Jathan Desir of the University of Iowa, has been charged by the FBI and the DoD's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section with felony counts of copyright infringement and conspiracy. This is the first conviction since the launch of the multinational Operation Fastlink.
From Slashdot:
"...'Operation Fastlink,' which targeted the underground community's hierarchy with [FBI] agents conducting more than 120 searches within 24 hours in 27 states and 11 foreign countries. At the time, authorities identified nearly 100 people as leaders or high-ranking members of international piracy groups." Sounds like somebody's in deep doo doo."
Everyone's heard about the peer to peer sharing networks such as Kazaa, Napster, WinMX, etc. These peer to peer companies create software that allows for peer to peer sharing of essentially anything including software, music, videos, and other types of media.
Although Napster has gone to a pay-for-download service following it's lawsuit by the RIAA, it used to be the de-facto standard for filesharing.
All of these lawsuits filed by the RIAA have brought personal privacy rights to the forefront of computer concerns. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an section of it's website set up to address these privacy concerns. They've even got a petition that you can sign to be sent to Congress voicing your concern regarding the RIAA's tactics.
The RIAA has filed suits against people from college students to 5 year olds, and even a 65 year old woman. On the other hand, the RIAA has been sued by a company called Altnet due to patent infringements.
Many of the copyright laws that are enforced now were written well before the Internet explosion that gave rise to P2P sharing.
Desir is the first of thousands that have been identified Operation Fastlink's 120 searches within 24 hours in 27 states and 11 foreign countries.
Posted by yakuza at December 29, 2004 09:26 AM | TrackBack