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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 154 responses total. |
other
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response 39 of 154:
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Apr 14 16:46 UTC 2003 |
I hope all his colleagues follow suit, until there is not a domestic producer
of quality products left, if that's what it takes to drive home the utter
idiocy of this kind of legislation.
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jep
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response 40 of 154:
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Apr 14 17:21 UTC 2003 |
resp:38: It looks like posturing to me.
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jmsaul
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response 41 of 154:
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Apr 15 17:56 UTC 2003 |
It may be in part -- he's one of Peter Honeyman's grad students, and they're
all very aware of the political issues -- but he's got a genuine point behind
it. The Michigan "Super DMCA" is way, way too broad. It needs to be
drastically limited, or knocked down.
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gull
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response 42 of 154:
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Apr 15 17:59 UTC 2003 |
And given the big money at stake in some of these cases, I wouldn't risk it
either.
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jep
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response 43 of 154:
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Apr 18 04:08 UTC 2003 |
I agree the law is horrid. I wouldn't think there's much chance it'll
survive a court challenge. Pass on the chance to make political
comments... is there really any chance this law is going to be used in
any way at all?
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jep
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response 44 of 154:
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Apr 18 04:09 UTC 2003 |
(I have blithely re-connected my home network, and am not worried at
all that I'll be prosecuted for doing so.)
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mcnally
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response 45 of 154:
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Apr 18 05:37 UTC 2003 |
I agree that the law is a bad one, but I'm not particularly convinced
that it will be struck down.
But then I'm generally dismayed by the "sure it sucks, but it'll never
make it past the courts" attitude that many have when deciding what to
do about these laws. Putting the responsibility on the courts, rather
than the legislature, give grandstanding legislators a free pass even
when the pass profoundly consumer-unfriendly laws. Do I hope the courts
will overturn stuff like this? Of course I do, but it should *never*
have been passed in the first place and it's important to remember that
when you vote..
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polygon
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response 46 of 154:
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Apr 18 06:58 UTC 2003 |
Repeat after me: "Just because it's a bad idea doesn't mean it's
unconstitutional."
Strongly, strongly agreed with #45.
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other
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response 47 of 154:
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Apr 18 11:00 UTC 2003 |
You're preaching to the choir.
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gull
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response 48 of 154:
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Apr 18 13:31 UTC 2003 |
I don't think it's likely to be used on its own. I could easily imagine
it being used as a threat to make people cooperate with investigations,
or to extract deals, though.
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orinoco
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response 49 of 154:
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Apr 20 02:57 UTC 2003 |
Re#40: It doesn't seem like posturing to me, quite; it just seems like a very
easy and mostly meaningless gesture. Judging from the article, he's just
moved some files from one server to another.
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dbratman
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response 50 of 154:
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Apr 21 07:30 UTC 2003 |
Good review currently on Salon, of Menn's book on Napster, arguing that
internal executive incompetence, more than anything else, brought
Napster low.
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gull
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response 51 of 154:
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Apr 21 15:36 UTC 2003 |
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30337.html
The U.S. Department of Justice has come in on the RIAA's side in their
case against Verizon.
"RIAA lawyers are arguing that a simple subpoena obtained from a court
clerk, which any fool can file against anyone suspected of copyright
violation, should afford adequate protection of due process, as the
dreaded Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides.
"A district court ruled in favor of the RIAA in January; Verizon
appealed the decision, and asks that the suspect's name not be revealed
until the matter is decided. The RIAA, on the other hand, would like to
get on with the business of persecuting the alleged malefactor as soon
as possible.
"Raising the Constitutional issues gave the civil-rights fanatics in
Ashcroft's DoJ an opportunity to weigh in. They argue that due process
is indeed safe, for they can find nothing in the Constitution expressly
forbidding searches and seizures on the basis of quick-and-dirty,
self-service subpoenas."
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krj
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response 52 of 154:
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Apr 28 04:55 UTC 2003 |
Widely reported: The Federal trial court judge has thrown out "most"
of the RIAA and MPAA lawsuit against Streamcast, the parent of Morpheus,
and Grokster. In gross oversimplification, the judge compared these
file swapping programs to VCRs and applied the Betamax precedent, which
held that a technology could not be banned if it had substantial
non-infringing uses. This is probably the biggest loss the copyright
industry has had, in the USA, in the file-swapping wars.
The judge did leave the way clear for the copyright industry to pursue
infringement claims against individual users of these systems.
Here's one story from Cnet, and most news sources on the net have
similar stories.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-998363.html?tag=fd_lede1_hed
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krj
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response 53 of 154:
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May 1 18:56 UTC 2003 |
The RIAA's latest Napster lawsuit is against the venture capitalistss
who funded Napster.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-04-30-lawsuit-venture-capitalists_x.
htm
"The music industry's latest legal assault would push the boundaries of
blame by holding investors liable for the actions of a company and its
management.... If the music labels prevail, 'it could destroy the
whole venture capital industry,' said J. William Gurley, a general
partner at Benchmark Capital in Menlo Park."
The idea that an investor's losses are limited to the amount of the
investment is pretty fundamental to the working of western-style
capitalism. The record industry's attack on this bedrock principle
should produce some interesting reactions. In this case, the
record industry is asking for the statutory $150,000 per song, so
the damages would likely exceed the $95 billion sought in the
Michigan Tech case -- possibly by orders of magnitude.
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mdw
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response 54 of 154:
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May 1 23:32 UTC 2003 |
Well, they might be able to do this if they can show the investors
"knowingly" invested in a criminal enterprise. But I think RIAA is
going to work itself down to the NRA level of credibility if they pursue
such a case. I suppose they still have a ways to go; the "Moral
Majority" is definitely an even lower tier.
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jazz
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response 55 of 154:
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May 2 02:42 UTC 2003 |
Wait. Even if they do, that means Bush can be sued for his Enron
investments ... awesome. Okay, well, I know that wouldn't really work out,
but it's a great thought.
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gull
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response 56 of 154:
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May 2 13:54 UTC 2003 |
According to this story: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30522.html
the RIAA has offered a settlement in the college student cases. The tab
comes to $12,000 for one of the students, $15,000 for two of them, and
$17,500 for the last. The money would be paid in installments over the
next three years. It wasn't entirely clear to me from the story whether
the settlement had been accepted or not, but given the fines that
*could* be imposed on the students if they lose their cases I imagine
they'll probably take it.
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orinoco
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response 57 of 154:
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May 2 16:57 UTC 2003 |
This morning's NY Times made it sound like the students had accepted the
settlement.
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goose
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response 58 of 154:
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May 2 18:30 UTC 2003 |
That's too bad.
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krj
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response 59 of 154:
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May 4 17:48 UTC 2003 |
The New York Times carries an incindiary article in Sunday's editions:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/business/04MUSI.html
"Software Bullet Is Sought to Kill Musical Piracy"
Or, as Slashdot titled it: "RIAA Plans Cyberwar Effort"
"Some of the world's biggest record companies, facing rampant
online piracy, are quietly financing the development and testing
of software programs that would sabotage the computer and
Internet connections of people who download pirated music, according
to industry executives."
...
"The covert campaign, parts of which may never be carried out because
they could be illegal under state and federal wiretap laws, is being
developed and tested by a cadre of small technology companies, the
executives said."
((Isn't the planning itself a criminal conspiracy?))
Techniques discussed include forcing PCs to lock themselves, deleting
user files, and denial-of-service network attacks.
The story is probably a leak from a record industry source who thinks
this program is a really, really bad idea.
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jor
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response 60 of 154:
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May 4 20:58 UTC 2003 |
but velly velly interesting
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jep
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response 61 of 154:
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May 6 00:10 UTC 2003 |
I think it was an article about KaZaa, a month ago, which got me to try
it. Pretty interesting WWW site, there. I think I can find just about
anything I'd want. Any software package (including operating systems),
any song (except they didn't have any "Katie Geddes and the Usual
Suspects" when I looked); I haven't looked for movies but I imagine
they're out there, too. I really hadn't realized how easy it is to
pirate stuff.
KaZaa gives you points for letting other people download stuff from
your computer. Is that how the kids at those colleges got into
trouble, or were they actively going out and selling pirated stuff?
The articles I've seen have been very vague about what they did.
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jep
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response 62 of 154:
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May 6 00:14 UTC 2003 |
Hah!
The student at MTU, Joe Nievelt, admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to
pay $12,000 anyway.
So, to find out what he did, I googled his name. The #1 hit:
http://www.admin.mtu.edu/urel/breaking/2002/codewin.html
HOUGHTON--Michigan Tech undergraduate Joe Nievelt finished in the money
last weekend at the 2002 Sun Microsystems and TopCoder Collegiate
Challenge, held April 19-20 at MIT.
The computer science sophomore took home $5,000 of the $150,000 purse
for his fourth-place finish in his first visit to the national computer-
code-writing contest. The competition began in February, with hundreds
of college contestants participating at the regional level.
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jep
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response 63 of 154:
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May 6 00:15 UTC 2003 |
According to Wired:
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,58351,00.html
The students allegedly set up sites using the programs Flatlan, Phynd
or Direct Connect, that, like the now-defunct Napster, indexed and
executed searches for copyrighted songs on the closed networks. The
RIAA charges that one network operator distributed 27,000 music files,
while the other three students ran networks offering 500,000 music
files, 650,000 files and over 1 million files.
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