thodorisandsarah's BLOG

Hello thodorisandsarah,

Let me begin by assuring you that this forum is not typical of forums on the internet. It is absolutely NOT normal to let newbies languish for two months, before someone[/] answers their post. I can't imagine why this has happened here, but I would like to remedy the situation.

What I will tell you here, is pretty much common knowledge on the internet. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, following on the heels of the 'No Electronic Theft' Act of 1997, extended the language describing what is legal and what is not legal in the publishing and electronic distribution of copyrighted materials. The DMCA was requested by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Geneva conference in 1996, and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28th, 1998. Since then, the big recording and publishing companies have banded together and hired technology companies to design and implement invasive computer programs to search the internet for copyrighted materials residing on servers and ordinary user's home computers. By the way, the methods used by the companies seeking these materials were, a few years ago, against Federal Statutes protecting consumers and commpanies rights of privacy. In the past, it was illegal to invade [i]anyone's computer without their permission. I am not sure what the status of that dichotomy is at this date.

Across the pond, they have a similar law "Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive". The European Parliament was working on a second version ot this law, to further restrict users electronic rights, in the name of fighting copyright infringement on a “commercial scale”. I have not followed this, since I am not in the EU.

At this date the count of computers trolling the internet to catch unsuspecting consumers in the web of the DMCA stands at 770,092,069. This count was provided by a computer program "PeerGuardian", and included world-wide Government, commercial, educational, and spammer's......

OOPS! I got cut off in the middle!

Lets continue at the last paragraph (I didn't know we were limited to 2000 characters):

At this date the count of computers trolling the internet to catch unsuspecting consumers in the web of the DMCA stands at 770,092,069. This count was provided by a computer program "PeerGuardian", and included world-wide Government, commercial, educational, and spammer's computers.

We who participate in P2P networks vehemently oppose any law, anywhere, which seeks to destroy or limit our electronic freedoms.

If you are participating in P2P, whether as a consumer or as a corporate entity legitimately sharing data with your partners or customers, or even within your own WAN, I strongly suggest that you employ a service like Peer Guardian to protect your own personal and corporate computers.

There are too many horror stories out there, where the DMCA enforcement companies have used blitz-like methods without due diligence checking of the validity of the data they have gathered, and caused no end of legal headaches for consumers and corporate entities, alike.

In one well publicized incident, they went after a family who had never had internet connectivity, simply because they had purchased a home that the DMCA enforcement companies said had produced hits by their programs. In another incidence they charged a company with infringement when the IP address stated in the complaint was owned by a network printer.

... (continued)

You need to protect yourself, even if you don't use P2P. The legal costs of defending yourself or your company can ruin you personally and professionally. It is best to deny entry to your computer by anyone you have not specifically given the right to access your system.

Here are some links you can follow for some light reading on this subject:

First, get Peer Guardian at http://phoenixlabs.org and install it on your computer(s).

Reports to the cases I referenced above: http://www.pcug.ws/Announcements.htm

A synopsis of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act with links for further reading - http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/dmca1.htm

I just came across this CNET article posted Dec. 17: RIAA drops lawsuits; ISPs to battle file sharing.

Read it on CNET: [url]http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10126914-93.html?tag=mncol;txt[/url]