Your tax dollars at work: local cops now paid with federal money to troll IRC | Hacker News Reader

Your tax dollars at work: local cops now paid with federal money to troll IRC

arstechnica.com

56 pointsmtgx41 comments

Due to an uptick in violent crime, the St Louis police department last month enacted a policy of not sending anyone out to investigate crimes like stolen cars or auto break-ins (and taking reports over the phone instead), because they needed more cops on the street dealing with crimes against people.

That was after one weekend where a 22 year old woman was shot and killed over an iPhone, in addition to several other armed robberies.

You'd think whoever was in charge of awarding this grant would look critically at the situation here in STL and think "gee, this money would be better spent putting cops on the streets fighting crime, rather than behind desks looking for intellectual property infringements."

I live in one of the better parts of STL and a woman was killed only 4 blocks from my apartment a few weeks ago. It's definitely becoming more and more of a problem here.

I live in one of the better parts of San Francisco and a man was killed by an ex-coworker about two blocks from my apartment about 15 years ago. At the time there was a lot of hysteria, but as it turns out it hasn't happened since and so was a freak occurrence rather than an indicator of a trend.

So it was a situation wholly unlike that of St. Louis? Cool.

No, just that one instance doesn't make a trend.

If you're a victim of a crime and want to have it investigated, make sure to mention the assailant tried to kill you with bootleg DVDs or perhaps counterfeit gun.

Many years ago, I earnt a little extra cash as security at large rock concerts. It was not my scene, and I was frankly just standing around. I clearly remember stopping a suspicious clean cut man in his mid forties, wearing ironed jeans and matching denim jacket... In a stadium of 20,000 long haired students in dirty black t-shirts.

He flipped a warrent card at me an angrily said "drugs squad" I hoped our boys in blue also had people who could pass for real - and I suspect the same for any local cops hanging around on IRC. They will stand out like 40 year olds in pressed denim.

It's probably difficult to recruit teenage goths and turn them into good narcs.

I imagine he was just there to go for low hanging fruit and was not worried about being a bit conspicuous, probably just nab people who can be seen passing little bags full of white powder between people , in a big enough crowd people aren't going to be able to notice everyone around them anyway.

> It's probably difficult to recruit teenage goths and turn them into good narcs.

"I Was A Teenage Narc" https://rottenindenmark.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/i-was-a-tee...

> It's probably difficult to recruit teenage goths and turn them into good narcs.

It's easy. Bust a teenager for possession of narcotics, then offer them a choice between years behind bars, and acting as an informant busting drug dealers.

See: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/03/120903fa_fact_...

One of my friends is a 30something county prosecutor, pretty professional in most cases.

He took on the role of interim county drug czar for a few months, which sent him to raves/concerts/etc. We've got a picture of him wearing a "porn star" hat with neon jewelry and a pookah shell necklace; pretty fun to see one of our most professional friends acting out this role.

In college in the early 90's, suddenly a 40 year old mustached guy started showing up to dorm keg parties.

He wore leather jackets, was overly eager to ask for everyone's phone number, and said things like "lets put on some twisted sister and smoke dope".

This continued for a few weeks, then suddenly he disappeared never to be seen again. Coincidentally, at the same time, one of the local dorm weedheads was busted for intent to distribute (even though in his defense he only liked smoking and only sold to this guy because he begged so much).

So, yes. These guys are so easy to spot its incredible. They are meatheads in most cases.

"We have seen—far too often—that IP crimes are not victimless. Not only can they devastate individual lives and legitimate businesses, they also undermine our nation’s financial stability, can jeopardize the health of our citizens, and even threaten our national security."

Really? I'd love to see them name three examples - bonus points if the company was trying to adapt and evolve and innovate instead of clinging to a pre-internet business model.

bonus points if the company was trying to adapt and evolve and innovate instead of clinging to a pre-internet business model.

I agree with your basic point, but I really hate this argument -- it's a "blame the victim" justification. Companies deserve to have their IP stolen because they aren't adapting to technology that makes it easier for IP to be stolen?

When your whole business model is based on government granted and government enforced monopolies, you have very little right to complain IMHO.

Name one (legitimate) business that doesn't rely on government enforcement at some point. If you think about it, you'll find that even subway buskers can operate with the confidence that their hat full of quarters and singles won't get stolen from under their noses. Stores everywhere allow prospective customers everywhere free, direct, and anonymous access to merchandise, confident that if any prove to be thieves, they can delivered into the hands of people with the legal right to inflict serious damage on their life prospects.

Given that not everyone is good, you'll find that "giving people (in general) a reason to buy" comes down to carrots for most and sticks for some. If you fail to get that balance right, your losses will drive you out of business.

Of course, society can't tolerate merchants who hunt down, attack, torture, maim, or kill transgressors. Nor can it tolerate the existence of crime syndicates that will handle this dirty work for a price (offered willingly or otherwise). So we've come to a pretty good arrangement where the labor involved in "giving people a reason to buy" gets divided between the private businessperson, who focuses on carrots like a more competitive product / service / price, and the State, which handles the stick.

Assuming that the State, in turn, remains generally accountable to the people, this arrangement works well. What doesn't work well is telling one group of producers "sorry bitches, but technology has changed and now you need to adapt" while glossing over the subtext that the "adaptation" you're referring to is the invention of a business model that's all carrots and no sticks. In a market where everyone else still gets the benefit of legal protection, this is both unique and unreasonable.

That doesn't mean IP businesses don't need to adapt at all, or that they should be given special consideration that retards the general progress of the arts and sciences. But how they do this depends largely on whether or not they receive legal support in situations where they are faced with jerks who refuse to pay.

>>Name one (legitimate) business that doesn't rely on government enforcement at some point.

That's not what he said. It's a matter of scale. Surely every company benefits from the government at some point. But some companies have their entire business model dependent on government aid. I'm not talking about having the government as a customer, mind you. I'm talking about companies that became monopolies only because their lobbyists convinced lawmakers to protect their businesses.

"I'm talking about companies that became monopolies only because their lobbyists convinced lawmakers to protect their businesses."

Don't be ridiculous. No American media company is, or is ever likely to become, a monopoly. What they depend on is a limited set of property rights in products they make or buy. That's very different from being a actual monopoly.

The concept of "property" (real or intellectual) is precisely a government-granted and government-enforced monopoly right of exclusion.

So ... you're saying none of us have the right to complain?

This is patently false, as "the concept of property" predates all governments.

Coming from an ex-communist country, comments like yours that assume property/life/liberty must be somehow graciously "granted" by the big brother make me sad.

The concept of "natural property" exists, it describes what you can personally secure, by any effective means (violence, intimidation, cunning, alliances...)

In the natural order, a predator who killed a prey loses it as soon as a bigger animal comes and takes it. Even before that, the prey who's been killed in the first place lost property on its carcass as soon as the first predator caught it. None of those had any "natural property right" on the carcass beyond its physical ability to secure it.

Property as we casually understand it (a right so effectively enforced that you can take it for granted, even if you don't have the personal means to defend it) is government-issued: it works because it's backed by the threat of government's violence, in the form of police then correction officers beating up most thieves into submission.

And there are ways to transfer property which are admitted as legitimate by the government; among those ways, some are bound to piss off some people. The definition of what kinds of transfers are legitimate is political, i.e. somewhat arbitrary.

So the concept of property not based on permanent mob violence does not predate governments.

I see what you mean. Only the size of the group that stands behind you when someone challenges your property is a matter of scale, not principle. Is it only you? Your immediate family? Pack? Your country? There's always someone with a bigger club...

I believe the GP simply meant that when you base your entire business on extortion (regardless of the group size perpetrating it, incl. governments), you shouldn't complain when another tentacle of the same machinery slaps you in the back.

IP is a legal fiction created and enforced to further explicit public policy objectives--specifically, to incentivize creativity and to create a safe protected space for innovation. If those public policy objectives are not being met, then continuing to implement IP in its original form is harmful to society as a whole.

In other words, a company that is relying on policies implemented to stimulate economic growth and development a century ago--and is using the power of its protected market position to interfere in the democratic process that might align policy with the economic realities of today--is certainly not any kind of "victim". If there are any victims, they are the people whose true economic potential is being suppressed by the continuing existence of outdated laws.

I'm not advocating for an elimination of IP, but I am saying that IP needs to be reformed in a way that will reduce the wealth of companies and individuals who do cling to a pre-internet business model, and it is right to attack them to the extent that a defense of their interests is preventing a modernization of the laws.

I guess the civil system (private lawsuits) is failing to protect intellectual property interests? Who holds those interests? The taxpayer? The government? Business entities?

Why not give the grants to businesses who are trying to protect their IP? Or to ones that are seeking to create IP and register it?

Supposedly, as the article states, this sort of capital allocation is supposed to forward the goal of promoting creativity.

But I'm not sure people will cease to be creative simply because others won't be prosecuted for alleged IP violations. But maybe they won't make as much money? Perhaps a clearer goal, instead of "protecting creativity", could be stated, such as "protecting revenue streams of businesses that produce and register IP (via fees paid to government)." As we've seen such businesses are not always the most creative. In many cases they are just the most prolific filers for IP registrations.

Creativity existed long before the legal fiction of intellectual property.

> it's a "blame the victim" justification.

I've always been a strong supporter of blaming the victim, precisely because "blaming the victim" is such a popular code phrase which acts to short circuit the process of logical reasoning and leads to a systemic under-blaming of alleged victims even where their alleged victimization is attributable primarily to their own actions.

If there are known strategies to avoid being victimized and particular victims consciously or incompetently forgo them, and the predictable consequence follows, are we really supposed to feel sympathy for those whose own decisions put them where they are?

This goes triple when the alleged "victims" are multibillion dollar international corporations. No industry with enough money and power to buy their own laws can legitimately feel victimized when non-Congressperson-owning individuals violate the laws that they bought.

I think the "blame the victim" thing comes from people blaming rape victims because they wore a short skirt or attractive clothing. I would defiantly not support the blame the victim mentality in that kind of case. It might be completely different in the IP realm,

I understand that's where it originates, but it's still bad logic. The fact that the accused is guilty or is a total dirtbag doesn't preclude the victim from having been malicious or idiotic, and the victim's failings don't necessitate that we feel more sympathetic for the accused -- but rather that we feel less sympathetic for the victim. And that goes on the scale like anything else. There is a reason that self-defense is a defense to murder. The victim's actions matter.

The reason that "blaming the victim" is so offensive in the rape case, and why that is always brought out as the poster child for "don't blame the victim," is that in the rape case it implies that wearing a revealing outfit is enough to excuse rape. Which is so clearly, unquestionably wrong that it makes a very emotionally powerful case for the logically unsupportable position that the victim's actions never matter for anything.

But "don't [ever] blame the victim" is bad reasoning. To make it correct you would have to qualify it with something like "don't blame the victim when the victim isn't to blame" -- and that's just a tautology that doesn't help you determine when the victim is to blame. The fact that we know for sure that the victim isn't to blame in certain cases (e.g. rape) doesn't help for other cases where it isn't so clear.

How much of a 'victim' is Disney if I was to violate the copyright on Steamboat Willy? Is Warner Chappell a 'victim' if I do a public (or private) performance of the "Happy Birthday Song" without paying royalties? How much of a 'victim' is a group of lawyers that bought up a couple of overly-broad patents in a fire sale, if I infringe on their patent for 'A method of displaying pictures of food on a webpage using a computer' without paying any royalties?

I think this is the recorded media industry using the scourge of fake drugs to rally the roused rabble behind the American occupation of New Zealand and New York.

  > Not only can they devastate individual lives and
  > legitimate businesses, they also undermine our 
  > nation’s financial stability, can jeopardize the
  > health of our citizens, and even threaten our
  > national security.

[citation needed]

"Let content producers pay for their own enforcement" - this might be a good method to get companies paying a sensible rate of tax in each country where they operate rather than allowing companies to use semi-legal tax avoidance loopholes.

Might also be a good way to restock the public domain in the face of virtually unlimited copyright terms, if the holder of those rights became responsible to determine whether the cost of continued protection is worth it for a given work.

Searching/trawling, not trolling.

Still corrupt, as success is measured by "increased prosecution", not "decreased piracy", which means they have just incentivized an entrapment+framing program. SL PD could make a fortune by pirating IP and arresting some of their customers.

The meaning of "to fish by trailing a lure or baited hook from a moving boat" far predates the internet version of the word "troll". This is correct, metaphorical usage.

You are definitely confusing the word troll, "A mythical, cave-dwelling being depicted in folklore as either a giant or a dwarf, typically having a very ugly appearance." (OED), with the word trawl: "1 an act of fishing with a trawl net or seine or 2. a thorough search". The parent comment actually mentioned trawling in his post, too, as a alternative Ars could've used.

I am definitely not confusing troll for trawl. Look it up, the definition I gave is a valid one for "troll".

You found troll(1) in the OED.

Now find troll(2).

When one is creating a headline and one can choose between two words, using the one that isn't confusingly ambiguous is usually the better choice.

My assumption, which dates back to the first time I encountered the word "troll" in its usenet sense, was that it derived from exactly that metaphor.

Trolling for a reaction. Spreading out some chum, setting the line, seeing who bites.

Yep indeed. From the Jargon File:

> Derives from the phrase “trolling for newbies” which in turn comes from mainstream “trolling”, a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite.

http://catb.org/jargon/html/T/troll.html

"Trolling" actually is mostly valid here, by definition (can mean "to search for something"), but I agree this was really confusing at first.

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