So UNLESS a P2P app blocks all not-authorised (by the *IAA) file transfers, it will be considered illegal. The implications are amazing, and could easily be applied to hardware (any file copy, burn to CDR, upload to MP3 player, etc...)
Every day... (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly, there must be a balance to online music sharing, but music companies must recognize that they have to adapt to the changing world like the rest of us, or be left behind.
effects (Score:5, Informative)
Peer to peer is the holy grail of networking (Score:5, Insightful)
In the lower network levels you see these kinds of networks in wireless setups. They tend to have problems with scalability. In the higher network layers it has turned out to be possible to create networks that are not in need of a fixed central node that controls communications. However you do see the advent of supernodes to improve communications.
Illegal stuff generally ends up on the most efficient network setup. It used to be BBS, then FTP and now Peer to Peer. However in the end, Kazaa, Gnutella and Bittorrent are all modern answers to the question: How do we build an FTP-system without the need for a central server that will run out of its bandwidth the moment it is announced on Slashdot.
Won't happen (Score:5, Insightful)
And as we saw in the Slashdot post yesterday, file sharing is clearly destroying the movie industry. Not! The only thing hurting the music industry is the music industry. They're putting out crap music and they're suing their customers. If they changed these two things, they'd probably be back to record (pun not intended) profits.
Not only am I not buying today's music, I'm not downloading today's music. Because it sucks. Britney, please don't do it again! Quit. Go home. Please!
What about Skype? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a technology. This is insane!
Taylor made arguments (Score:5, Funny)
Kazaa doesn't steal music, people do...
You can take my limewire from my cold dead hands...
Not to mention awesome statistics like... More music gets stolen every day by bootlegging operations than by p2p users.
Fun Stuff!
A non-lawyer's interpretation (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds reasonably fair to me. It's not an end-all "P2P is evil and must be stopped" bill. It's a method to keep out the more dangerous offenders. For example, BitTorrent should be immune to prosecution under this law because its main intended purpose is to lighten the hit on the download of new versions of legal software, specifically Linux distributions.
Kazaa, on the other hand, really doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. Perhaps if they didn't have a built-in MP3/Video player in the client, they might have gotten away with it, but they specifically built the GUI so as to make it easy and convenient to download illegal songs and movies.
And yes, I acknowledge that there are legal downloads that can be made through Kazaa, but most of those were added as an afterthought in order to try and delay/counter litigation.
Section 501 of title 17, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
`(g)(1) In this subsection, the term `intentionally induces' means intentionally aids, abets, induces, or procures, and intent may be shown by acts from which a reasonable person would find intent to induce infringement based upon all relevant information about such acts then reasonably available to the actor, including whether the activity relies on infringement for its commercial viability.
`(2) Whoever intentionally induces any violation identified in subsection (a) shall be liable as an infringer.
`(3) Nothing in this subsection shall enlarge or diminish the doctrines of vicarious and contributory liability for copyright infringement or require any court to unjustly withhold or impose any secondary liability for copyright infringement.'.
Re:A non-lawyer's interpretation (Score:5, Insightful)
This bill could easily kill BitTorrent, or more specifically ruin the lives of the people who developed it. And probably will. Here's the scenario:
The RIAA/MPAA first goes after Kazaa and other software and services of that sort. Once they take out the easy targets, they will inevitably start going after the more innocent software. They more or less have to, or the users booted from Kazaa will just use the next easiest system. Eventually, they are bound to get to BitTorrent.
Now, BitTorrent has plenty of non-infringing users; certainly a higher percentage than Kazaa. But there would be sufficient grounds to bring a case, and a judge is probably not going to throw out a case that hinges on what a "reasonable person would find". That's exactly the sort of decision that it, in theory, best made by a jury. Once it makes it to a jury trial, the developers start to run into real legal costs and probably go broke even if they win. And winning is not a foregone conclusion; counting on a jury to reasonable apply a reasonable person standard is definitely a crapshoot.
Come on, we have seen this dozens of times. The big fish don't have to win the lawsuits they bring to crush the little fish. Previously, BitTorrent's protection came from case law decided when a big fish went after, say, a medium fish that fought back and won. If this bill becomes law, it will nullify that protection. I hope the BitTorrent developers aren't from the US!
What about the candy manufacturers? (Score:3, Funny)
Misuse of "steal" again, sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
The equating of illegal copying with property theft is now so widespread that it doesn't attract comment: this is bad. Those who misuse the language in this way should always be corrected.
Dunstan
There's nothing wrong with stealing. (Score:4, Insightful)
At least stealing is not automatically wrong, it's just the act of obtaining something surreptitiously. My son steals music all the time, he borrows my CD's without telling me, and I steal them back. I'm fine with this, as long as he doesn't thieve them. Theft is wrong and as you say copyright infringement is not theft. Children should be encouraged to steal music so that the can learn about it, and broaden their knowledge. A child that listens only to music they have bought and payed for, or that the media conglomerates see fit to broadcast is a child that is deprived of the riches of our culture. A society that tolerates such deprivation in the pursuit of corporate profit is truly decadent.
The obvious counter-statement (Score:5, Informative)
While it is not at all clear that Kazaa has ever told people to use it's software to steal, it is clear that some corporations now seem to think that they can legally profit by bribing senators with campaign donations.
Open Secrets [opensecrets.org]
Note that he recieves a generous bonus from "lobbyists" and "TV/Movie/Music".
This is good because (Score:3, Insightful)
People will not stand for copyright when it actually enforced.
Re:This is good because (Score:4, Insightful)
Worse. It's sending us well on the slippery slope to anarchy. Or, at least, to general disregard of inconvenient laws by the the majority of people.
And I'm not sure they see that.
They're creating laws that corporations love, but the mojority of society in many countries do not like. Are they persuading people to stay within the letter of a law they don't believe in? Probably not in a lot of cases. instead people just dismiss the Law as an inconvenience. This is not going to end well.
yes, sometimes laws probably need tightening up to stop rampant law-breaking. But each law really should be looked at case-by-case.
Why was the law created?
What was society/technology like at the time?
What are things like now?
Does $ACTIVITY$ really need protecting/prohibiting now as it did back then?
Copyright law probably needs wholesale revision, but not automatically in favour of (large) corporations.
Currently they're wanting to restrict more things, and impose bigger sentences. What people see, though, is them being faced with out-of-proportion punishments for something that's not perceived as a serious crime.
Copyright needs reworking. Allow more stuff, decrease restrictions, don't penalise for what should these days be allowable, reduce copyright periods and allow things to hit the Public Domain within the public's lifetime, and don't make breaking the law seem more attractive than obeying it.
TiggsConversely, what's left as illegal should be serious breaches that really do look like criminal activity and make them the ones with teh heavy punishments. Mass bootlegging factories of DVDs, and making a profit for someone else's work does seem to warrant heavy punishment. People sharing MP3s doesn't seem to warrant the same level. But the **AA (and local equivalents) want to make it so, and people can't understand that thinking.
Don't Forget the Co-Sponsors: (Score:5, Informative)
Mr. FRIST - R TN
Mr. DASCHLE - D SD
Mr. GRAHAM R- SC
Mrs. BOXER -D CA
Bi-partisanship at its best!
In related news... (Score:3, Funny)
The bill doesn't even mention P2P (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming that copyrights are first reduced to "limited times" as spelled out by the Constitution, an inducement law might be appropriate -- to prosecute (rather than reward with millions of dollars) people like Shawn Fanning of Napster who actively solicit infringement of specific copyrighted titles. But this bill is not that because it is overly broad.
Which bill? (Score:3, Interesting)
Once again, I have to plug Rick Boucher (Rep. VA) (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.house.gov/boucher/internet.htm
On this one page, Boucher argues for the protection of Fair Use, for his "Digital Milennium Consumers' Rights Act," against using the DOJ to attack P2P, for...
Oh, hell. Just go read *everything* he's doing. Boucher is the anti-Hatch, and I hate the fact that I'm moving to NC and won't be able to vote for him any more. He is, I think, the one lone voice in the government that actually understands the slightest bit of what he's legislating about.
Don't blame the technology. (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there an important difference between P2P networks and, say, everyone running a copy of Apache and having Google index every machine? Yeah, sure, it's a little different, but the effect is the same. Every copy of MacOS X includes Apache, and if all P2P software went away tomorrow, I'll bet Apache would be put to service doing the same sorts of stuff.
Is there an essential difference between P2P networks and distributed file systems like AFS? Not, I think, when it comes to providing an ability to share information.
So as soon as you start legislating against certain technology to try to stop some social misbehavior, you're into a great big game of Whack-A-Mole. And the more you keep at it, prohibiting first one technology and then several others, the more damage you do. What's more, if you go after the vendors, you can really only succeed in driving the technology underground and making criminals out of all the people who are smart enough to understand it and want to tap into its power.
But there are two sides to this story, and those who swap music illegally are as guilty of ruining things for the rest of us as Hatch and the RIAA. By flouting the law, illegal music swappers make existing law seem ineffective and force copyright owners to look for new ways to protect their copyrights.
If you find yourself rationalizing the trading of copyrighted music over P2P networks, you are the problem. If you're trading stuff that someone else owns over the net (or anywhere else) then you are a criminal. If you don't like the way the law is written, then do something about it. But if you just go ahead and break the laws you don't agree with, you're the reason that we keep getting more stupid laws (and laws that are more stupid).
My letter to Hatch (Score:5, Informative)
http://hatch.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction
Dear Senator Hatch,
This is the third letter I have sent you over the last three years. I am a Ph.D. student at Brigham Young University and I have lived in Utah County for almost ten years. For my education, and my employment, I have worked in cutting-edge technology and multimedia. I have authored DVDs for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as several other commercial DVDs. I have also traveled to Europe and Africa to collect audio and video materials for use in online language instruction, so I understand the time, effort, and money that is required to produce high quality content.
However, your current assailing of fair-use rights has once again reached the point of being absurd. Your bill outlined in this article:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s
seems to follow the attitude of legislating broadly, intending to enforce narrowly. Senator Hatch, we have seen "from sad experience" that this does not work.
When I wrote you before, concerning Dmitry Sklyarov, you responded that the DMCA, as currently instituted, struck the proper balance between content provided rights and the rights of consumers. My question is this: What has changed in the last two years that the DMCA suddenly does not go far enough in impeding citizens' rights.
You might believe that peer-to-peer technologies have no legitimate purpose. I know this is wrong. I have used P2P applications to quickly move huge amounts of data across heterogeneous networks, saving me hours. I also attended a subcommittee hearing you held at Brigham Young University where four local firms, including Novell, demonstrated how they were using P2P applications.
I sincerely hope that you will reconsider the present INDUCE legislation, and realize that the scales are already tipped in favor of copy-right holders.
Regards,
Jeremy Browne
Words as tools? (Score:4, Interesting)
In case of P2P, say 'an equiv' instead of 'a peer'. Say 'resource scattering' instead of 'file sharing'. Say 'support lobby' instead of 'tracker server'. Insist you are not a peer, but an equiv, that you do not share files but scatter resources. Make a difference out of nothing, just as is the method of making human laws.
Words are software. Human brain is adaptable. Geeks are the most adaptable from all people, because they understand nature of software. Resist rigidity of any ideology by resillience of mind.
Inciting illegal behavior (Score:5, Insightful)
For years, the music industry has claimed, in Congressional hearing after Congressional hearing, that the creators and distributors of music that encourages its listeners to behave in an anti-social fashion bear no responsibility when those listeners follow along. (I agree with them, by the way, but that's not the point at the moment) They have gone to court over and over again to prove that they have no liability when they tell children to kill, to rape, to use drugs, etc., and those children do so.
Now they want to criminalize the act of writing computer programs which could be used for copyright infringement because that is "inducing" children to break the law.
Now, wait just one cotton-pickin' minute here. If selling music that glorifies committing crimes, and in some cases has a clear and direct call to commit such crimes, is not "inducement" to commit such crimes, then how is writing computer programs which may be used to violate copyrights, among many other legal uses, "inducement" to violate those copyrights? They want to have it both ways.
Ooooh that smell
And let's not even get into the gun industry. By Orrin Hatch's logic, since guns are used in crimes, the gun industry is "inducing" children to hold up liquor stores. Handguns in particular should be banned, since their overwhelming use is to either kill human beings or practice killing human beings. It follows the same logic. So how come Hatch is so worked up about copyright infringement but he doesn't care about murder?
Ranting on Slashdot is fun, but it doesn't change anything. We need to be active. We need to vote. We need to get our friends and relatives to vote. And we need to do it now, before "inducing" people to vote against the party in power becomes a crime, too.
They can have my apache2 ..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, all this fuss is being made because people aren't paying record companies money anymore. You know what? I couldn't give a fuck. Record companies made every penny they ever earned because the ability to manufacture recorded media was scarce. Now it isn't -- thanks to the Internet, ready availability of CD burners, compressed audio formats, portable devices, and so forth, just about anyone can make records. I'm almost surprised the RIAA aren't trying to demand that you buy a licence to own an instrument (after all, performing a song might be construed as copying it, in some warped, twisted way).
Of course, before you can make a record, you first need a song. Musical talent is a scarce commodity -- and the person whose voice is on the record is the only one whose job can't be done by someone else, and probably for less money. Everyone else is just a middleman, and is totally replaceable. That, the record companies need to realise, is how the real world works.
My proposed new business model for the recording industry works like this. A singer or band borrows some money to cover the overheads of hiring a studio, session musicians, producers, making a glass master, stamping CDs, designing and printing booklets, and so on (of course they may well already have some equipment of their own, so they won't need to borrow as much); and then sells the CDs at such a price as to recoup that loan and make a profit for themself. Like any other business venture, the money is lent on the understanding that the recorded performance will be of a sufficient standard that the resulting product will be saleable. Until the moment when the loan has been paid off, the lender has lien over the CDs and the content in them, and can prevent anyone else from distributing independent copies; but as soon as the loan is paid off, then control reverts to the original performer (until the work goes PD, anyway; and if the work goes PD during the lender's lien, that just serves them right for picking the wrong person to lend money to). Some fancy wording will almost certainly be required to prevent any shenanigans, e.g. where the artist holds out on the last pound and so the music still belongs to the lender.
I would also make it law that, once any debt incurred in making a recording is paid in full, then an artist must allow anyone to distribute copies of their work, for a fixed fee -- which would be the same amount irrespective of who does the distributing, and irrespective of the format in which the recording is made or the medium on which it is stored. This fee would be applied whenever a permanent recording of a copyrighted work changes hands, unless in the course of transfer the supplier loses the ability to make further copies. The onus would be on the supplier if any payment is made to the supplier, or on the recipient otherwise. (So I can make a free copy of an album I own for my MP3 player, but I have to pay to make a copy of my friend's album; and I would not have to pay anything if I sold a CD outright, unless I retained any copies of the songs on it. If my friend made a copy of one of my albums, it would be my friend's responsibility to pay the artist -- unless my friend bought me a pint, in which case I would owe the artist.)
It's also quite feasible that a few local bands could get together, pool their resources, and produce an album each without having to borrow any money against their "audible collateral" (for want of a better phrase to describe it).
If you don't vote Libertarian, you ASKED FOR THIS (Score:5, Informative)
Neither face of the party of state power wants you to have any control over your own lives. One side puts a nice shine on further controlling your private life, the other face shines the increasing control of your business life. Both vote for each others programs knowing that quid pro quo, one hand washes the other. Or face licks.
D's and R's both want whatever they can get from you. They will push and only back off to keep the general population from riding in armed revolt. Remember that the "assault weapon ban" passed a REPUBLICAN congress, who were trying to make sure they could push even harder.
Bob-
We're on the precipice... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's enlightening to think that this entire mess is related to the failure of campaign finance reform to adequately accomplish its goals; reason #1 why geeks should care about politics.
Not going to make it illegal - UTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
The proposal is not to make the software illegal. It is to make it easier for corporations to sue you for producing the software. There is a difference. The article goes so far as to spell it out
The bill doesn't set up new criminal or civil penalties for those who "induce" copyright violations, but it creates a new class of people who can be sued or prosecuted for copyright infringement -- those who a "reasonable person" would believe "intentionally aids, abets, induces or procures" copyright violations.
The headling says: "outlaw P2P entirely by making it illegal to produce such applications."
I guess that in addition to RTFA we need to have UTFA, Understand the f**** article.
While I am not all that impressed with the proposed legislation, being served papers because the RIAA is suing you for producing a P2P app is certainly much different from federal agents kicking down your door and arresting you because you just wrote a new Java app to share files on the internet for your programming class.
If you are going to get pissed off, at least understand what you are getting pissed off about.
Do your part. (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell Orrin Hatch that A) This law will change nothing (I thought we had legislation to stop spam...), B) He's a US senator, and has no control over the spread of P2P apps oversears, regardless of where they come from, and C) He'd also be opening up a lawsuit vs. many, MANY legit companies. (ICQ to name a prominent one).
induce != produce! (Score:5, Informative)
No doubt he would like that result, which failed in previous attempts to legislate regulation out of existence, such as the several forms of technology regulation previously advocated by Hollings. But that was not to be.
In any case, S. 2560 does not address production of P2P applications, but rather, the inducement of infringement by a third party. Some background is in order to understand the difference.
DIRECT INFRINGEMENT. Really, the question is when should a person be liable for infringement? One easy answer: when she infringes! Did Sarah infringe a copyright when she reproduced, distributed or made copies of a copyrighted work without consent or any other defense? If so, Sarah needs a lawyer. O/W, she isn't an infringer.
INDIRECT INFRINGEMENT. But then, couldn't Sarah avoid infringement altogether by instructing her employee, Julia, to make the copies for her? Nope! Even though Sarah herself committed no infringing acts (reproducing, distribution or derivation), Sarah engaged in conduct that gives rise to a kind of liability, the genus of which is variously called, indirect, secondary or derivative infringement. There cannot be any kind of secondary liability unless and until some third party actually infringes. Then, the question is when is Sarah liable for Julia's infringement, even though Sarah did not herself commit a prohibited act?
INDIRECT: VICARIOUS INFRINGEMENT. The particular species of secondary liability in the Sarah/Julia example is called "vicarious liability," and it derives from the fact that she controlled (in her capacity as employer) the conduct of Julia, directed the infringement and then enjoyed a financial benefit from that control. It is a well-settled idea in copyright law, and offers nothing new to this discussion, except to understand some of what follows.
INDIRECT: CONTRIBUTORY INFRINGEMENT. Now, what if Sarah didn't ask an employee about this, but new that Sleazy Sammy will take just about any work left in plain sight to infringe? Now, Sarah, knowing SS is going to do the deed, advertently places the copy in a location to facilitate the infringement. This now is the classic example of contributing to the infringement of another. (The classical example is leaving a print of a movie in a place for someone to pirate from.)
So, there you go. Acts of direct infringement by Sarah, she loses. If some third party, either Julia or SS infringe, Sarah might still be liable if she is vicariously responsible or if she contributed to the infringement. Proof of secondary liability is usually trickier, and requires proofs of scienter and financial benefit from the conduct, but varies somewhat, depending on the circuit.
NOW, the copying machine cases. Assume Sarah doesn't even HAVE a copy of the Paul, the plaintiff's, work. However, Sarah makes this really neat new movable type printing press, that can be used to reproduce and facilitate distribution of Paul's stuff. The question is whether Sarah can be liable for Carla Customer's use of the printing press to infringe Paul's work. (Once again, we assume that Carla DID THE DEED, and has no defenses. If she didn't infringe or has no defenses, then Sarah is always off the hook.)
This was a hot issue for awhile, that seemed to be raised by someone literally every time a new duplication or distribution technology is produced, from the player piano, to the radio, to the audio tape machine, to the television, to the video tape machine, to the DAT machines until today, with P2P filesharing technology. Allegations are old news. But what of the law? The problems are that the cost of suing a mass market of customers is often great, but liability creates a risk of deterring the development of useful and important technologies.
Well, the principal case here was the Sony Betamax case, in which the movie studios sued Sony for manufacturing a video-tape recor
Protection from ourselves (Score:4, Informative)
I know this isn't 100% ontopic, but it's kinda related, and kinda interesting. The other day, for the first time in ages, I bought a DVD. I got home, popped it in my multireigion DivX capable DVD player, and turned it on. What's the first thing I'm greeted with? The movie?
Nope.
A minute long, unskippable demonisation of pirates, telling me how people who pirate movies are out to kill and rape my children (funny.. don't remember having any), and fund terrorism - um, how, exactly? since when do you pay for Bittorrent downloads. And of course, that pirate movies are inevitably terrible quality and will ruin your enjoyment. Funny. I've never been forced to sit through FACT preaching at me on a pirate DVD, and I tend to find that release groups take so much pride in their rips and distribution that the quality is uniformly excellent - indeed, with anime fansubs the fan-released movies often have better subtitling than the officially released ones.
So, their points?
1. Think Of The Children! (oh dear)
2. You're funding terrorism! (without spending)
3. Inferior products! (except.. they're better).
So, can anyone re-order these words into a popular phrase or sentence:
On, stand, leg, to, don't, they, a, have
Re:Inducing Children to Steal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Inducing Children to Steal. (Score:3, Interesting)
No more or less. You do this. I do this. Do your neighbors?
"We think that freedom of speech also means stuff that's unpopular, irrational and sometimes off colour."
I can't speak for the places where they spell it "colour", but generally it has been the case that freedom of speech is more extreme in the US than is the case for Continental Europe. The line between what is acceptable, but unsavory and what is incite-full is
Re:Inducing Children to Steal. (Score:3, Insightful)
Every nation considers its own security above all else. To do the opposite would be to commit suicide.