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Hollywood Muscles Aussie ISPs Over Movie Downloading
Tenaka Kahn writes "Whirlpool is reporting that American movie companies are using a company (MediaForce) to try and muscle Aussie ISPs into disconnecting users who indulge in movie sharing."
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It seems like if they can't stop it in the US of A they might as well try some other countries...
How did anyone else other than the ISP get the IP addresses? For this company to get this information, they have to be doing some sort of spying. Obviously this is only taking place in AUS because these people could not get away with it here.
seen a lot of these on Kazaa:
But the company does not just monitor copyright violations, it encourages ISPs to block or restrict file sharing ports on their services. It is also distributes 'decoy' files via file sharing networks which look like real music and video files, but are in fact garbled data.
It creates invalid Win32 filenames you have to delete through the command line...
Anon cos aint a Karma whore
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Dear Abuse Department:
We are writing this letter on behalf of Warner Bros., a division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P. ("Warner Bros.").
As you may know, Warner Bros. is the holder of rights under copyright, including exclusive distribution rights, in and to the motion picture(s) listed above.
No one is authorized to perform, exhibit, reproduce, transmit, or otherwise distribute the above-mentioned work(s) without the express written permission of Warner Bros., which permission Warner Bros. has not granted to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.
We have received information that an individual has utilized the above-referenced IP address at the noted date and time to offer downloads of the above-mentioned work through a "peer-to-peer" service.
The attached documentation specifies the location on your network where the infringement occurred, the number of repeat violations recorded at this specific location, as well as any available identifying information.
The distribution of unauthorized copies of copyrighted motion pictures constitutes copyright infringement under the Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3). This conduct may also violate the laws of other countries, international law, and/or treaty obligations.
Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following:
1) Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above; and 2) Terminate any and all accounts that this individual has through you.
On behalf of Warner Bros., owner of the exclusive rights to the copyrighted material at issue in this notice, we hereby state, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 512, that we have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by Warner Bros., its respective agents, or the law.
Also pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we hereby state that we believe the information in this notification is accurate, and, under penalty of perjury, that MediaForce is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification.
Please contact us at the above listed address or by replying to this email should you have any questions.
We appreciate your assistance and thank you for your cooperation in this matter. In your future correspondence with us, please refer to Case ID XXXXXX Your prompt response is requested.
Respectfully,
Mark Weaver,
Director of Enforcement
MediaForce, Inc. (212) 925-9997
IANAL, but isn't sharing a movie or music a copyright violation? The owners of the copyright are asking the ISP to stop the people who are infringing their copyright. What is the problem? Copyright is pretty much international law with the Berne convention. I see no jurisdiction problem here.
Q.
Wow, i don't know where that came from, but i hope this brings a new perspective to things.:)
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
Well, most ISP's require you to forward the email with headers to them as proof. And, SPAM is itself a violation of TOS while breaking a law requires more proof and usually the authorities are involved. If the studios want action on this, they really should pursue it through proper legal channels. I am pretty sure they can report these wrongdoings to the proper authorities. If the authorities fail to do anything about it then the country can be sanctioned (shipping wise, not the CIA type). Months of no cop movies to inspire them may help motivate some action on infringement and help ring countries into line. The biggest problem I see is getting America to do this itself as Holywood (as they spell it) is based here and depends on americans for much of their money and our legal system is sitting on its hands on this issue. But that's another topic for another time. I do think the studios have a right to defend their rights, I just think they are going about it the wrong way....
After reading this article I did a little research on blocking the IP ranges of these p2p police, and found an app named peerguardian that SUPPOSEDLY blocks the ranges. (Please note the "supposedly", I don't know that this thing really works)
Your analogy is somewhat flawed, however. EU sued Microsoft for monopolistic practices *in Europe*. Not in US. I would be surprised in EU were to sue MS for monopolistic practices in US...
I am not anti-American, but I think US is the only country that tends to think its jurisdiction reaches anywhere in the world (Name Sklyarov comes to mind)
IP RANGES - MediaForce "MediaDecoys" have been spotted on irc networks (dalnet and efnet, at least) from these netblocks:
4.23.190.*, 65.247.105.* (matching *.regional-one.net hostnames), and 65.215.219.*
They have another netblock 208.251.137.0/24, as well.
MODUS OPERANDI - The "Decoys" are described briefly at http://www.mediaforce.com/services/mediadecoy.asp
The description they give their MediaDecoys exactly describes what we call a Denial of Service attack. They're boasting that their decoys are capable of flooding an alleged copyright infringer with requests to prevent anyone else from downloading from them. Such an action is unambiguously illegal in many states, and this company is doing it all without actually verifying that the person is offering AND sending a copyrighted work. They're taking blatantly abusive action against people that haven't been proven to be violating any laws.
The decoys that we see on IRC essentially do the following (discovered by watching their activity from the viewpoint of the irc server itself):
1) after connecting to an irc server, issue a LINKS command, presumably to discover more irc servers to connect to
2) occasionally do a LIST to get lists of large public channels
3) join the discovered channels and watch for activity
4) if there are any public fserves advertising in the channel, the decoy first attempts to do a public trigger to activate the fserve and get a list of files being shared from it
5) if the channel is moderated the decoy attempts to trigger the fserve directly via private msg or ctcp, or does a standard XDCC LIST. No files are actually requested or downloaded
6) after 2 or 3 minutes of no fserve advertisements, the decoy leaves the channel and continues searching for more.
7) the decoys watch channel activity for mentions of any other channel names (channels that are 'private' and don't show up in the public channel list), and attempt to join those channels as well.
8) a few (not many) of these decoys have also been observed sending XDCC LIST commands to other clients that simply have 'dcc' in their nicknames.
Nobody has observed these decoys actually downloading anything, so it baffles me how they can assume that the files being advertised are the actual files being sent if a person COULD download the file, or even assume that the person is in fact SENDING any files. In addition, if there are other decoys on the network whose sole purpose was to launch some sort of attack against irc clients sharing files (as described on the page mentioned above), we haven't found them yet.
Hope this clears a few things up about how their decoys work and what to watch for.
Max, the webspider monkey says "MediaForce Sucks!"
Unfortunately, there are some people who respond to threats. In Australia we have had a number of ISPs that have failed to honour the contracts they have made with their customers out of fear of litigation. This kind of yellow belly behaviour is common where the threatened feels no respect for those who will suffer from their complacency. These are the people we need to report.
If you have had your account removed or your service disconnected by your ISP, please report it!
It is the responsibility of our freedom loving society to avoid service providers who fail to protect that freedom. If each of us take notice of these reports and boycott those ISPs that fail to protect us, then maybe we can affect real change.
How we know is more important than what we know.
First of all, I'm an Australian on OptusNet cable. In March, my unlimited-download speed-capped service becomes a services with a 500 MB limit and speed caps (no, I'm not keeping it). This was due to a change in all OptusNet cable services.
Secondly, Optus speed-caps ports like those used with many P2P apps (I get a max of about 7K/s on Grokster).
Thirdly, Optus runs spiders that check the network and block connectivity on odd ports with a large amount of traffic travelling over them, for a limited time (half hour on, half hour off).
Now, MediaForce - I fail to see how they can monitor Hotline transfers and discriminate between movies and other files [unless they're sniffing every packet that travels through a backbone and reading the header/footer of every file - yeah right] without some pretty awesome and illegal technology.
Personally I use Haxial software (encrypted Hotline, basically).
This is all a load of crap, I must say. Scare tactics, nothing more. Not only does MediaForce have zero legal muscle in Australia, but they don't know jack either. I call their bluff.
Under Australian law I could walk out in the main street of my town and start handing out VCD copies of the new Lord of the Rings movie, and the cops couldn't touch me. It is not a criminal offence until I start taking money for it.
The Copyright holder does have the recourse of a civil suit though.
Anyway, our Federal Police have better things to do with their time, unlike the FBI.
ISPs - Don't log anything that isn't 100% necessary, and then set it up so it autodeletes to protect your customers. Remember that your customers are your most valuable business asset, and third parties asking you to close and account are creating a retention problem. Can you afford a 1%-3% increase in attrition?
Record/Movie Biz - Stop the witch-hunt before public opinion turns on you. Copyright is an abridgement of free press and speech... What the people gave you, we have the power to take away... Find ways to lower costs and make getting new music easy... and for God's sake MARKET DECENT MUSIC and MOVIES. Most of the crap you've foisted on us is suitable only for MST3K or the soundtrack of a movie on MST3K... Come out with something NEW already (when the biggest movies of the year are based on an old novel and a comic book or are sequels, you aren't exactly pumping out the new ideas...)
-- $G