Cybercitizenship Definition Of Crime 17
pbf writes: "This article from securityfocus.com has an interesting view on what RIAA-funded site Cybercitizenship.org believes is legal or not on the Internet, as well as how you should educate your kids for that matter. This is quite interesting and the conclusion indicates fairly accurately the tone of the article: "When did federal prosecutors and hi-tech industry moguls became regarded as authorities on cyber ethics or effective parenting?" Indeed... So are you surfing like a hero or are surfing like a zero ?"
"Thou Shalt"... (Score:1)
So, I should think about the fact that I'm upholding fair use with the DeCSS-based program I'm writing. Or is the "social consequence" that the MPAA can't force me to use a $30 piece of software and get royalties for it?
How about Phil Zimmerman knowing that human rights organizations [pgp.com] use PGP to thwart oppressive governments? Or is the "social consequence" that Louis Freeh has a harder time listening on your communications?
Freenet [sourceforge.net] is going to be a censor-resistant network that will allow people to speak freely and anonymously-- giving people who may never have had a voice before the chance to make themselves heard. But, according to some, the "social consequence" is the availability of badly-encoded .mp3 files.
Any program worth writing has social consequences, dammit! Whether it's a hex editor that can be used for looking at core dumps or FooCat BarCode for reading in ISBNs, good programs have good and bad consequences. Within the bounds of legality (which are currently being tested), the ethical decisions of programmers should NOT be questioned by the government!
Re:sweet jesus! (Score:1)
They must have fixed it then. The question asks if it's illegal to download copyrighted music from the internet. They say it is.
-BrentI am a Zero! (Score:1)
And damned proud of it.
----
Re:i got an email (Score:1)
"Thank you for writing. We will now summarily ignore everything you've just said for all time and wait for someone who agrees with our views to write in so we can suck them into our nefarious fold."
Lock me up (Score:1)
De-Americanization of America (Score:1)
It seems more and more the government is emphasizing socialistic programs. It is humorous, as socialism (more specifically, communism) was fought ruthlessly by the government.
I think Fidel Castro will have the last laugh-- as America slowly turns into an authoritarian state, despite having the label "democracy".
How do you stop this? Educate yourself and the ignorant. Read Machiavelli, Hegel (Marx was his student, you know), Locke, Rousseau, etc.-- learn what a government is truely about, not what cloned politicians believe it is.
Just a thought or two...
Not a problem! (Score:1)
The only people this website could fool are the same sloths who believe everything else TV and the internet has told them. These are the same people buying stock because they heard a tip on IRC, then sueing for fraud, the same people who acquitted OJ, and the same people that made oprah a millionaire ...
remember the old maxim : "What the american public dosen't know, makes them the american public."
A misuse of common sense (Score:1)
Fine. I don't claim to have written the Linux kernel, or any of the GNU tools, but I use and tout them as the best. I don't hurt others either.
However, they present this stupid common sense in a manner that makes it seem like anyone who knows more about computers than the general public is doing illegal deeds in their every waking moment. What they neglect to mention is the fact that acts worse than their "cybercrimes" are looked on as innocuous in daily life!
When I have kids, I intend on having them watch the cartoon Reboot, rather than the friggin disney channel, where there is MORE violence and stupidity...sheesh..
Re:i got an email (Score:1)
By the way, did you send it from the iloveporn@moralmajority.org address perchance?
The usual thing that bugs me is still here (Score:1)
Perhaps they should have said that downloading music from the internet is as bad as borrowing a CD from someone and copying it to tape.
Reno comment (Score:1)
"If we are to ensure public safety and responsible computer use, then government, industry and the public must all work together," said Reno
I thought we lived in a democracy in the US, that the government was an extension of the people/public.. Good to know that a government employee is finally having the guts to stand up and say what the public has known for a while, that government is seperate from the people.
They invited questions to their experts... (Score:1)
So I asked one:
I wonder if I'll ever get an answer?
sweet jesus! (Score:1)
seriously, what are we doing to keep people like this from spreading this filth?
i got an email (Score:1)
-----Original Message-----
From: the wonderful gtx
[mailto:xxx@xxx.xxx]
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 11:11 AMTo: cybercitizen@itaa.org
Subject:
If 48% of polled children do not consider hacking to be a crime, that's because 52% haven't been properly educated. Hacking is not a crime. Luckily for the person who wrote the copy for this website, being completely clueless isn't either. Hacking is not "manipulation of or intentional damage to a Web site," as you put it. Hacking has been around since before there were any web sites to crack. It is trash like this that gives us hackers a bad name.
Furthermore, when did downloading music files off of the internet become illegal? As a musician, I publish all of my work on the internet, and after doing 10GB of traffic a day, I can tell you that most people do not believe this to be illegal. Do you know why? Because it isn't. And when will you people stop equating online occurances to real world ones? Downloading music is not in anyway related to stealing CD's from stores. DoSing is not in any way related to blocking a tunnel.
When you say "Cyber Ethics: Applying Old Values to a New Medium," maybe you should step back and think about that. Why do we retain the old values? They have no relevance with the examples you give on your site. It's about time we came up with new values -- (btw, values are not the same for everybody, and yours are out-dated) new values, for new times, for a new medium. Makes a bit of sense doesn't it?
And as long as I'm reading this atrocity, I would like to congratulate the person who decided to scare the world with the story of how the love bug could have killed people. Nice. Do you people have any trouble sleeping at night, or is that only a problem when you have a conscience?
As a parent of two, I would love to see you post this email in your 'Letters from Parents' section. I do believe it would only be fair to give both sides of this argument. However, I doubt that you will do that, and I believe that all I have to look forward to, if anything is a form letter, thanking me for my interest. Do the world a favor, and let people know the truth.
Sincerely,
A parent concerned for a future stuck in the past.
And the reply:
Thank you for your comments about cybercitizenship.org.
As we indicate on the Web site, the whole area of cyber ethics is new and we are learning more about responsible behavior online, a subject open to discussion and modification. For this reason, the area, and the Web site, are works in process.
Your comments are helpful and we will take a look at them as we make modifications to the site in the near future.
The Cybercitizen Partnership
Re:i got an email (Score:1)
btw, iloveporn@moralmajority.org is not really an email address, sadly
Re:Reno comment (Score:2)
translation:
"if we are to ensure corporate control of the masses and prevent 12-year-old kids from doing BAD THINGS (tm) that we can't otherwise stop, the well-funded politicians, the RIAA/MPAA and othewise gullible parents must work together to spread our propaganda."
Anyone else have an alternate translation of Reno's statement?
Rant alert! (Score:2)
Warning: this is to be taken as tongue-in-cheek humor, not as flamebait (that little bit is added b/c I prefer not to post as an anonymous coward, and do not want my inbox to resemble a target for gelatinous gasoline in the morning)
The only people this website could fool are the same sloths who believe everything else TV and the internet has told them. These are the same people buying stock because they heard a tip on IRC, then sueing for fraud, the same people who acquitted OJ, and the same people that made oprah a millionaire...
Yes, the sheep are being led by greedy wolves in shepherds' clothing. We may also want to remember a quote from Abraham Lincoln that was to the effect of "A man who reads nothing is better educated than a man who reads only newspapers", or something like that. I personally think you're giving the average sheep too much credit with saying that they bought stock on a tip they heard on IRC because: 1) that would imply that they were smart enough to set up an etrade account, and 2) they were able to figure out how to use IRC. I fail to see how they could sue for fraud, because last I checked, screen names are not legal proof of identification, making it impossible to sue the person who gave them the tip. I won't even touch on the OJ case for fear of napalm. Oprah, I think, has made much more than one million dollars, as have several other talk show hosts. Then there's the whole issue of the most intellectually dulling shows in the history of the television: Big Brother (would anyone really want to live in an antiutopian, Orwellian environment completely cut off from the rest of the world?), Survivor (Oh, hey, we fished last week, but somehow forgot how to, so lets eat these rats over here, plus if this was a real survival show we'd just raid the camera crews' supplies relentlessly), Who Wants to be a Millionaire (oh, gee, now the gecko on the windowscreen ten feet away has the intelligence to have a 7-digit payout), and Greed (let's take 6 people, put them on a team, build teamwork, then pit them against each other in sudden-death challenges, and give the winner some outrageously huge payout that they don't really deserve).
Its because of pathetic crap like this that the American public demands that I would love to be one of the first people to colonize Mars. Hell, I'd even take the Moon, Venus, or the Asteroid Belt, as long as the "colonies" become self-governing. Then we'd finally be able to get rid of the fascist laws and acts that restrict our constitutional rights.
I might as well turn this into a full-fledged rant and toss the warning at the top to Grethnor. Last I checked, songs and song lyrics are speech, and source code was either speech or press, or both (First Amendment), scanning/probing of computers and electronic transmissions without explicit permission, à la Carnivore, is a direct violation of the right to freedom from unwarranted search (Fourth Amendment). As far as I can tell, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is in explicit or near-explicit violation of most of those rights, as well as in violation of that home recording act of 1992.
This concludes my rant.
--Given the way things have been going personally lately, I'm due for a landslide of karma points.