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130 Filesharer Homes Raided in Germany 431

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the paid-to-watch-an-ass dept.
Flo writes "Today, 130 homes have been raided in Germany under the allegation of filesharing. Law enforcement agencies had been monitoring an eDonkey-Server for two months. 3500 identified users are being investigated. Searches took place when users shared more than 500 files. Partners of the music industry helped identifying copyrighted material, but monitoring of the servers was solely done by law enforcement."
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130 Filesharer Homes Raided in Germany More

130 Filesharer Homes Raided in Germany

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  • Easy to guess what's coming (Score:4, Funny)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @10:35PM (#15391466) Journal
    I invoke Godwin. Thread closed.

  • I invoke my Triple-S Rule (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @10:38PM (#15391477) Journal
    Searches took place when users shared more than 500 files.

    I hereby invoke my Triple-S Rule which stats: Sharing Shit (they) Shouldn't

    News flash: Break the law, and you might get caught.
    • Break the law and you may get caught, if you are a consumer. If you are a business, you get to settle out of court for pennies on the dollar.
    • news flash: law enforcement being used to protect private interests (not that two wrongs make a right)

    • Don't share shit, that's good, dickhead. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @12:32AM (#15391911) Homepage Journal
      I hereby invoke my Triple-S Rule which stats: Sharing Shit (they) Shouldn't. News flash: Break the law, and you might get caught.

      Fuck you and your RIAA buddies. If you give me the choice between P2P retrieval of legitimate content and my RIAA music collection, I'll wipe my non free music in a heartbeat. It's crap like this that tightens my resolve to avoid non free music. I can get all I want from archive.org [archive.org], magnatune.com [magnatune.com], others like them, artist CDs bought at the club and etunes. You pigopolists and your old commercial shit are on the bottom of my list.

      We can debate the morality of surrendering to government sponsored ownership of culture, but the practical path is to not help by sharing non free material. Government mandated broadcast monopolies and many other bogus laws lead directly to the creation of the big three music publishers. As the owners of the previous convenient means of sharing music, radio, the publishers have co-opted a large part of our culture. No one really won that one, least of all artists and those actually making the music. The best way to fight it is not to purchase or share RIAA shit.

      Lack of hassle is another reason to delete it all. The accused should be presumed innocent, despite having their doors kicked in. As I pointed out, there's plenty of free content out there by people who want you to share. Much of it is easiest to get by bit torrent and other P2P services. If possesion of RIAA shit is the incriminating evidence, you might be better off without it. That way, I won't have some dickhead like you tut tuting in my face about how I'm getting what I deserved.

      That's kind of what they want - RIAA only or nothing RIAA for you. They are forcing you to chose. If everyone gave them what they wanted, the world would be a better place.

      • Please mod parent up. Just because he's passionate ("Fuck you and your RIAA buddies...") doesn't mean he doesn't make a lot of sense. Thank you.

      • Re:Don't share shit, that's good, dickhead. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by osolemirnix ( 107029 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @03:52AM (#15392515) Homepage Journal
        The problem I see here and that most readers seem to be overlooking, is that the RIAA/music industry representatives "helped" the police to decide wether a user actually shared copyrighted content. So assume you you share, but only free/legal stuff. But you share a lot, so at first you are on their radar. Then some music industry rep searches through the stuff you shared to determine if it's legal or not. Assume he is wrong (on purpose or not). As a result, the police will break down your door with a search warrant, seize all your computers, CDs, and DVDs as evidence and it will take months for you to see them back. In the meantime, try to prove that you are innocent. Even if they eventually figure out that you are innocent, they have effectively scared you from using P2P sharing (regardless of legal content). That because the music industry isn't only hurt by the legal songs shared, they are hurt and afraid by the principle of P2P distribution, it fundamentally challenges not only their business model but their whole "raison d'etre". That's what is really outrageous about this action.

  • This confirms it. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The MAZZTer ( 911996 ) <megazzt&gmail,com> on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @10:39PM (#15391481) Homepage
    Law enforcement officials ARE running servers. I think this has been mentioned on Slashdot before... at least I think someone traced a server group to Sony or the RIAA or something.

    • Re:This confirms it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HaloZero ( 610207 ) <protodeka@ g m a i l .com> on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @10:54PM (#15391553) Homepage
      Let me be exceedingly clear on this point.

      The RIAA and the Sony Entertainment Corporation are NOT LAW-enforcement agencies. They are entities designed to make money. In making said money, they have the means to buy government influence.

      This is called corruption, even while the coporation continues to screw the consumer.

      The ethical debate we - as citizens, consumers, potentially file-sharers, and ultimately the ones with the votes - have to deal with is: which is more, or in this case less ethical? Corruption at a federal or even International level, or Copyright Infringement?

      That is a choice I leave to you.
  • If you're american, just shut off all peer connections from your comrades in the states.. connect to japanese/canadians/europeans.. I'm sure they'll be happy to share files with you.
    • firewall domestic/national peers?

      And how might this be done? You lose points for replying 'dns'. Also whois data is no quarantee and the free geo location services are unreliable. (The free ones seem to be just an aggregation of whois data.)

    • Re:firewall domestic/national peers? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baseball_Fan ( 959550 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @10:56PM (#15391559)
      If you're american, just shut off all peer connections from your comrades in the states.. connect to japanese/canadians/europeans.. I'm sure they'll be happy to share files with you.

      I don't think that would help. They can nail you for sharing files, even if the people you are sharing with are outside the USA. I don't believe law enforcement has to prove the other party downloaded anything, just that you were sharing.

      What if someone in Germany was sharing a popular MP3. I download it in the USA. Does that make it less of a crime than if I downloaded it from someone sharing in the USA.

      But to the point. These laws are stupid. File sharing is no different than what many people did in the 80's when they made tapes of music and shared it. Or taped music off the radio. I remember when radio stations used to not speak when a song started, so you could make a good copy. Now, the RIAA is going nuts and calling it theft. I always believed theft is those guys who profit selling pirated copies. But giving it away for free because you liked a song is not the same thing. Too bad the law disagrees with me. It makes me believe the RIAA used lots of cash to buy legislators to vote their way, after all, running an election is expensive.

      If you ask me, the RIAA is a bunch of jackholes. Long before they started suing, they invaded the p2p networks and made available bad copies of mp3's. People would download them, and then realize it was 3 minutes of a screeching sound. I stopped buying music around that time and I remind myself just how friendly those big music companies are. I guess it wasn't good enough when I used to buy CD's and listen to the occasional MP3 on-line. Now they can live without my money.

      And look at the trends with television viewing. Everything is going digital, so you won't be able to make a copy of anything. No more VHS, even TiVo is having a new flag which will force anything recorded to be deleted in 7 days (if the station uses the flag). And to top it off, when you want to fast forward commercials, guess what TiVo does? A pop up box with an advertisment is shows. Geez, isn't that why I'm fast forwarding. Lets face it, we live in a world where movie theaters force us to watch 30 minutes of commercials before they start the movie we payed $10 to see with the $6 popcorn and $6 soda. And when the DVD comes out, we are forced to watch previews of the FBI warning screen without the ability to fastforward. And a year later, the same DVD is released with special features.

      They exists to rip us off. If they just wanted sales, they would treat the customer with respect. But there are too many people, and there is always someone willing to buy.

      • [T]he RIAA...invaded the p2p networks and made available bad copies of mp3's. People would download them, and then realize it was 3 minutes of a screeching sound.
        No, they were perfectly good MP3s. That's what people call "music" now.
      • >I don't think that would help. They can nail you for sharing files, even if the
        >people you are sharing with are outside the USA. I don't believe law enforcement has
        >to prove the other party downloaded anything, just that you were sharing.

        The point is, it's a lot harder to catch you if you're sharing over national borders. German police may try and catch naughty Germans, but the chance that they would be organized enough to share the information to other countries, and figure out all the legal issu
      • What if someone in Germany was sharing a popular MP3. I download it in the USA. Does that make it less of a crime than if I downloaded it from someone sharing in the USA.

        Since they are busting people for sharing not downloading yes...

        Also now it's a good idea to start buying drugs from Mexicans get them to throw them across the border to you...

        We welcome your business!

      • Re:firewall domestic/national peers? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by shmlco ( 594907 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @01:27AM (#15392110) Homepage
        "File sharing is no different than what many people did in the 80's when they made tapes of music and shared it."

        I beg to differ here. Making a copy of a tape or record and giving it to a friend is "sharing". Making 10,000 copies and giving them to 10,000 friends [sic] is "publishing".

        Moreover, sharing had a built-in limitation because it had a cost: the tape. How many high-school kids in the '80s bought 10,000 tapes, made copies, and then just gave them away to strangers?

        Sorry, but publishing is not fair use.

        • Whoa, slow down, cowboy! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by pedestrian crossing ( 802349 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @03:37AM (#15392482) Homepage Journal

          "File sharing is no different than what many people did in the 80's when they made tapes of music and shared it."

          I beg to differ here. Making a copy of a tape or record and giving it to a friend is "sharing". Making 10,000 copies and giving them to 10,000 friends [sic] is "publishing".

          I guess you don't understand how P2P really works [wikipedia.org]. Nobody is giving out 10,000 copies of a song. Typically, they are "giving out" one or maybe two complete copies of a file.

          Also, the file is typically not a "perfect copy" of the original, it is downsampled in some way [wikipedia.org].

          I'm not necessarily advocating either side of this argument, but please, keep to the facts.

      • Re:firewall domestic/national peers? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by NoMaster ( 142776 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @02:28AM (#15392294) Homepage Journal
        People would download them, and then realize it was 3 minutes of a screeching sound.
        This is nothing new. You're probably just too young to remember Yoko Ono...

  • This actually happened to me a few weeks ago (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @10:42PM (#15391497)
    Last week I was sitting around, screwing around on fark.com, when there was a knock at the door. My mom awnsered it, and it was an individual claiming to be from the RIAA, along with two county sheriff's deputies. My mom (stupidly) let them in, and the deputies came into my room and proceeded to throw me to the ground while the RIAA guy started looking around on my computer. I demanded to see a warrant and informed them that they did not have permission to search my belongings, but they said that they didn't need one due to some new state law (I live in Missouri). Anyway, they eventually found my stash of MP3s and my mom got scared and said "you're moving with your auntie and your uncle to Bel-Air" I whistled for a cab and when it came near the licensplate said fresh and had a dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought now forget it, yo home to Bel-Air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight, and I yelled to the cabby yo, home smell you later. Looked at my kingdom I was finally there, to settle my throne as the prince of Bel-Air.
  • This is excellent news. The IP rights-holders appear to be responsibly investigating the actions of people violating copyright law.

    I'd rather have a million more Jane Doe lawsuits and investigations like this one before DRM achieves greater legal backing than (in the United States, anyway) the DMCA already gives it.

    Copyright holders have always had the right to take legal action against copyright violators, but they made a tactical error when they chose to fight Napster instead of the users, and when they a

  • Sneakernet (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Technician ( 215283 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @10:50PM (#15391539)
    It looks a lot of filesharing is going back to sneakernet like it was in the 1970's.

    I wonder if they raided any homes with a wireless AP being leached by a neighbor. That could be fun when they can't find evidance.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Naw, you're thinking too complicated. Granted, the heyday of the sneakernet was in the 1980's to 1990's, but most sneakernet trading happened with copying vinyl to cassettes and copying VHS tapes. I had about a hundred floppies of Apple II and Commodore 64 games (which I sold in 1990, fool that I was!), but I still have boxes of "pirated" movies in my basement (actually, mostly time-shifted or otherwise under fair use, but I'm using the Jack Valenti term).

        The Sneakernet is still in use, and I use it for the

    • Sneakernet (Score:4, Interesting)

      by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @11:47PM (#15391751) Homepage
      This is true. At my university the IT department is, shall we say, "not amused" by students using a whole lot of bandwidth, even if it is all inter-college communications (these clowns still haven't upgraded from 24 port 10bt hubs in the dorms yet). So there exists a couple of very large CD folders (40 cds apiece) left behind by a graduating senior. One is labeled simply "The Porn", another "The Games". These travel all over the dorm, people take a cd or two, add a cd or two, and eventually return borrowed cds when they are done with them.

      This may seem rather archaic, but the IT department is so paranoid about getting in trouble with the **IA that they busted a 5-person DC++ network last year.

  • Tired of blaming Disney and the US government for extending copyright protections? You had the wrong target anyway... the US and the rest of the world usually falls right behind Germany's lead in extending their terms to reach back until 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles. That milestone saw Germany lose Asprin and all sorts of intellectual property, and they've been fierce in protections ever since. International trade agreements means that everyone has to play by aproximately the same rules in this space,

    • Re:I'm not surprised about this happening in Germa (Score:4, Insightful)

      by iSeal ( 854481 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @11:25PM (#15391674)
      Yes, but likewise you don't hear about Germany applying pressures to the USA for copyright extensions. Though they might be worse nationally, the extention propositions have always come from internal corporate lobbying pressures; and not a sense to "catch up with the rest of the world."

      It's sad really, as its meant the death of one of humanity's greatest intellectual achievements: the public domain. I equate it to the extermination of public libraries; sacrificing the bettering of society for the sake of saturating the corporate coffers. Of course, when politicians in charge of copyright reforms in the US are themselves bribed (via election funds) $300,000 by entertainment conglomerates, how can we expect any differently.

      I'm not saying that corporate concerns should have no say in law-making; I'm saying that the laws that are being designed right now should have more of a balance.

    • Re:I'm not surprised about this happening in Germa (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zatic ( 790028 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @02:28AM (#15392295)
      Germany's copyright laws aren't that strict actually. It is still perfectly legal to copy a CD or MP3s from your neighbor or even a DVD you rented for private use. And you can make copys of these copys and share them with your family and friends and it's still legal. Of course the industry is constantly trying to change that. They managed to get an insanly stupid copyright act introduced, which makes it illegal to circumvent "effective technical copyright restriction". To this day, their is no clarifying judgment on what the heck is an effective restriction and what is not. After all, you could argue that as soon as the restriction is cracked, is isn't effective anymore.

  • English article (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @10:58PM (#15391569)
    http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1196 [slyck.com]

  • Balanced and fair response (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Petrushka ( 815171 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @11:23PM (#15391666)
    Hmmmm yes, raiding people's homes is clearly a fair and balanced response to allegations of copyright infringement.
    • Yes, how DARE those police investigate credible leads of crimes being committed and undertake searches justified by probable cause!
      • > Yes, how DARE those police investigate credible leads of crimes being committed
        > and undertake searches justified by probable cause!

        Crimes? There are proper crimes that need investigating. If you ask people whether they think taxpayers money should be spent tying up the legal system and criminalising people who are just copying music, most people don't agree. Have you never taped music from a friend? Do you think you should have your door kicked in? It's against the law to copy music but I don't

    • Re:Balanced and fair response (Score:4, Insightful)

      by shark72 ( 702619 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @12:28AM (#15391898)

      Do you have any suggestions for an alternative? Should the authorities simply ignore claims of copyright infringement? Or perhaps use the honor system -- call the suspects on the phone and ask them if they've been sharing gigabytes worth of copyrighted material?

      • Should the authorities simply ignore claims of copyright infringement?
        In a word? Yes. The authorities should concentrate on circumstances where actual harm is being done. Like shoplifting, mugging, political bribes, etc.

  • Criminalization of society (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eloquence ( 144160 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @11:44PM (#15391740)
    DSL with downstream up to 16 MBit is now very common and cheap in Germany. This means that, theoretically, you can download almost a complete song per second. Affordable hard drives store up to 500 GB -- which translates to roughly a full year of uninterrupted listening pleasure. Burn your songs on DVD at 4.7 GB -- almost 5000 minutes -- per disc. My point: Today's technology makes "mass pirating" as easy as exchanging 20 grams of polycarbonate. It's something every kid with a computer can do. Not to mention that even those who just wanted to download something may have become uploaders without realizing this -- virtually all file sharing programs share the stuff you receive.

    Those who argue "Serves them right, they knew it was a crime" don't realize just how bizarre this whole situation is. You have police come to your house, take your computer away, and you'll get fined with thousands of Euros for something which is utterly trivial. If this is taken to an extreme, it's even worse than the "war on drugs": You don't even have to leave your house to be labeled a criminal.

    The music industry has this funny idea that they can scare consumers into using iTunes and similar networks. This will work -- for a while. But when you have all the technologies mentioned, copyright infringement that is undetectable will become prevalent -- because you just download 1 GB from your friend via IM, or swap DVDs (or soon HDDVDs), or use IRC and FTP. And it's not like you have to be a technology savvy guy to do these things. My mom can use IM, when she gets broadband, she can swap files.

    So, what you are left with is completely arbitrary enforcement on some services, scare tactics that work against some, while the underlying "problem" keeps getting "worse" because of technology (hardware, software). Just wait until the next file sharing application with a built in "how anonymous do you want to be?" slider comes along.

    The problem will only go away when those who make music embrace sharing as a way to popularize it. Those who like it, will pay. What will work better in the long run -- scaring people into paying? Or letting them choose to? If the industry doesn't realize the answer and tries to criminalize society instead, it's time for people to force them to. I really hope that initiatives like the Swedish "Pirate Party" [piratpartiet.se] are successful in working towards the decriminalization of non-commercial copying.

    Marijuana is legal in quite a few countries. It can happen.

    • Re:Criminalization of society (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Cee ( 22717 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @12:50AM (#15391978)
      I would mod you insightful if I had mod points. However:

      Marijuana is legal in quite a few countries. It can happen.

      I'm not American and I don't have that much insight about "the war on drugs", if it's good or bad. But some people (like me) are generally pro-filesharing and anti-drugs. To mix these two domains opens up the whole guilt-by-association-door. "See, fileshares think that marijuana should be legalised." But still, I agree with the spirit of your last sentence, anything can happen.
      • I would agree that it makes sense for advocacy groups like the "Pirate Party" to limit themselves to the domain of IP law. However, I also think you should do some [drugwarfacts.org] more [famm.org] reading [norml.org] about the war on drugs and its consequences. America isn't the global leader in incarcerating people [homeoffice.gov.uk] for no reason. It's OK to oppose drugs -- there are different strategies of decriminalization -- but I hope you will agree that locking up thousands and thousands of people is not the way to deal with the drug problem. And let me not

    • Re:Criminalization of society (Score:5, Insightful)

      by redelm ( 54142 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @08:18AM (#15393351) Homepage
      Fully agreed. Any law that is widely and perhaps unknowingly broken can only be enforced sporadically, and therefore arbitrarily. This is a fundamental threat to freedom. A totalitarian regime makes everyone a criminal so they can punish arbitrarily. And more importantly, shape behaviour by the mere hint of punishment. Prior restraint.

      Very respectfully, I would have hoped that Germany had learned from its recent experience with the Stasi, and their predecessors from 70 years ago.

  • "Today a very important day for the music industry" is, said John Kennedy,

    Well then may the force be with him.

  • Numbers seem off... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Israfels ( 730298 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @12:13AM (#15391842)
    Forgive the bad google translation:
    TFA:
    Altogether it came up to the early afternoon to 130 house searches in the entire federal territory, zirka 100 computers and large quantities further evidence was therefore guaranteed, among them thousands of CDs.
    Does this mean that of the 130 homes they invaded, only 100 even had a computer to take as evidence? What if there was more than one computer in some houses? I really doesn't seem like that percentage justifies the home invasions of a good number of possibly innocent people.

  • Solved! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kirkb ( 158552 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @12:19AM (#15391868) Homepage
    So this must mean that Germany has solved all of their problems with child porn, identity theft, extortion, and all of the other shady activities that can happen online, right?

    Because there's no way that they'd place corporate trademark and copyright issues ahead of the safety and security of their citizens, would they? On the taxpayer's dime, too?

    • Re:Solved! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Zatic ( 790028 )
      Germanys law enforcmement agencies have in fact large departments dediceted to shut down child porn and the like. And I am sure they know quite well who the real criminals are. However, if they get a legal complaint from a copyright holder, they simply have to investigate.

  • Sometimes I wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by autOmato ( 446950 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @12:34AM (#15391921) Homepage
    Sometimes I wonder what will the MPAA/RIAA/GEMA/etc. do, when all file-sharers are locked up in prison, all music and film is DRM-restricted, CD sales are still declining and nobody goes to see blockbuster movies anymore...

  • "What's the difference...?" - Joshua (Score:5, Insightful)

    by larzluv ( 518884 ) <{larzluv} {at} {hotmail.com}> on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @12:45AM (#15391966)
    Many, sadly here on Slashdot, too, subscribe to the thought that "artists *deserve*" this-or-that. That it's their "right" for such-and-such. Okay, let's accept that for a moment. Then riddle me this:

    [1] (Forget your employment contract, as most of you conveniently forget the actual contract between an "artist" and a (typically) Media Giant.) Do -you- have a "right" to royalties for a work you performed for your employer? This is a "moral" question to you all. Not a technicality one. Please answer accordingly.

    [2] Do you see a difference in the "right" for royalties - future compensation on work done "today" - of the following:
    A picture painter?

    A portrait photographer?

    A code monkey working at corporation X?

    The guy who mows your lawn/cleans your pool?

    A waiter at the restaurant you ate at? (LAST WEEK!)

    The gal who sized and sold you your suit?

    The grease monkey who fixed your engine's knock?

    A singer at a bar?

    Old Kids Down the Block?

    Movie Star Y?


    [3] After you've answered "Yes!" (because if you didn't, then you can't POSSIBLY see file sharing as "stealing", you dolt!), please explain WHY?

    [4] If I'm passing a street performer and, though I enjoyed the performance they gave, I didn't donate into their hat, do you consider me a "thief"? (I'd be the first to feel a heel, and "rude", but that's not the question!)

    [5] What's the difference between:
    A street musician singing a song? (I can listen, but don't don't donate.)

    A singer singing outside of a bar to attract customers? (I can listen, but don't go in.)

    A singer singing inside of that same bar, but I can still hear them?


    [6] WHY "should" an "artist" receive recurring payments for a job performed ONCE, while a, uh, bricklayer, trash-man, flight attendant, hooker, cab driver, teacher, mechanic, PC repair tech, etc., etc., ..., etc. NOT?




    If you STILL feel inclined to hold your misguided, fanciful, but NOT-thought-out *beliefs* after reading this, and choose to reply... I don't know if you're more stupid or brave...

    (Is it "brave" to be steadfastly wrong? ;)
    • Well, basically speaking, IP rights are a solution to the problem that information wants to be free. A clever hack, if you will, and not a true "right" in the natural rights sense.

      The result of this immutable law of nature is that people won't expend much effort to produce it, because something that is free has no value and people rarely expend much effort on production of valueless things (I'm using the technical economics definition of "value" here).

      The workaround to this problem is to (in theory temp

    • "Many, sadly here on Slashdot, too, subscribe to the thought that "artists *deserve*" this-or-that."

      ... straw man...

      "That it's their "right" for such-and-such. Okay, let's accept that for a moment."

      Excellent suggestion. Creators of works of art do have rights, as codified by law.

      "Do -you- have a "right" to royalties for a work you performed for your employer? This is a "moral" question to you all. Not a technicality one. Please answer accordingly."

      The difference between your working day and

    • There's a fundamental flaw in your argumentation regarding the notion of viewing illegally downloading music as stealing from the artists (you can only steal material goods) and another one regarding the notion that there's a right to royalties (there's not). However, you seem to overlook the fact that there is copyright.

      [1] (Forget your employment contract, as most of you conveniently forget the actual contract between an "artist" and a (typically) Media Giant.) Do -you- have a "right" to royalties for a w

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • ... Those crazy Europeans paid VAT taxes on all blank media because people just kind of assumed it would be used for piracy. (I hope thats not the real reason, I really, really do.)

    • Re:And here i thought... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Zatic ( 790028 )
      I have to disappoint you. While it isn't exactly a tax, there is charge on media and copying devices like cd recorders, but it is transfered directly to a fund which then destributes it to the artists. The sad thing is, this charge was introduced specifically so that law enforcement wouldn't have to deal with copying too much and that strict laws wouldn't be even necessary. Right now they are discussing much stricter laws (making even private copying illegal), a higher charge on media (up to 5%) AND they a
      • Give an inch.... they take a mile.
        What it basically comes down to is that there are enough corrupt politicians pretty much everywhere in the world for abusive legislation to get passed. These people, combined with the politicians who don't actually care about the issues to educate themselves is why we have problems. Not too many geeks going into politics....

  • In other news... (Score:5, Informative)

    by rapiddescent ( 572442 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @03:18AM (#15392419)
    EMI Group (a big record company) posted their results yesterday [emigroup.com]

    Some highlights:

    • Profit before tax increased 12.9% in one year
    • Group digital sales increased to £112.1m from £46.9m. Momentum remained strong during the fourth quarter, with group digital sales more than doubling to £41.2m
    • Group operating margin increased by almost a full percentage point to 12.0% from 11.2%. This improvement was driven by higher revenues, a greater proportion of revenues from digital, and the delivery of previously announced cost savings
    • Underlying diluted earnings per share increased by 19.8% to 15.7p from 13.1p

    So it doesn't exactly look like times are tough in the record industry in Europe at the moment. If the european authorities are worrying about margin erosion for european industry then there are plenty of other targets way ahead in the queue.

  • If in a country not yet raided: stay under 500! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ArsenneLupin ( 766289 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @04:16AM (#15392566)
    Here is a piece of advice if you live in an European country not yet raided:

    Check the size of your shared folder in edonkey, amule or whatever.

    If you have more than 500 shared items you are at risk. Unshare (or outright delete, if you're paranoid...) any items over 500, and you should be (relatively) safe, unless they already have your IP.

    Last week was Romania, this week was Germany, and next week may be another European country. Play it safe, and stay under 500; in Germany the 130 raided had more than 500 items to share.

    (I checked my amule this morning: had 1800+ items. I quickly unshared everything older than 100 days, and now I'm down to 96).

  • Great (Score:4, Insightful)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @05:02AM (#15392656) Journal
    Wow that's really great police work, you gotta put it to those German police with their efficiency - Apparently next week they're planning to do a big raid of about 10 major street gangs and they're planing to take 5000 guns off the streets! Oh wait whats that? they're not planning a raid to take guns off the streets? they're going to instead concentrate solely on copyright infringement? oh, well, im sure that's pretty important too, I mean a few people getting shot doesn't really hurt the economy!

  • Verdammt! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @08:16AM (#15393337) Homepage Journal
    No wonder the sources for all those David Hasselhoff albums I've been trying to get suddenly vanished.
  • The research i've been doing in P2P networks (due to my involvement in the okopipi project [okopipi.org]) has shocked me. In file sharing, we're living in the STONE AGE. Yes, even with bittorrent (which depends on centralized servers, and there's practically no privacy. And anonymous bittorrent like mutorrent is closed source, who knows if they got a backdoor in there).

    EDonkey uses MD4 for hashing, it depends on central servers, and has no anonymity at all. And without mentioning queue # 4892 for a popular file.

    Unfortunately for filesharers, file sharing networks based on modern P2P architectures is very scarse. The supernodes / ultrapeers approach is obsolete, easy to disrupt both denial of service and eavesdropping attacks.

    The future of P2P is Overlay Networks [dynamicobjects.com].

    From an architectural point of view, I would recommend the KAD p2p network, which bases its architecture on the relatively-new kadelmia [wikipedia.org] network (See Technical paper on Kadlemia [rice.edu], 2002).

    Even then, Kadelmia could be improved because it's based on a Pastry network [microsoft.com] topology - compared to other topologies like De Bruijn Graphs [wolfram.com], proposed by a recent paper [psu.edu] in 2003.

    And more research is being done dealing with load balancing [harvard.edu], anonymity [ucsb.edu], trust, reputation [umd.edu], etc.

    As I said, current peer to peer networks are in the stone age. Someone needs to design a file sharing network based on the latest research, and publish it.

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