RIAA to DoS Pirates? 616
_Chainsaw sent an article running at ZD that talks about the RIAAs latest plan to stop pirates: " We'll smother song swappers " is the quote, but it basically amounts to a Denial of Service. Way to go guys! Brilliant strategy!
Cool... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Cool... (Score:2, Funny)
server for a server
just link the offending site to an article on slashdot
DoS proxy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:DoS proxy (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of these could probably eat up the RIAA machine resources. A RIAA tarpit.
--knick
Dateline: 2006 - News Flash From the FUTURE! (Score:5, Funny)
Here in the world of the future, 94% of all bandwidth is taken up by these three sets: machines falsely claiming to have resources, other machines falsely claiming to want same, and those two sets of machines pretending to transfer data very very slowly.
Re:DoS proxy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:DoS proxy (Score:5, Funny)
Riaa to fight hackers on own terms... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Riaa to fight hackers on own terms... (Score:5, Funny)
The new home page for the RIAA... (Score:5, Funny)
Has someone been pirating you're music and putting it on the web? We understand how you feel. Because of that big bad idea called liberty, you can't stop it, can you? Well enter the IP address of the offending site, and we'll blow them to smithereens!
FAQ:
1. Isn't DoS illegal?
Not any more. We're the good guys, so it's ok.
2. Will you DoS any server that's entered on this page?
Discrimination is wrong. Always. You name it, we bomb it.
3. I hate my brother. Can you beat him up?
Watch for version 2.
No, this is scary, not funny. I mean that. (Score:3, Insightful)
Up until now the RIAA's sole method of business has been suing people and trying to get fascist legislation passed, and nothing else. As I'm sure we all know, the massive civil disobedience of file sharing doesn't bat an eye at the law, in fact kind of snickers at it, so that hasn't worked.
What this means is, the RIAA is finally getting with the program. They're finally employing a technological solution to a technological problem. Some might claim they already had with SDMI but that was a joke, plus it wasn't aimed at going after the file sharers. Now, with this plan, even though there are ways around it, it looks like it could be semi-successful, especially if their online music services are attractive enough. Picture: J Random Musiclover, uses WinMX and KaZaA, until they bog down terribly slowly. He doesn't know it's the RIAA attacking, and he should "damn the man" and keep on truckin'. He just thinks they've become lame and it's time to move on. And then he sees one of the RIAA offerings, and if they're smart enough to finally go for some sort of cheap subscription or micropayment, he might very well be sold.
And I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. The RIAA has been an ogre in the past, but if it goes the way of micropayments and accepts the fact of filesharing (and that it will never, never, never go away), then perhaps the RIAA will find itself able to move into the future as, if not a friend, then at least an ally of humanity. I would hope so. Otherwise, let's destroy the fuckers.
But let's give them a little respect, because they're finally starting to get with the program.
-Kasreyn
Wont work (Score:2, Interesting)
Could they themselves could be hunted for performing terrorist actions under terrorism laws?
Arrest them (Score:4, Insightful)
"Even when I say nothing it's a beautiful use of negative space."
- Indelible, "Fire In Which You Burn"
Re:Arrest them (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think there is a legal way to do what they are describing.
I think this might be yet another scare tactic.
Re:Arrest them (Score:5, Funny)
Tim
Re:Arrest them (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh wait! That's EXACTLY why they're doing it!
Re:Arrest them (Score:3, Informative)
Pretty much says it all.
Just goes to show (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we need to keep a very close eye on the RIAA right now. We (/. users) have the same capabilities as the US govt because of our large distributed nature. I advocate the foundation of a group to watch the RIAA. Email me if you think it's a good idea.
Oh, and check out the RIAA-watching stuff already on http://www.cryptome.org.
Mattcelt out
Re:Just goes to show (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just goes to show (Score:2)
Re:Civil Liberties? (Score:3, Insightful)
Being terrorized and attacked due to their determination of me holding "copyrighted meterial" is violating my civil liberties.
A) They cannot determine with certainty that I actually performed any illegal action, due to the uncertainty that the song/whatever is actually copyrighted, and also due to the fact it is not necessarily illegal to export copyrighted meterial, by accident/etc.
B) If whenever you illegally throw a piece of paper in the street, or whatever, I break into your house and mess it up, I'm breaking your civil liberties. The broken civil liberties are NOT of throwing papers in the street.
If the RIAA take the law into their own hands, and cannot be stopped legally, maybe citizens should take the law into their own hands, and fight back too.
Re:Civil Liberties? (Score:5, Insightful)
- From a mathematical point of view, if Congress is free to extend the term of copyright at will, then by definition that copyright term is not "limited".
- From an operational point of view, a copyright term that has been extended so that
during my adult entire lifetime, past, present, and future, no work has had nor will have its copyright expire is operationally indistinguishable from an unlimited one (for no experiment I can perform can make the distinction).
- From a human point of view, a copyright term that lasts for multiple human lifetimes is not limited in any meaningful sense.
In the United States, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. I say that the fundamental lawbreakers are the RIAA and their cronies in Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Courts.Escalation! (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmm.. (Score:3, Funny)
I always thought... (Score:2, Redundant)
Well, good! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm glad to see internet battles being fought on internet terms. Technological problems need technological solutions (ie, MAPS RBL but NOT spam legislation). Now, it's up to you to decide whether file sharing / piracy is a "problem", but if they do try this, then it's likely that we will see improved technology to deal with it (freenet?).
Bring it on, I say!
Seems somewhat easy to overcome (Score:5, Insightful)
The scarier RIAA attempt IMO is their attempt to make themselves exempt from liability if they damage a system while looking for copyright. The wording alone allowing for immunity to any prosecution provided that the break-in was by a copyright holder (in the article) appears so utterly vague as to be used as a carte blanche for anyone to break into a system (Honestly, your honor, I was trying to make sure that they weren't pirating a Star Trek TNG Fanfic that I wrote nine years ago!). What's scarier is the quotes suggesting that not only have they considered it legal in the past, but they have already been engaging in such activity.
Re:Seems somewhat easy to overcome (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that this is scary but what if it bit them in the ass? What if Microsoft (as a Copyright holder of Windows) broke into the RIAA's systems to ensure that the RIAA didn't have any illegal copies of Windows and inadvertently deleted the data on all of their servers?
Just desserts?
You too can be a copyright holder (Score:3, Interesting)
YOU TOO can become a copyright holder, and YOU TOO can have the right to break into ANY COMPUTER YOU LIKE to look for evidence of copyright infringement and then DO WHAT YOU LIKE TO THAT COMPUTER! Don't worry about actually FINDING PROOF of copyright infringement - once you've wiped their hard disk, how are they going to prove they DIDN'T have a copy of your data?
Sounds too good to be true? Just follow these simple steps:
- Write some half-baked nonsense [slashdot.org] and post it on a well-respected weblog [slashdot.org]. Be sure to include a copyright statement. Hey presto... you're a copyright holder!
- Pick a target computer. Maybe there's a political viewpoint you want to censor, or a business you want to destroy? Perhaps you want to read the personal mail of the head of a recording industry cartel? Or maybe you just want to find out the medical records of a friend or co-worker. These activities would be called "hacking" if they were done by an ordinary person, but remember: you're no ordinary person, you're a copyright holder!
- There's a pretty good chance that someone uses your target computer to browse the web. And there's a fairly good chance that they read the same well-respected weblog [slashdot.org] where you posted your copyrighted material. Well then, there's a chance that those bastards are infringing your copyright! Better break in and find out. They've probably got a copy of your data in their browser cache RIGHT NOW! (By the way, don't worry too much about the definition of "a fairly good chance" - you don't have to waste time with any of that pesky legal stuff like probable cause. You're not a policeman, you're a copyright holder! Or maybe you ARE a policeman. Well that's OK - policemen can be copyright holders too!)
- Hack into the target computer and look for evidence of copyright infringement. Criminals are devious people so you should look everywhere for evidence:
/etc/passwd is a good place to start. If you find any evidence, or even if you don't, wipe the hard drive to prevent any future infringement. This would be criminal vandalism, or even terrorism, if it was done by an ordinary hacker. But you're no ordinary hacker. That's right... you're a copyright holder!
The copyright in this comment belongs to Sony Music Corporation. Copying and distribution in any form, electronic or otherwise, is strictly prohibited and will one day be retroactively punishable by death. You have been warned.And just how long (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And just how long (Score:3, Insightful)
Face it, technophiles are fine with this measure of the RIAA's. It simply won't affect us, but the RIAA, for all their mouthing, doesn't give a damn about us. We're such a small number of people we simply don't matter. It's the Joe Sixpacks they're worried about. If they can make Joe's experience with P2P miserable(and tying up your phone line all night to download a couple of songs will certainly be miserable) then they've done their job. Any action on the part of P2P servant providers to filter these type of connections through a central MAPS-type database would be attacked like all other companies who have had any central architecture to attack have been.
I'm afraid this has a possibility of working in the short term at least. Anyway, everyone knows real pirates use Usenet or IRC.
Steven
Welp, (Score:2, Insightful)
Note to those who will say that I'm a dirty rotten no good pirate: I don't pirate music. I simply buy from indie labels. At least then, I'm sure that the artist gets most of my money.
Re:Welp, (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I think the end result will be to a) create a protocol arms race (if all else fails, there's always encrypted FTP or something like that) and b) move the fileswaps to sneakernet. Or hasn't the RIAA ever heard the maxim "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of CDRs"?
/Brian
Even if legal, it would never work.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah that's a Good Idea(tm). Bring the pirate music industry closer together, then raise prices for the rest of us.
Well duh. It's not a move to combat piracy, it's an excuse to claim 'more pirated works exist than we thought..', and ensure prices stay high, or go up.
Dropping the standards? (Score:4, Funny)
Now they want to be a "script kiddie".
What's next, they'll want to be an MSCE?
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
If this doesn't prove a mentality of being above the laws of "regular people," I have no idea what does.
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Music executive: "I am above the law!"
These people (the RIAA) really think that they are above the law. We need to put pressure on THEM by being in contact with our government representatives and through grassroots movements. The only way to beat them is to turn the public against them.
RIAA - Pursue by any means illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just when did anyone vote for the RIAA?
I wasn't aware that they had dictatorial powers over the Internet. This seems highly illegal, and should be stopped immediately.
I guess it's time to step up and hurt them where it counts. Boycott the music industry.
This is either a) bogus or b) an example of the fascist thinking going on at the RIAA. Somebody really needs to explain the principles of fair use to those people, or maybe we should just stop buying music altogether.
Re:RIAA - Pursue by any means illegal? (Score:2)
that's the thing. i would hope most of us have already done that, and that is what scares the RIAA. we have better, cheaper, easier access to music than they are willing to provide us. and naturally we are choosing these better, cheaper, easier ways of getting to the music. and they have no idea how to battle with that. (cluestick: offer better, cheaper, easier ways of getting to the music, knuckleheads!).
I wish it were possible, but the companies involved in the RIAA have their fingers in so much, you might as well try to boycott public streets driving from NY to LA. electronics, food, transportation, television, etc, etc. The RIAA are getting money from just about everywhere, which is why they can afford to spend big bucks trying to screw their own customers.
-samGood cover for the real K1dd1ez (Score:2)
License to virus (Score:2, Insightful)
It's license to committing a criminal act. People who conduct this sort of activity can be prosecuted.
It's like feeding your neighbor's dog antifreeze when it poops on your lawn. Definitely not the right thing to do, and just another way that the RIAA will piss off the public.
Their resources are finite (Score:5, Interesting)
OR, they can simply DoS the swappers. Unfortunately for them, they are relying on TCP, so they need to disclose their source addresses for the attack to work. And if they do that, we traders can make a database listing all of their IP addresses (kind of like MAPS/ORBS) and block their asses. We will find ways to thwart this approach and we will continue trading.
So, in a nutshell, I am very pleased with their latest strategy. I haven't been so gleeful since they announced copy-protected CDs (which also have done little to discourage swapping).
-CT
Legality of distributed systems. (Score:5, Interesting)
If I as an individual decided to write a client for a distributed system such as Gnutella that took an innordinate amount of bandwidth from users it connected to it'd be considered a bad or malicious client, but not illegal.
All the RIAA is asking for here is to play on the same level as us. I have difficulty counting the number of times I've read posts following an RIAA announcement saying "We'll just crack/hack this/that until their systems can't handle it," and yet the assembled masses get all self righteous as soon as the RIAA suggests they be allowed to do the same.
I liken this struggle to the one surrounding the hacked satellite cards. The legality of hacking those cards has been accepted, so the company fights on a technological level. I find this completely acceptable, and perhaps the best/right reaction to a sitation such as this.
I think we should encourage the RIAA to try to slow down file trading systems, and save the real fight for when they try to pollute our laws with amendments that will affect us far more comprehensively than the availability of the latest Spears track.
Not really. (Score:4, Interesting)
Going by a democratic system, that's two sayings for the Nays, versus one for the Eyes. The Nays have it, by a majority of one vote.
Re:Not really. (Score:2)
Who's better at DoS attacks? (Score:5, Funny)
If you want the best marksmen in the world dead, why would you challenge him to a pistol duel of all things?
-Ted
LOL! RIAA are terrorists! (Not a Troll) (Score:2)
Already a potentially contentious plan, the recording industry inadvertently sparked a further wave of criticism last week with plans to protect its strategy from being undermined by a pending antiterrorism bill.
Ha! Gee, looks like someone clued up and realized this DoS-type of technique would count as "hacking" and leave them open to prosecution under the Anti-terrorism bill [slashdot.org]. Ah... that's just too classic!
Killing Two Birds with One Stone (Score:2)
When the US government going to solve all our problems by dropping RIAA executives and lawyers on the Afghans?
[but, then, most of the Afghans don't deserve that much punishment!]
Conspiracy to commit... (Score:2, Funny)
Then again...maybe not.
Time to write some letters... (Score:2)
The article quotes in reference to the RIAA's last attempt to stop filesharing: "We referred to it as the 'license to virus,'" said one congressional staffer. "It would have given them the incentive to employ lots of hackers trying to figure out how to stop (MusicCity), Morpheus or Audiogalaxy."
So now the RIAA wants a 'license to DoS'. Give me a break.. This is by far more criminal than ripping some MP3s!
Oh yeah, by the way... (Score:2)
Could someone please clarify how this stops short of a DoS in any way??
Re:Oh yeah, by the way... (Score:2)
You can't do anything about a DoS. You can stop this by killing Gnutella/whatever.
Interesting approach. (Score:2)
But, hey, I don't see people making that much of an effort to set up an alternative system, either. If there was a realistic alternative, there wouldn't be an issue, because there wouldn't be an RIAA to create one.
combating privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
my suggestion is that these two strategies have never worked, and will never work, so maybe, just MAYBE they should try something new, something that has a chance to work.
let me explain.
they should look at the reasons piracy exists and see what they can do about them. (1) CDs are too expensive, (2) CDs are usually one or two good songs mixed with a lot of crap, and (3) downloading a song is SOOO much easier than fighting traffic to and from some shopping mall or waiting 3-5 days for shipping.
(1) CDs are too expensive. LOWER THE PRICE OF CDs. Why does it cost 15 bucks for a burnt piece of plastic, which is debatably more valuable than a 50 cent blank piece of plastic? Bring the price down to 9.99 and a large chunk of piracy goes away.
(2) CDs are usually one or two good songs mixed with a lot of crap. I don't really know what to do about this one. How about stop manufacturing boy bands and nurture the real artists out there?
(3) downloading a song is SOOO much easier than fighting traffic to and from some shopping mall or waiting 3-5 days for shipping. Either build great new perfect highways between everyone's house and the mall, or build a store next to everyone's house, or perhaps (please) provide individual songs for download at a VERY reasonable price in a format i can use (a) on my computer, (b) in my RIO, (c) burned to a CD for my car.
Fix it, or watch your empires crumble. You can't fight piracy with technology.
Re:combating privacy (Score:2)
1) You stuff is too expensive, so I don't want it
2) Most of your stuff is crap
3) Therefore, since I don't want to buy what you are offering, and its no good anyway, I'm going to steal it, since its more convienent.
Therefore, the music business should come up with new infrastructure, marketing plans, etc... to gain someone who likely won't be a customer anyway. I mean, even if music is available for sale, people will still steal, becuase its free.
I mean, the wide distribution of porn on the internet for reasonable prices sure hasn't make alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica.* go away, now has it?
Re:combating privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
no, but how much money have porn websites made in the past year? TONS. and alt.* is mostly SPAM and other assorted crap. the porn sites offer much easier access to more and better stuff than alt.*, and they are making a killing.
where exactly did i say i was stealing anything?
-samCompromises like this won't work long-term. (Score:5, Interesting)
All that sounds good, but in the long term there is nothing the music industry can do to solve the problem of piracy without fundamentally changing their business model. Right now it looks like this: 1) Manufacture flashy new act 2) Market the product like it's going out of style 3) Milk it, milk it, milk it 4) When it goes out of style, go to step 1.
The problem is that a model that is so driven by marketing is especially vulnerable to piracy. Why?
The music labels have pretty much stopped telling people to buy their stuff because it's good, but because it's popular, and at some level their customers realize this. People will buy a product because it's the hot thing, but if that is its sole source of appeal, at the end of the day the buyers won't feel obligated to support the people behind it.
If you have an act that's good but undermarketed, MP3-trading will function like free marketing, resulting in increased sales. But if you have an act that's well-marketed but crappy, MP3-trading will function like lost sales, as people say, "Okay, I've been told by Mr. Television that I should have this; well, now I have it."
No one is going to "discover" Limp Bizkit by hearing an MP3. The product is the marketing and vice versa. Similarly, in tend years, that Limp Bizkit CD isn't going to be on the shelves waiting for the next generation of music fans; if you want to make money off it, you have to make money now.
Take a look at the publishing industry. The book world is also driven by marketing, but to a much lesser extent. If you publish a book, you can expect that it will provide revenue independent of the amount of money you spend to hype it. That's because the book industry is actually about selling the content instead of the hype.
Furthermore, the publishing houses have stayed alive by acting as finders and screeners of content. Instead of riding one or two major cash cows, they cast their nets wide, trying to get everything that has some quality. There are tons of great music albums that never get major label release, but there aren't that many great novels out there haven't been published in one form or another. Conversely, I know that anything published by a major house will be better in quality than 90% of what I could get for free.
So why don't the record companies adopt a model like the publishing industry, where they nurture a variety of intrinsically good acts that will provide more modest but longer-lasting and more stable cash flows? Simple: the quality-based model doesn't make nearly as much cash as the marketing-based model.
The fact is that there is no way for the record companies to make a "fair" profit doing what they do now. Nothing less that the survival of their way of doing business is at stake; it's no surprise that they're going down swinging.
Not a normal DOS attack, also easily defeatable (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Run a polecat (Score:2)
Following this idea... if we have songs that seem to be copyrighted
They would have to respect this possibility and react to it... or else they would get some potentialy large lawsuits.
Just an idea....
Speaking of piracy... (Score:2, Offtopic)
IIRC, Napster is pretty much toast.
What's a good place to start to begin tracking down jazz, blues, world music, and seventies/eighties pop?
Re:Speaking of piracy... (Score:2)
Garrett Big G Jacobson and Anthony Gomes come immediatly to mind
Have they started already? (Score:2, Interesting)
How are these people going to make sure that the machines that they are trying to DDOS aren't somebody who just happened to be assigned the same dynamic IP address as somebody they actually targeting?
And for that matter, how are they targeting them? The variety of IP addresses the 'attack' came from was high and seemed to be all private users. Are they doing some sort of 'cache poisoning' to the gnutella database so that all requests for certain files are routed to a single slow dialup or something? So that they can effectively turn every gnutella user into a DDoS zombie machine?
It would certainly explain my logs from last night.
Dangerously vague (Score:2)
If that wording had become law, then anyone would be able to legally DoS anyone, for any reason. That's good if you want a Terrorism bill, bad if you want Anti-Terrorism bill.
Backfire (Score:2)
Heh, 1337 5|R1P7 K1DD135 (Score:2, Funny)
Person A: Let's hack 'em!
Person B: Yeah!
Computer Guy: telnet leet.mp3.trader
Debian GNU/Linux testing/unstable
leet login:
Computer Guy: I r0073d their b0x0r3. I r0x0r!
Person A: Yay! We stopped them!
Person B: Cool!
leet.mp3.trader: PAM_unix: Login timed out. Failure from box.riaa.com logged.
Computer Guy: What does that mean?
~Later that day~
leet.mp3.trader's ISP: Stop hacking our network. The FBI has been notified. Thank you.
Person A: Cool! The FBI's gonna help us do illegal stuff!
Computer Guy: Oh shit.
FBI Agent: All of you are under arrest, please come this way
~Tomorrow~
Person C: Well, our little plan failed! We'll show them! Boys, turn on the dDoS
Oh great. How creative guys
Sheesh (Score:2, Insightful)
Wouldn't This Just Backfire? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok Just Sanity Checking (Score:2)
Humm let me Add (Score:2)
in other news (Score:5, Funny)
RIAA officials will be sending groups of up to 2000 teenagers to any house party, block event, or apartment get-together where so-called "DJs" (i.e., pirates) are illegally performing protected works. By filling the space with RIAA agents, the hackers and pirates can't get in, thus protecting the vital intellectual property from misuse.
Also, the RIAA and MPAA are continuing their plans to merge and become the fourth branch of US government, overseeing the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Especially the judicial branch. Look for the RIAA seal in a courtroom near you! You PIRATE!
Another half-thought-out attempt (Score:2)
how long until someone adds a "download speedlimit" to their program? ie. a user has to be downloading at atleast some-K a second or they get the boot.
for an group with millions at their disposal, this is a pretty weak solution.
_f
RIAA engages in piracy? (Score:2)
What next? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then they tried out misc. tecnhological speed bumps, which all turned out to be trash, and when that was revealed, they tried to extort dr felten. And when he yelled "foul", they somehow managed to backpedal in a way that got felten's suit thrown out of court. bastards.
And now they've evolved into script kiddies. I guess the goal justifies the means. However, they're still as dumb as brick. In the aftermath of September 11., the hawks have tightened things so that hacking is considered terrorism.
Cool. Finally there is no need to go through expensive lawsuits to stunt these goons. All we have to do is wrap up the evidence, and hand them over to the feds.
Extortion, cyberterrorism, sounds like a mob thing to me. Time for a grand jury to put these people away.
One important thing (Score:2)
So, how are they going to define these "certain songs." Think about it: how many bands have played "My Girl" for example? If I have MyGirl.mp3 on my share list, do I get a DoS attack? What if that's an mp3 I actually made using a music production application? How in the world can they accurately say "this person is offering pirated music?" Are we going to be guilty until proven innocent, and at the whims of the RIAA have our sharing shutdown until we justify every song? This will never last, at least I hope it never does.
Does the RIAA have the "Get Smart" team ... (Score:3, Funny)
This plan was deemed only slighty better than the "PC GPS/Abandoned Star
Wars defense laser" and the "Anti-MP3 MP3" plans, the latter failing because
of the obvious development of an Anti-Anti-MP3 MP3.
Position Available (Score:4, Funny)
The RIAA does NOT have that right - they are lying (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that for the RIAA to attempt to hack into someone's internet-connected computer and disable it is clearly illegal under current law:
18 USC 1030(a)(5)(C)
(a) Whoever - (5)(C) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage;
An internet-connected server would appear to be a "Protected computer" under the definition in 18 USC 1030(e)(2)(B)
(e) As used in this section - (2) the term ''protected computer'' means a computer - (B) which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication;"
"Damage" is defined in 18 USC 1030(e)(8)(A):
(e) As used in this section - (8) the term ''damage'' means any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information, that - (A) causes loss aggregating at least $5,000 in value during any 1-year period to one or more individuals;
If the RIAA really thinks that it is legal for them to hack into and disable other people's computers, then why aren't they doing it already? Answer, because they know that it's really
illegal -- if they were to do more then $5,000 in cumulative damage, they could be charged with a felony, but they're hoping that they can fool Congress into making it legal for them to attack and destroy other people's computers by claiming that they currently have that right, and that the antiterrorism bill is going to take that right away from them.
The RIAA appears to have adopted the strategy of making a completely false claim, then taking advantage of the runaway-train-antiterrorism bill to attempt to insert a brand new exemption for themselves, allowing them and only them to practice cyberterrorism under the guise of "protecting their copyrights."
Dirty tricks as usual.
Really bog 'em down (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, you're 31337 & you have already programmed your router to drop their packets, or you've set up an auto-smurfer. Good for you! Back up a second & try this on your Win* box instead:
copy *.exe *.mp3copy *.vxd *.mp3
copy *.dll *.mp3
Just write a short
I think Hillary Rosen will shit live goats the moment her techies tell her that there are suddenly 6.02e23 mp3 files being shared on Morpheus. Didn't Sun Tzu specify a similar strategy centuries ago?
Re:Really bog 'em down (Score:3, Interesting)
"That's not really that many files. You're making a mountain out of a mole, Hill"
Technological solutions (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not follow our own advice and look for a technological solution? It would be an interesting project to combine something like Advogato's trust metric with cryptographic signatures and connection quotas. In such a system, the hosers that are trying to screw things up would quickly end up locked out of most hosts.
The downside of needing someone on the system to "vouch" for you to start would be relatively minor for the overall gains, methinks.
The bigger downside might be the lessening of anonymity on a transfer; if you have to prove who you are before starting a transfer, then there's the potential for someone to put together a client that logs who you are and what you've downloaded. There would have to be a strict seperation between identity information and digital signature...
audio honeypots (Score:4, Informative)
What did I find? Searching for songs from certain artists/labels returned *hundreds* of hits on essentially identical audio files with slight filename changes and incrementally varied byte sizes. Any attempt to download the songs would be successful -- until the server killed the session at precisely 80%.
Then I noticed that *all* of the files were being hosted on three IP's. A quick look showed the IPs in a range belonging to a major commercial hosting operation. Nice. A honeypot of sorts. And of course, they have my home IP (fixed) logged as requesting the same songs over and over until the lightbulb went off over my head.
Oh, well, back to anon-ftp for me...
What about universities (Score:3, Insightful)
My zombies are better than yer zombies.... (Score:3, Insightful)
They RIAA might be able to DoS a few file swappers out there, and knock them off the net for a few days at a time...but they are going to be placing a huge target on themselves for every script kiddie out there with an army of @home windows zombies just waiting for a reason to unleash them.
A script kiddie knocking down the Pressplay or MusicNet servers for even a few hours at a time is going to hurt the RIAA bottom line more than the handful of file-swappers they will be able to DoS off the net.
-jef
DoS attacks on ISPs (Score:4, Interesting)
Our users are dynamically assigned private IP numbers, so we use NAT on our gateway.
As I see it, any kind of DoS attack on one of our users, will effectively be an attack on our gateway
If such an indiscriminate DoS praxis was instigated by the RIAA against us, we would excersise our legal options to retaliate and defend ourself:
Eg. even though such DoS'ing may become legal in the US, it would still be a criminal activity by my countrys laws (Denmark). Since RIAA has presence in Denmark, it may be possible to persecute them.
Also, perhaps such DoS'ing from the US to other countries, may be illegal even by US law, since it is likely to conflict with international law.
And our humble organisation, might just be politically so well connected, that we could make it an EU case. Certainly we could make it a case in our own parlament, since we occasionally negotiate with high level civil servants, regarding various laws for community(?) based ISPs.
A huge amount of all Danish Internet traffic, goes through the so called DIX. So permanent choke points for RIAA IP numbers there, (and on our backbone providers routers), could also be an option.
We would also bitch and complain to RIAAs backbone provider, suggesting that harbouring DoS script kiddies like RIAA, might be a bad buisness idea, that perhaps could mean trouble for the overseas connectivity for the rest of their costumers (filtering on the DIX, RBL-style, peering agreements, perhaps even lawsuits).
In short, if such a law became a reality in the US, I would strongly advise the RIAA, to individually check the national identity of their DoS-targets IP, before commencing any attack.
Well. (Score:4, Insightful)
Can one charge a drug-dealer selling bunk drugs with fraud?
This is a serious question.. is there a statute that makes the laws against misrepresentation not apply if the intended transaction is illegal?
If they put up lots of 'bogus' files.. can we not sue theM?
Personally, I'm happy to see the RIAA go to war with the common folk.
Just a bluff (Score:4, Insightful)
Posted by sphealey:
This technique has been honed to perfection in the last 20 years. Pressure group floats a ridiculous and unbelievable trial balloon. Public outcry ensues. Pressure group "retreats" to a "compromise" position, showing its "reasonableness" to legislators and the courts. The so-called "compromise" position is 120% of what the presssure group wanted in the first place, to give them a little more wiggle room.
I think you can be pretty sure this will be followed by a similar proposal, probably slipped under the radar screen by a pet legislator.
Freenet is immune (Score:4, Insightful)
This will never work on the Freenet. Attempting to do so will cause each node along the request path to store a copy. Attempting this on Freenet will cause the targeted files to be spread more widely, making them MORE available, not less.
Remedial Math! Grade 5 lesson! (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming a bandwidth of 50kb/s avg per user, they're going to need
They're truly grasping at straws.
But you have to give them merit for one thing:
They are finally going after the source of the problem instead of trying to introduce legislation to hurt everyone. Yes yes yes you do hurt some of the indy artists who are legitimately trading online, but you can't deny that well over 90% of online trading through any sort of mp3 sharing service is going to be pirated.
It's a futile attempt, just like all of their other ones, but finally they've gotten their heads out of their asses long enough to come up for air to see that maybe they're headed down the wrong path. The question is to see how far they put them back up once they're done.
RIAA and Gnutella (Score:4, Interesting)
Endless bitching - stop it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Start supporting and frequenting your local bands and musicians. Let them know (while you have their ear) what you think of the larger labels and their tactics. More importantly, find out what the *musicians* think, since not only do they love the music they play, but eventually might like to [GASP!] make a living playing their music! [[insert thunderous silence]]
If it means you go without the next Backstreet Boys [sic] albumn, then so be it. Why not make your own music, then post it to the web for free. Heck, this might even be the predecesor for turning a large portion of the population into the 'artists' they didn't know they were.
Somewhere in a file sharing chat room... (Score:3, Funny)
HotBalls: u got any mixed britney spears tracks?
Bsblvr: i want the new Justin Timerlake solo from the BSB new album!
R7I7AAHaxor: trading MP3's is illegal, u know.
Bsblvr: yeah so what????
BigDisks (3,400 GB of MP3) began sharing.
HotBalls: bigdisk, I missed u! I bet u have the new britney spears mix, huh?
BigDisks: Yes, I do. It's on my third Maxtor 100 gig.
R7I7AAHaxor: Bigdisk, you shall die!
BigDisks: Who is Haxor?
HotBalls: Just one of the lame RIAA goons.
R7I7AAHaxor: I am NOT LAME! I can DoS all of u! I will destroy u cable modems!
Bsblvr: ur gay
R7I7AAHaxor: I AM NOT GAY. I HAPPEN TO WORK FOR THE RIAA AND MP3 TRADING IS ILLEGAL! I HAVE U IP ADDRESS!
BigDisks starts file transfer to HotBalls.
R7I7AAHaxor: I HAVE STARTED DOS ON BIGDISK. I WROTE THE SHELL SCRIPT MYSELF; I AM LEET.
BigDisks exited (ping timeout)
HotBalls: u jerk, u cut my dload off at 53%!
R7I7AAHaxor: I AM MIGHTY RIAA HAXOR I WILL PREVENT ALL MP3! I AM ONLY 14 BUT I CAN KICK YOU, I AM LEET.
Bsblvr: u suck
R7I7AAHaxor: I WILL BE BACK. I HAVE TO STUDY FOR A BIOLOGY TEST TOMORROW, BUT I WILL BE BACK TO STOP ALL OF U FROM TRADING UR MP3s'!
R7I7AAHaxor exited.
BigDisks entered.
BigDisks: Who was that?
Bsblvr: One of the RIAA's employees. He's gone now, he has a biology test tomorrow and has to study for it.
Re:DoS (Score:3, Insightful)
If the RIAA tries to DOS me, they'll be DOS-ing my ISP (a baby bell.)
If the RIAA tries to DOS some college student, they'll be DOS-ing that college.
Likewise, the RIAA is connected to the internet via some ISP, and I don't know of a single ISP that doesn't have a rule/contract clause/etc. against launching DOS attacks (or other forms of network abuse.)
Even if directed at a single IP#, the attack is still interfering with the normal operation of that network to which that IP# belongs.
Apparentally no one told the RIAA that two wrongs do not make a right.
Re:This is not a DOS (Score:2)
/Brian
Re:This is not a DOS (Score:2, Interesting)
-Chuck
Re:This is not a DOS (Score:2, Informative)
It's anything that keeps you from being able to offer your service to the net, hence a "Denial of Service" attack.
Exploiting all the bandwidth of an ftp is certainly a DoS attack if it keeps others from being able to download those files, same as having thousands repeatedly hit a web site to take it down is a DoS.
Typcially DoS's are accomplished through pingfloods and the like, but that's not the only definition.
If I were sysadmin at an ISP... (Score:3, Interesting)
I would start banning IP's and entire Class C's at the edge or backbone level that I knew belonged to record companies or the people who worked for them to distribute this kind of attack^H^H^H^H^H^Htechnology. This is the same kind of tactic that sysadmins use against DOS attacks, but in this case there's likely to be no distribution since there is no way to get around that legally, and no ability to spoof ip's since they are planning to act like they're really downloading a track. They have to negotiate a connection and send ack's back and forth, right?
It's a very simple argument if you look at it from a financial or a resource usage point-of-view. It is in an ISP's best interest to keep as much of its network resources free for its customers. If my customers are subject to frequent DOS attacks, then I may ban certain services, such as Ping or Telnet and refuse those packets at my edge router or on my backbone connection if I have a decent backbone provider.
It's the same deal here. It's in an ISP's best interest to keep the RIAA from using up their network resources as well, because the number one reason people leave an ISP (at least when I worked at one) was a perceived 'slow connection'. If a joe sixpack-type customer knows he's going to get online to find music, and if he has heard from his buddies who got him hooked up in the first place that one ISP is worse than another when it comes to having RIAA related problems, then he's not going to sign up for service with that ISP.
This war of words and technology isn't just confined to the elite circles of geekdom, as most of you know. The RIAA has made a big enough a deal out of it that they're starting to build a Microsoft-like reputation for evil and greed. Joe-sixpack *does* know that the industry wants to keep him from trading music online.
By the same token, even a marginally experienced user is going to be picky about his service when he has better luck running his file-sharing apps with one ISP than a another, and we do know that ISP's are starting to refuse to TOS their users more and more often, just so they don't get negative reputations.
In the long run, this is going to be just another class of people who are routinely denied network access for their actions, via organizations similiar to MAPS RBL or the like. I've already seena few posts by people who plan to 'collect' offending IP's. Again, you can't spoof IP's if you have to send Ack's or do any sort of encyrption negotiation for your attack to work.
A humourous side-effect of what I beleive is going to happen will be the fact that the RIAA companies and 'attack dogs' will by able to claim 'success' because they'll perceive a drop in file-trading because of the network blocks that will no doubt be up hours after this sort of thing gets off the ground.
Good try, Hillary, but you're playing with boys who have been doing this sort of thing for a very long time now. Why don't you try again later.
Re:Yet another good reason to use IP Tables.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Offer a solution (Score:4, Insightful)
There are NO technological methods to distinguish piracy from fair use. In the end, that is a legal distinction, and is based on a number of factors. In fact, quite often, the same, identical act can be either infringement or fair use, based on nothing more then the intent of the person committing the act.
If I record a television show off the air so I can watch it later, when I'm home, that's fair use. If I record the same television show off the air so I can sell the videotape on ebay, that's piracy. There is absolutely no technology that can determine what I'm going to do with that videotape. The idea that technology offers a "solution" to the problem is a fallacy.
The real "problem" is that copyright law is completely out of sync with the reality of how people use, and want to use, copyrighted works. The problem is that copyright holders have grown far too powerful, and have convinced Congress that they, and they alone, are the only "interested party" in matters of copyright, when in fact, the real purpose of copyright is not to protect them, but to serve the public by increasing access to and the availability of creative and useful works.
The copyright industry is struggling to reduce and control access to and to limit the availability of copyrighted works -- the exact opposite of the constitutional purpose of copyright.
The "solution" is for Congress to change the laws to maximize the availability and access to copyrighted works, through such methods as statutory royalties, and eliminating the "right" of copyright holders to control who may use and distribute their work.
The problem is that unlike the recording and motion picture industries, which pay individual Congressmen directly through campaign contributions, the rest of the country -- the citizens at large, pay Congress indirectly through taxes. We've created a system where no one can get elected without selling out to the media corporations, then we wonder why Congress keeps repealing our freedoms, but leaving exemptions open for the recording and motion picture industries.
Re:Can't they be bitten by their own pet law? (Score:3, Insightful)
The RIAA wouldn't know how to hack. Crack, maybe, anyone can be a skr1pt k1dd1e these days...
However, the implications of someone wantonly DoS-ing a company's connection because of an employee's (or, better, a wandering consultant's) illegally downloaded file, is phenomenal: you piss off a whole company, you get sued, very quickly, for DoS-ing them without good reason. IOW, it's very easy to miss the target...