German Police Seize German Pirate Party Servers 121
fph il quozientatore writes "The German police have seized today the servers from the German Pirate Party after an attack on the French company EDF. Apparently they are looking for evidence of allegiance with the Anonymous group. In completely unrelated news, the website of the German police was down this afternoon."
Mayhem only begets mayhem (Score:1, Insightful)
This is what happens when you hack for the sake of hacking. I don't know if the German police really had reason to believe that Anonymous was related to the pirate party, but when you open Pandora's box, these things can be expected.
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Idiots on both sides.... But we can say: the police started it...
Taking down the central server of political party just 2 days ahead of elections is not nice.
CU, Martin
Re:Sigh (Score:2, Insightful)
Taking down the central server of political party just 2 days ahead of elections is not nice.
...but if the PP-G is smart, they have a great opportunity to get some more people to vote... tweet: SEIZE-BACK... RETRO STYLE! Actually go to a booth and vote Pirate Party! #servergate
But then in German of course. Maybe from #6 they can become #5.
Just like the good old days (Score:5, Insightful)
Point a finger at your competition/enemy and make some unfounded claims about 'crimes against the state', and the police come in and take care of the problem for you.
This remind anyone of something? Like Poland late 1939?
Re:Just like the good old days (Score:3, Insightful)
Or today, anything on Fox News.
Re:Johnny Depp to play Jens Seipenbusch (Score:5, Insightful)
Not newsworthy?
The servers of a party that has online liberty as one of its core agendas have been seized, with an allegation of being involved in an attack against some French nuke power company (who, in turn, has been accused of rather questionable security and even more questionable garbage disposal). From what it looks now, ONLY this party's servers, despite being most likely nothing more than the equivalent of a TOR exit node that has been abused.
And all of that a few days before an election.
Sorry, if that's not newsworthy, I guess personal liberty and its limitation by certain "interest groups" really isn't an issue for nerds anymore.
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mayhem only begets mayhem (Score:5, Insightful)
Pro-pirate is not pro-liberty. Look up the meaning of the word "pirate" that these guys are trying to emulate.
They are not trying to "emulate" the term Pirate -- The pro-copyright corporations began using the term as a derogatory label (hopefuly having negative connotaion), the term stuck, and so we throw it in their faces.
These are pro-liberty only in the sense that they wish to have more liberty to break the law and enable others to break the law.
The "law" is unjust. Copyright is not required, per constitution, it is allowed, solely for the betterment of society as a whole. It is an outdated and over-broad, in the time that it was first allowed the founding fathers thought thought it should last only around 10 to 14 years. Now, in an era when not only big businesses have copy machines (nearly any one has many), the laws have been twisted to harm society, and extended for TWO GENERATIONS. My lifetime +70 years -- Beyond the life expectancy of my children!
If they actually wish to change the law instead of merely breaking it, then they should boycott the media that is copy protected. That is do not steal the music/games/video but instead refuse to listen/play/watch.
Yes, we want "free" stuff, like our freedom of speech and freedom of expression back. We don't want the restriction of only being able to legally share information that is over 100 years old. Freedom to sing songs publicly and share knowledge and information with our neighbors. The black people of America, and their supporters, had to stand up for their rights when Jim Crow was the LAW. Occasionally this means breaking the fucking unjust, oppressive, ridiculous law -- you dolt! Rosa Parks; Ring any bells!?! (sorry, excuse the rage -- ignorance is abhorrent to me)
As long as they continue acting like common thieves they will get zero respect from the public but if they start a boycott that catches on then they'll start making headway. But this won't happen since the vast majority of pirate party supporters just want the free stuff.
When your civil rights are abused it is your duty to peacefully protest -- What a better way to protest peacefully than to participate in the free sharing of ideas and information with your friends. No one is "stealing" anything. The only thing that has been taken away is the freedom to sing, say, write, or copy anything you want. We allowed aurthors a limited monopoly over their works to keep the greedy publishers in check. Now, the publishers force contracts on the authors or else the work doesn't get published, and these contracts take the rights of the authors and give them to the publishers.
We've tried the civil protest route... Hell, it this case We Have A POLITICAL PARTY, and yet the pockets of the corporations are deeper still than our own. Not participating in the society we helped create is not an option. If you can think of any more peaceful a protest than having a network connection and two computers duplicating 1s and 0s, please, FUCKING LET ME KNOW!
If it weren't for free sharing of ideas human society and the very languages we use that enable us to be more than just emotional animals would not have formed. It is in our very nature to share knowledge and information, to outlaw such things is the very definition of a police state. (Now, there's a fucking term it would do you well to look up!)
Re:Mayhem only begets mayhem (Score:4, Insightful)
You clearly have no clue what the Pirate Party is about. It is not pro-pirate, as defined by the MAFIAA; it is anti-IP. The concept of Intellectual Property is fundamentally abhorrant, and severely infringes on peoples intellectual liberties. This is about far more than the copying of movies, it is about the liberty to think freely. To invent or create freely, without being mired in lawsuits, where the parasites who "own" some idea demand rent for any and everything.
One may be the first to have an idea, but chances are nearly certain that they won't be the last. Granting the first-to-file or first-to-invent (which is more often not debatable), an unlimited monopoly is starkly in opposition to the public good. It puts a huge damper on what could otherwise be exponential progress, in order to enrich a select few.
Granting a monopoly on an idea is extremely detrimental to society.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a hint for people who are innocuous: don't call yourselves "pirates."
It's pretty common for insults to be adopted as terms of pride: "yankee" and "redneck" come to mind, along with all sorts of racial slurs, and sometimes the word even becomes the official name of the group, as with "Methodist." So the Pirate Party is following in an old and largely successful tradition. Also, since it's self-evidently absurd to equate copying bits on a hard drive with armed robbery on the high seas, they might as well have fun with it; how else are you supposed to respond to something so over-the-top?
Re:Mayhem only begets mayhem (Score:4, Insightful)
I can not post a video to youtube expressing my like or dislike of a few short clips of a moive/song....
I can get hassled by the "owners" of a large metal object in the middle of a public park (the bean in chicago), for taking pictures of it, to share with those that are unable to visit the free park.
Suppose that you have an idea for a new way to produce energy that you worked really hard all your life on. Wouldn't you like to be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor?
Make a working prototype, and patent it. This has nothing to do with copyright at all. Also no patents on ideas, methods, or other non physical goods.
illegally enjoying digital goods is no different than stealing? in both cases, someone is derived from something. When you steal something, the owner is deprived of the item, when you pirate something, the owner is deprived of the value of the pirated item.
But the stream of 1s and 0s does not it's self have value. It can be recreated at any time for marginal cost(you could argue that if I did download it from a server of the artist, that I should be responsible for the bill for the bandwidth used to do that. That would be fair, so here is the $0.002 that I owe for the 2MB song. I would be unable to otherwise aquire the "thing" how did I do any harm? In fact i may end up helping if i like it and share it with many friends, and some of them have the means/will to buy it, but would not have otherwise known about it. There are a great many music artists making a decent living while giving all their songs for free on the internet in high quality.
Now I would not say that there is not a place for copyright, patents, trademarks, "freedom of expression", and whatnot, but there needs to be some balance there. 140 years (unless assigned to a company that lives for 400) is a bit extreme, why should you make money all your life, and for the entire lives of your children just because you thought something. I think lots of things at work everyday (Custom HVAC equipment), but yet the company only gets paid when the gear is sold to the customer. Maybe we should try leasing out or gear with terms like,
"A fee of no less than the value of 1oz of gold on ${DATE} shall be paid for every person hour that this equipment provides service. If this is a process application, the fee shall be the value of .25oz of gold on ${DATE} per hour of service. If this is a datacenter application, the fee shall be the value of 2oz gold on ${DATE}, per server per hour of service. All fees shall be provided at the first of the month, and shall be no less than 60 hours of service per month for 140 years from date of purchase or final comisioning which ever is later, and shall start on date of shipment to authorized agent."
If we tried that we would be laughed out of the market.
You do know why no restaurants sing "happy birthday" don't you? right because it is under copyright and they would need to pay up to sing it.