INeedAttention.com

I’ll keep this one short and sweet. The RIAA’s complaint and exhibit A documents for NYU are now available.

NYU RIAA Complaint
NYU RIAA Exhibit A document
SLAPM.com’s IP Check Utility (now updated for NYU IPs) (gone)

Don’t forget to check out the SLAPM.com I2Hub Lawsuit Discussion Forums (gone) if you want to voice your opinions or network with other people that are concerned about the I2Hub lawsuit.

NOTE: I set up a forum where people can discuss the I2Hub lawsuits. Registration is required to post.

So… what would happen if RPI’s Public Safety decided that they were going to break up the event that is going to take place today in front of the Sage Building at 4:20? I’d say they’d be in a position much like the RIAA is in right now. When that much of the population in a group is violating the law, it becomes difficult to enforce the law. Like speeding on a highway, the best thing to do, in the eyes of the law enforcement, is nab a few people that stand out and try to make an example out of them.

Of course, we all know that this type of enforcement doesn’t work well. If it did, we’d all be obeying the speed limit. So, if today, people roll up a spliff and smoke it in public (which, by the way, is a misdemeanor, whereas possession in the privacy of your home is only a violation), maybe we should talk about why we haven’t already legalized pot. After all, it’s all that internationally imported pot that’s being sold to allegedly finance terror (all of that Canadian and Mexican bud…). So why not give people jobs growing it at home, tax the sale of it, and apply the taxes collected to addiction treatment, DWI and DUID education, and our national health care system. If you remember the commercials from the 2002 super bowl, the first to air since the World Trade Center attacks, the government accused people of buying pot of also “killing judges” and other colorful and violent acts. They closed it with, “Drug money supports terror. If you buy drugs, you might too.” I found this to be particularly interesting — since they were clearly telling you to grow, and not buy drugs.

On a more serious note though, let’s talk about the funding, financing, and support of global terror. Really, it’s not that drug money supports terror, it’s that tax money supports terror. If you pay taxes, then you might too. The United States government itself has provided material assistance to terrorism in Israel, terrorism in Columbia, and of course most notably, US military sponsored terrorism in Panama. Of course, we put rosy names on all of these — the last, in fact, was called “Operation: Just Cause”. It probably would have reflected more poorly on the politicians and military brass involved if they had named it, “Operation Bomb the Crap out of 4,000 Panamanians and Injure Thousands More”. But, wait, I’m off topic, this is about drugs, not how taxes support terror.

It’s not just that a bunch of potheads want to legalize it because they’re addicted. It’s a substantial portion of our population. There are more pot-smokers than there are gun-owners. George Washington himself owned a gun and grew hemp, coincidentally. People argue vehemently for the rights of gun owners to have assault rifles, and ceramic guns capable of evading metal detection. Does anyone in our society actually need a rate of fire higher than one shot per trigger pull? Does any regular citizen have a reason (let’s make that distinction to remember that Air Marshalls and the Secret Service likely have a good reason) to own a ceramic firearm? Probably not.

But marijuana is far more dangerous than an assault rifle, so maybe it’s a bad comparison.

One thing can be sure — with Bush and the rest of his hardcore christian conservative buddies dominating the house, senate, and executive branch (and soon, frighteningly, the judicial branch), the legalization of marijuana is impossible. We need to elect more progressive politicians if we ever hope to actually fix the problems we have at home. Instead, the conservative party — traditionally opposed to larger government — supports imperialistic policies that tie up all of our resources elsewhere and run the national debt up to ridiciulous amounts. This year, whatever you vote, don’t vote Republican if you’re interested in improving the world for people and not politicians and American CEOs.

To learn more about the movement to legalize marijuana, visit NORML.org, home of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law.

All in the course of one weekend, things have gone from bad to worse for me. I’ve been bent over and “pwn3d” by just about everyone in my life as of this week.

Have you ever felt like music was the one thing that made everything better? Here’s some lyrics from a great non-RIAA protected song by NOFX, called “Olive Me”. I believe it’s actually a cover but I’m not sure.

All of me, why not take all
Can’t you see I’m no good without you?
Take these arms, I want to lose them
Take these lips, I’ll never use them
Your goodbye left me with eyes
How can I go on to without you?
You took the best so why not take the rest?
Why not take all of me?

All of me, why not take all of me
Can’t you see I’m no good without you?
Take these arms, I want to lose them
Take these lips, I’ll never use them
Your goodbye left me with eyes to cry
How can I go on to without
You took a part that once was my hart.
Why not take all of me?

Trendyblog hasn’t posted this yet as far as I know, but here is a table of the IPs implicated by the RIAA that were at Columbia University. An anonymous source from Columbia was instrumental in helping compile the approximate on-campus locations listed here.

If you’re on the list or are just curious, you might want to check out the Exhibit A document listing the IP addresses and the songs they were alleged to have shared.

Two really quick comments. First, I wrote a tool that automatically scans the list of “John Doe” IPs and tells you if you’re being sued in the I2Hub related lawsuits (Update 2006: now gone). The tool is updated as TrendyBlog.com posts more.

Also, once again, I’ve managed to land an egg on the face of the creators of The Facebook (Update 2006: This also doesn’t work anymore, but now Facebook is open season). Here’s how it works — you can’t check profiles of people at schools other than your own, unless you’re already listed as being friends with a person from another school, in which case you can see their profile. Go view anyone’s profile on Thefacebook.

* Right click the their email address (which is actually now being displayed as an image, to thwart spam-bots).
* Copy the image location to the clipboard. It will look somewhat like this:
http://yourschool.thefacebook.com/emailgen.php?id=175003xx&key=aadfxxe92d&contact=1&state=0
* Click “global” allowing you to search other schools. Select a school at random, and search for any name.
* When the person you’re looking for comes up, and you can’t see their profile, you can get their email address by copying the link to “Add to Friends” or “Send Message”, and merely pasting their “ID” number into the address you got earlier. Paste in their ID over the ID of a profile you were allowed to see, and voila, instant email address.

(note that this no longer works)

Note that to see their school and alternate email addresses, you merely have to change the “contact=” field between 0 (for their school address) and 1 (for their preferred email). Happy facebooking, you stalkers.