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Australian Federal Police Raid Major ISPs
pflodo writes "The Australian (newspaper) has an article about Telstra the major Australian ISP and other 'declined to name' ISPs that have been raided by Australian Federal Police to 'seek the identity of particular subscribers' in relation to their activity and files stored on the ISP's servers. I imagine they will eventually raid some domestic homes and make a scapegoat of some unfortunate teenagers."
"According to sources, the wholesale value of the allegedly pirated music may be as high as $60 million"
Then again, the music could be mostly Backstreet Boys, Brittney Spears, and N'Sync, in which case the value of the music is closer to $60.
From the tone of this article it strikes me that the police suspect the ISPs of criminal complicity in regards to their subscriber's alleged actions.
Is this how it normally works down under?
Cheers,
-- RLJ
Sounds so Orwellian for an American groupie country. Whats going on?
Does anyone know if the ISP's were monitoring the users pipes? Or is this simply a case of 'If you left it in your user space on their machine you're up the creek sans paddle'?
Fnord.sig
Why would someone committing computer-related illegal activities store anything on their ISP's servers? That's just begging for the systems administrator to find it themselves, and report you for something (assuming it violates their ethics code).
One of the strongest truths in anything that isn't necessarily legal, or could be interpretted as not legal, is that you don't leave any evidence that others can control. If you're really smart, you leave no evidence at all, period, but if you do leave something, make sure that it is in your control, and your control alone.
The other thing that I'm shuddering about is the possible downtime effects that this has on everyone else who uses the equipment for fully legitimate purposes. Suddenly, the possibility of server outages, network outages, and other miscellaneous service problems ensue, especially if a federal entity decides that equipment itself is to be confinscated as evidence, and they don't take care to properly handle what mess they leave behind.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
It seems like the Aussies have taken a page or two from the US's "Big Book O' Terrorism" manual.
.au geeks that have lived in the US and would care to compare/contrast the two in terms of rights, both real and perceived?
Any
Does this mean I have to give up my downloaded copies of the 'Crocodile Hunter'?
that the ISPs were accessed without prior warning and traffic monitored for a small amount of time, and previous traffic recorded, as well as reviewing all of the websites held on the server. As I understand it it is not unheard of in America either.
What I want to know is, what exactly constitutes "copyrighted material" legally here in Australia.
I have a bunch of SNES ROM's and anime (series, music and movies) that have no licencing in Australia. I also have some PlayStation ISO's, same deal. The anime/game wasn't released in Australia (or in any PAL territory, with some of them), so the only way that I could get it was online.
If it were possible for me to have acquired this stuff another way, I'd have done it...
Is that kind of thing considered illegal?
Chasing child pr0n-ography - yep.
Keeping Australia free from terror - yep
Those sort of raids are all about upholding current laws
But chasing up a bunch of mp3 downloaders?
Pull the other leg, it plays JingleBells.mp3
Now they can read whats on your computer screen! Whats next? Roaming through college dormitories in search of students downloading music and porno when they aren't over 21 yet? Do we need to bring a legal fiasco back into the mix? Did those admins that knew what was being downloaded really deserve to be locked up instead?
Wow. Search warrents for allowing people to download music...hope it doesn't trickle down to everybody.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
They definitely wouldn't have dared taking the servers for evidence - not only is it illegal without express permission but it'd disrupt Australian internet. You're talking about the three or four biggest ISPs in Australia holding thousands of websites!
I prefer to call them the Federal Austrailian Police, or the FAP Squad. *fapfapfap*
Presumably, there could be some kind of ISP credit rating to add accountability and prevent consumers from rapidly switching ISPs to circumvent scrutiny. Privacy premium Internet access could be granted based on records of responsible online citizenship and satisfaction on the ISPs part that the subscriber wouldn't do anything illegal and get them into trouble.
Would it be possible to convince ISPs to implement such an 'Iron Curtain' feature or would it qualify as aiding terrorists, like purchasing narcotics does? *sigh*
My guess is that these dollar figure likely assume that every copy of a song downloaded results in a lost record sale so the record labels can cry "boo-hoo" all the way to the bank. However, just because I have the Rocky theme on my hard drive doesn't mean that I would have run out to the store and plunked down $13 bucks for the CD otherwise.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
Raid is a strong word and in this case a little excessive I think. The report says te police turned up with a search warrent and computer forensics experts. I suspect they got the cooperation of the ISP rather than close down Telstra (which has i dunno 50% of the internet market in Australia) by taking away servers.
I always thought small fry p2p users just opened their home machines to the network. But there have been stories in the Australian papers recently that suggest that ISPs are actually hosting p2p fodder on their own account in order to stimulate traffic. Unless these raids are looking for this type of material or anon ftp sites or stolen space I guess the police are in fact looking at traffic logs a la Verizon.
From the American Library Associations website: http://www.ala.org/alonline/news/2003/030224.html# santafe I was horrified to read that a man was hamdcuffed and brought in for perfectly harmless (but anti-Bush) chat in a library. Read the article and shiver. This story along with the Patriot Act II http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/02200 3Winslow/022003winslow.html has me very scared for my basic rights. These scenarios are coming home fast, it's good to watch Australia and Britan to see what's in store.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
"Authorities in [your country name here] today raided several warehouses, looking for beer making components in a widespread crackdown on home-brew that several large consortiums claim is responsible for annual corporate loses in the millions."
"Authorities in [your country name here] today raided several warehouses, looking for bolts of fabric in a widespread crackdown on home-made garments that several large consortiums claim is responsible for annual corporate loses in the millions."
"Authorities in [your country name here] today raided several warehouses, looking for metal forging tools and raw materials in a widespread crackdown on home-made bicycles that several large consortiums claim is responsible for annual corporate loses in the millions."
And keep in mind that your tax monies are paying for the police to take action to support these corporations as they reach further and further into your pockets - and your life. Think this is all a reach? Think again...
The AFP (Australian Federal Police) is the Australian Equivelant of the FBI.
Also ASIO is the Australian Equivelant of the CIA.
I always wanted to work for the AFP or ASIO. But its too hard to get in, and you don't get paid enough....
D.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Sounds like they're about to make some examples out of people. Seriously, kids, you're not going to get out of this one with a note from your mum.
Anyway, there is some footage of the raids taking place here metallicops
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
From the Article: FEDERAL police have executed search warrants on Telstra and internet company Eftel in one of Australia's largest investigations into alleged music piracy, which could be worth up to $60 million.
Wow... $60 million!
Assuming the price of a CD is $20, it means that the pirate has an MP3 collection of equivalent to 3,000,000 CDs!
Assuming each CD has 10 songs on it, then the pirate has 30 million MP3s!
Assuming each MP3 is about 5 megs... then the amount of storage required is 150TB!
Did they raid Kazaa's ISP literally... or is this just one journalist's idea of sprucing up what should have been a normal IP-infringement case?
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Hrmmm, that sounds a bit dodgy to me...
Lets think about it, assuming each song is worth $5 (a bit generous but let's be nice...), that makes around 12 million songs. With each song being around 3 MB, that'd be 36,000,000 MB... which is about 34 TB.
Now you can't tell me that any ISP lets customers have that much storage, and they would probably notice if someone, or a small group, was contributing to 34 TB of traffic.
Sounds like someone might be overestimating by a bit don't you think?
- proton
I mean here in the UK it great to have no worries.
I mean we dont have the RIP bill that means you can be chucked in prison for 5 years if you wont tell police your passwords, and they don't even need a warrent
Or that on the average day you are caught on 100 different CCTV cameras
Or that its a police state but most people haven't noticed yet
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Copyright violation in Australia is a civil offence in Australia, unless you sell the stuff. Search for the word "civil" here.
I know this with a fair amount of certainty, as I was on the end of a similar search warrant during the "drink or die" bust. At the time I was totally mystified as to why, after telling me they were going to search my work place for "copyright violations" and having a search warrant that said they could look for anything illegal under Australia law, they took absolutely no interest in the various CD collections we have, nor did they search any of the workstations for illegal software.
It turned out the target was a guy who used to work here and who did (briefly) have an IRC chat with drink or die after it had been infiltrated. That was how they got our IP. The cops were interested in IRC logs mainly, but I had cleaned up the servers ages ago. His house was later searched and the fed's did find his collection of 200 odd pirated movies. But it was just a hobby - he did not sell anything. I am presuming that is why he has not been charged.
It is a weird hobby if you ask me. It costs more here in Australia to download & burn a movie then it does to hire it, a lot more in fact.
Anyway, there has to be more to this than was reported in the article. For the police to be involved someone must be suspected of selling, or somehow otherwise getting monetary gain out of illegally distributing copyrighted material. Australia's copyright laws may sound lame from what I have said, but if someone is found to of broken the criminal law it won't be a slap on the wrist. They will end up in jail.
Is it possible the MP3 story is a cover for an ongoing investigation into child pr0n ? Perhaps that's what the AFP are actually after but they don't want to tip off the crims, they go to ground very quickly.
There was that story on the news in Australia last night about concern for the whereabouts of a child depicted in a porn photo, those photos don't get out unless someone gets busted. These raids could be a result of that. Just a thought.
-- INTX Grouch. http://www.midnightblue.net
"The challenge facing those who would minimise computer-related crime is to seek a balance which would allow a tolerable degree of illegality in return for creative exploitation of the technology. At this early stage of the technological revolution, it may be useful for individuals, interest groups and governments to articulate their preferences and let these serve as signals to the market. Markets may be able to provide more efficient solutions than state interventions."
Would you call the cops if you found out people were stealing from you? I thought so.
/. who decry groups like the MPAA but still line up 6 months in advance for their movies.
I don't agree with IP laws the way they are written and enforced, but as it stands, pirating music is stealing. Don't like it? Write your congressman so you can make yourself feel righteous.
Or, a better idea, listen to and support bands that don't use the RIAA-affiliated recording/publishing houses. In a capitalist country, only changes in the bottom line can bring about change.
Some knees can jerk both ways, see? One direction you have "But its the law" and the other you have "Corporations are taking over all our rights." I'm more inclined to the latter as well, but just being morally outraged is tiresome, I've just stopped buying products or services from companies or organizations whose ethics I do not like. I put my money where my mouth is, unlike the majority of
In other words, come up with some better analogies. (Not so easy...nothing else is quite like our hydrocephalic IP laws)
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
So the fact that I buy directly from artists off the internet isn't putting my money where my mouth is?
I worked for the largest music retailer in America, and walked away on my morals. Mine, not yours or anyone else's. They are the real pirates.
The fact that the record industry told us CD's would mean lower prices than what we were once paying for LP's has proven to be untrue. Artists make less than 5% off each CD retail. The record companies steal from us and the artists and it's ok....we steal from them and it's actionable? Sounds like a double standard to me, and I see no reason to feel sorry for anyone that can't see it.
I've know for a long time that the music industry is stealing from me....funny, tho, I don't think the cops would be amused if I called and reported that kind of theft...perhaps if I told them you suggested I make the call, they might listen?
The brochures contain absolutely nothing useful, it's just the standard natural-disaster guff. The general reaction has been that it's a gross waste of money and an exercise in scaring people into sticking with the incumbent government.In fact, many thousands of people, myself included, have written "return to sender" on the wrapper and dropped it back in the post... :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
When I worked at a major carrier in Australia as a security admin, we had some on staff known as 'LELU' - which from recollection stands for Law Enforcement Lliason Unit. These were the people whom the different law enforcement groups would approach with warrants and requests for subscriber info. Then LELU in turn would approach the security geeks and say 'we need to know which subscriber was on IP address x.x.x.x at 10.30pm GMT+11'.
Not once do I recall a 'raid' of our subscriber info. The LELU process seemed to be a good mechanism for law agencies to work with the techs at the organisation.
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
like me, did anyone else think this was regarding child pornography, and not (as is the case) a trickle of users in the sea that is filesharing, arrested at the behest of record companies?
..priorities, priorities...
<B>note to self:</B> <I>post as html</I>
The record companies/RIAA and the like always equate the profit loss to the number of songs dowloaded. The fact is, people download because they can, and if downloading is stopped, people will just do without the songs. They are not going to buy everything that they would have downloaded otherwise.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
I do have a hard time grasping that, mostly because of its extreme variance from the truth.
I mean, I don't even know how to rebut that. Its so painfully, blatantly obvious that large corporations get preferential treatment in nearly all matters, vs. private citizens (and yes, drug dealers). Tell me, when's the last time you heard about a corporate office tower being raided at 4 a.m. with flashbangs and shotguns?
Sorry, not insightful.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
If the police have reason to believe that ISP servers hold pirated files (a safe bet), why shouldn't they investigate? If someone had a warehouse stocked with illegal booze, or drugs, would you expect them to look the other way? Or, better yet for this crowd, how about a warehouse full of Linux CD's containing code that violates the GPL?
Regardless of where you stand on this issue, it's silly and naive to expect the police to alter their behavior because of your political opinions.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
--I don't download mp3s or movies, so we'll get that out of the way FIRST.
When I was a kid, you had a clear cut choice in the record store, and that's ALL we had really was records. There was some reel to reel tape action, but basically it was records and the am radio. You could get EITHER an album on 33 size OR a 45 that had two tunes on it. I can't tell you how much of the albums were wasted space, so a lot of 45 "singles" got sold, even though the song on the flipside sucked.
Downloading and swapping accomplishes what the customer HAS ALWAYS WANTED but these morons REFUSE to get it. People do NOT want to pay for crap, it's called BUNDLING. They don't want to pay for CRAP they don't want.
If I go to the car dealer and order a new car, I got the choice to decide on my accessories. If I go to get a new bicycle, I got a CHOICE whether or not I want blinking lights on it, electronic turn signals, baskets, whatever, I can GET what I want. No fenders? sure. With mainstream commercial music you got NO choice. You can't easily preview, you can't find anything that isn't on the approved list, and if you get suckered into buying some "disc" you got no idea how much of that disc has anything you want on it or even if it will even play in your player!
Oh, listen to the radio to decide, because the radio will provide you a way to preview? No it won't, they play the same 40 top songs and have since I was a kid in grade school. NOTHING HAS CHANGED IN FACT IT GOT WORSE.
Anyway, I started boycotting paying for music when I had gotten several cassettes and noticed I really only wanted one or two songs off the things. I started even boycotting live music when the price of a ticket got to what was for me ridiculous levels, switched to "local" music at local smaller venues. I was in the mega concert biz a bit, I saw what the waste and greed did to people, it was wasteful and greedy, that's why humans have those words. Those industries are chock full top to bottom of coker and booze addled people who all got this paranoid delusion of grandeur that they are all worth this totally absurd amount of money. top to bottom and sideways. Ridiculous levels of money. The producers, the middleman, the pressers, the pr firms, the "stars" you name it, out to lucn on believing they are really worth these sums. Paranoid Delusions of Grandeur, expectations that they got some "right" to profits at obscene levels. Screw them!
The big names ain't worth it, the big middleman companies that constitute this business ain't worth it. IF they can cut their expectations down on what THEY think they are worth, and ALSO make it dog squat easy and simple for people to be able to preview and buy indivdual songs CHEAPLY AND EASILY, they wouldn't have any problems and would actually make MORE money than what they are making now.
Frankly, those people are just plain STUPID if they can't see this. VCRs haven't "killed" the movie industry, even though this was claimed. Cassettes didn't "kill" the music industry. The xerox machine didn't "kill" the book industry. Web forums where articles are discussed hasn't killed the online news business. What all these things HAVE done is to point out COMPLETELY unreasonable expectations of "profit" that some people get, figures they pick right out of their asses, then they DEMAND to get that profit. People deserve SOME profit from their work, everyone and their cuzzin leroy who is an "artiste" and their middle man skimmers DON'T need to be millionaires from these "efforts". If people really thought this stuff was worth it, they would pay for it happily.
It's the same with writingbooks, software writing,painting pictures, whatever. If people got over this sheer greed, they could see this. The "music industry" as it's run at the top by the corps who use the riaa as their front mouth piece need to buy a MUCH cheaper clue. What they are seeing is a righteous BACKLASH to entire generations of people getting ripped off by being charged way more than what this stuff is really worth, and now that the tech exists to SHOW what it's worth, they just need to deal with it. How their dollar gets divvied up with 'the artistes" is for them to figure out, don't ask the customer to do it! If these 'artistes' think it's ok to sign away their rights for cheap,that's their business.
EVERYONE works hard at their jobs, I don't see it written in stone everywhere that because you are such and such you can just DEMAND to be a millionaire. And by the RIAA controlling the so called "public" airwaves through graft and payola, by conspiring to keep cds artifically inflated in price, by all their other monopolistic practics based on GREED, they finally got the people fighting back and SHOWING them what their products are worth. 10 songs on a cd AREN'T WORTH 15$. They are worth MAYBE 10 cents apiece, something like that. Because they never were content with making a living, and instead conspired to have inflated paychecks, people revolted, used technology, and this is what the market can bear now. It's the RIAA and MPAA and the "artistes" they represent who NEED TO BUY A CLUE, and knock it off with extravagant millionaire lifestyles and false expectations for their "work".
I so DETEST both those industries that I watch very few movies, I stopped going to the movies, I stopped going to expensive live concerts and stopped buying pre-packaged music a long time ago,with the exceptions of already produced and used discs or tapes, and that's it, because the dollar I pay for a used tape or cassette or disk is ALL that "entertainment" is really worth.
And ditto professional sports for that matter.
Irony is when a former penal colony known as a haven for outcasts and criminals creates and enforces laws to punish the outcasts and criminals.
What's been happening in Australia lately? It used to be known as one of the most open & welcoming societies. But now with increasing incidents like this, like detention camps for immigrants and the Australian government apparently falling over itself to out-ape the Bush Administration, it's quickly losing that reputation. Can someone from there explain? I can't see feds cracking down on mp3 trading as a result of the Bali bombing.
When are the record companies going to figure out that the reason that people so assiduously trade MP3s is that they perceive that the price of the "real thing", i.e. the CD is not worth the value received? The recording industry has no one to blame but themselves for the situation that has been created regarding MP3s, a much lower quality product, from an audio perspective. People know when they're being ripped off and CDs priced at $15 and up is definitely a rip off when you consider what the actual cost of production is.
Even including studio costs, which are generally charged back to the artist, along with promotion costs and virtually any other "cost" associated with the product the recording houses are rolling in money. They're upset about MP3 trading, not because they have any great love for copyright law, except when it benefits them, but because they perceive each MP3 trade as a lost sale. Which is probably not the case in real life.
The recording industry is vainly trying to put the technological genie back in the bottle. The problem is that they are being aided by governments in this attempt. Rather than the government taking the view that the marketplace should be let alone to resolve its own problems of pricing, distribution, etc. they are bowing to the wishes of the wealthy and powerful and passing laws to prevent the marketplace from evolving as it would otherwise.
It is unfortunate that the very technology that has made MP3 trading possible may very well be used to shut down access to anything that isn't paid for up-front. The various DRM recommendations and proposals from folks like our friends at Microsoft are nothing but an attempt to limit the freedom of people to listen to or view what they want when they want after they've purchased a product. The days of pay-per-play are not far off if the entertainment industry has its way.
They do own the rights to the material contained on the CD or DVD that I just bought at Best Buy. But, I own that piece of plastic and if I feel like taking it to a friend's house and playing it or watching it there that is no business of the industry or anyone else. But, the industry would have us live in a world in which they control everything we see or hear, including when and under what conditions we may do so. So keep on trading those MP3s. Civil disobedience is one way of fighting back against those who would limit our freedom simply because they feel entitled to continue to make a living in the same old way. Toss sand in the gears folks, slow things down or ten years from now we may not be able to say what we're saying today because it's "not approved."
just my $.02,
Ron
Impeach Barack Obama for violating the Constitutional requirement to be a "natural born" citizen to hold the office of P