Sunday, July 20, 2003

in-addr.arpa,file-sharing,etc...

I got a hit from the arpanet at roughly 215pm today, or so it seems. Had to look up "in-addr.arpa" of course, see what it might be(linking to it led to a "cannot be displayed" error page.) I did find http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/dot-arpa.html , where it says

How to receive a delegation from .in-addr.arpa:
If you are in charge of a block of IP addresses, and you want to provide reverse lookups for those IP addresses, you will need a corresponding name in the in-addr.arpa domain.


Suggests, to me with my limited imagination, that perhaps someone is trying to find my IP address. Why? I am hardly that important or interesting. Ok, I like to think I'm interesting, but you know what I mean--interesting in a larger sense. And I haven't once written anything derogatory about the RIAA, at least not yet.

I will, however, take this opportunity to suggest you go look at Boycott-RIAA.com. I came across their site through a mention in a Yahoo News* story about the RIAA's latest rounds of subpeonas against ISPs, trying to find file-sharers to sue. The funny thing is, I don't see any actual statement at boycott-RIAA suggesting you do so. I suppose a boycott, especially for a substantial period of time, would function as a gesture designed to discourage the heavy-handed tactics of the RIAA. If a law , like the DCMA, effectively criminalizes the behavior of hundreds of millions of people around the world then the law is just plain wrong, as I see it.

*the link is to Salon's AP wire report version of the same story, which should stay up longer and doesn't require a subscription. However, this dandy article on file-sharing on Salon does, or at least a look at the ad, and you should read it.