Posted on 07/30/2002 11:27:23 AM PDT by weegee
The hackers are vigilantes, acting lawlessly against a criminal enterprise who has bought off a few politicians.
Let me say this: I do not steal copyrighted material, ever. I even pay for shareware.
But "Protecting Property" by criminal behaviour, JUST BECAUSE one bribes a politician to change a "law", is no more "legal" than using Deadly Force on someone who leaves a Watchtower in the front door, as "protecting Property".
If I am ever interested in looking into a peer-to-peer network, and am attacked for it, there is not much limit to how I might respond, because it will be an Act of War as far as I am concerned.
Many of us have had it with Hollyweird and the so-called "Entertainment Industry", anyway.
As someone else here has already said, all this was simply was a warning shot. If the RIAA and the MPAA keep headed down the path they've started on, they'll end up with a full fledged cyber war on their hands.
And my money will be on the hackers.
Indeed. To continue my line of argument, someone who has a problem with burglars may take various legitimate steps in self-defense -- but if he sends hired goons to harass everyone in the neighborhood looking for stolen property, the community will, quite reasonably, withhold any help they would have otherwise offered (and may go so far as to help the burglars).
Heck, that ain't the half of it. From now on, half (if not more) of actual cyber-attacks will be seeded with bogus clues indicating that they came from the RIAA. This gets particularly amusing if the attack target is somebody like an al-Qaeda cell.
Really, Hilary Rosen's parents ought to have taught her not to play with fire.
I am sick of posting the links again and again, so if you are interested in reading 2 articles which will shed light on this, so you will have a basic understanding of what the hell you're talking about, search for
THE PROBLEM WITH MUSIC - by Steve Albini
COURTNEY LOVE DOES THE MATH - by Courtney Love
these can be found by pasting them into GOOGLE or YAHOO!
ASCAP demonized "payola" because the Rock & Roll "fad" meant that they didn't have any hits on the charts. That ASCAP refused to record rock & roll artists and BMI did had little meaning for the old fogies at ASCAP.
Some DJs (including Alan Freed) got co-writer credits on hit songs. The payoff that keeps paying. ON the major labels, the artist's only avenues for cash are the album sales and personal appearances.
Many small labels are actually subsidiaries of Warner Brothers or Sony but there are still some indies out there.
An artist needs to be on a big enough label to get in the stores to make any real money otherwise the receipts will all need to come at the concerts. But selling more albums doesn't necessarily mean more dollars as the cut becomes smaller.
I have an interview with Frank Zappa and he says that no one has ever gone to the recording industry with an accountant and come out empty handed; there are always receipts that weren't paid to the artist.
One of industry's recent scams has been to require "protection money" from bars that play the television set. The argument is that the tv may air a commercial (think GAP, Target, or Burger King) and it contains an ASCAP song. It doesn't matter to the toughs that the ad agency has paid for the use of the song or that the tv broadcast is an antenna received signal, they want the establishment to cough up dough. Only there is no record of what songs the bar played or who the royalty owners are. Money collected that can never be paid out.
How much longer will it be until you are assessed a fee for watching tv at home or even playing CDs at your Christmas party in your home?
ASCAP and BMI collect their dollars from bars with a "protection fee" sticker that indicates they already cough up dollars regularly. It also protects live music venues when the artist onstage plays a "cover" song (again that money will never get back to the author of the song).
Ever see a jukebox with non-ASCAP/BMI songs? Those artists have no representation so their cut of the jukebox revenue is not paid (many of my friends' bands feel that the promotion they get by being in the box exceeds the money they would be collecting). Jukeboxes at least keep a tally of the popular songs played (I don't know if the count of all the songs is mainted though).
That's precisely what it was. But, I'm sure that plenty of people are asking why they should even care? What difference does it make if industry geeks and file swapping geeks have a DoS war? The disinterested internet user should be concerned because these network pissing contests tie up bandwidth.
Let's go back to the author's traffic jam analogy. The internet isn't all that different in appearance from the L.A. freeway system. In L.A., several freeways parallel each other. For instance, if the San Bernadino freeway is jammed, there is always the Foothill or Pomona freeways. But what happens to those routes when the 10 is screwed up? They get jammed, of course.
The same thing will happen on the 'net. If Geek A is having a willie-waving contest with Record Company B, then traffic that would have used the bandwidth nearby B's provider has to be shunted someplace else. If you are unfortunate enough to live near one of A's zombies (A hijacked machine used in a DoS attack), then B's counter-attacks will also lock you out of the network. The converse is true of B is attacking a file swapping network. Should you be physically near a target machine, the DoS attack will chew up the bandwidth you were planning to use.
Sounds wonderful, huh? And it's your Government that's sponsoring one side in the pissing contest.
The bill from Howard Berman (D-Warner Bros.) makes one side's activities perfectly legal. No, stealing music and other copyrighted material isn't OK. But neither is a Government sponsored foodfight over the internet. Yes, the recording industry has the right to protect its property, but not at the expense of disinterested third parties. This bill is wrong because it will prevent innocent internet users from accessing the network. This is like allowing banks to foil robberies by placing claymore mines in front of their doors. Yeah... It would work, but...
The technology has leapfrogged the industry a number of times.
Sheet music sellers and organ grinders had the original monopoly on music royalties. Music publishers would pay to have perfomers sing their songs on the vaudeville stage. When they were run out of the backstage area, they paid audience member "plants" to sing along with the performer onstage. They also payed plants to sing their songs at the corner bar.
When recorded sound came along, the Supreme Court ruled that the recording artist did not need to pay the songwriter for the recording. The industry intervened.
When radio came along there were live music programs but when DJs started to play records, live bands claimed that they would be put out of work. The Supreme Court ruled that radio stations did not need to pay anyone for playing records. The industry intervened.
And on it goes...
You are hereby forgiven for not being aware that the RIAA is currently lobbying Congress for the right to use exactly this sort of technique - felony hacking - against the computers of anyone it suspects of file trading. What goes around on a TCP/IP network tends to come around - in milliseconds.
This to me is a no brainer, why can't geeks and nerds understand this? It's the same thing as walking into a record store--or any store--and walking out with armfulls or merchandise. It's against the law, plain and simple. Duh.
I'm aware of it and I can't blame 'em. They're merely trying to protect their interests. I'm not saying it's right but they have every right to protect their property, that' all they're trying to do.
Much like when the film industry trotted out destitute actors and screenwriters to get the copyright on many works extended retroactively. This is why Ted Turner's company now owns It's A Wonderful Life even though RKO let it lapse into the public domain decades ago. Apart from a few rare circumstances the cast and crew did work for hire and won't see a dime from a renewed copyright release.
And don't think that Ted Turner is any kind of humanitatian. His company has released a pirated version (and bastardized/copyrighted colorized version) of Night Of The Living Dead which isn't even public domain (although common misconception is that it is).
Boo Hoo. Corporate America only stole billions and millions this week instead of billions and billions. That growth curve has to level off some time.
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