Manhattan closed the thread Kazaa lite with “IP Blocker” in GQ where someone was asking about Kazaa Lite and its purported inclusion of an IP blocker to (maybe) avoid detection by the RIAA.
The thread was closed because the SDMB does not allow discussions on how to break the law which is understandable. However, was this thread really about breaking the law? Kazaa is still legal as far as I know and there is nothing illegal about IP blockers that I am aware of. Further, I don’t know that the RIAA has a legal right to sniff my computer. Or, put another way, I don’t know that it is illegal for me to try and protect my computer from outside sources scanning my PC.
I am only asking in this thread what it was about the other thread that constituted discussion of illegal activities? Maybe I’m wrong in some of my assumptions above but in the face of it it didn’t look like a discussion of illegal activity. I can talk about handguns that have a legal and legitimate use…that they might also be used for illegal activity doesn’t prevent us from talking about it. Is this different?
I think manhattan’s concern was that, although the software and techniques in question arre legal, they can be (and usually are) used for illegal purposes, and so chose to err on the side of caution. That’s how I saw it. Manny himself might have a slightly different viewpoint.
First off, just to be very clear, I am NOT trying a round-about way to discuss the use of Kazaa or IP blockers.
Secondly I realize that the Chicago Reader, the SDMB or the Moderators do not owe me an explanation for what threads they choose to close. Their board…they can do as they please.
With those understandings and if the moderators are willing to talk about it I am curious why the outright ban on discussions about Kazaa or IP blockers or Kazaa with IP blockers? As I mentioned above guns have both legal and illegal uses. I am free to talk about guns here on this board. As long as I don’t say I want to use the advice for committing a crime I think it passes muster. If I am merely talking about Kazaa and how it works without mentioning file sharing at all how can the SDMB be worried about that?
I understand that if they err they want to err on the side of caution but the SDMB is also premised, at least partly, on free speech. I am not suggesting that the mods are censors in a ‘bad’ meaning of that term bit for something like Kazaa that dances so precariously close to the edge of legal vs. illegal I think discussions about it are of particular importance. I find myself fence sitting on this one because while I see file sharing copyrighted material as clearly wrong I also hate the RIAA with a passion. I would be very interested in legal ways to thwart the RIAA wherever possible.
That said I much prefer to keep the SDMB safe from trouble that could potentially close it down so view what I’ve written more as a curiosity/wish rather than a rant demanding something.
Hmmm…I read the link and the OP that Manny closed seems to be in a grey area. Would it have been allowable if Kazaa had not been mentioned? If the question just pertained to IP blockers, how they work and if they are effective? DrMatrix says no IP blocker discussions but I don’t know if he really meant just that or was trying to put a firm kibosh on a third attempt at a thread that had now been closed twice.
Really? I rarely talk about it so I apologize for not knowing better but…really?
I’m not taking the SDMB or mods to task for anything. I’m not ranting about the ‘unfair’ this or that of the ‘evil’ moderators. I’m just curious how they viewed a particular topic and why they did what they did is all. Seems rather wimpy for the Pit but if it must be so then I guess it must be so.
IP blocking in order to conceal the source or destination of a message may be illegal in some states, under the same laws that were intended to stop spam (or something) but ended up banning routers, VPNs, and NAT.
What we have in the internet industry is a wholescale attempt to suppress personal freedoms and liberties by the monopolists at the RIAA and MPAA, an assault against anything that gives internet users freedom and choice because of the supposed danger that those users will exercise that choice in a way that inconveniences the monopolists.
I understand the caution with which the SDMB staff prohibit discussion of this genre of activity, but I maintain that they are overcautious. This is discussed far more blatantly at many internet forums, none of which have yet been shut down. Had Microsoft gone through with their plan to release/enforce Palladium, the anti-piracy OS, would we be banned from discussing here the ways to regain freedom and control over our own property, the computers at which we type?
No matter what propaganda the RIAA and MPAA put out, it hasn’t even yet been established in a court of law that file-sharing is illegal, so how can we even call it an illegal activity with what we currently know? It’s a generally assumed theory of the law that when the vast majority of people behave as if a certain activity is acceptable, and yet that activity is illegal, that the law has failed. Are we barred from even discussing the ways in which those anachronistic holdouts try to use force to maintain the system which protected their unfair interests and fueled their power structure?
IP blocking is a countermeasure against the invasion of privacy that the mega-conglomerates wish to perpetrate against the internet world. Why can’t we discuss the measures we take to keep those nosy, intrusive jerks away from our computers?
. . . amongst other things. It’s like saying the Internet is a countermeasure against an enemy of the US taking out conventional communications systems. It was and it is, but that ain’t all . . .
How 'bout, because, as a message board not unfamiliar with the occasional undesirable – make that, persistent undesirable, it’s in the SDMB’s best interests to not educate the lunatic fringe apropos IP blocking ?
In my, admittedly limited, experience, the main threat and concern posed by such discussions is that of lawsuits. Someone may see CR as a target with deep pockets and so, it may be more vulnerable than a less “high profile” target such as the other message boards that we have visited. I’m going to go way out on a limb here and summise that the SDMB doesn’t have too big a portion of the CR legal budget. The SDMB is not the only (but certainly the best) board where I have witnessed such threads being summarily and unilaterally closed “just because we said so”. The policy covering such closings is very clear about the rule, IMO. The only room for speculation and interpretation seems to be the “why” of it all.
[unrelated rant]The threat of lawsuits running rampant in our country today is one of the biggest dangers to our freedoms and some system of checks and balances should be implemented to prevent the continued abuse of the very institutions designed to protect our freedoms[/unrelated rant].
The Chicago Reader has spent a significant amount of time and money to protect its copyrighted material.
For every individual who respects copyright, there’s probably a hundred that believe that anything that is available to them by any means is free for the taking and that artists have no right to compensation for their work or control over how that work is disseminated.
It is the desire of management that we not encourage the abuse of “fair use” and that we do not aid and abet copyright thieves.
Kazaa says on its site not to use their software to violate copyright . . . but they do nothing to police it, which means they condone thievery, plain and simple.
Personally, I think the RIAA, any influential industry group, or the government should be free to monitor my computer usage, my ports, and my location - so long as they agree to pay for a potion of my equipment and my ISP fees. Hell, I’ll even use a portion of the savings to buy records and movies.
I don’t think that point is all that unrelated, Bugnorton. I make decent money, and have decent savings - but I recognize that a frivolous lawsuit could cripple me. That is exactly the threat that is being expressly made. That is the type of tool our legal system has allowed itself to become.
Is it that simple? Let’s forget about Kazaa. How about Dell, Optimum online, and Sun and Cisco for that matter? Their technology is a lot more necessary for transferring copyrighted materials than some adware program. I don’t think it is normally good practice to hold someone accountable to police the usage of their own product - a fact I’m sure the folks at Remington will be relieved to hear.
If you want to get really technical, Waverly, all those folks at the IEEE, the IETF, and all those other internet engineering groups who have done research into and set standards for connection oriented and connectionless data transfer are the ones whose ‘products’ are absolutely necessary to not only e-mail, web browsing, posting to forums, Usenet, FTP, Telnet, SSH, and various other common and 100% legal protocols, but also the protocols that drive filesharing protocols.
Why, without those people who wrote the RFC defining TCP/IP, there would be no Internet to speak of, there would be no IP addressing, no way to reach a computer by a numeric identifier somewhere on the other side of the world, and without TCP, no way to generate a connection to that computer and transport uniform packets over a packet-switched route between one numeric spot on earth and another.
I think what this means is that because the entire issue of file sharing would be impossible were it not for a paper written in 1973 by Vint Cerf and Bob Khan, any discussion of NCP or TCP cannot happen now because TCP is ‘often used for illegal activity’.
(Please note that this post was meant to be tongue in cheek. I understand the interest of the SDMB to ban discussion of file sharing, however humorous I may find it that the exact technologies involved are vital to all TCP/IP network communications. Also I find it kind of funny that RIAA seems to assume that it’s actually a law enforcement agency.)
I’d like to say I agree with you Waverly, from an idealistic standpoint, but most of the companies you mention produce fairly innocuous internet technology like routers and such. I can burn a CD and mail it to someone, but no one’s cancelling the mail, because it’s used for a lot more than that.
Is there anyone out there who thinks that these utilities are not being used for copyrighted material, most of the time? I’m a computer tech, and I don’t know anyone with a file charing utility that doesn’t use it solely for the purpose of gaining copyrighted material rather than paying for it.
IP blockers on the other hand, can be both security tools for hackers and security tools for network administrators, although usually if you have to block your IP address, it’s because you’re doing something that might cause someone to want to find you. Or you’re just a goof who likes running security programs, like me
Or you’re someone whose ISP refused to sell them a block of addresses, so you’re running all your individual machines through a gateway somewhere as a matter of practical necessity. It happens that my gateway is sitting in the same building as all my other machines, but until my ISP will sell me additional IP addresses, I’m stuck with ‘hiding’ machines in private IP space.
Some ISP’s would consider that ‘stealing’ their service, as more than one computer is connected to a single account; however, my ISP doesn’t. They are fully aware that there is a network here, and in fact were the ones who advised me to set up routing and use private IPs because they didn’t have enough available to sell me what I needed.
