MPAA Goes After Its Customers

EyesWideOpen writes "The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is issuing 'takedown' notices to ISP's to alert them that customers are using their internet service to transmit or post copyrighted movies. The ISP's in turn send a letter to the customers threatening to disable their internet connection unless the offending material is removed. The MPAA is using software that 'cruises file-swapping networks like Gnutella to find copyrighted materials, hunts down the IP address of the poster, then discovers which Internet service provider is being used.'"

Comments

False Positives

[ghostlibrary]

My first reaction is "so? Sounds fair". I mean, it's going at the source of pirating and illegal sharing, not a problem.

The article raised the issue of false positives. It had this chilling bit on it:

"Of all the letters we have sent out, we only had 2 other people who corresponded back who said we were mistaken," Jacobsen said. "And we didn't think we were."

Oh, wait-- the folks doing the automated search get to decide whether its infringement. This is kinda backwards.

I mean, someone thinks you stole a coke from 7-11, the cops come and listen and maybe a judge makes a verdict-- not the 7-11 clerk.

But here, the person making the allegation gets to decide if it's true or not-- and when has any person ever been really psyched to say "Oh, wait, sorry, I was totally wrong, wasted your time, and opened myself up to legal risk by making a false accusation."

So, neat idea, but the implementation needs some better due process.

Re:False Positives

[jdhutchins]

I really don't know if they plan to go after people in court. It would be a tough case, because you could say
-It wasn't my computer
-You didn't listen to the song, it wasn't copyrighted...
and I'm sure your lawyer could come up with plenty of other excuses. They're just hoping that a letter from your ISP, or them, will be enough to scare you into stopping it. I doubt that their robots will be able to tell if it's you a second time, because your IP will probably be different.

Re:False Positives

[RatFink100]

All systems have false positives. Cops arrest the wrong person. Innocent people get convicted.

The important thing is where are the checks and balances. The right of appeal for instance.

I don't have a problem with the process in principle but I think 24 hours is too short a time to be able to challenge the information.

They should also have the right to have access to the ISP's logs on their connection.

Re:False Positives

[IronChef]

Proof isn't required. This isn't an action of a court, this is Special Interest Group A asking Big Company B to do them a favor and lean on a customer. Not that it doesn't smell like legal action, and it could lead there, but that's not what it is to begin with.

In a few years I expect the MPAA/RIAA will be IDing pirates and asking all kinds of businesses to cooperate in making their lives hell. Imagine gas stations refusing to serve you because they have a list of license plates that they have been asked (or paid) to check for... or your credit cards being refused at "participating merchants."

It's a brave new world. I think things will get a lot worse before they get better.

Re:Invasion of Privacy

[billbaggins]

If a police officer goes through your room and finds a bomb, without a warrant, he can't do anything with it, until he gets one from a judge.

True, but if he sees one through the window, or is just dropping by to chat and spies a few dozen sticks of TNT and schematics of the Hoover Dam, he doesn't need a warrant, any more than an arrest warrant is needed when the cop sees you stick up the 7-11. (Ok, IANAL, but I did read up on this a while ago, and I believe this to be true...)

So they go on Gnutella like everyone else and see something (something anyone could see) that you shouldn't be sharing. And they ask your ISP to ask you to stop. I don't thin this is IoP.

Whether they should is another question entirely. But if you are sharing something for the whole internet to see, you should expect everyone on the internet to see it. Even the ones you don't want to.

Re:Invasion of Privacy

[CheechBG]

wow, quite a knee-jerk rant you have there.

First of all, it's not "illegal search" if you HAVE THE FILES OPEN FOR SHARING TO BEGIN WITH. If you and I were both on KaZaA and you had some Simpsons episodes, I searched for that and found them on your computer BECAUSE YOU HAD THEM AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC, how is that an "invasion of privacy?" You are making this out to be that they have some crawler that checks random IP's and does a full HD scan. THAT would be illegal.

Face the facts, YOU ARE PIRATING ILLEGAL COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. However way you determine to package that up for yourself is your business, but you're still doing it. The MPAA is within it's right to come after you if you blatantly leave it lying around for anyone to find.

What customers?

[man_ls]

You're only a customer if you pay for a product, or have a legal license to use the product free of charge. I.e. Windows XP NFR copies...you're a customer even though you didn't pay for it.

People who are involved in trading music/movies on the Internet are, for the most point in time, either fully aware that it is copyright infringement (I hesitate to say stealing because I don't really believe it is, but it is copyright infringement) or are vaguely aware that there's something "grey" about it.

It's within the (RI/MP)AA's right to go after the individuals who are responsible for copyright violations, which they are doing--rather than try to increase prices on movies, institute DRM, etc. If a large-scale sharing user knows that if he gets caught, he'll have his bandwidth taken away, that'll be a decent deterrant. Similar to the Windows XP preview editions and Microsoft IRC spiders-anyone running Windows XP and an fserv at the same time was given a nice little message, courtesy NET SEND, warning them not to share software illegally. (I personally know two people this happened to.)

Besides, the gnutella network isn't all it's talked up to be, anyway. I run a very fast DSL connection (1536/512 up/down) but STILL can't maintain more than 3 Gnutella network connections or pull more than 2kb/sec. I get transfers on IRC over 50kb/sec and direct from web sites in the 150kb/sec range...Gnutella as long since stopped being useful to me.

Besides, everyone knows the REALLY good movies are found in IRC FServs in the distro group channels, or on FTP servers--not on Gnutella. All you'll find on Gnutella are fakes and porn.

Police Involvement.

[Grendel Drago]

The MPAA doesn't forward information to the police because they wouldn't have a leg to stand on. They send form letters and threaten legal action, but if they clogged up the court system enough (across how many jurisdictions? Quite an expensive nightmare for them) with frivolous accusations, the courts wouldn't look so fondly on this sort of thing.

There really is something incredibly frightening about this mafia-like body's accusations having some of the force of law.

--grendel drago

Re:Police Involvement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Never underestimate the amount of money and lawyers the recording industry has. NEVER!

Re:Invasion of Privacy - I think not

[Alan Cox]

It becomes an invasion of privacy if they decide to break into your computer. What is going on here is quite different. Its more akin to people leaving piles of copied movies on the road with a big "take one" sign.

If you make stuff available for download you stuck it up for people to see and put it out in the open.

There are guilty until proven innocent problems with the current take down approaches but the privacy one is a red herring here.

Re:How hard could it be?

[kaden]

They don't really need a program, you can find out the IP and ISP of anyone on Kazaa as soon as they start sending you a file, just using basic tools on any OS, even Windows. I imagine if they really are using a custom program to do this for some reason, then the program just runs on top of Kazaa/whatever and therefore never is actually connected to the network itself. I'm just speculating, but it doesn't seem like there'd be any reason for them to right an entire P2P client to do this.

Re:Invasion of Privacy

[starX]

No, it's not even then. The key words you're looking for are "unreasonable search and seisure," and while we may consider this unreasonable, in the eyes of the law, it's perfectly legit as long as no law enforcement body put them up to it. Now whether it would stand in CIVIL court is another matter, but if you try to go that route, the MPAA would be able to, and would be within their rights if they did, to seek to CRIMINALLY prosecute you. Getting a lawyer is probably a good idea if they have falsely accused you and no one is listening to your side of the story, but if you have actually posted the movie, the smart thing to do would be to take it down when your ISP comes knocking.

Re:Uh, those customers are same as shoplifters...

[91degrees]

I can't speak for the other person, but I'd have no problem with it as long as you didn't use the credit card number, and was 100% cerain that you wouldn't. Then it would be stealing since I hadn't lost anything.

I don't think that piracy and theft should really be considered the same crime. I agree that piracy (or unauthorised sharing of copyrighted materials as the EFF would like to call it) is wrong, but the crime is different since the victim still has their original.

Re:Uh, those customers are same as shoplifters...

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

By copying the movie rather than buying it, you are depriving the copyright owner of income.

Thankfully, "denial of income" is not a bona fide crime. If I review a movie and pan it, convincing some people not to see it, am I guilty of "denial of income"? Copyright law is not overly concerned with income -- that's why the usual "I was only copying for non-profit use" defense is bogus.

Infringement is a crime. It is not theft, as it does not deny use of the item in question to the legitimate holder of copyright.

Re:Lazy?

[realdpk]

I disagree... The MPAA was being lazy going after the software developers before. Now they're moving towards going after the actual offenders. They're getting closer and closer to the actual infringers. Granted, they're doing it slowly, but they're getting there.

e-mail I sent to rangerinc.com

[fmaxwell]

Disgusted by this whole modus operandi, I sent the following e-mail to several addresses within Ranger Online:

---

Gentlemen,

I have the static IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (via my {ISP Name Here} business Internet service) and am officially notifying you that I will not tolerate your firm snooping around on my computer, using bandwidth that I paid for, in order to conduct your clandestine spying. I suggest that you take whatever steps are necessary to assure that Ranger Online and its affiliates never access that IP address. Any attempts by your firm to access data on my computer will be treated as a "trespass to chattels."

I do not like your self-appointed 'net police' attitude. You are not a law enforcement agency and your searches are being carried out without probable cause or a warrant. The accuracy of the information you produce is suspect and your methods have not been undergone public scrutiny and peer review. You are using huge amounts of bandwidth from consumers, businesses, and institutions that often have limited resources and bandwidth already.

Frankly, you are like spammers. You believe that you have a right to use bandwidth paid for by others for your own financial gain.

Regards,
{Name and address}


If I do not get a response from them, I will reformat the message into a printed letter and have it delivered with a signature required and a return receipt.

Re:Threat by Form Letter?!

[marxmarv]

The DMCA requires that a binding takedown order swear under penalty of perjury that the file is illegally distributed. Someone who suffers as a result of such a sworn statement ought to have some sort of recourse against them. Share your non-MPAA music exclusively and make them suffer death by a thousand paper cuts.

If the orders are not sworn under penalty of perjury, they are non-binding and therefore ISPs should give them exactly as much weight as any "ENLARGE YOUR PENIS!!1" spam, because that's exactly what it is.

-jhp

Dynamic IP is no panacea.

[Nonesuch]

dh003i writes:

The solution here is to develop anonymous file-sharing techniques.

There are pseudonymous chat and filesharing systems where all transfers go through a central server which masks the end-users IP addresses from one another. In this case, your anonymity is only as good as the strength of conviction of the service operator, and his lawyer's ability to avoid a conviction (for contempt of court, after he refuses to turn over any records).

Things where your IP address is masked, for instance. I believe he mentioned a program called "Flyster" which provides downloaders with anonymosity.

The MSNBC story refers to going after the people offering to SEND you the file, not the people who have downloaded it. Masking the true source IP of the sender is not trivial, as any legitimate ISP will have implemented packet filters to prevent IP spoofing.

To quote the article " Called "Flyster," the program will allow downloading in complete anonymity, according to developer Louis-Eric Simard. However, those who host files for download could still be traced, he said"

Also, lets get real here. This is a scare tactic which only works if you get scared. The MPAA/RIAA have neither the time nor desire (nor even the money) to actually litigate each one of these 50,000 cases out.

No, they only need to litigate in the cases where the takedown notice isn't sufficient to cause the offender to cave and pull the content. To quote the MSNBC story "...the music industry has been behind several high-profile arrests of individuals involved in the online music trade. And just last week, The Wall Street Journal reported the industry is planning to step up such individual prosecutions."

Another solution is to get on a broad-band connection with a dynamic IP; thus, IP numbers can't be traced back to a specific user.

Wrong. Given an IP number and a timestamp, the ISP can check their RADIUS or DHCP logs and determine who was assigned that IP at that time. Dynamic IP does make it tougher for a random attacker to come after you, but it gives you very little insulation from lawyers who subpeona your ISP for their records.

However, this raises its own problems as dynamics IP's take away users rights. You can't log into your own computer from remote w/ a dynamic IP; can't host a web page; etc etc.

These 'rights' you speak of, where were you granted them? If your contract with your ISP says you cannot host servers, you do not have that right. Your desires are not rights, they are wants. If you want to run a server, have a static IP address, ask your ISP how much more you must pay them to be granted these priviledges.

You are guilty of illegal file sharing!

[jesterzog]

I know this from a hunch, and therefore you owe me royalties.

If you don't want to pay them then prove to me that you're innocent. Sending me police-verified evidence of an approved ISP's logs should be sufficient.

Re:Ummm...read the DMCA lately?

[Citizen of Earth]

The DMCA requires ISP's to takedown materials that are alleged to be infringing until the alleged infringer disputes the allegation.

And in addition to Due Process, the DMCA also eliminates Fair Use and Free Speech.