<nettime> IP theft 'terrorism': WIPO

[Martin Hardie <auskadi@tvcabo.co.mz>]

From: ben moretti <benmoretti@yahoo.com.au>
# is this like thoughtcrime? 

Not sure about thought crime (well maybe the thinking behind it is a crime) 
but its not the end of it either. It seems to fit nicely in with a whole 
stream of  rhetoric and discourse of late. Here is just a taste:

This one is a(n American) beauty:

Homeland Security a tech priority

DECEMBER 04, 2003 
TECHNOLOGY companies must cooperate in the battle against cyberterrorism - or 
submit to government-imposed security regulations - US Homeland Security 
Secretary Tom Ridge said.

 "The enemies of freedom use the same techniques as hackers do," Mr Ridge said 
to 350 industry executives gathered for the first National Cyber Security 
Summit in Santa Clara. "We must be as diligent and determined as the 
hackers."

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,8061136^15319^^nbv^,00.html

Who are these enemies of freedom, other than those nasty pirates who hide 
behind the name of file sharers maybe here is another hint:

On Saturday, November 29, 2003 a post on the GNSO mailing list indicated that 
the .name registry website had been hacked. As reported by George Kirikos, 
"The .name registry's main website www.nic.name has been hacked, as of 
Saturday evening in North America. According to Netcraft, they're running 
Linux. They must not have kept up to date with all security updates, or 
someone cracked a password. Hopefully offsite backups were made, to ensure 
data integrity."
Although, due to this emergency, the .name web servers have been pulled down 
as of this writing, just a short few hours ago, visitors to the .name 
registry home page would find a mysterious black screen upon visiting the 
site, including the following text:
.....
 The bottom of the black screen also included a rotating image displaying the 
following text in sequece:
"It's good.
 www.slackware.com
 Open Source is Good.
 Free is Good.
 Slackware Linux."

http://www.circleid.com/article/383_0_1_0_C/

And just in case you were not sure ask the current FLOSS embodiment of evil, 
SCO's David McBride. In his Open letter to the Open Source Community McBride 
couches his language in familiar  "your with us or against us" rhetoric: 
"No one can tolerate DDoS attacks and other kinds of attacks in this 
Information Age economy that relies so heavily on the Internet. Mr Raymond 
and the entire Open Source community need to aggressively help the industry 
police these types of crimes. If they fail to do so it casts a shadow over 
the entire Open Source movement and raises questions about whether Open 
Source is ready to take a central role in business computing. We cannot have 
a situation in which companies fear they may be next to suffer computer 
attacks if they take a business or legal position that angers the Open Source 
community. Until these illegal attacks are brought under control, enterprise 
customers and mainstream society will become increasingly alienated from 
anyone associated with this type of behavior."  

http://www.linuxworld.com/story/34007.htm
 
dum dee dum ... as blind Freddy knows, and if he didn't he does now (or will 
soon) there is a link between cyber-delinquency- piracy- file sharing-linux 
hackers and that other evil global terrorism - or at least in the eyes of the 
global machine. Uncontrolled hackers and file sharers is like smoking pot 
behind the school shed, just a simple step away from the heroin of Al Qaeda.

And you wonder why I can be cycnical about riding on the coat tails of some 
liberal American types.
                   
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