File Sharing Is Not Pollution, And You Don't Need An ISP 'Tax' To Deal With It
from the sorry,-will dept
I like Will Page, the chief economist for PRS for Music (a UK collection society), quite a bit. We've had a number of fun conversations about the music industry and music industry economics -- some of which we've published here. While there are plenty of things I agree with him about, there are still many points on which we disagree. His most recent paper, advocating a mandatory ISP fee for file sharing (pdf) is a point where we completely disagree. Page's paper is getting some attention, and he presented it at the same event where Peter Jenner just called for a blanket license as well. But I fear that Page's paper, while it digs into some economic concepts, includes a few mistaken assumptions that drives the entire paper offline (though, in fairness to Page, he clearly states that for you to accept his thesis, you need to accept his assumptions).The key assumption in the paper is the idea that file sharing creates a "negative spillover." He's basically saying that file sharing is pollution -- creating a negative impact where the cost is borne by different parties than those responsible for the problem. Such situations are cases where there is a "market failure." In theory (and there are some important recent challenges to some aspects of this theory), if the costs are not borne by those creating them, then it could create an inefficient outcome, potentially requiring some sort of intervention, either in the form of regulation or voluntary restraint. But, you have to be very careful in what you consider "pollution." After all, one could argue that the creation of, say, email represented "negative spillovers" for the makers of fax machines. After all, it created a "negative impact" on fax machine makers, borne by a different party than those who created it (internet folks). But, of course, that's ridiculous. That's just innovation and competition at work.
And, the claim of "negative spillovers" really doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Normal pollution generally involves companies doing the polluting and the public bearing the costs, in some manner. But that's not the situation with file sharing at all. The public isn't being harmed at all. In fact, they're better off. And, according to Page's own research, there's no evidence that musicians are worse off either. Also, it's not like the amount of music being created is going down. It's actually going way up. The only "harm" being done is to a few companies that make up the recording industry. That really doesn't sound like pollution. It sounds like competition and innovation. We should never mistake a more efficient market for pollution, but I fear that's what Page is doing here.
Page's report does suggest one other area where there might be some pollution: in the broadband networks. This is the somewhat ingenious part of the argument. He's effectively making the argument that the pollution is that more file sharing will clog broadband networks, so it's actually in the best interests of the ISPs to "tax" the behavior to decrease the clogging. ISPs have long resisted calls for any sort of blanket licensing, but they've also talked up supposed claims of "clogged" broadband pipes from too much traffic -- usually in attempts to fight calls for net neutrality. So by saying that such a tax would decrease congestion in the networks, Page has sort of caught the ISPs at their own game, and given them a "solution" to the problem. The only issue? The "problem" of network congestion is more or less a myth, used mainly by lobbyists to ward off net neutrality legislation. The broadband providers don't really have a congestion problem, and a music tax isn't going to help solve this non-existent problem anyway.
Again, to be fair, Page more or less admits this in a paragraph towards the end:
We want to make it clear that neither of the above-mentioned options could be considered without accepting that some sort of market failure has occurred and that in consequence some form of regulation is required, and that regulation should seek to put incentives and structures in place so that a market-based solution to the value of media on networks can evolve.But, of course, most people will miss that paragraph and won't necessarily consider the assumptions being made.
I also think that the paper doesn't recognize the inefficiencies and economic costs created by blanket licensing/collective licensing regimes (though, to be fair, that wasn't the focus of the paper at all).
Either way, I chatted briefly with Page while writing this up, and he pointed out that the paper is focused specifically on the realities of the UK market under the Digital Economy Act, and that it shouldn't be generalized for other markets -- which, again, is a fair statement, though I'm not sure it changes any of the economic assumption questions (and, also could make the paper itself obsolete if the DEA is repealed, as some still believe will happen). Either way, we're going to try to find some time in the near future to have a more thorough discussion/Q&A on the topic and see if we can dig into some of those assumptions.
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Filed Under: file sharing, isp tax, pollution, uk
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If you are stuck on a fixed IP, then, if you wanted to even
try to remain anonymous, you should probably use some sort of proxy, or use tor.
Even if people bother to make a trace of all of your conversations, you can still avoid accountability by magically disappearing. Since you cannot be identified (you are still anonymous), you can just resurface later with a different IP address and keep causing mayhem.
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You don't always get a new one when the lease time expires. If you leave your PC on all the time when the lease time expires, and you're still connected online the DHCP server will usually hand out the same address.
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What you are describing sounds like a direct connection to the ISP. This is not recommended. Most home setups these days involves a gateway which is really just a modem, some have a switch other have a router, most all have NAT. Anyways, the point being that your computer connects to the gateway and obtains an IPaddr from the gateway DHCP server, probably in the 192.168.x.x range. The gateway connects to your ISP and obtains a different IPaddr from the ISP DHCP server, this addr is not within the 192.168.x.x range. When you enter the command ipconfig /all at the command prompt on your windows box, the response describes your PC connection to your internal network, not the ISP network. - Unless you are directly connected, which is a very bad idea for many reasons. Hope this helps.
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Nothing in the way this was done diminishes your anonymity, as multiple people have pointed out. All it does is make it easier for people to keep conversations straight (a constant complaint from users).
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(as a side not, look at me! I'm all sparkly!)
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Too bad that this effort has been wasted in adding anonymity rights management (ARM) to the site, rather than focusing on innovation.
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In that case, what is the problem? Those who still want to be anonymous can be and everyone can follow conversations easier. The fact you post without encryption is far more of an issue for your privacy and anonymity than identicons.
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There are a lot of corporate interests that would go through a LOT of effort and spend lots of resources to figure out who is who. If you are posting under a pseudo-name that you know made you are taking such into consideration before each post to ensure that it is very difficult for anyone to be able to collect enough information to ensure that the collective body of information on you is enough to uniquely identify one person. For instance I may know that Dark Helmet is from Chicago (and there are other things I know about him too) and that alone narrows down who he is a lot. but it's still not enough to uniquely identify him and he is careful to ensure that he doesn't present enough techdirt information on himself such that no one else could possibly fit the description. People are mindful of this stuff. While posting I was not mindful because it never even crossed my mind something like this could happen. I'm very upset and I'm about done posting here.
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There, fixed that for you.
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Use tor.
Use a secure proxy.
Use an alias and you won't even _get_ an image. Change your alias sometimes so people can't trace you.
You realize that, the more you post, the more you open yourself to a (supposed) attack don't you? Just keep posting, and maybe some "detective" will find you an attractive target and start tracing you. According to you, that is.
Of course, someone smart could just crack the techdirt servers and access thousands of logs and get __actual__ data on people (IP addresses, emails, ...). I think it would be a lot easier than manually compiling the posting history of several users.
(And I just realized that I may owe money or cookies to someone if I keep posting).
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Let *IP* be your ip address and *MD5* the hash of the IP address:
/begin python 2.5 code
import md5
#x is md5 hash value of *IP*
x = md5.md5(*IP*).hexdigest()
#Print it. Copy it...
print x
#...or save it to a file:
f=open("file","w+")
f.write(x)
f.close()
/end python 2.5 code
Then, use this url to generate the image:
http://en.gravatar.com/avatar/*md5*?d=identicon
(replace *MD5* with the hash value).
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
It was meant as an answer to this one:
http://www.techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20100715/01280010225&threaded=true#c746
Many apologies.
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No, because I'm not currently posting anything about myself so it won't make a difference. Just like you currently aren't.
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Use a secure proxy.
Use an alias and you won't even _get_ an image. Change your alias sometimes so people can't trace you."
Brilliant, if only I had done this many months ago.
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And yet, you did it. Based on little more than a change of icons, no less.
Cudos, my frienemy. You are truly the envy of trolls everywhere.
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I like it because I can now identify the rest of your posts and skip over them.
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Re:
If you really really wanted to remain anonymous, you would adopt a less distinctive writing and (lack of) punctuation style.
If your point against snowflakes was to allow you to do something where anonymity helps (whistleblowing), I'd have to agree. But your continued stylistic affections seem to contraindicate that.
If the point of your anonymity is to allow you to entertain us with sock-puppetry, I have little sympathy. Go Snowflakes!
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What if I went back to dialup, would I still have to pay a tax as if I were downloading gigabytes of unauthoried copyright material?
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Of course, I'm not saying a few million pounds in lobbying won't convince our politicians, just like with the Digital Economy Act, but that won't make it right.
What would the purpose of the levy be? Will they stop harassing UK netizens about copyright if the levy is introduced? Most likely not.
More crucially, if they can't estimate the size of the "spillover", or even its polarity, how are they going to decide how much the levy is going to be? Will they pull a number out of their arses like they usually do?
1 trillion quid will do, k tnx bai.
I really don't think this will work.
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No -- that is the brazen ugliness of it. Give the public absolutely nothing more, just charge extra! Hooray for the record industry!
We have all heard their civilisation-threatening estimations of 'loss': well, this is nothing less than a plan to convert that automatically into actual money.
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I agree 'it' wont work
Royalties exist to reward the unusual; the successful- the competitive.
Tariffs,such as the one Mr Page is advocating, exist to protect uncompetitive industries.
'it' used to be called the British disease.
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Also will my symbol always bee the same?
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It's hard for me to believe that at least one national recording industry body wouldn't do something other than try to maintain an extra-tight grip on popular culture. So, I'd have to say that I suspect that a lot of the "national" bodies of recording lables are actual puppets of the US' RIAA or some variant.
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Pirate Bay banned in Holland
http://tinyurl.com/3yx5hbt
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Iconic
I didn't notice because every time I post I get a different one.
Isn't TOR great?
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Fooling around
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No doubt about that.
Letters of accusation will still target dead people, laser printers and those lacking a computer.
Clearly this is a smash and grab rather than a genuine attempt to curtail the activity for which they lament.
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negative spillovers?
This may be one area where our strict adherence to the free market philosophy here in the US has actually benefited the public. Given that the Internet is a (huge)new marketplace. I am guessing that the powers that be here in the US thought that they could control it just as they have controlled so many other markets. Now they have realized that it is out of their control, and all of these lawsuits and calls for new legislation, regulation and taxes sounds a lot like sour grapes and whining to my ear.
I am not a fan of the term "negative spillovers" as it is applied in this context. Characterizing the advent of a new marketplace as a market failure only makes sense if you already had a good position in the formerly prevailing (traditional) marketplace. Even then, it seems that being open to new possibilities rather than stubbornly clinging to the familiar offers greater opportunities in thee future. From what I understand, the corporate form was constructed with the aim of encouraging greater risk-taking in order to generate greater profits. That a large number of existing established corporations are unwilling to take the risk of venturing into this new marketplace created by the Internet can also be called a "market failure."
I am not opposed to having the FCC regulate the Internet here in the US. In my opinion, we would be better off having the government install the infrastructure than leaving it to private corporations who really do not care whether or not you have access at all, except that they want to collect your monthly fee.
The ISPs charge what the market will bear and not a penny less. They are corporations looking to make a profit. Not one of the big ISP players cares what you do through their connections unless it interferes with another of their business interests, which it generally does. AT&T did not like Skype because it cut into the market for person to person communications. Comcast would prefer that their customers not stream videos online because it cuts into their Cable TV revenues.
One last thought: Can it be true that the British still think the way to solve a problem caused by a new marketplace is to tax it? That strategy has not worked out so well in the past. Might be time for a new solution?
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Get this through your thick skull: You are anonymous. I can't (nor can anyone that posts here) know who you are. If you are seriously concerned with your anonymity, maybe you should have used measures to protect yourself.
In regard to the RIAA:
The RIAA can kiss my shiny a** because:
1- I'm outside of their jurisdiction. They have no power here.
2- They can't find me unless Mike gives them my IP address linked to my posts. And even then, they would have to sweat to find me. And after all that, they would probably nail the wrong person. Notice that they could already do this (since TechDirt, like any decent operation, logs their traffic).
One last observation: I bet you'll come back, despite this rant. Your types can't resist trolling around here.
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That's the problem, you're new here.
"I'll pay you money (or cookies if you prefer) if you can collect a history of 10 of my posts."
You may have a different ISP setup than others where your IP address/hostmask changes more often than others. Don't assume your circumstances are the same as others.
"You are anonymous."
It's not as difficult as you think for someone with the resources to collect seemingly disparate pieces of information and put it together to find someone. Detectives do it all the time.
Again, you're new here so the collective body of information that you posted within a single hostmask/IP address maybe limited but don't assume that of others. Techdirts decision to do what they did was very poorly thought out at best.
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Perhaps another reason it maybe difficult for you to understand why techdirt made a bad decision.
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I'll certainly confirm it with you if the RIAA (or any bar sinister sock-puppets thereof) attempts a reprisal by suing me.
Go Snowflakes! Cover all the trolls!
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RECORD INDUSTRY: "We have this excellent new idea, backed by the finest economics: it's this levy approach . . ."
PUBLIC: "Hmmm, you mean like flat-rate? That has some sense to it -- we pay a simple overall amount, but in return everything is free, and can be freely used. It fits internet realities better."
RECORD INDUSTRY: "Oh no! Nothing is free, you still pay everything you paid before, but now you pay extra!"
PUBLIC: "You are ******* joking?! Right???"
RECORD INDUSTRY: "Sorry, we forgot to tell you the good news part. The good news is: we get to pay ourselves higher salaries!"
Well done record industry!
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I suggest that you find a better ISP.
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a very insecure algorythm. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security said MD5 "should be considered cryptographically broken and unsuitable for further use.
Researcher, M.M.J Stevens wrote about unencrypting MD5s as part of his Master's Thesis.
http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/On%20Collisions%20for%20MD5%20-%20M.M.J.%20Stevens.pdf
Sec tion 7.2 of his research can be adapted fairly quickly to IP addresses.
I would probably stay away from here if Mike's going to run fast and loose with providing hashes to the general public of your IP address.
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Contrary to what you have been told, the sky is not falling.
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http://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/hash/
The icon is based on a MD5 Hash, a very insecure algorythm. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security said MD5 "should be considered cryptographically broken and unsuitable for further use." But har har... it's acceptable for TechDirt!
Researcher, M.M.J Stevens wrote about unencrypting MD5s as part of his Master's Thesis.
See:
http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/On%20Collisions%20for%20MD5%20-%20M.M.J.%20Stevens. pdf
The Section 7.2 of his research can be adapted fairly quickly to IP addresses or whatever unique ID Mike is using.
I would probably stay away from here if Mike's going to run fast and loose with providing hashes to the general public of your IP address.
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The flaky goodness of outsourced snowflakes in July
See:
http://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/hash/
The icon is based on a MD5 Hash, a very insecure algorythm. In fact, the U. S. Department of Homeland Security said MD5 "should be considered cryptographically broken and unsuitable for further use." If Techdirt is sending your IP address in a MD5 Hash, it can't be that hard to break.
In fact, researcher M.M.J Stevens wrote about unencrypting MD5s as part of his Master's Thesis. He said MD5 Hashes can be obtained in about 6-8 seconds if it's structured data, like a birthdate. See:
http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/On%20Collisions%20for%20MD5%20-%20M.M.J.%20Stevens.pdf
The Section 7.2 of his research can be adapted fairly quickly to IP addresses or whatever unique ID Mike is using.
I would probably stay away from here if Mike's going to run fast and loose with providing hashes to the general public of your IP address.
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Re: The flaky goodness of outsourced snowflakes in July
1- You don't know the value that is used in the hash calculation. It could be a randomly generated value (only techdirt can help us on this one).
2- You don't know what algorithm is used to generate the images (only Gravatar can help us with this).
Without knowing any of this, you cannot easily extract any data from the image. You could try to break "some" hash value, but what value? Use the image as a bitmap and map the images "bits" into ASCII characters? It's a possibility, but given that the image patterns are "nicely behaved" I really doubt that the actual hash value is encoded in the image itself.
I did download a random image file to (try to) analyze it and I noticed that they have (apparently) random names. I certainly hope that the file name has nothing to do with the hash value.
Mike (or anyone at techdirt), in the interest of openness and in the interest of the security of your readers, could you please explain how the images are generated? Is there any kind of information (IP address, for example) encoded in them that could be used to trace us?
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Re: Re: The flaky goodness of outsourced snowflakes in July
Here test your privacy and see if your IP is all that important.
http://analyze.privacy.net/test.asp?bhjs=0&RequestCookies=&Requestdate=&refe r=http://privacy.net/analyze-your-internet-connection/
You want to be anonymous do something dumb ass.
Use a proxy.
If you don't everybody can collect a lot of information from you and it is all public, what are you waiting for? another Facebook event to realize that you need to take care of your privacy?
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In fact, I think we can get all that information without digging in much. I haven't developed webpages for a while, but I think there were basic ways of knowing the browser, resolution and OS of people that came to a site (not sure if it was done in pure HTML or Javascript). Anyone can do that with minimal effort, so I don't see what the AC above is so freaked out about.
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Re: Re: The flaky goodness of outsourced snowflakes in July
I still hope techdirt can give a proper explanation of the process (if they deem us worthy) and put their anonymous users at ease.
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Thank you Capt Obvious.
Not sure what I would do without your astute observations.
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Re: Re: Re: The flaky goodness of outsourced snowflakes in July
The name Gravatar comes from the post above. I was just pointing out that our entire security model relies on those two points: The string that is used to generate the hash value and the algorithm used to generate the image.
In answer to your other question ( http://www.techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20100715/01280010225&threaded=true#c788 ), I didn't really try that. We would just be guessing anyway. There are millions of possibilities. Also note the the addresses could have been normalized (ie, 12.12.12.12 to 012.012.012.012, for example).
I (you?) "could" write a script to try all those possibilities. But that would be like a brute force attack, and a waste of our time.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The flaky goodness of outsourced snowflakes in July
To say that it's similar to a brute force is not the same, if you know a lot about a key (ie: my IP address) and what you don't know is only a very small aspect of the key then you are effectively only trying to crack the aspect of the key you don't know. A brute force means you know nothing about what you are trying to crack and are trying to find it by trying everything. If you know something about what you are trying to crack it's not a brute force.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The flaky goodness of outsourced snowflakes in July
That may or may not be an accurate assumption. They could generate a random character string to hash along with your IP address (called "salt"). Each IP would have its salt stored (in a secure location of course) with it, and that would really throw a wrench into the kind of attack you mention. I'm not saying that's what they've done, but it's possible.
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Re: The flaky goodness of outsourced snowflakes in July
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704799604575357073796077564.html
The war on drugs may affect the big pharma industry after all, with drug cartels getting the ability to produce chemicals they can find themselves battling a well funded, resilient group of people that don't fallow laws anyways LoL
That could be the worst nightmare for pharma people, instead of doing drugs, drug dealers will be inundating the market with cheap drugs for ill people. They would buy in droves.
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The flaky goodness of outsourced snowflakes in July
http://is.gd/dwlfX
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Re: The flaky goodness of outsourced snowflakes in July
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Re: Re: The flaky goodness of outsourced snowflakes in July
That image obviously has no more accuracy than an icanhascheesburger motivational does. Less, in fact, since it's not funny.
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if you want my ip address come ask
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Re: if you want my ip address come ask
If it's the IP address it's a 32 bit IP address, do you know how easy it is to brute force that? Especially after removing the combinations that are not included on the Internet (ie: ones that start with 192, 172, 10).
I really hope techdirt didn't put so little thought into this as to put an unsalted hash of our IP addresses on here.
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Retarded person use a proxy.
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Now the mac address of your modem is unique. So that would be a much easier way to track you as your MAC is always the same.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: if you want my ip address come ask
MAC addr is not unique and is easily changed.
In addition, both the MAC and IP adresses are easily spoofed. Using either one as a means of identification is ignoring this fact.
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Re:
http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/7db8151609ab557838b3d26efcd45e97?d=identicon&s=20
7db81 51609ab557838b3d26efcd45e97
What does that look like to you?
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Just look up your IP address, run a quick md5 on it, then compare the results with the image icon source on a post of yours.
Still, this does deprive an element of anonymity one would expect when posting anonymously. The fact that all of your posts, not counting dynamic IP changes, proxies, etc, which would of course either change or obfuscate your actual address, can be tracked with a unique post icon is hardly what one would consider true anonymity, or anything close to it.
I don't think people are getting upset because they think that somehow, now, everyone will know who they are, but now all of their anonymous posts will be linked and identified via this post icon. The whole point of anonymity is not to be able to be identified, at all, in any aspect.
Anonymous posters don't want to be a unique and beautiful snowflake, they want to be drowned in the sea of general population, and hopefully never found.
As a side opinion, though, this is a pretty cool feature. One that I'm sure could provide useful and interesting when applied in a different manner.
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Ironic Alert
Perhaps this is some sort of "meta-prank" by Mike?
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Re: Ironic Alert
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Re: Re: Ironic Alert
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BTW It is confirmed now. Since I am still using the same browser without clearing my cache, the icon corresponds to the IP adresss only. So Mike I hope you urself remember telling to the MPAA that IP address is not enough to identify a person. So please implement your own fucking solution or else I will call you for who you are really i.e a HYPPOCRITE.
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Re:
I see two different icons, Grouchyflakes. The one for Jul 17th, 2010 @ 1:14pm has quite a different appearance than the one for Jul 18th, 2010 @ 3:29am. So it's *not* confirmed. Further, my recollection of the 1:14pm Snowflake, viewed on Friday, is different that it's appearance today. Color was a sort of pea-soup green, now it's brownish, and much sparser.
So, BTN it is not confirmed now.
Furthermore, Crabbyflakes, I haven't referred to a non-anonymous-coward as a "troll" at all. On TechDirt, I believe (although I can't confirm, they are "anonymous" cowards, after all, despite the flakes) I have only told two different on-line identities they're trolls.
But I will admit to asking some leading questions. The usual complaints about "how will the starving artists get paid!" when price of a copy of music drops to almost zero seem a bit odd when considered in the usual way that Free Market Economics considers this sort of thing. Innovations leading to drops in marginal cost of production are generally applauded as Good For Society. And competition usually drops the price of a good to the marginal cost of production. We, as a society, generally don't prop up firms that refuse to adapt to a changed market. Heck, we even let American Motors get bought by Chrysler a few years ago, didn't we?
Call me a troll all you want, but asking questions, even questions that are difficult to answer honestly without resorting to propagandistic usagges, doesn't really constitut "trolling" in many people's books.
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I see what you did
Perhaps one of the multitude of anonymous voices would like to explain why you find the identifying icons so outrageous. Personally, I find them helpful because many comments are posted by anonymous authors, and most of those posts are not titled. The result is a bunch of "Re: Re: Re:" replies to posts written by what appears to be one anonymous author.
Stand by your work.
Without the icons, you all look the same to me.
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Re: I see what you did
The main concern right (well, from the one person that complained, not counting with tam and his cousin) now seems to be that people can easily go back and make a history of posts you thought would be anonymous and untraceable.
My opinion is that people shouldn't go around saying things that they might regret in the future. And if they are (for example, whistle-blowing), they should take measures to protect their identity.
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Hi I am the 1:14 PM guy and I have only 1 thing to say to this- "think of the children". Seriously, you are saying that I should not say what I might regret in the future. Fuck You. You should be the new Palin of the Republicans. You are the person who would be supporting the patriot act and carrying of ID for any job whatsoever, and denying food to those who refuse to reveal their identity. I hope you find yourself in Communist China, then you will know the consequences of what you are saying. At this point, the assclown Mike needs to come out and defend himself, or else he is that i.e a HYPPOCRITE!
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Re:
And the situation in China is completely different. If the case was the same here, you would know your name, age, address, bank account number, size of pants, etc.
Here, all we know is that some blue snowflake hates Palin and republicans. And that some (I'm going to assume) purple snowflake doesn't know if there is a non-communist China (me).
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Re:
That seems pretty basic. If you're not willing to accept the consquences of your actions, you'd better be darn sure you've protected yourself against them. Where "I hope Mike doesn't change the privacy features in a way I don't like" doesn't qualify as darn sure. It just seems really strange that anyone so rabidly concerned about privacy doesn't already use some kind of anonymous proxy.
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Consulting?
Thanks for th article mate! Oh wait......haha
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Conviction of your words
Or are you so ashamed of what you are saying, that you dont want to be identified ? And that if someone actually finds out who you really are it will be in some way embarrasing or damaging to you ?
Like for copyright, this is a right Mike has decided you should not have.
You dont have a right to profit from your own invention, and you dont have a right to remain anonymous should you wish too.
So dont come here expecting that you have any rights.
The only right you have is the right to own up to your statements and stand by them, not hide behind an AC.
I guess it depends on if you want to be taken serious or not.
Or if you have enough conviction to put a name to your words.
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Re: Conviction of your words
- A bit presumptuous - no ?
"You dont have a right to profit from your own invention"
- I do not recall Mike ever stating this, possibly you could provide a citation. My guess is that you are throwing out wild and baseless accusations because you feel that Mike does not share your views regarding what has become known as intellectual property.
"you dont have a right to remain anonymous "
- Again, I do not see where this comes from. Perhaps you could enlighten everyone how your anon status has been compromised beyond what it was prior to the icon.
"So dont come here expecting that you have any rights."
- Visitation of this website has not removed any of my rights. WTH are you talking about? If you want to get upset about removal of your rights, I think you are looking in the wrong place.
"The only right you have is the right to own up to your statements and stand by them"
- Now this is just retarded.
"I guess it depends on if you want to be taken serious or not."
- Can you guess whether I take you serious?
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Re: Conviction of your words
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Re:
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China claims to be communist but in reality they are a dictatorship
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Go Ahead... Levy the Tax.
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Re: Go Ahead... Levy the Tax.
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Re: Go Ahead... Levy the Tax.
I'm sure they would forget the part where they extend a license to all the levy payers. The levy would get passed but oops, they can still sue you for downloading.
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