If I Download Music Will They Fine Me

[mj5444]

So you guys are saying if no one ever really uploads from you your alright?

[DasScoot]

Well, the less you upload the lower your risk gets, but we also like you less.

[Switeck]

Originally posted by mj5444+31 July 2003 - 10:37--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (mj5444 &#064; 31 July 2003 - 10:37)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>So you guys are saying if no one ever really uploads from you your alright?[/b]

<!--QuoteBegin-DasScoot@31 July 2003 - 10:38
Well, the less you upload the lower your risk gets, but we also like you less.&nbsp; [/quote]There is basically NO reduction in risk by slowing your upload speed. (Most people don&#39;t know how much upload speed they have or how to do this anyway...) Likewise, there is basically NO increase in risk by speeding up your uploads&#33;

THEY claim to only be going after &#39;big pirates&#39; first so reducing the number of MP3 files shared might help some, but if you&#39;re sharing recent releases you&#39;re still at a slightly higher risk.

They&#39;re listing all files shared by someone (note: Kazaa Lite K++ CAN block this) and doing searches -- they don&#39;t even seem to be checking if the search results are accurate by trying to download any of the files spotted. (And their searches will not show up in KL++ -- you&#39;d need a connection monitoring/logging program to spot them.) They&#39;re using the search results to get a judge-less warrent (thanks to a clause in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998) to gather &#39;evidence&#39; against you. This warrent more or less forces your ISP to give up your private information to them on the assumption that you are violating copyrights. They don&#39;t have to PROVE ANYTHING anymore to your ISP to get your private information, so they could make wild claims without just cause if they wanted to. (In the case of the college kid they sued for >&#036;97 billion, they did just that.)

EVEN if you have sharing disabled or *NEVER* ran Kazaa, they could claim you were sharing their copyrighted materials and your ISP would be forced by law to give up your personal info. (Read the Verizon vs RIAA case verdict if you don&#39;t believe me&#33

However, were you to remove KL++ today it would not protect/indemnify you from any past illegal acts that they may claim you committed. Statue of limitations doesn&#39;t mean much to organizations that fought to have copyrights extended FAR past a human lifetime...

Plus, the list of people they&#39;re (trying to) suing was gathered possibly weeks or even months before they called the lawyers and media in for a press conferance.

They also may have errors in their methods, so just BEING on the internet may put you on their list even if you NEVER ran Kazaa (or KL++). They&#39;ve screwed up before in their rush to make the best media soundbite in their &#39;war against piracy&#39;, and they&#39;ll no doubt do it again.

And your privacy means NOTHING to them -- it&#39;s just an impediment to preventing them from catching everyone who&#39;ve violated the modified copyright laws they&#39;ve lobbied so hard to get&#33;

It&#39;s not the FBI you have to worry about, it&#39;s not the cops -- it&#39;s private organizations doing things that the cops would need special warrents to do -- or are even outright illegal in any case&#33; Actively and purposefully disrupting file-sharing networks without a COURT ORDER to do so is at least a civil offence and possibly even a criminal offense. (This isn&#39;t the same as RIAA just searching the network for copyrighted files, but rather what I&#39;ve seen on the Gnutella network -- Mutella bots operating out of the 38.144.x.x range which were blocking off the network by tying up huge numbers of network connections and NOT routing ANY network traffic. NOTE: The Mutella bots were probably not related to RIAA/MPAA/BSA -- it was just EXTREMELY convenient for them.) It might even qualify as disruption of commerce if any business actually USED p2p networks were adversely affected by this.

Even with the laws much in their favor, they still occassionally break the law to catch music-sharers/downloaders.

We need people willing to stand up to those abusers of power who think that protecting copyrights overrides ALL considerations of fair use, privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and illegal search-and-seizures -- or ALL will find they have few freedoms left&#33;

[DasScoot]

Did I say anything about speeds?

[Switeck]

Originally posted by DasScoot@1 August 2003 - 08:32
Did I say anything about speeds?

&#39;less&#39; implies slower.