Why is Department of Homeland Security worrying about file-swapping? [ip]
Begin forwarded message:
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@xxxxxxxx>
Date: June 8, 2005 10:49:37 PM EDT
To: politech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Politech] Why is Department of Homeland Security worrying
about file-swapping? [ip]
Previous Politech messages:
http://www.politechbot.com/2005/06/07/hollywood-foots-bill/
http://www.politechbot.com/2005/05/25/federal-polices-new/
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Subject: Re: [Politech] Hollywood foots bill for LAPD spy cams: How
generous! [priv]
Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2005 09:31:08 -0400
From: Paul Rapp <paulrapp@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: paul@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@xxxxxxxx>
References: <42A65CF8.5070406@xxxxxxxx>
Surprised Homeland Security isn't in on this, too. Or maybe they are.
See the attached article I wrote for an Albany alternative weekly on the
Elite Torrents bust.
Also available online (until, I think, tomorrow) at
www.metroland.net/opinion.html)
++++++++++++++++++++
Paul C. Rapp, Esq.
348 Long Pond Road
Housatonic, MA 01236
MA Phone 413.553.3189
NY Phone 518.935.4568
Fax 413.528.2079
www.paulrapp.com
------------
Metroland Magazine; Albany NY June 2, 2005
Terror-Level Infringement?
Since Sept. 11, 2001, most folks agree in principle that we ought to
be on a heightened state of alert. There are bad people who want to
get us: They’ve shown they can do it, and stopping them before they
do it again is a good thing.
And when we tell the government to circle the wagons, it’s to be
expected that mistakes will be made. There will be overreaching, and
rights will get stepped on. It’s inevitable. But it is the citizens’
job to tell the government when it has gone too far, because the
government isn’t equipped to stop itself. Like a nasty fungus or a
bad roommate, the government will expand to fill any available space.
Along the way, the government will gobble up everything in sight—
including fundamental rights—until somebody stands up to the inertia
and says “stop that.”
This column is supposed to be about intellectual-property issues, so
why am I harping about the “war on terror”? Because the two things
have become joined.
Last week, a multilevel governmental strike force, apparently led by
the Department of Homeland Security, shut down the Elite Torrents Web
site, where bit- torrent-based peer-to-peer file trading was taking
place. (Bit torrent is a new and superfast peer-to-peer networking
technology.) If you go to www.elitetorrents.org, you will see,
between the official seals of the Department of Homeland Security and
the FBI, the following message: THIS SITE HAS BEEN PERMANENTLY SHUT
DOWN BY THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION AND U.S. CUSTOMS AND
IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT. Those running the Elite Torrents site are
being criminally prosecuted by the Federal Department of Justice.
Maybe I’m missing something here, and I hope that I am, but the
Department of Homeland Security (according to its Web site,
www.dms.gov) “has three primary missions: Prevent terrorist attacks
within the United States, reduce America’s vulnerability to
terrorism, and minimize the damage from potential attacks and natural
disasters.” And Elite Torrents was allowing the free distribution of
copyrighted materials over the ’Net. According to news reports, Elite
Torrents made the new Star Wars movie Revenge of the Sith available
six hours before the movie’s premiere, and was responsible for more
than 10,000 downloads of the movie before the site was shut down.
One of these days I’ll discuss the legal ins and outs of file sharing
over the Web, but suffice it to say that right now in this country,
downloading free music, movies, and software without the copyright
owners’ permission is a lot more illegal than legal, and it’s likely
to stay that way. So the folks running Elite Torrents should have had
an inkling that posting new movies—especially Revenge of the Sith—for
free download on the Web would bring the wrath of the Motion Picture
Association of America (MPAA) raining down upon them. The MPAA has
always been super-aggressive against piracy and counterfeit goods,
and of course it’s going to be absolutely tenacious as technology
begins to allow for the quick and easy transfer of movie-sized files
on the Web.
But the Department of Homeland Security? What are they doing here?
Shouldn’t they be doing things like making sure some fanatic doesn’t
bazooka a chemical plant or fly another plane into a building? Are we
supposed to feel safer because geeky college kids can’t download
pirated Star Wars movies any more?
What’s particularly distressing here is that we’re talking about the
movement of information. OK, pirated information, but information all
the same, and fairly benign information at that. Yeah, piracy’s a bad
thing, and infringement can often be a bad thing, but frankly, not
always. There are civil penalties for piracy and infringement, and if
the activities are bad and systematic enough, there are criminal
penalties as well. There have always been policies and processes to
punish bad guys.
But it appears that the resources that are supposed to be used to
keep the country safe are being used instead to keep the information
industry happy and profitable. And beefed-up laws and mandates that
were supposed to be used against enemies of the state—you know, the
freakin’ evildoers—are being used against, at best, high-tech common
criminals.
Dwight D. Eisenhower wasn’t a flaming liberal, and nobody ever
accused him of being unpatriotic. Eisenhower warned in 1961, in his
last speech as president, that the titans of national defense and of
business, if allowed to run together, could nibble away at normal
citizens’ basic liberties until the liberties were all gone:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-
industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.
“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our
liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for
granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the
proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of
defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and
liberty may prosper together.”
—Paul Rapp
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