I’d like to see the FBi waste resources on everyone that downloaded it.
I recommend evreyone shout “I’m not Osama” as they are been dragged to the cop car. ( in other words - they have beeter things to do that get ppl for a lousy beta version )
A former coworker caught the attention of the FBI a few years ago too. He had apparently gotten pissed off about some dealings with the admins for a popular old school MUD type game. He hacked into one of their systems and supposedly stole their source code too. He had either threatened to do exactly this or bragged about it afterward. Maybe both, I forget, but he was pretty dumb about it. He used a work computer for at least part of this. He left our company under only slightly more friendly circumstances.
A few months later, my boss pulled me aside to ask about our logs and email archives. A couple FBI agents visited him that morning looking for our buddy. We really didn’t have anything relevant left over, and there was apparently no real threat that we’d have anything seized. I did see some of the logs from the intrusion, it was pretty clear what had happened.
But the FBI dudes were pretty clueless. We didn’t know where he was either, but I remembered a goofy domain name he owned and WHOIS seemed to have legitimate address info, out of state. We were pretty pissed off at him too, but my boss said they seemed like they neither understood nor had any interest in the address information we followed up with.
So are they just looking for the code thieves? I mean, I am in CGW saying I have a copy of the game?
I don’t think so. It sounds like this guy was a member of Hungry Programmers or whatever who are evidently suspect in actually taking part in the hacking itself.
The official last thing I need is any FBI agents at my house. I doubt anything like that would happen, though.
When did it become illegal to have mp3’s on my hard drive? I’ve got about 30 gb devoted to mp3’s…
…amazingly, at this point, none were the result of file-sharing.
Isn’t a civil deal between you and the record company even if you did outright steal the music?
Is it between you and the owner if you steal from a store?
And hi. An apostrophe denotes ownership. Not plurality. You goddamned tool.
Wow. Lots of hostility!!
Although that’s an intuitive reaction, I’m not sure it’s so open and shut. There’s no general federal law against stealing (stealing from the federal government is illegal, as is stealing stuff on federal land, but if you just rip off the local 7-11 that’s not a federal crime). States obviously prohibit theft, but IIRC (and state law is not my speciality) an element of the offense is usually that you have the intent to permanently deprive the owner of his property. Merely copying an item, I think, is not “theft” under state law (at least here in CA). I think copying music is probably just a civil wrong.
Well, isn’t that kind of where they are with the HL2 source stuff though? Copied, not stolen outright? Then again, i suppose the FBI and SS are all over this more because of the hacking it took to get it as opposed to just downloading the source code.
Although that’s an intuitive reaction, I’m not sure it’s so open and shut. There’s no general federal law against stealing (stealing from the federal government is illegal, as is stealing stuff on federal land, but if you just rip off the local 7-11 that’s not a federal crime). States obviously prohibit theft, but IIRC (and state law is not my speciality) an element of the offense is usually that you have the intent to permanently deprive the owner of his property. Merely copying an item, I think, is not “theft” under state law (at least here in CA). I think copying music is probably just a civil wrong.[/quote]
I don’t know the legal arguments, but I’ve always thought that illegally copying music, software, etc. should fall into the same category as counterfeiting currency rather than stealing. The copier is not depriving the orginal owner of property, but rather reducing the value of that property by reducing scarcity.
Not a 100% sure how MP3’s play into this, but I know that warez go into the boundry of IP theft, and the DOJ IP website (http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/ip.html) has some interesting examples of people getting busted. Besides, I’ve lived in California for most my life and know a few people who have been pinched for having warez. Many of them started as phreaking or drug related and in their investigation the authorities found illicit software and tacked those charges up there as well.
There was also the case of the New York man a couple years back who got a knock on his door from the police because he and his wife were having a pretty loud argument. One of the police officers was hep to the whole warez thing and noticed that the guy had a cd burning machine and thousands of CDs with software titles written on them with Sharpee markers. I don’t know what happened to him in the end, but last I read they were going forward with criminal charges.