Music-Swapping Sites To Be Blocked By Irish ISPs 194
An anonymous reader writes "Irish internet users are to be blocked from accessing music swapping websites, as internet service providers bow to pressure from the music industry. Eircom, the country's biggest internet provider, is to start blocking its internet customers from accessing music swapping."
Useless (Score:5, Interesting)
Totally useless and a mere inconvenience for the die-hard file swappers. New sharing sites will pop up faster than I can say "First Post!" and new protocols to circumvent those blocks will have arrived by the time the mods have moderated "First Post" down to -1.
Worse than useless. (Score:5, Insightful)
Far worse than useless. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Far worse than useless. (Score:5, Informative)
Or, if they implement this how I think they will, a quick DNS server switch should do the trick.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Worse than useless. (Score:5, Funny)
We could trade files right here on slashdot.
Bit of steganography and we could hide music in our rambling car analogy loaded posts.
Re:Worse than useless. (Score:5, Funny)
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It's like duct-taping a thumb drive to your undercarriage and driving across the border.
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we could hide music in our rambling car analogy loaded posts.
Do you have a car analogy for that?
Sounds good to me
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People are going to be teaching themselves all matter of upgrades
Upgrades? You mean they're going to go into the woods, kill lots of squirrels and level up? ;-)
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1) maybe more labels and artists will spring up that won't hamper their fans with such limitations or threaten them with lawsuits.
2) secure p2p would be sweet
3) ???
4) Profit???! (maybe for proxy operators)
IRC? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Useless (Score:4, Insightful)
And most protective measures on the net against this are leaking like a colander.
Re:Useless (Score:4, Insightful)
the MAFIAA's interest is to stop the widespread, common and easily available sharing of media. the "sheeple"
of-fucking-course the "scene" will still be alive. those people that know enough to evade prosecution, know enough to rip dvds too. but as long as you can discourage the general population (with lawsuits) from file-sharing, they might've made their point - legal and moral ambiguities as they may be.
as soon as people get pissed off enough, another Bram Cohen will emerge. Either declaring a new method or meeting the MAFIAA eye to eye in the courts - or shaking their hand.
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but as long as you can discourage the general population
Haven't we pretty much established that they can't? They've tried it every which way except capital punishment and I doubt that'd do any better. There's too many, they're not afraid and they don't agree. Even if they were afraid they'd use any one of the slightly more secure ways than public torrents or just share with their friends. Many of the pirates are also their best customers, buying much and downloading more. Downloading is getting cheaper, faster and more secure every day. For each passing year ano
Re:Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Totally useless and a mere inconvenience for the die-hard file swappers. New sharing sites will pop up faster than I can say "First Post!" and new protocols to circumvent those blocks will have arrived by the time the mods have moderated "First Post" down to -1.
True as this undoubtedly is, I think this is the wrong attitude to take. Simply saying, "OK, Mr. Government, if you want to block bits of the internet go ahead, we'll just work round you." gives the impression that they have the right and justification to censor bits of the internet at will and it's up to us to work round that.
While the sort of people who read slashdot are able to circumvent this kind of thing, does that make it right to censor the internet for the rest of the less technically savvy population?
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Maybe we can get them all to stop browsing the web with Administrator access and turning off their AV software because it was flagging that new Britney Spears MP3 as a virus, and we all know only
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Irish Evil (Score:2)
But on the good side, it's the one story where it's appropriate to talk about Irish Evil ;).
Re:Useless (Score:5, Funny)
Proxy demand increasing in Ireland in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...
I should start a business selling proxy services to Irish internet users. My connection will never be filtered in Australia.
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Good Old Racketeering (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it's the virtual equivalent of paying thugs to block access to a store.
Call the lawyers.
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Good to see we can occasionally agree on something ;)
Are you from Ireland? (Score:5, Informative)
You must be to describe IRMA so prefectly.
It must be noted, however, that IRMA is fighting to protect the meagre incomes of people like U2 and Enya - who are all just managing to survive with one castle each.
Sarcasm aside, due to the fact that musicians have a tax exemption (cos lord knows U2 need it) - there are unfortunately a lot of them here, and they also have great wadges of cash. This in turn makes IRMA far more powerful than it should be.
I still don't think the other ISPs are just going to rollover - Eircom is a joke. They are largest because they were originally a monopoly - and there is a large number of users that are slow to change.
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Depends on which single band member we're talking about.
You know who I mean: starts with B, ends with Oh No! and rhymes with shutthefuckupbonoyouselfabsorbedgit.
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Except that in this case, the thugs are the virtual equivalents of the local sheriff, and he things you're the bad guy in town.
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More like paying thugs to block access to a roof overseeing a concert venue where people would otherwise congregate to listen without paying
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There, I corrected it for you.
"Music swapping"? (Score:5, Informative)
The fucking article mentions Pirate Bay as one of these "music swapping" sites. So basically, they're after torrent trackers.
I won't go into explaining the difference between a hypothetical "music swapping" site and a tracker. Insert here gun, car and other analogies.
Re:"Music swapping"? (Score:4, Funny)
So, basically, it's like Fannie and Freddie are angry because you drive your car way to fast in front of their subprime real estate and then hatch an evil plan to bring down the entire car industry. Awesome!
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Does this include sites like Magnatune, which offer independent music at much lower prices or even for free? I mean, that's damaging to its business, right?
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If only Ford, Chrysler and GM could compile a list of car salesrooms that are damaging their business!
If the list was compiled by a disinterested party then it's one thing. But this is just an industry lobby group compiling a list of what it doesn't like, i.e., what the companies it represents doesn't like. Legitimate uses or not, surely it is only a matter of time before bittorrent traffic is filtered out at the network level, whether it is carrying a Linux ISO or a Project Gutenberg Archive.
Rapidshare? (Score:5, Insightful)
So Rapidshare is blocked, then? And Megaupload? And Mediafire, Sendspace and Badongo? And the hundreds of other free filesharing services that seem to pop up everywhere?
This is completely futile.
Re:Rapidshare? (Score:5, Insightful)
My problem with this is that sharing files is not illegal, nor is sharing music. Sharing copyrighted files without rights to do so probably is in Ireland, but forcing ISPs to block legitimate sites in a broad manner like this because they have the potential to "damage" your business is bullshit. And blocking the Pirate Bay is another brand of bullshit since the only file-sharing going on there is with .torrent files.
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hahahahaha
you believe that?
I just checked the top few movies in their top 100. Copyrighted. Wow golly gosh, what a surprise.
Let's reflect on how you failed. You tried to follow the GP's sound statistical suggestion ("Pick a bunch of random .torrent files and analyze what content they describe.") but you hadn't yet learned the meaning of "random."
I'll give you a hint. It doesn't mean "the most popular .torrents in the movie section." If you can figure out what random really does mean, you'll find that 80% of the .torrents point at legal content.
Heh, (Score:2)
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And IRC, and messengers, and usenet, and skype, and social pages, and...
Does that leave anything but corporate sites open?
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Have they blocked *other users*? That is where the shared data is ACTUALLY coming from.
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Re:Rapidshare? (Score:4, Funny)
Nobody Expects the RIAA!
Out chief weapons are suprise... Surprise and idiocy...
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Cardinal Fang. Fetch...THE COMFY CHAIR!
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Meanwhile in financial news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Meanwhile in financial news... (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, a huge spike in sales of VPN services was reported.
Re:Meanwhile in financial news... (Score:5, Interesting)
I just scanned the article but this looks like a misleading subject.. basically only one ISP is doing this (although it's the biggest), and the others have been threatened with legal action (just like what is happening here in Australia, with one of our ISPs targeted by the media industry and currently getting sued [ausgamers.com] (disclosure: our site) for not taking action against file sharers).
So, this is basically ISPs caving to legal threats - which I guess either means they're complete pussies, or they have deals with the ISPs to provide content themselves (ie, sell music to their subscriber base) so its in their financial interests to comply, or they've actually crunched the numbers with their lawyers and Irish law doesn't look so good for ISPs.
If that latter is true, THEN I would believe reduced revenues might be likely - or if this ISP is just the biggest because it has a monopoly on infrastructure or whatever. If it's not though, users should just vote with their feet and jump ship on this ISP and go to one that is not going to tell them what they can and can't do with their Internet connections.
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All ISPs in the Irish Republic report reduced revenues and profits.
If the ISPs really do see a drop in profits then they may try to fight the decision, even if it's for the wrong reasons.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Music sites." Really. (Score:4, Insightful)
Once they go down the road of blocking sites they can no longer make the perfectly reasonable defence that they're a service provider, not a censor. It *is* a slippery slope and only harm will come from it. If all ISPs give in, then the next thing will happen is the government will "helpfully" step in with a national firewall and force all providers to go through it. Internet access will become as repressive as it is in Australia or other countries that think they can control people by restricting what they can see.
I'd add that sites like the pirate bay are service providers too. It may well be that most of their content is copyright infringing, but not all of it. Furthermore, they just host tracker files so Eircom isn't even preventing piracy by shutting off that site. It wouldn't surprise me either if distributed search, trackers and crypto make it extremely difficult for Eircom to EVER shut off piracy or say with certainty who is downloading the latest Ubuntu and who is just downloading the latest copy of Windows.
By the way, does anyone know a decent and affordable VPN service in the US I can subscribe to?
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Do these conspiracy theories ever come true?
Where have you been for the past 10 years? Haven't you ever heard of the banking industry?
SWEET (Score:3, Interesting)
Next up, socially and politically insensitive speech, porn, nude/violent/graphic images, low price merchants, and communication with unenlightened societies.
So many to choose from, it makes me dizzy just from thinking... oh, thinking!
I can haz censorship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Between political correctness on the left, intolerance on the right, and pressure from crony capitalists to wall off their monopoly profits, pretty soon the only thing you'll be able to post on the internet will be cat pictures. :(
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HAI
CAN HAZ PROXY ?
KTHXBAI
(Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.) ... um no, it's called LOLCODE, get with the program, you stupid filter !!!
Re:I can haz censorship? (Score:4, Informative)
lolcode is worse than yelling. By quite a bit.
Re:I can haz censorship? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a problem with the "cult of ignorance" that is springing up. We're celebrating people and their behaviour that would have caused ridicule only decades, maybe only years ago. Take "reality TV shows" like Big Brother. Moronic lowlives whose life was already uninteresting when they weren't monitored permanently become celebrities for, essentially, being unable to communicate or to do anything meaningful with their life. Or American Idol. Young people making a complete tool out of themselves for the minuscle one-in-a-million chance to become famous (not rich. Only famous). And I'm not talking about Springer, though at least there I could imagine it's scripted and just for "tha lulz".
We live in a time when being a jerk becomes something praiseworthy. It makes you famous. Makes you some sort of role model in a way, judging by how many copycats spring up for every jackass idiot video of the "how stupid can a human being be and still be able to utter some sort of sound for communication" category on YouTube.
lolcats fall into that category. It's not funny. It's simply retarded. It's about as much fun as laughing at the retarded kid that can't figure out how to drive his electric wheelchair in any but a circular pattern. That's fun for about 5 seconds. Tops. After that, it's just plain boring, repetitive, always the same ol' crap that, if you're really honest, wasn't even funny the first time. It's especially not funny to mangle the English language "4 tha lulz". My excuse is that English is my third language. What's yours?
I love to communicate and exchange ideas. That's what I like about the internet. It allows that. The drawback is that it also allows the exchange of braindead memes.
Re:I can haz censorship? (Score:5, Funny)
"pretty soon the only thing you'll be able to post on the internet will be cat pictures. :("
How dare you?? Don't you know that underneath all that fur, those cats are completely naked?
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LOLCAZ WINS!
(insert relevant cat picture here)
So it's true. The internet, once created to distribute knowledge, exchange ideas and generally contribute to propagate information is reduced to the same crap TV was reduced to a while ago.
First they brought in the AOLlers. But I didn't speak up because they didn't step on the same turf I went, and I didn't care because "my" internet was vastly different and richer than theirs. Then they brought in the companies. But I didn't speak up because they had money, but
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Sure. Download two of those pictures, take a binary diff of the LSB of each pixel and out rolls the latest by U2... or download one kitty and a file containing random noise, decrypt the noise with kitty and Hello U2 again. This block will be sooooo effective...
Thank God! (Score:2)
You mean at least one website [tessums.com] is still safe? So, the internet won't be entirely gone then?
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I know you're half-joking, but... (Score:3, Informative)
...Ireland is one of the most conservative countries of western Europe. Remember that access to information about abortion thing? Apparently abortion isn't just still banned in Ireland, a situation which is by the way fairly representative of the general state of Irish law, but Ireland even tried (from 1983 to 1993) to ban access to information on abortion. Fortunately, it couldn't possibly work, not unless they would pull a China on us.
Free Music (Score:5, Informative)
For a related discussion on free (and non-RIAA) music, see:
I've just downloaded one artist's Creative Commons songs, and it's not half bad. I'd imagine he might earn cash on freelance composition.
That's brave of them (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly, now the ISPs are responsible for any music-swapping that occurs since they've taken it upon themselves to determine what is or isn't legal.
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...since they've taken it upon themselves to determine what is or isn't legal.
No. They are just accepting IRMA's determinations.
Podsafe Music (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Podsafe Music (Score:5, Interesting)
...that will prove how incompetent and underhanded the music industry [is]
Incompetent? No. just that they see no need to actually verify that the content actually violates their copyrights. Besides, according to TFA, the agreement is that IRMA will supply lists of site they deem harmful to their business. Clearly, in their view, indy artists giving away music is harmful to the businesses of IRMA.
Why do the music cartels have so much influence? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply in terms of gross earnings, the music companies make peanuts compared to some other very big industries being negatively impacted by all this anti-piracy hullabaloo (sure, corporations probably don't pirate music, but this DRM and filtering and other BS all carry a cost for anyone working online). Are they just that much better at lobbying? Have they somehow nobbled all the right people? What gives?
Confused,
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I live here. They're my ISP, for about another ten minutes.
Ireland is notoriously corrupt. Eircom didn't even fight the court case. I smell brown envelopes.
Re:Why do the music cartels have so much influence (Score:5, Insightful)
It goes something like this:
Music industry lobby
Lobbyist: Hi Mr MP, how would you like to meet Bono?
MP: OMG HE WAS MY IDOL AS A CHILD I'D LOVE TO
Lobbyist: Okay, just implement these laws otherwise Bono will be a very very sad person and might not want to come out and see you
MP: Sure!
IT industry lobby
Lobbyist: Hi Mr MP, how would you like to meet Richard Stallman?
MP: Who?
More seriously though, I think the issue does seem to be at least from my experience of reading into comments from various British MPs that the music industry is much better connected and MPs are much more likely to bow down at their feet simply because although some people of their generation are the founding fathers of IT as we know it, many more simply missed the boat with the IT thing and MPs nearly always fall into the latter- they just don't get IT, but they ALL know who Bono and so on is and they all worship these types of people. We don't have any IT literate MPs here and I'm not sure it's much different abroad, Obama is one of the first politicians I've seen that actually seems to have a decent grasp of technology.
I think the crux of it is that people in the music industry and politicians seem to get on well, they just seem to have the same mindset whilst IT and Science simply don't seem to get on with politicians as well. In that scenario it doesn't really matter what an industry is worth, most politicians don't seem to take a logical approach to decision making like that. They're more fallable to arguments such as "Piracy is wrong, it's illegal, it always has been, it must be stopped" than they were to reasoned arguments producing statistics showing piracy is only bad for the major labels but probably good overall for the population as a whole. If politicians did follow a logical, reasoned way of thinking then in the UK at least we wouldn't be seeing this consistent push for ID cards despite the population, the opposition parties, ex-security service leaders, employers/businesses being against it and costs for the scheme ballooning into many many billions of pounds- no logical or reasoned thought would lead to the conclusion that continuing such a scheme is a good idea.
One final note is that a few weeks back David Cameron mentioned that if the Conservative party made it into power next that he would appoint someone from the creative industry to be in charge of deciding the UK's broadband future. One has to wonder what on earth the logic behind that is when he could choose someone from the technology industry. That coupled with his speech to the BPI a couple of years ago that was full of ignorance and many other comments and events through the past few years along similar lines are a pretty good demonstration that David Cameron and the Conservatives are strongly tied to big media. I do not think Labour is any different judging by their actions. So one thing is for sure, their actions and comments in favour of big media over technology certainly add weight to the idea that yes, they have a much stronger lobby at very least or simply offer more "incentives" to MPs than technology does.
Re:Why do the music cartels have so much influence (Score:5, Funny)
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in .com.fr,
we shall fight on the web and on usenet,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Internet, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the servers,
we shall fight on port 443,
we shall fight in the VPNs and on P2P,
we shall fight in the darknets;
we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Internet or a large part of it were subjugated and censored, then our digital Anarchy beyond the web, armed and guarded by thepiratebay fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in good time, the New Internet, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."
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Oh God !!! Why did you have dig him up ???
Never liked Churchill but why destroy such a great speech?
heres a decent quote that fits the situation
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." --Harry S. Truman, message to Congress, August 8, 1950
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"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." --Harry S. Truman, message to Congress, August 8, 1950
1950 eh? So this was around the time that the entire country went bug-nuts over rounding up and silencing the dreaded communists?
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With the notable exception of Bill Gates (because he's filthy rich and does good charity work) and Steve Jobs (because Apple is as much a fashion company as a technology one) there is nobody in the technology sphere that has anywhere the celebrity power of most media stars.
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I think Europe tends to follow the United States in terms of policies. I would imagine it's because the trading with the US is so important, they want to stay on the good side of the US. Also, there's probably a strong lobby in Europe as well.
The music industry's war against its consumers is a guaranteed losing battle. We have already decided that music costs too much and we are refusing to pay their artificially high prices. They can either change or die. They chose to die. So this is just their attempt to
So Ireland isn't a free country once again (Score:2)
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That's it, really. How sad.
Freedom isn't defined by the ability to download music for free.
This does amuse me. All these measures do is bring about new technology for sharing files. Well, that and win the people who came up with the idea promotions/votes.
Anyone who thinks of things like this should be sat down and made to watch a film about prohibition. Then they might just realise how stupid they're being. Just arguing that they're doing the wrong thing won't work, because they don't think they are, and anyone who says they are is '
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well said.
I love the kids who sat on their ass playing halo when guantanomo bay was set up and when the USA invaded iraq on the pretence of finding WMD that didn't exist, and which the USA had sold them anyway, but OMFG LOOK OUT! TAKE TO THE STREETS! because they might have to pay for music like honest people.
Some people have weird priorities and senses of what is right and wrong
Unexpected Win (Score:5, Informative)
Oh no (Score:3, Funny)
Swapping by sneakernet (Score:2)
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Horray, I get to use this again! (Score:2)
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*ahem* anyway... President Madagascar! [homelinux.com]
Is anyone surprised? (Score:2)
So Irish governments have had the idea of making Ireland a tax haven for "creatives" - writers, musicians and artists. Given the current financial doo-doos, caused in part by the diversion of so mu
Finally! (Score:2, Insightful)
Darwinism and Irish People (Score:2)
As a consequence Irish People will be the first to develope good skills in circumventing internet blocking. Easy to use software to get around those things will be developed there for the use of us all if ISP's around the world get into the habit to try the same nonsense. Hey! I love darwinism! :-)
How about some counter-threats? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Find some reasonably popular band who is sharing, or is willing to promote their music on torrent sites.
2. Throw out a little press, get a reasonably large number of people outside Ireland to download/seed.
3. Sue the IRMA for tortious interference with contract, anti-trust, whatever shit you can make stick.
4. Profit?
Since it's not the government you can't really demand your rights from a private ISP but it seems to me that they're then also opening themselves up for lawsuits based on interference with business, something you couldn't do against a law.
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Didn't Nine Inch Nails already do steps 1 and 2 ?
I'm not Irish so I can't help you with step 3.
This will work for sure! (Score:2)
Apologies to Frederick Weatherly (Score:2)
Eircom's gone and blocked the pirate sites
No mp3s, and torrents are appalling
'Tis all because of nutty IP rights.
But come ye back armed with your faithful proxy
Or simply find new URLs to parse.
'Tis not the science of the flying rocket
Oh Download boy, the law it is an arse.
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Look, I Like to Rock and I will Say Hello Tonite because I am a Ladies Man. Before The Dawn we'll have Babes In Arms so you Better Do It Well so you don't become a 21st Century Schizoid Man.
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Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
In Germany many things are illegal ('verbotten') as long as citizens are concerned. This is immaterial as soon as some gov. agency breaks the law to get data on citizens for instance. I suppose that is what our constitution means by 'sozial'.
It is interesting to observe how they are squeezing our rights with every occasion. I stopped buying CDs long time ago and did not move to illegal copying as I did not see anything useful to copy - it may be however that soon I will be paying tax to these bastards anyway. I wonder where does this stop? OC laws and actions that could help with spamming, cyber-criminality of any kind etc are left out as they are too difficult to handle and there is no lobby to pay the fee.....
This all is very sad indeed.
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have you ever heard of Cartel monopolies?
What, like the US Federal Reserve? :)