RapidShare Urges US To Punish Linking Sites and Not File-Sharing Sites 167
hypnosec writes "RapidShare has said that the U.S. government should crack down on linking sites rather than punishing file-sharing sites and strangling innovation. The file-sharing site is understandably a little worried about the recent crackdowns on sites involved in or found to be promoting piracy. Daniel Raimer, RapidShare's Chief Legal Officer, is to meet with technology leaders and law enforcement at the Technology Policy Institute forum. Responding to a public consultation on the future of U.S. IP enforcement, the company emphasized that linking sites are the real problem. It wrote, 'Rather than enacting legislation that could stifle innovation in the cloud, the U.S. government should crack down on this critical part of the online piracy network.'"
War on Google (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with cracking down on "linking sites" is that it's way to broad. When you start attacking sites that provide users a collection of links, you're effectively attacking the basis of every web site on the Internet. It will no longer be safe to provide links. Further, it will undermine search. What is google but a collection of links?
How about we don't go after file sharing or linking sites and instead go after the RIAA and MPAA for buying our politicians and extorting money out of people by their frivolous lawsuits. I buy my content, but when they go after the basic foundation of the Internet, it makes me rethink that. No revenue means no buying politicians.
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Which are, in essence, a link. Maybe not in the technical sense of a direct pointer, but its a method for finding what you're looking for.
Saying otherwise is just as pointless as the old bitching about how "piracy" wasn't a problem because "pirates" roamed the high seas and wore eye patches. Technically true, but a fundamentally pointless argument in practice -- which specific buzzword was used as the label is irrelevant.
Shakespeare even pointed this out several centuries ago ("A rose by any other name.."
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Its not like "using the wrong label!" has ever really held up as a useful argument.
I dunno about that. If you get pulled over for speeding, and the cop writes down "Tuesday" but it's Wednesday, that is liable to get the ticket thrown out.
But, other than that, yes, the courts are unlikely to be impressed by technical hocus-pocus acts.
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That's because Tuesday is a label for a specific day, and Wednesday is not a label for the same day - it is an inaccurate label. The point is that it doesn't matter what we label something as long as we all know what is being discussed. And in such a situation, arguing semantics just makes you look like a tool.
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Had Romeo not been a Montague, or Juliet not been a Capulet, then perhaps they wouldn't have been star-crossed lovers with only a fleeting romance.
Or if they hadn't been idiotic teenagers prevented from just fucking each other due to lack of quality birth control.
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Likewise, by conflating the infringing of a legal monopoly with theft or piracy, the argument is tainted and hope of rational argument quickly goes out of the window. Accepting the propaganda labels of cartels that the important distinctions aren't important is a major loss to finding a reasonable outcome.
I'm sorry, but you appear to be ignorant of the origin of the term "piracy" to refer to acts of copyright infringement.
Several decades ago, there was a radio station called Radio Caroline, and it broadcast from a ferry anchored in international waters off the coast of South-East England. Then along came Radio Atlanta, a little bit further north.
The term "pirate radio" was born, to describe unlicensed, off-shore broadcasts. As happens in language, the term gained new usages, and came to refer to all unlice
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MPAA v. 2600 made a legal distinction between those two. An actual link can be infringement, the text version of the link without html directives are not. Go figure.
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Don't know the details of the case, but if its as cut-and-dry as you make it out, that sounds like the work of either a brilliant lawyer or a stupid judge (or both.)
Not that I have any love for the MPAA but come on -- if it points me to something, its a "link" I can follow, regardless of whether I can just click or if I have to cut and paste it (and the lines are even blurring these days with the advent of automatic link detection in various software.) Similarly, a "magnet" vs a "torrent" are both just lin
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Conceptually it's the same problem though.
Computer nerds viewed torrents as a way around file sharing rules because you never shared the whole file, only a little piece of it, guess how well that went over?
Changing the technology being used doesn't change what it does, if I post a list of hashes that my browser can interpret as the comments on /. they may as well be the actual links to the comments. Storing a collection of magnets, or links or providing any resource that allows me to access something I'm no
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The real question with magnet links is...
How do fucking magnets work?
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A magnet uri on the other hand is a number. When you want to find the content you think the magnet uri refers to you ask a bunch of people "Do you know what this hash belongs to?". If doesn't say "The location of the content this uri refers to is here." There is a slim chance it could refer to many
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It might be whack-a-mole, but the law is having smaller and smaller ground to stand on.
All information is just a number; this sounds like a facetious remark but it's really central to this whole ordeal. A 3 megabyte MP3 file is an extremely large number (by our standards), usually somewhere around 2^3,000,000. A magnet URI is a much smaller number, usually around 2^128, and magnet URIs are literally just numbers.
The problem here is that current copyright law says numbers can't be copyrighted, and common sen
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but the law is having smaller and smaller ground to stand on.
I think it's the other way around, the law is going to get more and more broad, because it's going to be about what you can do with a collection of numbers (after all, everything on computers is just 1's and 0's), or the interpretation of that number rather than the number itself is what matters on you.
We prohibit things like guns (in civilized countries at least) because access to them is dangerous. But it's not the gun itself that is illegal usually, it's the possession of it, the transport of it, the sa
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, you're effectively attacking the basis of every web site on the Internet
And they dont care as long as they are still in business and make money.
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Making linking illegal will pretty much kill the internet.
Uh-huh. I'll assume that you're being purposefully disengenuous. I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting you're unable to make a distinction between "knowingly and purposefully linking to infringing content" and "linking".
I won't insult your intelligence by trying to explain the difference, or by analogising your statement to a claim that laws against (physical) theft are "making picking things up" illegal."
How does this even make sense? (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt anybody would punish linking somewhere without punishing outright sharing too.
Re:How does this even make sense? (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK just did it..... sent a man to jail for 4 years because he provided links to piratebay, demonoid, and other sites that had TV shows/movies.
Of couse the UK has demonstrated itself to be as bad as Russia when it comes to free speech, so I guess we shouldn't be surprised.
Re:How does this even make sense? (Score:4, Interesting)
That sounds innocuous enough - but keep in mind that he actually made GBP35,000/month in 2009 with these activities.
Given that they were merely link sites, his hosting costs weren't going to put much of a dent into those figures.
Now I'm not saying that his profiting is what made it illegal (it was illegal either way), or that 4 years in jail is an appropriate sentence - but let's not kid ourselves by suggesting that these site operators are only wishing to give to the world, to provide cultural enrichment to the needy, etc. They most certainly do profit by providing an avenue through which 'piracy' is committed.
That said, under my copyright reform suggestion, linking sites would in fact not be a valid target for legal action. But not because of some misguided 'free speech' concern. ( In case you were referring to the Pussy Riot thing - wow. Did you really just equate the two? If so, you may wish to read up on that case a bit more. It's many times more scary than any piracy-linksite getting targeted is. )
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iirc there were two cases in which the sites in question were deemed legal. It remains a case-by-case thing. However, I do agree that the charge in this case is suspicious at best (conspiracy to defraud).
Probably - but let's face it, even TPB has magnet links to Linux distros, The GIMP, etc. That doesn't suddenly make TPB the 'go to' place for al
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It wasn't an insignificant amount of the links posted, and they would make the same amount off of ads whether or not the links were legal or illegal. Your argument is not on based up
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From what I remember reading only one quarter were infringing.
In all reality any site that host links like this should simply block anyone accessing from the USA. I am no international lawyer, but I think part of the problem is that his site was available in the USA, even if it was hosted in the UK. It is probably a grey zone, in terms of international law, but since the UK is bending over to USA based entities, this probably doesn't matter.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19253359 [bbc.com]
Grey's Anatomy has been mothballed? When did that happen?
Admittedly, I read your post's body first and thought you were going to make a good point; e.g. that if the broadcaster (in the case of Grey's, ABC) wanted to make money off of it rather than leave it to the `pirates'` devises they could have made it available for cheap on their site.
But instead you went for something that is demonstrably untrue. D'oh.
Re:How does this even make sense? (Score:4, Insightful)
... which is so awesome, even, because that's already down the slippery slope: Piratebay and Demonoid don't have TV shows/movies either, they only link it themselves (torrents are just oversized links). So that means there is now someone in jail for linking to a site linking to pirated bits. Can one even argue there's a difference between:
https://thepiratebay.se/ [thepiratebay.se]
https://www.google.com/search?q=thepiratebay [google.com]
https://www.google.com/ [google.com] seatch for "thepiratebay" and click the first link
?
Sense is really just not a player here.
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Yes, one can argue that. If argued in front of a judge, they'd even agree with the argument. If argued in front of any reasonable person, they'd also agree.
Open up TPB in one window, open up Google in another. Present to some person unfamiliar with either. Give them 5 minutes to explore each site. Now ask them to giv
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Of course there's a difference. Google has a lot more money than TPB does. Bullies go after the weak, not other kids bigger than they are.
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Sure, but there is a huge difference between linking to the front page and links to specific pages that exist only to facilitate copyright infringement of one particular item. It's like a guy asking you "Do you know where I can get some drugs?" and the difference between you answering "Try the phone book." and "Here's the number for a dealer I know." A lot of people like to pretend the phone book and your guide book to local drug dealers with phone numbers are one and the same, because they both contain pho
Not that easy (Score:5, Insightful)
agreed (Score:2)
And what if we add in the thousands of paste sites as well? If someone were to construct a small algorithm we could paste links to these sites, and point these leaves back up to a trunk. Then find them either with a search engine, or by scanning several paste sites. I seems to me that this could all be handled by a bit of javascript in a person's browser.
Suddenly instead of a single paste site, it becomes a web of information from an amalgamation of sites, pieced together by an agent running on a desktop?
So
Uploaders? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldnt they actually go for the uploader and not hosting company or the ones that link? Ahh going for uploaders would hurts their business, so they would rather have the authorities going for the ones that link.
Re:Uploaders? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldnt they actually go for the uploader and not hosting company or the ones that link? Ahh going for uploaders would hurts their business, so they would rather have the authorities going for the ones that link.
Shouldn't they actually go for the content creator and not the uploader or the hosting company? Ahh pointing out that content creators licenses are what causes the uploading, hosting and linking to be illegal makes them look stupid, so they would rather have unlimited copyright for "a limited time" that's actually THREE GENERATIONS OF HUMANS in length.
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While I agree that rights' holders current licensing schemes, artificial distribution limits, etc. etc. very much are a huge factor in piracy, the duration of
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Let's be honest - if copyright duration were reduced to those 5 years, or even 3, do you honestly believe that a significant portion of current 'pirates' would stop 'pirating' material that is not yet 3 years old?
No. I believe that if the powers that be hadn't committed the largest theft in the history of mankind - stealing the vast majority of our cultural works and hiding them away behind their paywalls (those they don't just let rot and vanish from the face of the earth so they won't compete with their new works), piracy would never have risen to the levels it's at now - and would be much harder to justify.
Now? It's too late. We've already got several generations hooked on easy, free, downloads.
And strangely, whe
Go after the uploaders how? Honest question. (Score:3)
You say that they should go after the uploaders. That sounds like a good principle (in fact, I favor this approach - although in my view rapidshare would not be an innocent bystander either).
There's just one problem with what you are suggesting - how do you suggest they go after the uploaders?
Have you ever sent an e-mail to rapidshare asking for information on the user who uploaded a file? Did you get that information? Were you able to use that information to get additional information required for legal
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Most uploaders make money of their uploads. Most hosting companies including Rapidshare pay you proportional to the number of times your file is uploaded. If you can pay them you most definitely can exactly pinpoint them.
And if you cannot pinpoint the uploader, bad luck, there is nothing one can do about it. Let piracy happen. The only ones as far as I can see doing something illegal is the uploaders.
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s/uploaded/downloaded
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But then you'd end up in one of the quandaries of my proposal for copyright reform. My proposal is to do away with copyright and instead strictly enforce distribution rights. This would require RapidShare to collect legal information about the uploading party specifically, and exclusively! (though I wouldn't put it past politicians to pervert it), for the purpose of distribution rights enforcement.
So
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My proposal is to do away with copyright and instead strictly enforce distribution rights
Copyright is intellectual property law. What's the point of having a license to distribute IP when you have just abolished IP?
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No, copyright law is one of various intellectual property laws. Patent law is another one, for example.
Distribution rights are already in existence - film companies license out films for distribution to local marks, for example. But this doesn't mean that the company that took that license has free reign over the content. The copyright holder retains its right to exercise control over it almost completely. That's why copyright holders can (try to) go after downloaders, uploaders, hosts, link sites, etc.
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I had to chuckle when you said 'a few' - I'm pretty sure there's more than 'a few' people who partake in copyright infringement :)
Your right to privacy is also just that - a right, and not necessarily an inalienable one. If you rob a liquor store, do you believe that the camera footage should not be put up in TV broadcasts in an effort to help the police find you? After all, it violates your privacy.
Many would say that, if it's clear that you performed a robbery, you gave up your right to privacy in that
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So if going after the people who actually committed infringement is too hard, that means they should go after easy targets whether or not they are liable?
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(emphasis mine)
Absolutely not - but only regarding the part I emphasized.
I'm certainly not suggesting that if they can't go after the actual murderer, that they should just arrest some random passerby who they reasonably know was there due to cell logs and asking the question "where were you on the night of...".
The question is, of course, whether or not r
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Why that's crazy talk!
You young people and your logic...
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Shouldnt they actually go for the uploader and not hosting company or the ones that link? Ahh going for uploaders would hurts their business, so they would rather have the authorities going for the ones that link.
The other problem is that the hosting sites may be in jurisdictions that aren't so sympathetic to foreign entities screwing with their legal system. This would mean it is easier to screw with parties that are making money in jurisdictions that are sympathetic.
In the end, he loved Big Brother. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Rather than enacting legislation that could stifle innovation in the cloud, the U.S. government should crack down on this critical part of the online piracy network.'"
I guess that's Newspeak for "Do it to Julia, don't do it to me, do it to her!"
But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
It would be a dangerous precedent. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they start regulating what you can link to, the internet is doomed. Don't go there.
Besides, at least in the U.S., free speech is very much an issue when it comes to links.
Re:It would be a dangerous precedent. (Score:4, Interesting)
Facilitating copyright infringement is a crime and has been upheld by the US courts. Linking to copyrighted material would fall under facilitation. You may not agree with it, but that's the way it is. Free speech doesn't give you cover for it either.
And the US courts are always infallible, right? You sound awfully Team USA with your statement.
If someone asks Siri where to hide a dead body, she will give them the locations of Dumps, Mineshafts, Quarries, etc. Would that make Apple accessory to murder?
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"Linking to copyrighted material would fall under facilitation."
So far, according to the courts, that is only true when the INTENT is clearly to facilitate infringement. And even then... infringement is not a crime. Piracy is, but by (legal) definition, "piracy" only occurs when infringement is done for profit motive.
"If someone asks Siri where to hide a dead body, she will give them the locations of Dumps, Mineshafts, Quarries, etc. Would that make Apple accessory to murder?"
You are merely reinforcing my point. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to ask such a thing... even for the purposes of forensics. Just as there are plenty of legitimate "fair use" purposes for copying or downloading, which would otherwise be infringeme
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It would have to be clarified considerably better than "linking to copyrighted material".
Otherwise you could be charged for a link to a public library.
Say, if linking to copyrighted stuff is criminal, why are Google and Microsoft still operating search engines?
Re:It would be a dangerous precedent. (Score:5, Informative)
"Say, if linking to copyrighted stuff is criminal, why are Google and Microsoft still operating search engines?"
Exactly. And that is only part of the point: how can linking be a crime, when even downloading isn't a crime. ("Piracy" is, but downloading is not piracy, according to the legal definition. Downloading is merely infringement, a civil infraction. Piracy is a crime, but in order to be piracy (generally speaking), it has to involve mass distribution of copyrighted materials for profit.
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Exactly. And that is only part of the point: how can linking be a crime, when even downloading isn't a crime. ("Piracy" is, but downloading is not piracy, according to the legal definition. Downloading is merely infringement, a civil infraction. Piracy is a crime, but in order to be piracy (generally speaking), it has to involve mass distribution of copyrighted materials for profit.
That's not +5 Informative, it's wrong. USC 17506(a)(1)(B):
by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
Did you see "reproduction" there? That's what you do when you download, it's been confirmed many times by the courts. The uploader distributes, the downloader reproduces. So if you download say the Adobe Master Collection ($2599 retail price) you are a criminal, not just a civil infringement. Criminal copyright infringement is actually more of an OR than an AND, either for profit OR distribution of high value OR in large quantity OR reproduction of h
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It would have to be clarified considerably better than "linking to copyrighted material".
Otherwise you could be charged for a link to a public library.
Say, if linking to copyrighted stuff is criminal, why are Google and Microsoft still operating search engines?
because the law isn't the same for everyone.
link collection sites have been targeted by feds since the dawn of internet whenever some riaa,bsa or such wanted them to go down. it's not about logic or the feds applying the law on their own.
but the thing is, you find those sites with google... and plenty of those search sites aren't even manually operated.
what rapidshare is trying to pre-empt is them getting raided due to queries made on other sites like http://rapid-search-engine.com/index-s=mass%2Beffect.htm [rapid-search-engine.com]
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It would have to be clarified considerably better than "linking to copyrighted material".
Much of the material on the Internet is copyrighted and the authors very much want people to link to their sites -- that's what they are there for. I'm sure most of Microsoft's site is copyrighted, for instance. If "linking to copyrighted material" was a crime, the Internet would cease to exist.
I believe you mean "linking to unauthorized copyrighted material" but tell me how you propose a person determine, quickly, reliably and automatically, which copyrighted material is authorized and which is not.
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"Facilitating" is absurdly broad language for this kind of a law. It deserves to be struck down, or else every ISP needs to be shut down for their role as facilitators too.
If free speech isn't cover, then neither is 'common carrier' law.
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I understand that has happened, but then how does google survive?
Searching will bring up all kinds of infringing links.
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That's a good question, and I certainly don't have a answer to that with a foundation in any jurisdiction's laws. I'm pretty sure the judges here (NL) wouldn't even know and would have to determine that on a case-by-case scenario until law were written on it ('precedent' doesn't mean much in our courts - which can be both a bane and a boon).
However, in reality, link sites linking
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The principle starts being abusive well short of that. Let's say Google provides 2,312,000 hits to a query. The first couple of pages don't really seeem to be what the querent is looking for. What happens to a site that tells people how to refine their searches to better get meaningful results?
Maybe Google has substantial non-infringing or otherwise legal uses and can claim a defense here, but what's to stop someone from arguing that, say, tips on refining searches lack t
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Car analogy: A getaway driver is an accessory to a crime. A taxi driver isn't an accessory if he didn't know the fare was fleeing the scene of the crime at the time. There's a lot about "intent" in law....
Rapidshare HAS NOW MADE THEMSELVES the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
The "problem" isn't file sharing. That's legal. It's not linking. It's legal. What's against the law
are violations of the law (e.g. copyright).
HOWEVER, in saying "don't come after us, go after linking sites" rapidshare has thrown the
babies to the wolves in hopes that they can evade a similar fate.
Rapidshare, for that, deserves to die. Linking sites and sharing sites are legal. The US Federal
government and its ICE dogs will sooner or later be brought to task. (Rojadirecta probably).
We'll still remember that Rapidshare threw everyone else to the dogs.
E
Re:Rapidshare HAS NOW MADE THEMSELVES the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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hear, hear
Well, partially anyway. It wouldn't exactly 'solve' the problem, would it?
People commit murders despite cops chasing after them, jailing some of them, and even killing a few of them every once in a while. "Eliminate laws regarding homicide. Problem solved." - but you'd still have murderers. You might even have more murderers if you find that you can legally get away with it (of course you might get the family/friends of the victim going out to kill you, and t
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But what makes Rapidshare so different from say Gmail? You can send a big attachment to a 'public' email, then publish the password and user name to a 'link' site. Google will then perform the same function that Rapidshare does. Or how about Googledocs. What if someone posts a copyrighted work there?
Obligatory "Your post advocates a" checklist (Score:5, Funny)
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative (X) government ( ) market-based (X) finger-pointing (X) political
approach to fighting illegal file-sharing over the Internet. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws.)
(X) There is no centralized authority that will force people to carry out your plan
(X) Your plan is incomplete or contains too much "needs to be further discussed." phrases
(X) Requires a consensus on whether a problem actually exists
(X) Requires a consensus on the definition of where the problem lies
(X) No one can agree on the definition of the problem
(X) Proposal is philosophically inconsistent in mulple places
(X) Computers and frequently people can't tell if a copyrighted item is being hosted legally or not
(X) The item at the end of a link can change over time
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) Existing court decisions protecting the very activity you want to restrict
(X) Scalability
(X) Extreme opportunity for mischief when abused
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Stupidity on the part of some people who do business over the Internet
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) A near-consensus that the activity you want to restrict should not be restricted
(X) Many people download illegally because it is not feasable to obtain content otherwise
(X) If file-sharing ended tomorrow and everything else remained the same, gross revenue wouldn't increase all that much
(X) Is this really the purpose of government?
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
Looking forward to similar posts by others who can do "funny" better than I can.
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You missed two Microsoft-related items in the "fails to account for" list. These are required per the checklist protocol. The following would work:
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) Existing court decisions protecting the very activity you want to restrict
(X) Scalability
(X) Extreme opportunity for mischief when abused
(X) Armies of trojan-riddled Windows boxes connected to the internet
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Stupidity on the part of some people who do business over the Intern
Wrong Solution to the Problem (Score:3)
Kinda makes you wish (Score:2)
that they went after Rapidshare instead of Megaupload.
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Don't worry, they'll get to them.
Bad form (Score:5, Funny)
Only a united front can beat back the MAFIAA. Winston Churchill's statement on appeasement seems apropos here: "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping it will eat him last".
I'm guilty of a crime by pointing at crime? (Score:2)
So if someone is guilty of copyright infringement for posting the web address of a file, are they guilty of murder for posting the address of a known murderer?
Current efforts of law enforcement are already being wasted on pursuing linkers, when they should be focused on the publishers of copyrighted material. The people uploading, and the people garnering revenue from those uploads are the criminals. The file sharing sites know that plenty of people will subscribe so that they can download that material.
Innovation? (Score:2)
A file server you have to pay for? What exactly did rapidshare innovate in their entire existence?
The real battle (Score:4, Interesting)
RapidShare, MegaUpload, Demonoid, etc all provide competition to the distribution monopoly of the RIAA members. That's their real problem. It isn't about piracy. The RIAA member/cartel are more worried about artists deciding that the middlemen are no longer necessary.
As long as the RIAA has their way, it will be impossible to operate a file locker/linking service without being arbitrarily shutdown by the "piracy" boogeyman. That's what they want, and right now they're the ones writing the laws.
Crack down on Hollywood Accounting instead (Score:5, Interesting)
Kill the messenger (Score:2)
Am I the only one who agrees? (Score:2)
Okay I've read all of the reasoning here for why people are against this, but lets think about it: linking is not illegal, file hosting is not illegal, but hosting a website with the explicit purpose of linking to copyrighted material in such a way that it infringes upon the copyright of the content owners? THAT should definitely be illegal. Don't tell me none of you have ever seen a forum or a blog filled with nothing but links to illegally shared copyrighted material. Heck I've seen several that have exp
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but realistically
Realistically? Realistically they can never stop these websites. They can shut down a few at most (and if they're host in other countries, that's be difficult) and hope they don't lose the court cases that take place afterwards, but more will spring up in the meantime.
So, yeah, while changing copyright law is unlikely to happen for a while yet, realistically there's no way to stop copyright infringement.
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What sounds freaking ridiculous is that you're ready to sacrifice the principle of freedom of speech to make some record execs some extra money.
What about the internet itself? (Score:2)
Don't forget that the internet itself is a storage device. Assuming speed-of-light transfer (that's pessimistic) and 10Gbps transfer rates, we have a storage of about 33 kbit per kilometer of cable.
Are they going to forbid the internet?
Re:Darn you Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't that I'm offering fake Rolexes for sale, it's that some law breaker is telling people about it!
Re:Darn you Google! (Score:5, Funny)
OKAY EVERYONE, we just all need to stand in a big circle and each blame the person to your immediate right.
Cops, please follow the chain of blame until you reach the end and find your culprit.
It's the guy who posted the file! No, it's the guy providing hosting for the guy who posted the file! No, it's the blogger who posted the link to the file! No, it's the guy who reblogged the link! No, it's the guy who aggregates blog links! No, it's the guy who wrote a Google custom search which spiders links from those link aggregators! No, it's the guy who figured out that math can be used to obfuscate the "original source" of a data leak! No, it's the guy who came up with a distributed data storage model based on it! No, it's the guy who figured out that the Streisand Effect applies to every piece of published data! No, it's Barbra Streisand herself!
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Sir, I would mod you insightful if I weren't absolutely disgusted by the undercurrent of truth in your words.
As it is, I cannot be positive towards the truth you have unfolded as it would require re-examining my own responsibilities as a potential file-sharer, as well as giving some in-depth thought to more than just a few current business models.
Re:Darn you Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
Quit thinking about business models, and start thinking about models for society and for culture. A world full of piracy may be a shitty place to try and make money as a publisher, but it's a marvelous place to grow up as a child with a love of music or film or literature. No one has ever said that publishing has to be a profitable business in order for a market or a society to thrive, except for publishers.
Re:Darn you Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Certainly one way, but I think we should simply ban anyone using "a href" in their pages.
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Almost impossible to find by itself, but if someone attached a string to it and told you to pull...
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Almost impossible to find? Really? Let me introduce you to this new way of finding things on the internet called a Search Engine.
No, the Rolex example was spot-on. If my non-tech-savvy folks can find illegally shared stuff online in less than fifteen minutes, anyone can do it.
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Try finding a file on RapidShare directly from Google -- you can't. For pirates to use RapidShare to spread warez, they've got to link to it from some external site. There's a whole pile of video streaming sites that are little more than a catalogue of links to RapidShare, MegaUpload (RIP) and the like. Those sites are the ones that are actively spreading the material even though they don't host it themselves. They are the ones that the law should be set up to chase. I've never seen any evidence of Rap
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I've never seen any evidence of RapidShare actively encouraging pirating (unlike MegaUpload, who offered cash incentives to prolific pirates)
This is historical revisionism. RS had a reward program like every other host did, they were just the first to give it up because they were on the legal battlefield first and saw which way the wind was blowing.
Pointing to MU as the exemplar of "pay to upload" hosts is always a clear sign of someone with very little personal filehost experience. MU was one of the choices avoided by uploaders with a focus on making money, because it was way too hard to get paid using them.
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I distinctly remember reading allegedly leaked emails in which MegaUpload staff discussed selecting specific uploaders to offer financial incentives to upload more, and it was alleged that they knew full well that these uploaders were not quite legit. This is what made MegaUpload the easy target for the copyright litigation lobby. NOT that they're sharing profits, but that they (allegedly) were knowingly and actively complicit in the sharing of infringing goods. If this is proven wrong, fine. But the all
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Well, your example is still terrible, of course, because these sites don't present you with the pile at all - just the strings.
Google provides you neither, but you can throw a string into the pile and Google will try to make it hook to whatever item in the pile most closely matches what you want it to hook to. That can be the Rolex, or it can be a picture of a cat - whatever you requested.
There's rarely a string with a picture of a cat at the end of the strings offered by the 'piracy' link sites.
But if you
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Course, I could be wrong. And severely caffiene-lacking...
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Definitely need a constitutional convection and get rid of the damn thing.
I thought that whole 'Bill of Rights' thing was already long dead and buried?
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I thought so too. Didn't we crumple it up and toss it out around the time that we created the TSA, passed the Patriot Act, allowed warrantless tracking of cars, and came up with the idea of free speech zones? Actually, has there ever been a time when we followed the constitution? Listening to it would allow the communists/terrorists to win, so only a communist/terrorist enabler would do so...
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Under crack house laws, if someone sells drugs at your event the venue can be confiscated. It happened to Camp Zoe.