[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Er, a simple Google search reveals LINK that the DOJ has been pursuing spammers since early 2004. Gould they do more? I'm sure , but its not like they ignore spam-they do prosecute spammers.

Is there less spam now than in 2004? Is it a smaller percentage of online activity? If not, they're failing to bring law to the internet.

I don't doubt their intentions; I question their ability to achieve useful results.

I'm also not accepting that copyright infringement is causing more damage than DDOS attacks, viruses, phishing, identity theft, and other types of online attacks.

If you arguing that the DOJ doesn't go after those types of offenders, then you are wrong AGAIN.

I am arguing that the DOJ doesn't prevent those offenses. That it fails to effectively curtail those kinds of crimes. I don't care how many dollars they spend fighting crime, nor how many people they prosecute, nor how big the fines are--I care whether the end result is less crime.

The purpose of a crackdown is not "catch the ringleaders of this particular crime wave;" it's "put a big enough hole in the systems of crime that future crime will be easier to prevent, easier to prosecute when we can't prevent it." I haven't seen that any of the DOJ's actions have done that.

The Avengers movie came out after Megaupload went down... did it take longer to hit the internet?

(Shrug) The Avengers didn't come out on the Megaupload and Ninjavideo sites, did they?

I have a story for this one:

I live in Oakland, CA. The crime rate's high enough that it has its own Wikipedia entry. I live near (what was) East 14th Street, long known as a high-crime area. Businesses refused to set up shop on the street because "everyone knew" it was too dangerous for customers.

Several years ago, the city planners decided to fix this: they renamed the street "International Boulevard." They said "It will help create a positive image and stimulate an economic revival."

End result, more than a decade later? Well, there's no more crime on East 14th St. Instead, people share advice like "Theres always crime on International Blvd. DO NOT wander around past 11pm unless you want to put yourself in harms way."

The DOJ's takedown of Megaupload serves the same purpose as Oakland's renaming of its high-crime street: lots of flash, many assurances handed out to businesses, absolutely no effect on what's actually going on.

You'll find that the Avengers became available on sites where the DOJ can't get to -yet. Those pirate sites are currently beyond the long arm of the law. But eventually, the federal marshal will ride into town. I hope its soon. I want movies like The Avengers to be made in the future. They won't be made if piracy ruins the movie making business model.

In order to make an actual difference against piracy, rather than the occasional flash of "WE CAUGHT A BIG ONE!!!", we'll need an overhaul of the entire legal system in relation to the internet. "Marshal riding into town" won't work; we will never be able to afford as many marshals as there are towns. The internet is a LOT bigger than the "old west."

Part of that overhaul would mean defining legal activities that currently are often assumed to be "piracy"--establishing a solid foundation of what's acceptable for educational use, what counts as transformative and parody and is fair use, what's allowed for personal noncommercial use, what kind of sharing among friends and family is permitted.

Because right now, people are told that stripping the DRM from their Kindle books so they can read them on their Nook is a crime, punishable by up to 5 years in prison or $500,000 fines. That's ridiculous. And people decide, well, if I'm going to commit an act that might get me 5 years in prison because I WANT TO READ WHAT I BOUGHT, I might as well share it with someone else. Might as well download another twenty books for free... it's not like the penalty is *more* for downloading from a torrent than for cracking the DRM on my own.

To enforce the law more widely, the enforcers need widespread public support. For that, first the enforcers need to convince the majority of the public that they're not criminals, that their friends aren't criminals. They have to convince people that the law follows common sense, or people will ignore it.

Rule of law has to start somewhere. You begin by getting rid of the Wild Bunch and the Hole in the Wall Gang -to extend the Wild West metaphor, and end up by prosecuting the small fry.

The public wanted the Hole in the Wall Gang gone. The public shows no signs of wanting file-uploading and torrent sites gone. Especially not when they fear that making emailing a song mix to their boyfriend puts them in the same legal category as Kim Dotcom.

The big media companies have worked very hard to divide the public into "producers of media" and "consumers of media," and they're now reaping the results: the "consumers" have little interest in supporting the "producers" if the productions aren't conveniently available.

On the contrary, rooting out the pirates will require international cooperation.

Certainly. And whose laws should be deciding what counts as piracy? Whose police forces will take the risk of arresting possibly violent pirates? Where will they be prosecuted?

Why should other countries see this as anything other than an American attempt to stabilize its floundering empire by finding yet another excuse to push US troops into their territories?

You are free to publish what you like. You may not be free to commercially exploit what you publish. That's the law, currently, in the US and Australia.

Laos has no copyright. The Marshall Islands have no copyright. Does that mean anyone is free to set up a server in those places and distribute any material they want?

If not... why is it legal for me to publish something online that's illegal in Australia, but not legal for them to publish something online that's illegal in the US?

There's a popular myth that pirates are somehow Internet heroes, standing up for freedom. In reality, they are generally simply criminals, out to rich themselves on any Internet scam they can get away with. The pirate sites make money by hawking ads for just those fraudulent ads you object to in other contexts.

There's a big difference between "they're scam artists and criminals" and "they're the same types of guys who cause these other problems."

Not all criminals have the same motives. Not all scams are run for the same reasons, or have the same ways of getting profit. The same methods won't work against them.

Fix spam, fraud, and harassment, and patching the holes that allow unauthorized, financially-damaging file transfers will be easy. Refuse to fix the *big* problems, the ones that affect the majority of users online (how many people hide their email addresses when posting in forums and blogs?) and the random strikes at large file-sharing sites will continue to fail to accomplish anything useful.