ralpress.org

Cory Doctorow in the Guardian on the three way deal between the government, the music industry and ISPs:

Under the new scheme, the rule of law is replaced by a cosy inter-industry deal. Whereas before, anyone who wanted your ISP to spy on your internet connection would have had to show evidence to a judge and get a court order, now any joker who claims to be an aggrieved copyright holder can do so.

And whereas actual criminals are punished by judges who make rulings that are proportional to the offence, and which are calculated to minimise external harm, the new scheme allows ISPs and their pals in the record industry to randomly shake up your connection like a snow-globe, dropping some or all of your services – whether you’re using your VoIP phone to speak to your dying granny in Australia or downloading the latest hit single from the guy who did the “Crazy Frog Song”.

Then there’s the question of trust:

They claim that the surveillance data will only be used to police copyright and not to spy on every communication you make. But Transport for London claimed that Oyster cards would only be used to simplify paying for travel, and not to bulk-surveil Londoners, and yet here we are. As novelists say, “A gun on the mantle in act one is bound to go off by act three.”

And when it comes to “trust”, let’s not forget the following:

• Voice and data networks were built to help citizens communicate and share, not to provide our government with unprecedentedly powerful means of spying on our most private activities.
• Filesharing is an inherently legal activity; despite this, there is strong evidence that ISPs are interferring with the right of their customers to engage in this activity.
• The Terrorism Act was supposedly drawn up to combat terrorism, not to enable local councils to spy on parents attempting to obtain a place for their child at a particular school
• Roadside CCTV cameras were originally supposed to be used to penalize dangerous driving, not to create a nationwide, automated system for control, punishment and extortion.
• The data within the police DNA database was supposed to be used to fight crime, not sold to  commercial researchers to help the police cover their operational expenses.
• Electoral roll data is entrusted to our local authorities and is supposed to be used to facilitate the functioning of political democracy, not as yet another means for our local authorities to raise extra-taxation revenue.

But we needn’t worry, the ISPs have given us their word that they won’t spy on us or allow our data to be viewed by third parties. With such reassuring pledges, who needs legal or constitutional protection?

One of the great ironies here, is that the ease of data access, copying and manipulation that the recording industry is demanding be curtailed, is the same ease of access, copying and manipulation that has seduced our authorities into thinking that they can control and punish citizens remotely, and earn a quick buck by selling our most sensitive and constitutionally essential data to the highest bidder. Given that the government is siding with the record industry on this matter, it’s not irony, it’s arch hypocrisy. If hypocrisy were the only misdeed, we could just raise our eyes to the heavens and carry on with life, but this hypocrisy is eroding our civil liberties, and it doesn’t get much more serious than that.

Let’s see now, the RIAA is on to something here. Just think of how many other organizations could benefit from filters on consumers’ private property. A quick, off-the-top-of-my-head list as I drink my morning coffee includes:

• Software-license checking filters: various helpful companies have already provided us with these of course, but a more joined up approach wouldn’t hurt. It would ensure that all the requisite permits are up to date and valid before you attempt to use your computer or connect to the Internet. It would be most unfortunate if a SWAT team were to kick down your front door on account of something silly, like being a day late with the annual subscription payment for your thumbnail viewer, or something.
• Movie filters. When the Hollywood studios and copyright holders see RIAA getting filters installed on users’ machines, you know that they will be demanding the same. And their filters will probably be bigger and better.
• Email filters: not the ones the user creates, but ones put in place by law enforcement agencies, just to be able to “educate” you should those agencies determine that you are engaging in activities or conversations that are liable to lead to any kind of nefarious activity. It’s pretty clear that we already have these out on the network, but getting across that last mile and into the home should increase accuracy and conviction rates educational effectiveness.
• Patent filters: all software activity on users’ machines to be analyzed for potential patent violation. (The fun they’ll have with that one.) Oddly enough, Microsoft is reported to be less than keen on this particular measure.
• Voting filters: helpful state analysis of your online voting behaviour, just to help you correctly discharged your democratic duty, you understand.
• Online banking filters: the Inland Revenue would hate for you to inadvertently be using any services that might be, shall we say, unhelpful to its cause.
• Adblocking filters: just in case you were tempted to install every brimstone beast’s favourite application. Oh, and also to make sure you haven’t accidentally un-installed the mandatory eyeball monitoring app, you know, the one that uses your web-cam to ensure that you are not breaking the terms of the websites you visit by not actually looking at the ads.
• Multi-user monitoring filter: this uses your other web cam to check that no more than two users are viewing a website on any given machine simultaneously. If a user wishes for more than two users to browse the web from his or her machine, the filter will advise that a multi-user licence is required.

If you can think of any more potentially useful filters I’ve missed. Feel free to add them below.

Well aren’t I the prescient one? I’ve been saying to anyone who will listen that it’s only a matter of time before RIAA and its allies start pushing for this kind of measure and here it is, in all its glorious predictability. Cary Sherman, the head of the Recording Industry Association of America, thinks that installing copyright filters on privately owned computers is probably the way forward. That’s right, monitoring devices installed on private property, to prevent that property’s owner from violating copyright held by the Association’s members.

Is there any substantive difference between this and, say, the police demanding to install a listening device on each and every telephone and mobile handset in case their owners ever feel like talking about something illegal? Well, yes there is. The police force, at least here in the UK, is a reasonably accountable organization that is ultimately answerable to parliament. RIAA is neither of these. The police could at least claim that any such action was “in the public interest”, at least where particularly serious crime such as terrorism, kidnap, human trafficking, etc are concerned. I don’t think anyone could claim much moral equivalence between such matters and copyright violation.

(more…)

http://riaa.org

Pretty much every link results in the message:

“It appears that the article you requested has been temporarily removed”

A current thread on reddit seems to indicate that some miscreants may have ‘injected’ some mischief.

Couldn’t have happened to nicer people, I say.

It’s interesting to note that RIAA uses an open and free language (PHP) for its web application. This means that chances are, they’re using MySQL as well. Perhaps the cost of paying for all of those proprietary software licenses became bothersome?

EDIT: A quick check of the response headers reveals that they’re running on Apache and RedHat as well. Nice.

EDIT 2: Yep, it’s a hack.

EDIT 3: “Pics or it didn’t happen“.