RIAA Wants Gov. to Delete Your Illegal Downloads

RIAA Wants Gov. to Delete Your Illegal Downloads

www.tomsguide.com

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that both organizations--along with a few others--want to take the file-monitoring process a huge step further by infiltrating consumer PCs and deleting the infringing content off their hard drives. How? Through "anti-infringement" spyware developed and enforced by the government.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Yet more copyright crazyness. Now they want pre-emptive access to every machine, based on no prior evidence of criminality, in order to be able to scan and delete files as they see fit.

I don't know how this will go down in law, for US people it seems to contradict the 4th ammendment on unreasonable search and seizure, but hey, the constitution is just a piece of paper right?

Ditch your proprietary operating systems, over here on the Linux side we may have a few less programs and features at times, but one strength we have is that our side believes in freedom. I could see Microsoft allowing this in a heartbeat, but Ubuntu/Debian/etc? Even if they wanted it, the source is there, we can just fork around any damage like we do with all their stupid attempts.

www.tomsguide.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by harpsounds
Looking on the bright side...it'd free up 90% of my hard drive

Let's see how well this BS works on Linux.

Looks like if people want free stuff, they'll have to learn to use computers a little bit better.

This will never affect me as I'm far to advanced to let some measly spyware infiltrate my PC. =P

Would this be for just things like P2P file sharing music or any music that is copyrighted? I have music on my computer that I never bothered to take off from CD's that I have bought and copied onto my computer to burn a spare disc of.

Some of the music that I like is foreign and not easily available in the US and I had to order it from stores in the country that the musician is from (which also makes it ungodly expensive). Because I have a CD player in my car that seems to cause little scratches on my CD's and makes them skip I only play the spare discs when I drive and keep the original CD safe at home. So, while I bought the original CD, I also have a copy of the CD on my computer from when I made the duplicate spare disc.

If it is something that is based on tools used to protect consumers from viruses and malware, as mentioned in the article, how does it differentiate between something that is a P2P download or content that is bought and paid for, but copied for protection against screwy CD players that cause scratches?

This seems far too intrusive sounding and like there are far too many grey areas to be abused to ever be considered helpful.

Take care,
Cindi

When are they going to learn ?

All the money that they are wasting on trying to enforce copyright infringement is not going to change a damn thing. People who download aren't suddenly going to start paying for stuff, they're just not going to bother with it at all and will ultimately hurt the industry more than it will do good.

Yeah come on..... Bring it on..... Just another challenge.

I would invite the RIAA to willingly imbibe a portion of my anatomy and draw upon it succulently. To expand any further would be against the terms and conditions of this site, however.

Seriously, how would this not be a blatant invasion of consumer rights?

The good thing is, the hackers, crackers, and computer wizards are always two steps ahead of the government, and seven steps ahead of the RIAA. As long as there is internet, there will be file sharers. This spyware would be identified the second it hit a major file sharing site, and a workaround/fix would be found within a couple of hours.

pardon me for asking a stupid question here but:

looking at the contents of a hard drive,
how are they gonna know what's legal
and illegal ???? Is an illegal file gonna be
interlaced with code?

Anyway this is a violation of the 14th Amendment
as well.

Originally posted by boondock-saint
pardon me for asking a stupid question here but:

looking at the contents of a hard drive,
how are they gonna know what's legal
and illegal ???? Is an illegal file gonna be
interlaced with code?

I don't think it's a stupid question at all.

In some cases it may be obvious in a way, for example, many pirate movies have tags in the filename like

SomeMovieName.XVID.VIDEOGROUPNAME.ETC.avi

if they find a file that matches this template, with known pirate groups in the name, that could be one way.

Another way, would be via checksumming. If you don't know what that is, it's basically a way of making a "fingerprint" of a file. It is commonly used in file transfers to check if the file was correctly received. They could scan for files with known checksums. However this can fail a few ways, one of which would be this.

If Pirate gets a music CD, and rips to MP3's using common software, then distributes it, then everyone who downloaded his version will have files with the same checksum. However, if you buy that CD yourself, and just happen to use the same settings as the pirate did, you may end up with identical files to the ones the pirate made, causing a false positive.

Those are just a couple of ideas off the top of my head.

[edit on 19/4/2010 by harpsounds]

If these goons would get their way there would be a government paid enforcer literally looking over your shoulder when you're at your computer. Bunch of big brother wannabes.

Do they realise what is going to happen to these servers that would scan and delete peoples files?



The second they go up the largest DDOS attack the internet has ever seen will take place.

Hahahahah! I find it funny as hell, because it will NEVER happen.
These fools are showing just how desperate they are now.

RIAA will cease to exist soon. The middle man will go away. It's happening more and more. The artist sells it directly to you. via Amazon, itunes.. etc. (and record stores are rare as hen's teeth these days).

Good bye RIAA. You are irrelevant.

BTW: Copyright protection basically killed PC Gaming. That Secure ROM crap, and online install checks made it such a pain to even install, let alone playing.. (I still prefer PC Gaming though.. have a killer rig)

I don't get the RIAA.. they are already HATED. They want to piss off the rest of the people too? lol. OK.. Cya RIAA.

R- really
I - incredible
A- asinine
A- attitude

Yeah, good luck with that. If I can't get it for free then I won't bother. On the other hand after getting a ton of music for free and I decide I like the artist enough, I will go out and buy their music to support them if they are not a popular band. I refuse to buy mainstream music and since I won't support the box office, pay for cable or or get a digital box, I'll go with out if I can't get it on line.

I want the the government to delete files on RIAA computers.

Like c:\Windows\fonts\*.*

Who's with me?

Lets get a campaign started

Originally posted by belial259
I want the the government to delete files on RIAA computers.

Like c:\Windows\fonts\*.*

Who's with me?

Lets get a campaign started

Heck, do this to them:

Format C: /autotest

(That formats INSTANTLY. no 'are you sure'.. well, at least in the old DOS days it did.. dunno about windows and NTFS.

Originally posted by harpsounds
I don't think it's a stupid question at all.

Me neither.

Honestly your point about a checksum is a good one too.

But what if I say download x file with x checksum and then convert that file to a different format or change the bitrate? How are they gonna know?

Just delete all media that isn't DRM protected?

Lmao my computer has advanced security, i haven't had a SINGLE computer virus in 2 years, they think they can try something lmao!!

not to burst anyone's bubble or ego here
but about 2 yrs ago I remember seeing an
article about a government sponsored
trojan being implemented that went through
any firewall on the planet. How they did this
was they gave the code to all firewall manufacturers
and had the trojan added to the safe list OR
either ordered it NOT to be considered a threat
by the software itself. I think this was part of
the source coding done under the Patriot Act.

Has anyone else heard of this??
or did I hallucinate this article??

And if it's true, then they probably already have
access to ur machine and u dont even know it.

Think about it: Why would RIAA ask big brother
to delete these files if they didn't have
access already???

Go ahead and delete them, they are all old anyway. And I have them all on CD already.