New Copyright Lawsuits Go After Porn On Bittorrent 209
neoflexycurrent writes "Three adult media entertainment producers filed suit Thursday in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois alleging copyright infringement against hundreds of anonymous defendants accused of trading videos using Bittorrent. This kind of action resembles the much-criticized mass litigation undertaken by the US Copyright Group against hordes of unknown accused Bittorrent users trading movies like The Hurt Locker. In this case, the subject matter promises to be more provocative."
Uh oh (Score:4, Insightful)
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You got that right. I have always felt pretty safe downloading porn from torrents. Fortunately, I'm running peer guardian but that may not be enough. I guess I need to be more careful about that too.
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I was just about to point this out. AFAIK, PeerGuardian doesn't actually update the IP block addresses any more.
My question now is...how do we get PeerBlock to find the studios in question and make sure they're added to our databases?
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Peer Guardian does not maintain a block list, but the application is still quite usable. There are utilities and services available to gain fresh and user updated lists from. After this it is a simple matter to generate a block list that is peer guardian compatible.
The problem with such an approach is that it is resource intensive. However, if you have time to pirate then you have some time to dedicate to utilizing certain basic protections.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes, I know they use the same blocklists, but PG won't update(at least for me)..keeps complaining about some error. After a month of this, I went looking for a solution and found PeerBlock, which obviously worked immediately.
Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Insightful)
None of these programs do anything even remotely useful. All they will manage to do is prevent you from connecting with legitimate peers.
Re:Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
... rewind the boring scenes ...
You're doing it wrong.
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Sounds like extortion (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Accuse someone of having massive amounts of porn and offer to sell your silence
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
Oh, wait, step 2 IS step 1....
Re:Sounds like extortion (Score:4, Informative)
Better yet, here are the titles from the first PDF:
Shemale Yum, Trannies From Hell, and Shemale Pornstar
Re:Sounds like extortion (Score:5, Funny)
Trannies From Hell
Reminds me of my 94 Ford Mustang that would intermittently fall out of gear on the highway.
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Better yet, here are the titles from the first PDF:
Shemale Yum, Trannies From Hell, and Shemale Pornstar
What's wrong with shemales? Living in Thailand I gotta tell you, they give you the absolutely best blowjobs and still have nice tits and look like girls!
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Wow, I always assumed those titles had pretty distinct audiences, you're a real renaissance man (or woman, I suppose)!
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Speak for yourself, I have 2 TB of porn and I'm PROUD of it!
Re:Sounds like extortion (Score:5, Insightful)
* unless you made it yourself, that is
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you forgot xhamster
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Never heard of red tube. My big porn days were back in the 80's and I grew up with dirty books so the stories appealed to me more than the X-rated films. I think I saw one X rated film that was arousing-- and that was not during the sex scene but rather during the seduction scene that lead up to the sex scene. It was just a guy and a girl standing talking in front of a fireplace and it started with no interest at all between then and as they talked things got a little more racy and then hot and then at t
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You may be interested in:
Literotica [literotica.com]
and
Adult Interactive Fiction [aifgames.com]
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Now I know who's drive to raid since I've got a meager 400GB
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The medium is the message? (Score:2)
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DMCA safe haven, thats what. Its the same that keeps youtube "floating". If rapidshare is notified, they will remove a download. And as long as they do, they can't be closed down completely. But as the upload is more or less anonymous, the uploader can just upload the file again when he notices that it has been removed.
Re:The medium is the message? (Score:4, Insightful)
DMCA safe haven, thats what. Its the same that keeps youtube "floating".
True enough, but even if an infringing download is not removed, you still have to go to court, and win. You can't pull RIAA-style courtroom shenanigans with an outfit that has lawyers who charge just as much per hour as yours do. It's much more profitable (and provides much better PR, if you can call it that) if you just attack individual infringers with default judgments and threaten their livelihoods unless they cough up some dough and settle out of court.
Face it, the content industry is owned and operated by people with a gangster mentality, otherwise the RIAA would never have been funded to the level that permitted their lawsuit mill to go forward. Ditto for the MPAA. Remember, those two groups are not exactly autonomous: they have masters they serve, and whose marching orders they follow.
Re:The medium is the message? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the ultimate goal of these lawsuits is not to actually recoup losses or find new modes of profit, but rather to kill any system in which commoners are not reliant on some corporation to provide service for them.
The intent of the media cartels is to eliminate any and all technologies which can be used to distribute content outside of cartel-owned channels, regardless of any consequences to individuals or society at large. Period. End of statement. If these bastards could have assassinated the original DoD working group that developed TCP/IP and the principles of packet routing they would have done so in a heartbeat. But that would have required the ability to look further than the end of their own collective nose. Forward thinking is not a specialty of monopolies or cartels.
Honest to God, look at the history of the motion picture industry, especially their take on home video recording. Remember Jack "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone" Valenti? Maybe you don't, but if not, remember than the VCR eventually resulted in billions of dollars of revenue that would never have been realized if their shortsighted attempts to have it banned in the U.S. had been successful. The music industry is no better: they successfully killed off DAT (a nifty technology) and even managed to get a tax levied on blank media sold in the U.S. You know, to compensate the "artists" for their presumed losses due to (ahem!) "piracy", regardless of whether that media was used to illegally copy anything whatsoever. They then reneged on that deal (.e.g, the Audio Home Recording Act), and started suing people for fun and profit anyway. Fuckers, all of them. Personally, I think law enforcement dollars would be much better spent investigating the largely foreign-owned corporations that comprise the so-called content industry, and protecting citizens from the depredations of their pressure groups than, say, all the grandstanding going on around Google.
I have no respect at all for these people (and I use the term loosely) since most of their problems are due to a sociopathic need to control, and a complete inability to understand that the world is a very different place now that the Internet is here. They could and should be making more money than every before using new technologies and opportunities afforded by the Internet age, just as they made billions by selling VHS tapes. But they can't see that: all they want is to control distribution so they can charge whatever they believe we'll cough up. Competition be damned. I suppose it doesn't hurt that the RIAA proved that racketeering, frivolous lawsuits, perjury, forced settlements, intimidation and destroyed families can be so darn profitable.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)
A colleague of mine had a cable modem. For a number of reasons, he just happened to be aware of his IP address. It was DHCP assigned, but essentially a static assignment because it never changed. Then one day, there was a technical problem. Whatever the problem was, the cable company's solution consisted of changing his IP address. Great! New IP address! Problem solved.
A few months later, he gets a nastygram from the cable ISP. "Your IP address x.x.x.x was used for illegal file sharing activity on $DATE, and your contact information been supplied to the copyright holder pursuant to a subpeona..." One TINY little problem. The address in question was his NEW IP address and the date in question was BEFORE THE ADDRESS WAS ASSIGNED TO HIM! It seems the ISP looked up the IP address in question and identified the CURRENT user, with no consideration about who was using it at the time!
It gets better. The colleague in question has a lot of money, lawyers, and the willingness to use them. The cable clowns got spanked big-time. I have reason to believe they paid a substantial settlement to avoid a defamation suit. And of course, the process of identifying users by IP address has now been proven to be error-prone. Reasonable doubt for everyone!
In addition to incompetent ISP research, there are a number of ways for a user to hijack your IP address, which I won't go into here. But trust me, it's possible. More reasonable doubt.
It's one thing to accuse someone of sharing "The Sound of Music" and say "oops" when the user in question turns out to deaf and clueless about P2P. But when the movie is "Debbie Does Detroit", the reputation of the defendant is damaged. That's a BIG problem if the user identification process is flawed (as described above). Sooner or later, the plaintiffs are going to go to court armed with bad information and all hell will break loose.
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Sounds like i better get a mega-sized serving of popcorn ready, as the fireworks from such an even should be spectacular.
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http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_were_Barack_Obama's_grades_in_college [answers.com]
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And the evidence is actually pretty clear that he was a B student or lower overall, possibly with a bias caused by initially low grades due to drug use that later improved, which would explain both his post-college admissions and success at Harvard Law, where we know he was in the top 10%.
Sounds fair (Score:5, Funny)
When people download porn without paying for it it ultimately hurts the working stiffs...
Re:Sounds fair (Score:5, Funny)
er...
*rimshot*
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and the working wet and engorged, too /me quickly glances over article.....but at least the JAV companies aren't suing yet, *whew*
Re:Sounds fair (Score:5, Informative)
I know you were going for a joke, but it is my understanding that the actors and actresses usually get paid a paltry sum up front rather than a decent share of the profits, so it doesn't hurt them*. It "hurts" the bottom line of a bunch of people who are already much richer than they deserve to be in my opinion, so I say screw 'em.
* I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I imagine they are fairly rare
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But if, in fact, they make less per movie, surely they have to make MORE movies to make up their losses, not less, so ultimately, isn't this helping?
Re:Sounds fair (Score:4, Funny)
but those that ride to the top get paid well. And don't forget those further down the pipe always have various ways for back end money.
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My head hurts from those mixed metaphors and double entendres, "It hurts the bottom", "I say screw 'em"
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So if I decide to take a higher paycheck over stock options, you think stealing from my company will only hurt the stock owners and not me? That there won't be pay cuts and layoffs if our revenue fails? Unless the porn actors were tricked into signing a contract that would give them much less than they thought through Hollywood accounting, that's a choice between them and their employer. Asking for an up front sum is pretty much as honest as it gets, they got paid what they asked for and if it was too littl
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There are quite a few actresses who operates their own paysites. If people download free porn *instead of* subscribing to their sites, then obviously that hurts their bottom line. Many porn actresses also do escort work on the side, maybe because recording movies doesn't pay enough, to support their coke addiction or just because it is funny, I don't know. The fees for one hour with Jill Kelly or Nina Hartley, two of the absolute top names, is about $1000/hour. Wicked Pictures [yahoo.com] made a revenue of merely 2.6 m
richer than they *deserve* to be?? (Score:2)
Lets hear it for freedom and capitalization!
F-ing typo check :( (Score:2)
Make that freedom and capitalism -- *sigh*
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Lets hear it for freedom and capitalization!
I'M FREE?
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We need to take our country back!
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they should be shot in the face with a magnum load
If I Had $1,000,000 (Score:2)
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Cool, let's take every tired Slashdot argument about piracy and make it topical!
If they made better pornos with hotter girls (like they did when I was 13), people would pay for them, especially if they had a fair price, say $2 each.
Haven't they heard of "Try before you buy"? I download porn all the time and also own 2,000 porno DVDs. In fact I just purchased the collectors edition of Asian Cumholes 8.
Most porno is downloaded by "collectors" who would never buy the porn and don't even masturbate. They just w
Re:If I Had $1,000,000 (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of a scene from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels: (Quote taken from IMDB)
Tom: Listen to this one then; you open a company called the Arse Tickler's Faggot Fan Club. You take an advert in the back page of some gay mag, advertising the latest in arse-intruding dildos, sell it a bit with, er... I dunno, "does what no other dildo can do until now", latest and greatest in sexual technology. Guaranteed results or money back, all that bollocks. These dills cost twenty-five each; a snip for all the pleasure they are going to give the recipients. They send a cheque to the company name, nothing offensive, er, Bobbie's Bits or something, for twenty-five. You put these in the bank for two weeks and let them clear. Now this is the clever bit. Then you send back the cheques for twenty-five pounds from the real company name, Arse Tickler's Faggot Fan Club, saying sorry, we couldn't get the supply from America, they have sold out. Now you see how many of the people cash those cheques; not a single soul, because who wants his bank manager to know he tickles arses when he is not paying in cheques!
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I think that quote actually have happened. Some online porn company had charged various people for services they had failed to deliver, got a court order to pay their customers back, but sent checks in the company name easily readable.
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I think that quote actually have happened. Some online porn company had charged various people for services they had failed to deliver, got a court order to pay their customers back, but sent checks in the company name easily readable.
I'd deposit the check anyway. Don't much care what some anonymous person in a check processing room thinks of me.
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My mates all do this already anyway. Whenever we transfer money to each other via electronic banking, (say for footy tipping competitions or the like) we add a description line such as "Big black anal dildos."
The poor guy who ran our last footy tipping competition had to show up at with his bank statements for a loan he was applying for. Of course his statement was full of payments for dildos, gay sex, escorting etc etc...
Re:If I Had $1,000,000 (Score:5, Funny)
You think that's bad? A guy I know ran one of those, and had to get a loan from an American bank. And you know what everyone put in the memo line? "Footy-tipping competition", that's what.
New Copyright Lawsuits Go After Porn On Bittorrent (Score:2, Funny)
They're not the only ones going after porn on Bittorrent; it's very popular.
The circle is complete (Score:5, Insightful)
First they came for those who were sharing music, and I shrugged; I didn't care, because I wasn't sharing music.
Then they came for those who were sharing movies, and I shrugged; I didn't care, because I wasn't sharing movies.
Then they came for me, who was sharing porn. I didn't shrug, but there was nobody left to care for me.
Re:The circle is complete (Score:5, Funny)
Then they came for me, who was sharing porn. I didn't shrug, because it kind of needs both hands to do it properly.
-- FTFY
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Then they came for me, who was only sharing knowledge, but there really was no one left.
And i don't think this is a circle, its a one way trip to hell.
Great opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly, we need to relax copyright law in order to hurt the porn industry, for the sake of the children.
If you support strong copyright law now you hate children, right?
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Clearly, we need to relax copyright law in order to hurt the porn industry, for the sake of the children.
If you support strong copyright law now you hate children, right?
You do realize that the cognitive dissonance of this would literally dissolve the brains of many Congresspeople?
Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Debbie does litigation (Score:2, Funny)
Sounds like an orgy of injustice to me. I can't wait to watch all those lawyers screwing everyone and everything. Wheee
Extortion (Score:4, Insightful)
Can someone explain to me how this isn't extortion?
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It's legal.
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It's legal EXTORTION. In the US, they terms are not mutually exclusive. I suspect the same to be true in most places. After all - the US didn't invent the professional lawyer, we just feed ours better than most places.
Some people feed pet sharks too. Doesn't mean you're supposed to let them into the swimming pool.
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Unless you concede that plea bargains are equally extortionist
Um, yep, absolutely. They pervert the entire system, seeing people who didn't do anything plead out to avoid risking big charges, and let people who do seriously bad stuff get away with a light sentence by only pleading to a relatively minor crime. All plea bargains do is get society the worst of both worlds.
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My understanding of the situation is that our legal system couldn't exist without them, or would at least cost waaaaaaay more to run and require far more personnel, as we simply don't have enough judges and public defenders to handle more than a small fraction of cases, should a full trial be required.
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then the legal system is broken. All cases should always go to trial. The prosecution should have to lay out a beyond-reasonable doubt case even if someone pleads guilty (so pleading guilty would be like opting not to present a defence).
If the present system can't cope with that, the present system needs to be expanded (or there need to be less laws). The same with justice as with everything else - you get what you pay for.
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True, and points out how broken our system is.
If we got rid of all the "victimless crime" nonsense our courts would actually be able to function. But nobody (in power) wants that.
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Yes, but they would all have to do it. If only a few did, they might get harsher sentences than they would have otherwise, while those who didn't got lighter ones.
It's quite a dilemma, you see. For the prisoners. A prisoner's dilemma, even.
Why would anyone... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not pay for porn? (Score:3, Interesting)
First, I would think slashdotter's would be for this. Remember, the GPL and other "free" or "open" licenses all get their power of enforcement from copyright law. So if you want strong open source software licenses, you need strong copyright protection.
Second, Porn sites don't cost much. A lot of them will offer a discount if you click out of the signup page. Join for a few months, download all you want high quality and DRM free, then cancel. Beats searching around through random links where you never know what will pop up.
Third, porn may be one of the last pillars we have left in this economy. When all the other businesses are starving for customers, people still want their porn. And it's the adult entertainment industry that's been on the forefront of internet and network development for years. Stuff like live chat, streaming video, secure billing.
Without porn the internet would still be a dry and barren wasteland where only the most computer savvy could tread.
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Re:Why not pay for porn? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, I would think slashdotter's would be for this. Remember, the GPL and other "free" or "open" licenses all get their power of enforcement from copyright law. So if you want strong open source software licenses, you need strong copyright protection.
This argument comes up a lot in discussions of copyright law, but it's just a specious "gotcha." The F/OSS movement exists as a response to the increasingly Draconian nature of copyright, and it's a clever hack, but hacking the system does not mean approval of the system. The ideal situation would simply be for open source licenses to be unnecessary. Instead, as the copyright lobby pushes for ever-increasing restrictions on the dissemination of information, F/OSS advocates have to work harder to keep the system from being quite as awful as it could be.
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Except that's not true. Sure, copyright laws are getting ridiculous, but a world without copyright would NOT be an open-source world... It would just be one where reverse-engineering, and sharing of someone else's software is legal.
Stallman/FSF/et al. don't want a world wi
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Third, porn may be one of the last pillars we have left in this economy. When all the other businesses are starving for customers, people still want their porn.
This is completely wrong. The porno industry [wikipedia.org] is a $13billion industry. Although that number can be disputed, it is not even .1% of the US economy. As a comparison, agriculture in California alone makes $36 billion [ca.gov], and even that only accounts for 2% or so of the state's production. Porn may be big business, but comparatively, it is not important.
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There is a world of difference between commercial and non-commercial. The porn industry long ago made a pact to ignore non-commercial distribution of their works, and only going after those who would illegally sell it. Freeware software licenses before the
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"Without porn the internet would still be a dry and barren wasteland where only the most computer savvy could tread." ... those bastards!
Interesting Tension (Score:5, Interesting)
The judges will HATE dealing with porno cases. They will want to make them go away. Judges can make things "go away" very easily. One erroneous fact finding can kill a case dead--permanently and totally dead. They can also cut all the legal breaks in favor of dismissing a lawsuit. We place a lot of trust in our judges and sometimes they betray us. A good example can be found in the judges in the South tasked with enforcing the "separate but equal" laws. They enforced the 'separate' part, but the 'equal' part got lost.
Even though the judges will want to make the porno cases go away, they won't be able to treat them too rudely (because the court rules and legal principles in effect are supposed to be "content neutral"). This tension might manifest itself in the porno cases in cool and interesting ways.
Porno is the big sleeping giant that the big media ignores. If they behave like pricks (or like the RIAA), the judges are going to go all hairy on their ass. When mainstream media comes around and tries to do the same bad things that the porno media wasn't allowed to do, the Courts will be hamstrung by their need to appear consistent. This presents some pretty cool ideas.
If you want to support internet freedom, support the Larry Flynts of the world in their efforts to protect their ultra-gross porno copyrights. You want them to be mean and brutal in the glorious tradition of the RIAA. Support them on appeal--all the way to the bitter end. This would be a legal version of a sapping attack. The judges will cut the filth-purveyors the absolute least slack possible. This will make for a better and more fair copyright law--and will have the humorous by product of watching the RIAA support the filthiest porn purveyors in the appellate courts.
It could get pretty absurd.
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It could get pretty absurd.
Hard to imagine this getting any more absurd than the average RIAA suit, but anything is possible. Especially here in the "land of the free".
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Judge: We'll take a half hour recess while I ... um ... privately review the evidence ... in my chambers.
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And if there's an industry that needs protection, it's the porn industry!
Not so fast, cowboy... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, porn is an industry. Yes, they have a lobby. But the porn lobby is not as effective as other industries because politicians cannot be seen openly supporting the porn industry.
Some examples: The tobacco lobby buys politicians who represent tobacco growing states. Big pharma buys politicians from states that have big pharma R&D centers. The farm lobby buys politicians from big farming states. None of these politicians has any problem with policies that help their benefactors at the expense of t
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Your assumption is what's absurd. Porn is an industry with their own lobby and special interest groups. They're not going to go into the courtroom like something you'd expect out of some porno flick, they're going in as an industry in need of protection and they'll get it.
No they won't. Porn is like the tobacco industry. Every politician want's to make it look like their against them.
Oh to be... (Score:4, Funny)
IP list (Score:2, Interesting)
Underground (Score:2)
Will everyone go back to. It will become about impossible to catch anyone doing anything as all that is being taught is 'you better hide what you are doing', no matter what it is, for tomorrow what you do may be illegal too and we keep records forever.
They are forgetting something. (Score:3, Interesting)
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You forgot the inevitable loss of anonymity that governments and corporations are pushing for. Within five years you will have to do everything online with your real name, no aliases, no anonymity, no privacy.
Yes, you're right; there's a lot less reason to bother about the internet (or computers) any more -it's time to find other hobbies.
Re:No reason to bother with internet anymore (Score:4, Interesting)
There are always ways to exchange data secretly.
The problem comes when you want to both exchange data secretly and do it with anyone that asks. Bittorrent was never good for this. Private trackers offer at least some sort of protection I suppose, but it's not an ideal solution by any means.
What we need is for home users to start having a decent upload speed, so that a multihop, friend-to-friend network can spring up, such that you only ever exchange data with people you know, and they do with people they know until the whole world is joined...
That needs a lot of bandwidth, a lot of otherwise unnecessary bandwidth, but is feasible. I know there are some projects (OneSwarm) and some mature networking tools (I2P) out there that can already help.
Or you could just stop ripping stuff off. Just sayin'
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Umm what exactly do you think it is then? Prostitution? Because then it would be illegal.
You may not think it qualifies as art, but that is just your misinformed opinion. Just because I don't consider Uwe Boll movies art doesn't mean they aren't treated as such and protected by copyright. You're wrong.