Don't Worry About Copy Write Protection!

[Azselendor]

DEG's method would go a long way to help curb piracy. But it won't stop, as fyron said, people with virtual drives. However, if you tax media duplication devices, office theft of blank cd's would rise and shoplifting as pirates aren't detered by taxation.

Here's what I'd do.

1.) Have ISP's block ports used by peer-to-peer systems and ones that can be used.
2.) Require all servers to have a domain name if it is accessable to the web. This allows pirates to be hunted down and found. Domains can only be registered to valid mail addresses, no po boxes (but I'd allow an exemption for rural locations by means of a special application).
3.) Sites containing porn must use a .XXX extention as proposed. Many warez sites have prono advertisers and we can force them into the .xxx domain type and then use ISP's to lock them out.
4.) Levy taxes against companies that manufacture recordable media software, hardware, and media. Individuals that make the software can be made liable for infringment suits if their software is involved in piracy.
5.) Create a system of financial rewards for the successful capture and conviction of pirates. This will seriously harm flea-market pirates.
6.) Make piracy penalties involve a mandatory prison sentance and fine, not one or the other and up to limits.
7.) Require pirates to register in a national database distributed to computer companies and retailers when caught. Much like how sex offenders can't work or live near children, we want to make sure pirates are run out of computing for good.

Now that won't stop pirates, just really give them a bad day. We need to combat this on the industry level as piracy is rampant in price-senstive nations and areas where $50+ price tags on software is insane.

[Atrocities]

Lets fill up the jails with people who make illegal copies of software and music instead of the creal criminals. The only way to stop piracy is to simply outlaw the technology.

[Suicide Junkie]

1) You mean block *all* ports? That's the only way its gonna happen.

2) IOW, destroy load balancing, and put every PC in the DMZ? No routers or NAT or serious firewalls?

3) Who's definition? Who enforces it? Take this simplified version, and see if you still think it will be possible:
You don't even need the ISP part. Just have them all change their names to "something.not-a-TLD" so they don't resolve.

4) That makes zero difference from today. The costs all get passed on to the consumer in the same way.

5) If police aren't going to take up free tips, why would they pay for them? And who is going to pay for that; You, in taxes.

6&7) Cranking penalties beyond reason dosen't help the issue. It may reduce some copyright infringement, but it certainly dosen't anywhere near fit the crime.
At what point does murdering the witness become less of a crime than getting caught copying something?


The REAL SOLUTION
- Stop screwing around, and parent your kids properly. Take responsibility.

[Alneyan]

Suicide Junkie said:
1) You mean block *all* ports? That's the only way its gonna happen.

[Sarcasm] Don't be silly. It may be possible to allow some ports from trusted sources. So, you could still bask in the glory of port 53or port 137 , so long as you stick with approved servers. There are probably a few other such services, where all traffic can be routed to a few, trusted servers.

Yeah, so perhaps you will lose access to a handful of ports. Well, it's not as if they were actually important. I mean, who uses port 25, port 80 or port 110? And don't start complaining about ports 22 and 23: only crackers and hackers (them are the same exact thing) have any use for them. [/Sarcasm]

Yup, ain't gonna happen, unless you really want to be stuck with DNS, NTP and their ilk (in a best case scenario; closing down everything ought to be faster and easier). And you should really close down port 80 to begin with: it's probably the one most used for downloads of all sorts. It also happens to be used by the HTTP protocol, but hey, who cares about that? Well, perhaps you would.

[Suicide Junkie]

I do.

After the servers for FTP, HTTP, and etc, I've got lots and lots for games.

Besides, you can always use any port for any purpose you like.
Limiting them just means more hassle for users who have to turn X off inorder to free up a port for Y.

[Alneyan]

Sorry if that wasn't clear. The sarcasm was not intended at yourself, but at the idea of closing down ports.

[Azselendor]

Well, the thing about US law is that it doesn't effect foreign nations. Clearly anything the Us does won't exceed it's borders.

Atrocities, outlawing the technology will only slightly curb future use. What's to stop someone from making their own software and obtaining/maintaining old equipment. Y2K clearly showed that despite end-of-life expectations, software and hardware lives on for years after it was supposed to die.

As for filling up jails, no. Prisons. If there is no current sentance, send them for a minimum of 367 days. By default, they must go to prision if it is a year plus a day. 367 covers leap years.

Renegegade13, my point with #4 is against individuals who make programs and distribute them as freeware that is designed to bypass protections and copy software/movies/music. They should be held responsible because a person who makes a program that rips DVD's with a commercial film on it does so for only that purpose. If a person makes a program to copy home DVD's of his cats playing and lends it to a friend who uses to pirate his movie collection wouldn't be held responsible. But if you make software thats only purpose is to pirate software and cover yourself by saying "Well, I made it for backup puposes only and distributed it so others could make their backups too" doesn't excuse guilt.

#5 is geared as an effort the industry has to make and sponser with the federal government, local authority and most state authorities won't do anything.

SJ, Renegade, bear in mind 6 & 7 would make these pirates known and make sure that they recieve a punishment that hurts. There is no national registry for released murders, I should point out. However, the punishment does fit the crime when you take into the amount of money lost and direct income those losses have on individuals and their lifestyles. Yet under current laws, a software pirate can get out of jail and pay their fine by simply going back to pirating.

#7 is specially designed to hurt them by denying them access to technology-based jobs that could enable them to further pirate software. I'd put it on par with bank fraud. Surely you wouldn't want person that defrauded a bank working in your back, just as you would want a pirate in your IT deptartment, or rev. fred phelps as your lawyer (he was disbarred after extorting thousands out of people by demanding $1500 retainer fees every month from his clients, when that failed he threatened to sue people for the $1500 retainer.) What the database does is alert retailers and companies that a person who is a known computer pirate is applying for a job. Now that won't tell the company to not hire that pirate or not, but it will alert them.

I'm not talking about blocking all ports, but many of the uneeded ones. Nearly all larger ISP's currently block port 25 because of spammers, for example.

[Azselendor]

SJ, it wouldn't be illegal, but many pirates operate via IP adresses. An alternative to this might to ensure some method of locating the person so companies can locate people actually engaged in pirating.

Fryon, I didn't say sue microsoft, what I said is that individuals who make software specifically for the purpose of evading copyright protections for the explicit purpose of duplicating copyrighted material should be held financially responsible and punished.

I'll also point out there are a number of free services that allows the posting of files and images out there. Most domains can be now registered for as little as 3 bucks a year, I don't see how much an inconvient 0.25 cents a month is. I'm sure dynamic url services can compenstate easily as well.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Well, this is about books, but it has lots of relevance: http://www.baen.com/library/

[Fyron]

Making copies of commercial DVDs is _absolutely_ not piracy. _Distribution_ of said DVDs is piracy (when it is for profit; otherwise it is not piracy, but copyright infringement). Making backup copies solely for personal use is perfectly legitimate. Therefore, software designed to create copies of commercial DVDs is not inherently piracy software, it is software designed to let me exercise fair use rights. Some might be made with the intentions of piracy, but not all of it. Same with software that lets me create images and rips. The fact that such software can be used for piracy does not make its purpose to be piracy any more than the fact that I can use the DOS "copy" command to make copies of copyright-protected executables makes "copy" a piracy tool, or even Internet Explorer's save command on copyrighted web pages. Even better is using an alternate browser for which the javascript used on a page to lock out the IE save command has no effect. According to your definition, Mozilla is a piracy tool!

How about a program that bypasses DRM copy protections placed on music CDs? Is that really a piracy tool? It is there so I can continue exercising my fair use rights on these CDs that I have exercised on all the other CDs: make backups of my CDs, make mix CDs, play them on my computer without juggling CDs, etc. Of course, the illegitimate DMCA claims that this is illegal, but it is a wrong law in the first place...

Piracy is a huge ghost. All of these schemes are not about stopping piracy, which the big content providers know can not be stopped, but rather to restrict or eliminate fair use.

I'm not talking about blocking all ports, but many of the uneeded ones. Nearly all larger ISP's currently block port 25 because of spammers, for example.

There is no such thing as an "unneeded" port. Ports exist so you don't have communications conflicts. So long as you can run another service, you will need more ports. Further, ISPs restricting free ports to a few hundred (or less...) will make malicious attacks _easier_, since the time to scan for available ports on target PCs will be reduced 100 fold (32x to 100s range)! Zombie networks will become vastly more efficient if they can reduce the time spent analyzing target machines... There is no tangible benefit to restricting ports in a draconian manner.

Destroying the anonymity of the Internet is not a good goal to strive towards, especially not for the boogey man of piracy.

Prisons are already overcrowded with non-criminals persecuted in the war on drugs. We don't need to construct dozens of new prisons for petty software pirates too.

And don't forget about foreign, free proxy servers and encrypted transfer protocols that make any sort of tracking difficult...