IP: IF THE F WORD DISTURBS YOU, DO NOT READ -- FBI gun-check computer crashes; Flash movie parodies Metallica

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

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>Date: Sat, 13 May 2000 11:51:37 -0400
>To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu
>From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
>\
>
>http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,36310,00.html
>
>    Metallica Net Parody Flashy Fun
>    by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
>
>    3:00 a.m. May. 13, 2000 PDT
>    WASHINGTON -- If you thought the spectacle of a heavy-metal band
>    whining to Congress about the Internet was hilarious, just wait 'til
>    you check out a short movie about it.
>
>    The Flash spoof of Metallica's efforts to shut down file-sharing
>    service Napster depicts singer James Hetfield as a hulking ape who
>    grunts things like "T-shirts good!"
>
>    The animated drummer Lars Ulrich praises his fans, saying: "You
>    fucking made us rich. You fucking made us popular. I worship you.
>    Unless you downloaded 'Until It Sleeps' from Napster ... then you're
>    going to motherfucking jail. You're motherfucking meat."
>
>    Bob Cesca, the creator of the movie and founder of Camp Chaos, said he
>    already had a monkey-for-president character from a previous
>    assignment, and was inspired by Metallica's lawsuit against Napster.
>
>    "The two things came together. I had a character design already, I
>    knew how to do the voice, and the issue was hot," Cesca said Friday.
>
>    The popularity of the flick overloaded Camp Chaos' server, which was
>    transferring about 3 MB a second, Cesca said. He hoped to have a
>    mirror site online by Saturday.
>
>    ---
>
>    FBI offline: The FBI's computer used for background checks of gun
>    purchasers has crashed.
>
>    "On May 11 we experienced a loss in service to the Interstate
>    Identification Index due to a database problem," an FBI spokesman
>    said. "The only thing affected is the National Instant Check System
>    and the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System."
>
>    Under a federal law that took effect in November 1998, anyone buying a
>    rifle, shotgun, or handgun from a dealer has to go through a
>    background check.
>
>    Some 100,000 Americans were prevented from purchasing firearms because
>    of the glitch, which started Thursday and which the FBI hopes to have
>    fixed by Sunday. About 9 million checks took place during the first
>    year of NICS's operation.
>
>    Investigators at the U.S. General Accounting Office report NICS was
>    offline for 215 hours from November 1998 to November 1999.
>
>    [...]
>
>********
>
>>Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 16:44:47 -0700
>>To: declan@well.com, politech@vorlon.mit.edu
>>From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
>>Subject: Re: Metallica drummer says Congress should ban MP3-swaps,
>>   Napster
>>
>>At 01:40 PM 05/05/2000 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>> >http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/is/20000502/bs/metallica_speaks_put_napster_ou
>>t_of_business_1.html
>> >  Lars Ulrich, drummer for the heavy-metal band Metallica,
>> >  suggested that the U.S. Congress should step in to stop
>> >  MP3-swapping services like Napster "before this whole Internet
>> >  thing runs amok."
>>
>>WAY too late for that :-)
>>
>>It may not be that hard to stop centralized servers based in the US
>>with identified clients from swapping watermarked files -
>>but Gnutella and similar decentralized systems are very hard to stop
>>(but very inefficient), and semi-centralized servers in non-Berne countries
>>can provide similar services efficiently.  Meanwhile, somebody commented
>>that Napster complied, dropped the 300,000 user handles, and the same
>>people logged in again 10 minutes later and created new handles :-)
>>
>>And there are lots of applications that are legal - particularly
>>non-commercial trading of Grateful Dead and Phish live concert recordings,
>>which the bands permit as long as you don't charge money for them,
>>and trading MP3s made by garage bands, and promotional MP3s by
>>commercial bands.
>>
>>Somebody has suggested that Metallica should set up a few thousand
>>high-bandwidth Napster connections, and start flooding Napster with
>>MP3s that have their song names but instead contain a recorded
>>"Hey, you, stop ripping off our music!" message...
>>
>>The real problem with Gnutella and FreeNet is that they don't
>>provide a good mechanism for finding other users near you to
>>conserve bandwidth - leading to the problem of university networks
>>getting swamped by students downloading on limited internet feeds
>>instead of staying on the campus LAN, getting them from other students.
>>Napster was able to reduce this problem significantly by modifying their
>>indexing mechanism, so students would get copies from inside,
>>but systems that hide where servers are to prevent censorship
>>and don't have central databases to track things are very bad at this.
>>It's sometimes possible to build useful indexing on top of them,
>>but it's much harder if it's not planned for from the beginning.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>                                 Thanks!
>>                                         Bill
>>Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
>>PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
>
>*********
>
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