I just moved from the VA area near DC back to Texas because I hated my job there. I basically got tired of having arguments to convince my co-workers that what has been published in tomes of books about “Best Practices” really are best practices. They’re lack of exposure and experience (and ego) prevented them from realizing that it wasn’t me saying “this is how stuff should be done” but a whole industry.

I say all that to point out that after my 2 years in the area I have come away more disappointed with DC and how it works then before I moved there.

‘Who’s Listening?’ is EXACTLY the right question. The answer? Not the Senators on the comitee. Although I don’t believe in the black helicopter theories of “politicians are owned by special interest” (after all, the EFF *IS* a special interest group and one I would imagine many of you support!) I do believe that the Senators on this commitee are only inviting the testimony as “lip-service” to say they did their homework (look at Hatch’s speech today, one day after this testimoney).

Then WHY are the Senators NOT listening? It’s not money. Many people mistake politician’s motivation as being money gained from special interest. This is incorrect though. Listen to Billy Clinton himself “Money didn’t buy laws, it provided access”

No. Their motivation is higher prestige and more votes. With the current upheaval about “indecency” the Pols are just wanting to be able to go out there and say “HEY!! I passed this law to prevent indencency”. And while he did that he aided a group that has A LOT of “access” in shuting down a competitor.

The result? Not sure yet. Although I HATE all these laws against the technology and quite frankly they scare me (as a programmer I have nightmares about some black coated government guy coming to take me away in the middle of the night because something I coded was used improperly); I must say that history has shown that in America (an in most societies in history) progress wins in the end.

If P2P *IS* progress then it will win. The only question is how much pain for how long.

(Bradford_n_taylor@yahoo.com)

Michael Weiss’ testimony was excellent. The question though is ‘Who’s Listening?’ This is the Congress that’s fasttracking (ouch!) the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5244796.html

Hopefully there are enough rational folks left in DC who are brave enough not to let HollyWhacked lead them around by the nose.

Marc Freedman
RazorPop, developer of TrustyFiles, http://www.TrustyFiles.com
Publisher of DiaRIAA, http://www.DiaRIAA.com/

PS. Sorry for the Anon posting. I’ve tried to register here a few times but never receive the confirmation emails.

I’m not exactly sure what that has to do with the rest of your post. Just went to the site, it doesn’t look any more Matrix-ish than I remember it looking a couple years ago when I first checked it out.

Besides, the Matrix “stole” the name Morpheus from Roman mythology.

Starling

” is not used by the real P2P community at large.” The other ones aren’t either. So what?

Here are Some Facts:

Every version of Morpheus for the last 3 years (since being booted from Kazaa’s Network for non-payment) has been a Code Port from a Open Source Project. (Streamcast has never posted source code in compliance with any version)

Morpheus the companies flagship name has been stolen from the Matrix Movie along with numerious Special Effects, Dropping letters, black cats, Neo references etc…

The Latest version of Morpheus (all versions after they were booted from FastTrack) is not used by the real P2P community at large.

Morpheus just recently purchased XoloX BV from Michel Weiss (the real owner of XoloX) in an attempt to have a non-US Company shell.

Streamcast Networks distributes 2 Spyware applications with its Morpheus product. Both applications are “foot in door” programs that in turn install system resource lethal Spyware.

The CEO of Streamcast Networks is Mike Weiss the COO is his wife!……..

Here are Some Facts:

Every version of Morpheus for the last 3 years (since being booted from Kazaa’s Network for non-payment) has been a Code Port from a Open Source Project. (Streamcast has never posted source code in compliance with any version)

Morpheus the companies flagship name has been stolen from the Matrix Movie along with numerious Special Effects, Dropping letters, black cats, Neo references etc…

The Latest version of Morpheus (all versions after they were booted from FastTrack) is not used by the real P2P community at large.

Morpheus just recently purchased XoloX BV from Michel Weiss (the real owner of XoloX) in an attempt to have a non-US Company shell.

Streamcast Networks distributes 2 Spyware applications with its Morpheus product. Both applications are “foot in door” programs that in turn install system resource lethal Spyware.

The CEO of Streamcast Networks is Mike Weiss the COO is his wife!……..

Sounds like there is 1 powerful force behind all these P2P networks and they are trying to look like seperate companies

In a sea of black hats (Kazaa and the RIAA) these are the good guys.