Despite restrictive copyright laws, online vandalism is not the answer
EDMONTON (CUP) — It shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone that Limewire, one of the more popular choices for Internet freeloaders worldwide to download illegal music, videos and software, has been shut down.
Despite these measures to curb illegal downloads, the Internet “vigilante” group Anonymous has been making waves recently in “Operation Payback,” their pro-piracy campaign focused on attacking various websites belonging to groups who advocate for current copyright laws.
Targets have included the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and anti-piracy software company AiPlex Software. Their sites have been brought down for varying amounts of time using distributed denial of service attacks, which effectively overloads their servers with millions of service requests and makes them virtually inaccessible to people trying to visit their websites.
Their latest target has been the United States Copyright Office site.
If ever there were a defining example of idiocy, this would be it. These attacks are highly illegal and violate the terms of use set out by most Internet service providers. Targeting the U.S. government must be high up on the list of “stupid shit that isn’t going to accomplish anything, except getting your ass thrown in jail.”
These attacks can be hard to trace, as they simply bombard a server with a huge number of requests from many computers at once. Tracing those requests is a pain and would be nearly impossible to do. However, if you want to give the government a good reason to force us all to have unique Internet IDs that track our every move, then this is a good way to do it.
Before long, these attacks might become a lot easier to trace, along with every search, YouTube video upload, and legal or illegal download that we initiate.
Not only are the attacks themselves illegal, but they’re also an incredibly childish way to protest this issue. These sorts of demonstrations are at the same level as egging someone’s house because they stage band practice at 3 a.m. It may piss you off, but there are plenty of more civilized and legitimate ways to deal with the problem.
Besides, to these powerful groups, such web vandalism is merely a mild annoyance. It is, at most, a slight inconvenience for them, and the only ones who will actually care are the pissed-off IT guys who have to fix the failing servers. Meanwhile, the people who run these organizations are only validated in their opinions that anti-copyright advocates are a bunch of miscreants who don’t deserve to voice their opinions.
The worst part about this is that there are legitimate concerns that should be raised relating to copyright laws. The RIAA, for example, has been embroiled in a particularly nasty case involving Jammie Thomas-Rassett, a woman who was caught downloading music and has been, as of the most recent appeal, sentenced to pay $62,500 for each of the 24 songs she’s been charged for sharing illegally.
A fine of $1.5 million for the crime of downloading a Bryan Adams song seems harsh, to say the least.
The RIAA rejected an earlier reduced sentence that only charged her $2,250 per song, making it seem like instead of trying to recoup legitimate losses, they’re mostly looking to make an example out of a Minnesota mother of four. The entire process is ridiculous, and shows that the RIAA isn’t using any sort of valid metric when it comes to figuring out these penalties, and is just pulling numbers out of the air in a vain effort to scare potential pirates.
Because piracy has become such an enormous problem, companies who have a stake in controlling how their media is shared have tried to clamp down tighter on pirates and legitimate customers alike. This is not much of a solution and may actually be adding to the problem of piracy. Restrictive digital rights management software can be annoying at the best of times, and is often unyieldingly restrictive; indeed, when customers can’t control their own legally purchased music, they’re more likely to turn towards music piracy.
While there are problems to be addressed with how certain organizations are handling copyright infringement, “Operation Payback” takes these concerns, ties them to a brick and hurls them through windows. This is not how we should be tackling these issues, as it discredits those who are trying to deal with them in a legitimate and productive way.
