Hatch favors destroying computers of 'illegal downloaders'

[Valis]

WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.

Hatch Takes Aim at Illegal Downloading (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030617/ap_on_hi_te/downloading_music)

[Angel_Mapper]

Can I invent a device to remotely stab him in the face? :scratch:

[radio667]

I am a cd buyer i have never down loaded music before..and i think Hatch's idea is wrong . I think a better way to stop people from DLing ( without destorying anybody's computer ) is by doing what they did to the Matrix soundtrack and Metallica 's newest -they put extra stuff in the cds : like "making of " or "in the studio" videos , hidden tracks , rare remixes , and in Metallica's case a whole dvd of them testing out the new songs live :D PRICELESS !!- this makes buying the cd that much more special then downloading just the songs .

[ShirleyFT]

The music industry hired some peeps to write hacks about a year ago. The virus'/worms were all ready to go 2 months ago. The industry pulled back after their lawyers told them they'd get their a$$es sued off so now they're trying to get legal permission to release the bugs.

If a law goes through allowing them to infect the internet then anybody who hacks or releases virus' can use the same defense in the courtroom - "It was to protect my interests".

Also, what happens if they infect the computers of people who don't dl music. They'll have a class action lawsuit on their hands that would make the CD price hiking lawsuit look like nothing.

Kerr predicted it was "extremely unlikely" for Congress to approve a hacking exemption for copyright owners, partly because of risks of collateral damage when innocent users might be wrongly targeted.

"It wouldn't work," Kerr said. "There's no way of limiting the damage."

They want to play that game fine. Start hitting the industry with a barage of lawsuits, everything from destroying innocent computers to media payola to illegal monopolies.

BTW, there's a good chance there are sleepers on any CDs you LEGALLY purchased in the last year. And digital watermarks on every track.

[radio667]

Originally posted by ShirleyFT


BTW, there's a good chance there are sleepers on any CDs you LEGALLY purchased in the last year. And digital watermarks on every track. Yikes - Big Brother is listening :( !!

[1_LoSt_TaLiBaN]

yeah I was listenin to this discussion on the radio on the way to work this morning


let the Cyber Jihad Begin!!!!:sour:

[Valis]

Personally, I find it pretty easy to get anything I want. If you have an hour or so to spare and know where to look anything can be yours. Yet oddly enough even though I am 'armed' with this knowledge I have never run napster or Kazaa/gnutella/etc personally. Plus there's the fact that it might actually BE anything, and not what you want. Or it might be incomplete, or a horrible quality rip off someone's old hifi through a cheap ribbon microfon.


I own over 400 cd's and 3000 records (mostly dance/dnb singles and lps). I also have cd books full of tracks sent to me by dance/dnb artists, and mixes from djs who are friends. In addition, I even write my own music and have various bits and versions of that floating about my internal network.


While I will admit there are songs on my harddrive that are technically 'copyrighted' and I didn't 'purchase' them, the reality is that it comprises less than 1-2% of my music collection, and sits in a default folder where I gather them from people sending them through irc/aim/etc, never listen to 80% of that and have to remind myself constantly to delete it. Why? They want to expose me to new artists and music, something that I feel 'people' do rather well, but current music 'industry' seems to only do well on a lowest common denominator level.


So I have a bevy of 'grey' area contraband floating about my machines. How are we to differentiate between the varying shades so we can TARGET AND ELIMINATE IT? Now that analog tapes & vhs has given way to 'ILLEGAL FILES' (Fair Use???) that are generally given to me to expose me to new music (fair use??) and music which is given to me by artists so I can hear their music specifically (fair use?). What about my own music? Must I prove ownership of that too if I choose to register it?


Fact: More than half of my cd collection and 75% of my vinyl collection has been purchased since 1997 when I first got dsl access.


Its unfortunate that I have to still purchase most of my music on vinyl and cd in order to be able to 'legally' have it in a more portable digital format. While I actually have a use for the physical format, there haven't really been ANY alternatives digitally that weren't completely restrictive and not very portable, outside of 1 that I shall mention in a moment. And now, for even my particular case Final Scratch and similar programs would allow me to dispense entirely with the 'harder' formats.


Unfortunately once a lot of money has been invested in infrastructure, companies are reluctant to let go of that infrastructure for an unstable and hard to predict future. What they fail to recognize is that the 1970's was the biggest boom the music industry has seen. Aside from that fact that the analog tape debuted in this time period and through bootlegs and 'mix tapes' new forms of music have spread around the globe expanding markets incredibly. The fear of the analog tape has given way to fear of digital tape, and yet the rest of their system is still crunching along on 1970's time: releasing a limited number of 'radio' (3rd party 'bribes') and 1980's 'video' (expensive productions to fatten hollywood more) singles into the market designed to be sold by blanket marketing at great expense and across the face of the 'media' landscape. Where are the huge internet media outlets?

www.mtv.com isn't nearly the advance that the original MTv was (and still would be were it not overrun by 'reality').

www.shoutcast.com certainly gave it a great run, but its now crippled by copyright to the point where it requires licensing & infrastructure so equivalent to Radio that the selection is now almost the same compared to the plethora of large & small streams that were available just a little over a year ago.

www.riaa.com would like to remind you that if you have any illegal music YOU ARE A CRIMINAL.


The real problem with the modern music industry, in my opinion, is that our tastes have multiplied and fractured into a million tiny subcorners of the collective 'genre' landscape. Traditional vertical markets geared to pumping out 'hard formats' are much easier to produce in massive lots and distribute than just 2 copies of something a particular artist has done. And yet distributing the digital form itself addresses this concern. While a good online database would certainly be larger than the current Billboard Top 40 that you'll find in your local Sam Goody, this is something that modern fast databases & servers are built to handle with aplomb. Having to send out 300 copies or 1 copy is no different from the perspective of the original file (unlike with harder formats based IRL). Its simply a matter of a business plan built around overall storage capacity and bandwidth keeping up with the amount of music available and the demand for it. Make all that available in a format that's easier to use than most p2p apps (and there are HUGE problems with p2p, fakes dupes mislabelled files, incompletes etc etc etc) and cheap enough that I can purchase music without thinking about it. What do you think would happen?


There is light here however. In the computer industry they are really not that far from Microsoft's own tactics (and yes I can justify this). And yet Apple has come remarkably close to offering a service like the one that I outlined. I can only hope that the market follows and market dynamics take hold to bring the rest of the industry to compete online.

[1_LoSt_TaLiBaN]

ummmmmmm ...................stick it to the man?:dunno:

[TheNarcissus]

Originally posted by radio667
I am a cd buyer i have never down loaded music before..and i think Hatch's idea is wrong . I think a better way to stop people from DLing ( without destorying anybody's computer ) is by doing what they did to the Matrix soundtrack and Metallica 's newest -they put extra stuff in the cds : like "making of " or "in the studio" videos , hidden tracks , rare remixes , and in Metallica's case a whole dvd of them testing out the new songs live :D PRICELESS !!- this makes buying the cd that much more special then downloading just the songs .

Dont work...they have sweet programs that work. I dont trade music, never will. I respect MetallicA and what they have done for Metal so I was a supported with Naptser, because MEtallicaA was just used as a scapegoat while the record companies were the true pushers of it. Kind of funny how DR. Dre and Eminem were HUGE against Napster too but they were never mentioned...oh thats right they were "cool" at the time and the record companies and MTV didnt want to lose the buisness.

But Nero can burn the disc and tracks..and another program (wont mention cause it is GREAT and popular and dont want it deleted by nasty record companies...PM me) can rip into OGG, MP3s, and any other.

All that Macrovision type crap on there is not allow current O/Ss that only support digital types of formatting now (Winamp included). Older O/Ss like pre-98 SE has the analog CD player that will.

But I have the program cause I like listening to my MP3s while gaming. And other things. There are more people like me that dont do illegal crap than the ones that do. But I guess they ruin it for us.:angst:

[1_LoSt_TaLiBaN]

I dont, I just steal music off kazaa....... cause I see all these "artists" blowin their money on cars, drugs, booze and hookers..... and I figure with all the money I save by rippin them off .... I can do that **** too!:rockon:

[ShirleyFT]

Hatch is a software pirate.

http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59305,00.html

[Switch]

LOL

Hypocrisy still our best ally in the war against tyranny? :p

[Airlea]

How ironic is it for me to stumble across this thread while I'm dl'ing music?

interesting enough is that I'm downloading a couple of songs from a tape I played all the time a few years ago. I've got the tape (bought it) and I'm downloading some of the songs to my computer so I can listen to them (don't have a tape player anymore)... so technically, I'm labelled as a criminal... aren't I?

Even though I already have their music on an awesome album and I'm downloading the exact songs from the album, am I stealing? :scratch:

~Airlea~ Shouldn't be thinking this late.

[Valis]

Unfortunately if you didn't repurchase the 'missing' items from a legitimate source you are technically 'stealing'.

And, you're not even safe now that the RIAA Plans Lawsuits Against File Traders (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30875-2003Jun25.html) (washington post)

And you think its just the big bad boys out there?

"The RIAA said it expected to file "at least several hundred lawsuits" within eight to 10 weeks but will continue to file lawsuits afterward on a regular basis. " - Yahoo News (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030625/ap_en_mu/downloading_music_4)

[1_LoSt_TaLiBaN]

Originally posted by Valis
Unfortunately if you didn't repurchase the 'missing' items from a legitimate source you are technically 'stealing'.

And, you're not even safe now that the RIAA Plans Lawsuits Against File Traders (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30875-2003Jun25.html) (washington post)

And you think its just the big bad boys out there?

"The RIAA said it expected to file "at least several hundred lawsuits" within eight to 10 weeks but will continue to file lawsuits afterward on a regular basis. " - Yahoo News (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030625/ap_en_mu/downloading_music_4)

yeah but they'll never take me alive:p

besides last time I logged onto kazaa how many users were there..... yeah good luck dumb f$%ks...... they cant arrest us all:rockon:

[Airlea]

Originally posted by Valis
And, you're not even safe now that the RIAA Plans Lawsuits Against File Traders (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30875-2003Jun25.html) (washington post)

"The RIAA said it expected to file "at least several hundred lawsuits" within eight to 10 weeks but will continue to file lawsuits afterward on a regular basis. " - Yahoo News (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030625/ap_en_mu/downloading_music_4)

Ehh... I'm in Canada; They pretty much just legalized pot. I don't think one or two music files is going to bring me trouble. I hope... :angst:


EDIT: "Record companies say file sharing is to blame for more than a billion dollars in lost CD sales, as well as millions in shrinking profits." This was in that washington post article. Canada has already implemented a "tax" on blank media. Currently, these are the "levies" on blank media:

"(a) 29¢ for each audio cassette of 40 minutes or more in length;

(b) 21¢ for each CD-R or CD-RW;

(c) 77¢ for each CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio or MiniDisc."

http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/news/interimcopy-e.html

So, up here in BC not only do we have two taxes totalling 14.5% on these items, but we also have the media tax. Bites the big one, but I can understand where they're coming from.

~Airlea~Still prefer's buying cd's.