Man Convicted For Helping Thousands Steal Internet Access 378
angry tapir writes "An Oregon man has been convicted of seven courts of wire fraud for helping thousands of people steal Internet service. Ryan Harris, 26, of Redmond, Oregon, was convicted by a jury in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He faces a prison term of up to 20 years and a fine of up to $250,000 on each of the seven counts."
he got rich from fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:he got rich from fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree with you on that if corporate CEOs and pretty much everyone who makes over a million dollars a year hadn't set the precedent that defrauding thousands of people at a time comes only with a slap on the wrist and a meager fine despite a huge profit margin.
Shit, that's the definition of how corporate America works. Why aren't they jailing the CEOs of the cable companies instead for charging >5000 times the amount they pay for bandwidth for the average user? Why aren't they jailing the AT&T and Verizon execs for bait-and-switch with the 'Unlimited' plans which are actually limited to single-digit bandwidth amounts?
It's all ass-backward, and this guy just had the balls to do something about it. Do your time, but do it proudly.
Re:he got rich from fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Why aren't they jailing the CEOs of the cable companies instead for charging >5000 times the amount they pay for bandwidth for the average user?
I bet it'd be a different story if this guy had significant campaign contributions. It'd be a "Misunderstanding" of some sort.
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Because Mr. Harris didn't make any "political contributions" and Cable companies are on a first name basis with Repubmocrat legislators.
Further Mr. Harris charged a fee for helping gain free internet access. Hackers put up this info for free on the internet. I notice they aren't being charged either.
Nope, this was a case of regulating commerce and example making. Have your contribution ready 'cause you have to buy the right to make money here in the U.S.
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Republicrats, REPUBMOCRATS!
I hold no delusions that this is a two party system, rather a one party system pretending to be at odds by highlighting and playing up minor differences, they have created the illusion of two parties at odds. Jointly they have been chipping away at our most valuable freedoms for around a century now, and monopolizing the political arena through disinformation and info manipulation.
Yes, as I was saying as a corporation, just drop the envelope with the cash into the congressman/sena
Re:he got rich from fraud (Score:4, Informative)
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A parasite on the cable companies is not going to be able to match the magnitude of the campaign contributions of said cable companies. Whoever makes a decision by looking at such things is going to say "Hmmm. Campaign contributions from cable companies >= Gross amount of your theft... kthxbye."
Re:he got rich from fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree with you on that if corporate CEOs and pretty much everyone who makes over a million dollars a year hadn't set the precedent that defrauding thousands of people at a time comes only with a slap on the wrist and a meager fine despite a huge profit margin.
Shit, that's the definition of how corporate America works. Why aren't they jailing the CEOs of the cable companies instead for charging >5000 times the amount they pay for bandwidth for the average user? Why aren't they jailing the AT&T and Verizon execs for bait-and-switch with the 'Unlimited' plans which are actually limited to single-digit bandwidth amounts?
It's all ass-backward, and this guy just had the balls to do something about it. Do your time, but do it proudly.
Why aren't they also jailing each of the individual loan officers who sold mortgages to customers who couldn't pay them back? They were, perhaps, more directly responsible than the CEOs, and yet also directly benefited (commissions or bonuses, depending how such things work at each institution).
That question is also your answer. There is a very large chain of people involved in the financial crisis, and it's unlikely that any single one of them can be apportioned enough blame to go to jail.
And what about the people on the end? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those that walked in to various loans, eyes wide shut? Or those who took loans they couldn't afford because they figured they'd just flip the house and make money?
The idea that individuals were completely blameless in the financial crisis is silly. Sure there were some people who were suckered in. They were told one thing and given another. For them I have some sympathy (though really, there's a standard loan terms sheet that comes with every loan, it isn't hard to read). However there were plenty that got greedy and just ignored all good sense.
An example would be my cousin, call him B. He owned a house that he'd had for quite some time, around 8-10 years on a 30 year fixed mortgage he could afford. then things went crazy and he decided he's take all his equity out in a refinance so that he could buy a bunch of new toys like a truck, take an expensive vacation, shit like that. His loan amount went way up because he was taking out more than the original loan had been for since his house was allegedly worth more. He couldn't afford a fixed loan at that rate so he got a cut rate ARM. Then prices crashed, the rate went up, and he lost his house. Not only should have he known better, my dad (among others) told him this was a stupid idea.
Then there's me, I have a house that I had since before things went crazy, on a 30 year fixed mortgage that I can afford. It supposedly doubled in value during the craziness. I could have taken a ton of money out. I didn't, because I knew that was a bad idea. I still have my house, and I can still afford my loan.
We were both in a similar situation, he chose one option, I chose another. Nobody held a gun to anyone's head and forced the issue.
The crisis was caused by failures and greed at so many levels. The government, the bond rating companies, the investors, the banks, the loan officers, and yes the individuals. You can't just act like a certain group were the evil ones who caused everything. There is a lot of blame to go around.
Now if you just want to start locking everyone up, I guess that's a valid position, but you might want to ask how well that's work in, say, the drug war.
Re:And what about the people on the end? (Score:5, Informative)
The loan reps aren't exactly blameless either.
When I bought my places ($100k-$150k range), the first loan place I went to, the guy I talked to tried to convince me to get a more expensive house (you are approved for up to $350k! You should look at something nicer!)
I would *not* be able to pay the mortgage on such a house, let alone cover food and utilities. He didn't care, they were just going to sell the loan to some other company, they would make their money, he'd get his commission.
Glad I went with another company. That was obnoxious.
Re:And what about the people on the end? (Score:5, Interesting)
Conversely, the fella I worked with was very practical about the topic. Basically I can afford up to X but I'd be eating only ramen and wiping with newspaper. For every increment lower that I could get to would increase my quality of life so either make more money or find something significantly cheaper than X. And hell, I was 23 at the time.
Oh, and the bank - Bank of America oddly enough. Incidentally that guy doesn't work there anymore. He moved back to Sweden. Probably saw the writing on the wall, heh.
Re:And what about the people on the end? (Score:5, Informative)
He didn't care, they were just going to sell the loan to some other company, they would make their money, he'd get his commission.
You nicely summarized the root cause of the collapse of housing markets across the US. The banks thought that, by chopping up mortgages and combining them with other securities, the resulting CDOs had less risk because it was spread around and since the cost of each tranche was proportional to the risk, and therefore the yield, everyone understood the risks involved. Of course that created a profit motive to create as many mortgages as possible--and the riskier the better because the risk magically disappeared once sliced up and repackaged. Opportunists climbed into cheap suits and starting fly-by-night mortgage brokerages, assembling teams of sleazy salespeople to push bad loans. By the time the mortgages went sour, everyone involved in the transaction had taken their profit but, thanks to deregulated banking, those profits were basically paid out of the savings accounts of the very same people getting the bad mortgages. And since all the banks merged into giant mega-banks that snatched up bad debt with your money, they were "too big to fail." But don't worry, they bought "insurance" against it in the form of credit default swaps so that the government wouldn't have to bail them out. Except that the "insurance companies" were also banks and didn't have nearly enough cash to pay out, so the government bailed them out, including the third parties that were buying credit default swaps on CDOs that they didn't even own.
So everyone made money--from the mortgage bundlers all the way up to the CEOs of the giant banks--no matter if they succeeded, failed, or wrecked the global economy in the process. And to get the economy going again, the Fed started loaning out money at %0.01 interest so the banks could turn around and lend it back to Treasury at 3% (and pay back the bailout after dumping their bad assets); it's socialism for banks, and "free markets" and personal responsibility for the rest of us. Now we have a mountain of government debt and a generation of college-educated young people entering a stagnated economy with student loans accrued during the boom-times. I guess that is what happens when you create a system in which you can flip someone's livelihood for a profit without taking on any risk or responsibility.
...but this guy goes to jail for 20 years for scamming cable companies.
Re:And what about the people on the end? (Score:4, Interesting)
You nicely summarized the root cause of the collapse of housing markets across the US
- that is NOT the root cause, that was an expected symptom based on the real root cause, which was government easy credit to the banks (they did push it down all the way to 1% for Clinton and 0% for Bush and it's there now too) and all of the mandates, that had government and quasi government agencies 'insuring' variable rate mortgages, liar loans, all of that stuff. At the time of Clinton and Bush it was mostly F&F, now it's mostly FHA, which 'insures' over 1Trillion with only 5Billion assets.
Of-course all of this 'insurance', just like all other 'insurance' that government provides is not insurance. It's all debt and counterfeiting (hail the Fed).
People saw this coming [youtube.com] miles away [youtube.com].
Wrong. So wrong. (Score:3)
I imagine you're also lumping Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) loans into the culpability for the crisis. This is a thirty-year old law. You may want to look into that; CRA-approved mortgages were less likely to be subprime and less likely to be resold.
Also, Fannie and Freddie have rules that stipulate they would cover only 80% of a mortgage. Where did the other 20% come from? Ask Angelo Mozilo; Countrywide would just give you a second mortgage to cover the other 20%. Ta-da, 0% down payment home mortga
Re:And what about the people on the end? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personal responsibility is important (it certainly kept me out of a mess in this regard), but when people from every side are trying to trick you from every side, you eventually slip. These people know your financial situation, - they see your records, and in most cases, are probably better trained to understand it than you. Yet they try to put you in a situation that is above your head, and screws whoever they sell the loan to, for their own profit. Yeah, they should be held responsible as well, not instead of.
It's a bit beyond the magnitude of a super-sized meal, a $20 stack of disks, or a V8 car...
Re:And what about the people on the end? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the old days, there was an obvious means to discourage a loan officer from loaning you money that you could not pay back. If you failed to repay, then he or at least his company was on the hook. There was none of this shuffling off bad debt onto other people.
Although even that practice didn't completely trash our economy.
No. It took rampant pervasive corruption of ratings agencies to do that.
The current approach to doing business is simply not sustainable regardless of how you view the situation in moral or ethical terms.
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He later told me that the French law forbids banks to give you any loan which will make you get into a situation of paying more than 33% of your salary for loans+rent. So if you earn 3000â a month and pay 500â rent you will only get a loan which has a maximum repayment of 500â per month.
Thi
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The idea that individuals were completely blameless in the financial crisis is silly.
IMO it's not so much that as the fact that the banks made really irresponsible loans.
Generally I'd say it's not only stupid but flat-out unethical for banks to give out loans to people they know can't repay them. They're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. When you have a few thousand of these loans floating around, well... look what happens.
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That question is also your answer. There is a very large chain of people involved in the financial crisis, and it's unlikely that any single one of them can be apportioned enough blame to go to jail.
I think there's plenty of blame to go around to justify jail time for the lot of 'em, just not enough space in the jails.
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I would agree with you on that if corporate CEOs and pretty much everyone who makes over a million dollars a year hadn't set the precedent that defrauding thousands of people at a time comes only with a slap on the wrist and a meager fine despite a huge profit margin.
Two wrongs make a right. Gotcha. You must be some kind of rebel freedom fighter.
Shit, that's the definition of how corporate America works. Why aren't they jailing the CEOs of the cable companies instead for charging >5000 times the amount they pay for bandwidth for the average user?
They aren't being jailing them because nobody has proven in a court of law that they've broken any laws. Please feel free to demand charges be pressed if you feel they're warranted. Maybe a few desperate law students can help you figure out a way to trump some charges up.
On a related note, I was born in 1981. I probably grew up in the same culture you did, and still have admiration for things like The Conscience of a Hacker [ghostwheel.com]. Tha
Re:he got rich from fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Why aren't they jailing the CEOs of the cable companies instead for charging >5000 times the amount they pay for bandwidth for the average user?
Because thats neither fraud nor any other crime - its not illegal to not base your prices on your costs. The cable companies can charge what they like for their product.
Why aren't they jailing the AT&T and Verizon execs for bait-and-switch with the 'Unlimited' plans which are actually limited to single-digit bandwidth amounts?
Now that's a better example, and one I can't give an answer to.
It's all ass-backward, and this guy just had the balls to do something about it. Do your time, but do it proudly.
Sorry, but that's just a pathetic excuse for this guys actions, he didn't do anything justifiable or the be proud of.
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It just means he should have incorporated and created a ficticious "personhood" to take the fall.
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Yeah, right. Let's examine your claim that "defrauding thousands of people at a time comes only with a slap on the wrist and a meager fine".
Bernie Madoff - 150 years
Bernie Ebbers - 25 years
Dennis Kozlowski - 25 years
Jeffrey Skilling - 24 years, 4 months
Yup, just 'slaps on the wrist'.
Why aren't they jailing the CEO of cables companies? How about: because they aren't doing anything illegal. What laws do you imagine they have broken? If we take your ridiculous assertion that they are charging >5000 tim
Re:he got rich from fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
It depresses me that people think that some people it takes material profit in order to make fraud and theft of service immoral. Apparently you can't commit a crime against a rich person, unless you become one in the process.
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You're way off. In this case the fact that he made a decent amount of money off of the fraud COMPLETELY undercuts his claim of this being a "freedom of information" situation, where he just reported on a known exploit, or some such.
We've heard enough cases here, of legitimate researchers facing unjustified prosecution at the behest of corporate interests, that those in the know have become highly suspicious of a
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No, you just can't commit a crime against a rich person in general. Now, poor people, you can bend them over backwards and fuck 'em however you like. At worst, you'll get a slap on the wrist. At best, you'll get a pat on the back for a job well done. Either way, you'll be filthy rich.
not necessarily (Score:5, Insightful)
We should never outlaw creating tools like lockpicks, knives, cable modem sniffers, or CPUs able to run unsigned code. We should only outlaw specific usages of said tool.
A priori, there is nothing wrong with explaining how such tools work either, but aiding customers with the specifics of their particular cable provider could eventually cross the line into conspiracy to commit wire fraud, just like helping a robber a house's door would become conspiracy to commit robbery.
I therefore hope they convicted him on specific instances of technical support he provided which unambiguously made him a conspirator in specific customer's wire fraud. And I hope he wins back his freedom on appeal if they convicted him on any other grounds.
In fact, we should discuss the physical plans for equipment and software which he sold here because I'm sure we're curious what exactly he sold. Anyone got links to DIY kits? We should add this stuff to thepiratebay.se's physibles section : http://thepiratebay.se/blog/203
Re:he got rich from fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
don't to the crime if you cant do the time
I know, but 20 years?!?! Are they serious? That is an insane amount of time for a non-violent crime!
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Information wants to be free and so does Ryan Harris.
seven courts (Score:5, Funny)
Courts are an odd unit to measure instances of wire fraud.
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Re:seven courts (Score:5, Funny)
Re:seven courts (Score:5, Funny)
That typo was in the article, too. I'm not sure whether I should snobbily deride the editors for not correcting the mistake or fashionably praise Slashdot for finally reporting on a article accurately.
Re:seven courts (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you for quoting me accurately!
Bad design (Score:5, Interesting)
If this guy could build a business, complete with websites, forums and so on, it must have gone on for quite a while (6 years it turns out), so it is obvious that:
1) The ISP didn't know enough about their business to realize the giant holes this guy was exploiting.
2) The ISP was incompetent enough to let this guy and his customers steal service (which the ISP's other customers paid for) for a long time.
Any sentencing here should include a heavy fine to the ISP for technical incompetence.
Re:Bad design (Score:4, Insightful)
Any sentencing here should include a heavy fine to the ISP for technical incompetence.
Theoretically it already has, it's paid the fine in lost customers due to their service being so crappy. I can't imagine that you could pull something like this off without massively degrading the hijacked service.
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His technique used a packet sniffer & changed the MAC addresses on the modems. That creates the same havoc on the network as 2 devices with the same IP address. So you would have a situation with huge blocks of packet loss while one modem was getting the data for both modems, until the ARP
Re:Bad design (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bad design (Score:5, Insightful)
He was impersonating modems using sniffed MAC addresses, which is only possible if the network is running without encryption
Are you sure about this? Many encryption schemes only encrypt the payload, not link-level headers, such as the MAC address. Or how else would the modem be able to figure out which packets are for itself, and which aren't? Attempting to decrypt every packet (including those not intended for it) would be a huge performance drain.
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That's fine though. Only the legitimate holder of a given MAC address would possess the correct encryption key. Another modem could transmit a packet with forged link level headers, but the payload wouldn't decrypt correctly and so wouldn't be forwarded.
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Re:Bad design (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, from the description it appears the guy was selling modified cable modems to sniff data on the coax line and enabling the user to change MAC addresses etc. This [coaxthief.com] would seem to indicate that the device would operate with several configuration sets - maybe switching those on the fly depending whether they were already in use. This way the users' modems would be able to replicate the access data of other users.
That could be prevented by using encryption for exchanging login data, but it's pretty hard to detect: You can't easily tell the difference between unauthorized access of user B with user A's login data, and user A who just happens to use the internet a lot. Also you wouldn't notice a few users doing that in one particular segment, the guys customers could be distributed all over the US:
Re:Bad design (Score:4, Insightful)
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The network should be able to detect this. The end user too.
Why I say so: let's say the thief, T, tries to go online. One way or another T intercepts the authentication codes of user U. Well maybe several users over time. Then when T wants to go online, he uses U's authentication codes to authenticate his modem to the ISP. So now T is online with U's authentication.
Some time later, T still connected, and U wants to connect her modem to the Internet. Now there are suddenly two modems with the same authentica
I'm ok with that so long as... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are ok with a fine on you if your house gets broken in to and it is found you didn't do a good job securing it. After all, if we fining people for not doing security properly, then it needs to apply to physical security too, and to individuals too. So if you are like most people and have a cheap lock that is vulnerable to bumping and picking, single pane windows with no security screen or coating, no security locks on your windows, no alarm system, and so on then if you get broken in to, you get fined too.
After all, it is something you can fix. You can get high security locks from someone like Medeco or Assa that can't be bumped, and key controlled, hard to pick etc. You can have your windows replaced with coated glass and screens that are very difficult to break through. You can buy friction security locks for your windows that you take on and off when you want to open them and so on.
You probably don't choose to. Few people do. It costs more and is inconvenient. However it does make it much easier for someone to break in to your house.
Now if you aren't ok with that, then I have to ask why it is ok to fine the ISP. Could have the had better security? Most certainly. However they chose not to and that doesn't make what was done to them right. Same shit with you. You can choose to have better security. Just because you don't, doesn't make it right for someone to break in.
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I dunno about the exact rules for high security locks and so forth, but insurance companies will refuse to pay out if you left the door unlocked.
Plus if you've already been broken into they will not insure you unless you've increased the security since then.
So yes, most people will "get fined" even if they don't know it yet.
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Same deal for the ISP's insurance, and yes they have insurance of many types.
So why again should they be punished by the court system? Just because smart ass geeks think they could do better?
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Any sentencing here should include a heavy fine to the ISP for technical incompetence.
I wasn't aware that was illegal.
Writing tools to configure cable modems (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh well, at least now there is jurisprudence to put gun manufacturers into jail. After all, they make the tools that others use to commit crimes, which is what this guy is going to do hard time for.
Re:Writing tools to configure cable modems (Score:5, Insightful)
It is slightly different in that he did provide customer support in cracking the network. Even so I wonder how this will do on appeal.
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Oh well, at least now there is jurisprudence to put gun manufacturers into jail. After all, they make the tools that others use to commit crimes, which is what this guy is going to do hard time for.
Only if they're selling their weapons with full knowledge and intent that it will be used to commit crimes, but then this was the case prior to this guy anyways...
Re:Writing tools to configure cable modems (Score:5, Insightful)
"shooting targets" might be a nice hobby, but it's not very practical.
The purpose of the item being sold does not have to be practical. Recurve bows and arrows have no "practical" use, and are only particularly useful for target practice. In fact, recurve bows are even less useful than hand guns for hunting.
As well, handguns have another perfectly legal reason for purchase and ownership: protection, and defense.
There is no way that gun manufacturers aren't aware of those statistics, yet they keep on allowing their products being sold in shops.
Being aware the statistics about misuse of your item does not mean that you are criminally liable. The manufacturers of oxycodone are certainly aware of the high rate of abuse of their drug, shall we hold them responsible criminally for the abuse of their drug?
With this jurisprudence, gun manufacturers are just as guilty. Either that, or someone got wrongly convicted here.
This jurisprudence is not precedent setting. Gun manufacturers are already, and have long been subject to the conditions under which this individual was charged.
There was sufficiently established evidence that this individual was selling a product that had no legal purpose. Guns have well recognized legal purposes. And weapons manufacturers are not concerned about this case... like I said, this case hinged on already well established legal precedents, and the gun manufacturer lawyers have long been aware of these details.
But then, as usual, anything legal happens, and slashdot armchair lay lawyers are ready to jump out of the woodwork with specious legal theories, and pretend like shit means more than it actually does.
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His software is still available (Score:2)
What an idiot. (Score:2)
With all the effort and work that went into this thing, he could have built a legitimate business offering legal goods and services.
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What the hell is up with your justice system? (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean -- 20 years for a simple financial fraud thing. In other countries, murder is less.
No wonder you have a considerable fraction of your population in jail [wikipedia.org].
Scary.
Meanwhile... (Score:5, Informative)
prison term of up to 20 years and a fine of up to US$250,000
...the real criminals in the banking and mortgage industry got away scoff free even after they caused damages in the trillions. Is the law blind?
FFS, it's not stealing, it's fraud. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm tired of "stealing" getting applied to every instance of "underhandedly doing something you weren't supposed to".
Stealing internet murder? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think most people get that kind of a sentence for murder.
I saw one case on this "I Survived" show they have on Biography channel: a woman shot her husband six times in the chest, and she was sentenced to six days for aggravated assault. Six days for unloading a gun into somebody's chest, 20 years for stealing internet; what a wonderful justice system we have.
Re:hrm (Score:4, Informative)
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And along those lines, I don't like the Chicago Cubs, so maybe we can all just pretend they don't exist. Problem solved!
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No, bandwidth requires infrastructure and maintenance, while "intellectual property" can be copied infinitely for a near-zero sum of money.
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Infinitely copied, yes. Infinitely produced, no; that also requires infrastructure and people's time.
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If it's been 30 years then I should be able to violate the author as much as I want. That's part of the bargain.
Genuine natural rights don't expire like that.
Re:hrm (Score:5, Insightful)
There a huge difference. You can indeed steal Internet service - you are not making a copy - you are actually taking something someone else paid for, i.e. theft.
When it comes to 'stealing' intellectual property - you are not taking anything away, nor are you taking something someone else paid for. You are making a copy that detracts nothing from the original. Any loss would come from the loss of a potential sale, but as must file sharing either is done by people who would never pay for the stuff they download (no lost sale) or by people that buys the downloaded material later when it becomes available, there's usually no loss involved and thus no theft.
Understand it now?
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you are actually taking something someone else paid for, i.e. theft.
Are you sure it wasn't more like a free ride? It's not dissimilar to taking what somebody else invested R&D money to develop.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you let thousands of people access service with a parallel cut of the speed, not just sharing the total speed of the person they're impersonating, then you're not just piggybacking another person's service, you're using speed and service that's reserved for other paying customers, present and future.
The infrastructure is limited and capacity depends
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By using an ISP's connection without paying for it, you aren't piggybacking on another person's packets, you're using up the limited* space in the pipe. By not paying, and essentially being an unknown factor to the business providing the pipe, you are lowering the quality of service for everyone else. If not through using bandwidth that wasn't accounted for, it's by delaying their packe
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Are you really as retarded as you are making yourself out to be, or do you actually not understand something this basic?
By using research without paying for it, you aren't piggybacking on another person's discoveries, you're using up the limited* funding in the field. By not paying, and essentially being an unknown factor to the business providing the R&D investment, you are lowering the return on investment for every other researcher. If not through reducing sales of a final product, it's by crowding t
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By using research without paying for it, you aren't piggybacking on another person's discoveries, you're using up the limited* funding in the field.
On the contrary, you are actually not using up the funding in the field. You would be, though, if you had to replicate research already done once and again. That's why researchers consider publishing your research a good thing: they get information quite more cheaply than if they had to research everything on their own and they may also get validation/refutation of their own research.
..you are lowering the return on investment for every other researcher.
Only, perhaps, if you don't share back. But if you don't share back you will get sidelined.
...investors do need to calculate just how much return they will see from the research projects they are funding.
Weren't we talking about ROI for
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So using a finite resource affects the physical world, but I wrote about things that apparently don't affect the physical world... so am I to understand then that R&D funding is an infinite resource? Please tell me where this endless fountain of funding is, so I can pass it on to my long-shot medical researcher friends.
By copying IP without restraint, something is physically taken away from the people who paid for it - they are no longer able to sell the product they paid for, because the sales market i
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I'd actually argue that most filesharing is done by people who wouldn't pay for it and there's still a loss involved.
For example, let's imagine a thought experiment: if a company is selling 100,000 cop
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You haven't accounted for the pirates who then turn into customers, either.
Or pirates that tell their friends about how great of a program it is, and those friends purchase the program legitimately.
---
No, let's operate off of the assumption that piracy never occurred. Who is to say your program will have as many paying customers? Don't think you can simply say, "HEY LOOK X PAID, BUT Y DIDNT, THEREFORE WE LOST PROFITS!" Which is mathematically wrong. It should be represented as:
x = customers who are cust
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I personally am of the opinion that it doesn't matter whether they were never going to become a customer regardless, they are "enjoying" the product nonetheless.
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You're missing the point. To allow people to pirate because a small portion of them could potentially purchase down the road may be great for marketing, but is poor for revenue.
I am just unable to understand the intellectual lethargy that I find on Slashdot when it comes to piracy. You may disagree with how someone feels about piracy, but if it is their content, it is their prerogative.
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I am not addressing this. I am addressing the claim that they have suffered damages. Which the onus is on them to prove. I merely laid out an error in common reasoning about how they calculate damages.
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Oh, thought experiments are fun. (Score:3)
Now, let's suppose they're selling 100,000. Piracy comes along, 1 millio
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What did the customer pay for that these people were stealing? Do terrestrial/cable ISPs still charge per-hour or per-GB for bandwidth?
Last I checked every provider in my area was offering (truly) unlimited high-speed access for a flat rate, and they couldn't tell worth a damn if someone else was using my connection. They certainly didn't charge me more (for example) when my friends would stop by and use my WiFi.
This is no more stealing than using Coffee Shop WiFi, the only difference is how the connection
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Any loss would come from the loss of a potential sale, but as most file sharing either is done by people who would never pay for the stuff they download (no lost sale)....
The car thief doesn't get let off the hook because he would never would have paid for the cars he stole.
Tell me why again why the geek with a PC and a broadband connection is entitled to freely download movies and games that others must rent from the Red Box or go without.
"File sharing" implies that you are both uploading and downloading files.
The Kazaa client made it explicit by displaying progress bars for both upload and download traffic. There was not so much as fig leaf to disguise that you were en
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Do you know how much the artist paid for the copies you take? They have donated both their time and their money into creating it. It's not like they come to them for free, it's just that most of the cost is incurred very early in the creation process.
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Can we please stop with the shitty argument that one that has illegally downloaded something is not a lost sale? it is an insult to our minds. Someone who has downloaded and used something is a stolen sale, because that person is using something he/she should have paid for.
Re:hrm (Score:5, Informative)
OTOH, the bits that you copy from me don't disappear from my hard disk by your copying, for information is being a virtual world entity.
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Obvious troll, but I'll bite: the bits that you receive through my connection detract from the bits that I can receive through my connection for bandwidth is a physical world entity.
OTOH, the bits that you copy from me don't disappear from my hard disk by your copying, for information is being a virtual world entity.
I'm not trolling, nor the author of the grandparent post, nor interested enough to RTFA. But I kindof agree with your line of reasoning, BUT... You sound like the kind of logical ethicist who might be interested in this followup thought-
Suppose the hacker in question was _so good_, that they managed to write their tools and enabling hacks, such that the only bandwidth 'stolen', was known, with scientific and engineering accuracy, to have gone completely unused. Now that's a very, very big IF. But from s
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The thing that people have yet to touch on in this thread is that the bandwidth used does not just affect the end consumer that is having their connection increased or hijacked - and I'm not talking about the effect on other users on the network.
Let's talk peering arrangements. No ISP has access to the entire Internet, so they peer with other networks and backbones to increase their reach - and those agreements are routinely based on an amount of data transferred per period. Go over that agreed amount and
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That sounds fair, but only in principle.
Let's say you and I both run a web business out of our homes. You've got your website running on your local Apache copy, I've got mine. On that website, you're selling product X, and I'm selling product X as well.
As part of your at-home busin
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Suppose the hacker in question was _so good_, that they managed to write their tools and enabling hacks, such that the only bandwidth 'stolen', was known, with scientific and engineering accuracy, to have gone completely unused. Now that's a very, very big IF. But from skimming these comments, it does sound like this guy may have known the technical nature of the network even better than those who owned and operated it. In that hypothetical, his infraction seems about as ethically dubious as the seemingly less (by your expression) malicious copyright violation of getting a free copy of that tv episode you paid itunes for.
_If_ the bandwidth was really unused I certainly would have no problem with his using it. But it would seem the software this guy's company developed was designed to clone other user access information, which would most certainly cause connection problems, as that usually happens when having repeated MACs or IPs in the same network.
Not directly related, but it seems the ISPs could have worked in some better kind of security in their authentication protocols, which would have probably defeated any easy atte
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Interesting how when it is internet service theft, nobody seems to mind the arrests but when it is intellectual property everyone bawws the fuck out about it.
What's interesting is despite how clearly the general view on piracy has been made around here for YEARS, there's always some dipshit who comes along and tries to raise some artificial hypocrisy and not only demonstrates that he doesn't understand what people have been saying, but that he doesn't understand the topic at hand either.
You would have gotten more mileage out of mentioning the Pringles can articles this site covered. (Do your homework, though, that's still an uphill battle.)
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Generally the assumption is that they'll never be caught and thus never have to pay. If they knew for sure that it was going to cost many years out of their life I believe they might choose otherwise. It's some of that "It can't happen to me" kind of thinking that results in so many bad ends.
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Not to say that a cable modem hacker is not a dangerous criminal, who is constantly putting the general public at risk. I mean, this guy modified cable modems to break the rules set by cable com
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No, Kevin engaged in active destruction, both deliberate and accidental, of the systems he probed. You seem to think he just engaged in social manipulation: while effective, it's hardly the only tool he used. And the destruction was as much from his _incompetence_ than from his expertise. By re-arranging and casually ruining core security systems he made production systems crash repeatedly, lose data and code, and cost developers, customers, and companies many millions in lost work. He also _kept_ doing i