If biden has any pull obama will probably comply..
The pdf doesn't use 'theft' incidentally, it uses the word piracy, and has more interesting things than the simplification this article reduces it to, so good job providing the link.
One of the amusing things is that they want more freedom for themselves and not to have to pay taxes, not even in foreign countries.. it's a christmas list I guess and it accidentally got rerouted on the way to the northpole.

Blue Ray ads. I'm tired of that overpriced POS being shoved down my throat every time I watch a DVD. Take your $30+ dvd and shove it.

Copyright only exists by community consensus, without that consensus there would be no copyright law. In the USA, and most western democracies, the right of freedom of expression is believed to be endowed by our creator - some would say that creator is God.

Freedom of expression includes the ability to repeat an idea to another person which is fundamentally the same thing as making a copy for another person. Thus, piracy is indeed a "God Given Right" and it is copyright which is nothing more than a law of Man.

Well I guess we can all revel in the knowledge that this dastardly plan the MPAA wants to pull off is not even possible. TCP/IP is designed to be routed / re-routed / proxied / forwarded / encrypted / VPN'd / etc. at a whim, and that this "filtering" (ROFL) would be so simple to work around that even spending money on researching the possibility is financially irresponsible. Especially in the US who is suffering a recession.

For this to work TCP/IP would have to be replaced with a completely different protocol.

Seriously while I don't really support piracy of things which are available for legal purchase the very concept of internet filtering in an attempt to stop it as well as DRM is at best a really bad joke. Think about it how many people work for the MPAA and these groups trying to develope systems to stop piracy along with how much it costs them to product it? Now consider the fact there has yet to be a DRM invented which isn't broken by the general public inside of two weeks. Hell the average time these days to break copy protection on new software is a few hours from when the software gets released to when the hack hits the net.

Now then specifically on the subject of media filtering how are you gonna determine the files to be filtered? I mean besides the idea of encryption think about how media files are actually put together. You could change the video encoding type or the video bit rate, the audio encoding type or the audio bit rate then depending on the file format add addition audio streams, subtitles, etc... all of which would change the final file drastically without even changing the name and container format. You could also just add a few frames at the end which would change the overall runtime of the file again potentially getting around how they are filtering it.

Also in all seriousness the RIAA and MPAA are a bunch of greedy bastards, the RIAA more then the MPAA but they are greedy bastards all the same. Piracy is not nearly as serious a problem as they like to make out if it was they would be losing hundreds of billions a year but they aren't. Hell with only being able to find net income numbers on one of the six MPAA member companies the MPAA made more money last year then the entire Sony corperation.

I am tired hearing the same old song from MPAA and RIAA: downloading is criminal. NO! This is not! It is simply a more convenient usage of music they are unable to propose. With quality downloads at fair price without DRM, they will sell megatons of songs and piracy will be negligible because everybody prefer originals. I don't see why i must buy an expensive cripled electronic form of a record i already have on vinyl or CD form, when i can dwnload a better one not restricted who will play on all my hardware. Another point just disturbing is the equation: song downloaded = song not buyed... NO! majority of downloaders would'nt buy if they had the opportunity, for lots of reasons (poor people, curiosity download, rare, ease of dwnld).
Majors, they treat us like criminals, so boycott them...

Another "free net" will appear if the current one gets poisoned by big corporations.

Onion router anyone?

The end of the free internet is on its way. They tell us what to eat, where to live, what is great and who isnt. The rise of the corporate governments of the world are screwing with all our rights and controlling society. They dont want any free medium to express your views or share ideas (or even videos). The corporate media owns and wants to control everything you see or read so you can become another easily controlled drone, whom has no individual thoughts or ideas, but simply follows the "norm". These corporations have been ripping off the consumer for years and have become a law onto themselves by spying on people, installing dodgey root-kits and drm packages on pcs without permission, and performing illegalities themselves without consequences.

If they want to actually filter the net, stop those f@#$ing annoying video ads on their own sites, that waste extra bandwidth and slow net services. We dont need to filter the net like the great peoples republic of china does, and restrict ones' human and privacy rights.

Does anyone actually believe every illegal download means a lost sale?

If countries release a movie or game several months later in a different country or ban it altogether, can they expect people not to be curious and want to watch it or want to play it?

How many people can afford to buy every top game or go to every blockbuster movie?

Lets all leave the net alone, and worry about the true criminals of the world who murder and rape etc.

Please, Mr Obama, can you just leave the net alone, instead go over and chase after, and finally capture some of those bad dudes from al-qaeda (that mr bush couldnt find), and spread love & freedom to the world. :P

He can add it to his socialist tax plan and health system! Then we can all sit at home and wait for our government check while surfing the free, heavily restricted Internet. I hate my job anyways.

I am sure God wouldn't like the proposed fines on pirates. He is forgiving and loving to all, remember! Also I don't think he would support going after a 12yr old little African American girl who lives in a trailer park with her frail grandmother. Whom is tempted to download what she finds, as she can't afford anything.
Your solution would be to throw her in with other criminals in a youth camp? and to drive her grandmother broke with a $8,000,000 US fine.
At least the young African American girl shall be shown how to make money off the other criminals. A potential street hooker? drug dealer? I think so, especially with her grandma now behind bars as well.
I don't think society gets a very good deal out of it, do you? It was a lot less of a burden on society when she, was living with grandma, peacefully. Attending school every day, doing her homework and downloading a few songs (that she couldn't afford anyway).
Americans should just throw everyone in jail and make them serfs to serve the corporations. The USA has lost it's ways, it's moved from capitalism, to corporatism and now it is going to the dogs. The above scenario would have never have happened in the old Republic, it would have been despicable!

morals,religions,and opinions never mattered to me. i dont have the money to buy software i pirate it, because i need or want it so what about it.my personal thoughts and experiences are my laws.if i go to jail then i messed up and need to be cleaner with my work lol

i always found it funny that sheeple will always tell you something is wrong when they were told it is,even though they dont understand the whole story.

Meet the new government... same as the old government. Do you think after all the campaigning (and money) for Obama, Hollywood and the entertainment industry is not going to want some payback?

Seriously, how is filtering the internet for illegal activity, different than filtering cars on the road to stop car thefts? Car theft is a big deal... I think the US should come up a way to search the roads to identify what might be stolen cars (think the ACLU might have a problem with that?). Also for folks who drive more than others, there will be a signal transmitted from the odoemter and they will pay an extra usage road tax.

Unfortunately between Obama's coziness with Hollywood and Biden - I think we will see "change" (even though noone believes in it). Unfortunately during the election people didn't ask the question change to what? (and were just interested in change "from")

I remember when, in the early 80s it cost about £12 for a vinyl album and about £3.50 for a 12" CD.

In todays terms thats more like £50 for an album and £15 for a single.

The record companies got fat and rich from huge profits selling music at vastly inflated prices. It was a high price low quality product.

Piracy or the ease of copying has had a hugely beneficial impact for the consumer resulting in sensible pricing for DVDs and music alike. It has reigned in the real thieves which is the hugely fat record companies.

The time is coming whereby the record companies will run out of the huge amounts of money they have currently which allows them to undertake these outrageous and obscene methods to protect their profiteering. When they do run out of money this nonsense will stop, it will also run out of steam when the current generation of record bosses moves into retirement and younger blood takes over.

Then we will see artists earning their money by selling merchandise and doing concerts rather than by stealing it from their fans through grossly obsence pricing structures and freedom limiting DRM.

I would rather go without music than pay these bloodsucking parasites.

This is payback for consumers and its been a long time coming.

Why should the RIAA think its a special case and go bleating to congress about special measures to protect them? What makes them so special that we all have to adjust our technology to protect them? Where is the justice in that?

How many people are pirating BECAUSE of the lawsuits. As long as these stupid RIAA people are suing people for 100s of times the value of the file I WILL NOT buy their stuff. Period.

When they start respecting the cruel and unusual punishment clause in the Constitution, I will very happily delete all my BT files and go back to being a law abiding citizen. Until then, they can go **** themselves.

Seriously, lets think about this. While the illegal sharing of copyrighted material is well, illegal. However, why does one company think it has the right to filter all information on the net based on 'you might be stealing something'. What if I am not? What would you say then? Personally it is a violation of my privacy. The whole premise of the US democratic system, or most democratice sociaties that share a common legal system is that you are INNOCENT until PROVEN guilty. Not the other way around.

What they propose is painting everyone with the same brush, as a criminal. It is wrong, immoral and ILLEGAL. Even more so than downloading Sony's latest movie.

Sony's latest movie = theft under $4000. A misdemeaner. Violation of privacy = federal offence.

Andrew

Reading the post on TorrentFreak you linked to gives this gem: "The CopySense Appliance uses a patented packet-resetting process, and it sends a packet reset to both the requesting and sending IP addresses each time they attempt a P2P transfer that is to be blocked." I did not realize one could patent sending spoofed TCP RST packets in both directions since that is what fancier NIDSs did in the days before inline NIPSs were the norm.

It's funny them commenting on filtering, when they have such a grasp on things. like their $60,000 internet filtering system, with its $15,000/year update fee, that doesn't actually work for bittorrent (Copysense).

They're selling products that don't actually work, and worse, they were touted heavily by the MPAA and RIAA when thye introduced the system - to the point they were introducing Audible Magic people to congress.

Filtering, it just doesn't work.
http://torrentfreak.com/copysense-sleek-predator-or-white-elephant-080926/

Ben Jones

I laugh at the tripe posted by the Inquirer regarding piracy. You'd think theft of copyright protected materials was some God given right. Who knew?

Thankfully neither the dribble posted by the Inquirer nor denial by pirates will prevent prosecution of pirates for their crimes. I hope that the new U.S. administration imposes mandatory $10,000 per copy fines plus minimum six month jail sentences - for first time offenders. Repeat offenders should go to prison for a long time because they are too stupid to be on the streets.

The MPAA and RIAA member companies are bottom-feeding scum who treat their paying customers like criminals and use our government like their own private gestapo. Other companies with business models which don't work are forced to adjust or go out of business. That's how free enterprise is supposed to work. Instead, these evil companies buy government officials who shove unconstitutional legislation down our throats and prosecute legitimate consumers in order to support their failing business models.

We all need to stop buying their products so they fade from existence and are replaced by modern companies who understand and embrace the technologies of the 21st century. I suggest we target the RIAA first. Check out http://www.boycott-riaa.com for more.

It is time we had a consumer bill of rights. A consumer who purchases a license for a particular piece of media (song, movie, whatever) should be able to utilize that piece of media on ANY playback device that consumer owns. Period. It's common sense. For example, if I buy a license to listen to a song, I should be able to listen to it, not on one player, but on any player I own. Any company who employs DRM, proprietary formats, or another technique to prevent that private usage of my media, should be prosecuted for violating my consumer rights. It's time our government started serving us rather than the Big Media special interests.