WiFi Hotspots Elude RIAA Dragnet

mblase writes "A CNET News article discusses a problem the RIAA is having with its copyright enforcement strategy: public wireless hot spots. Normally, the RIAA notifies the ISP when a user is found to be violating their copyrights, but in this case, the ISP is powerless to do anything. Key quote: '...unless the administrator keeps detailed logs of everybody's account use - which is not required by law - she may well not know who was swapping files.' I wonder how long it will be before those detailed logs ARE required by law?"

Comments

Dynamic IP's Extra

[Ken@WearableTech]

This gives rise to a solution to these and similar lawsuits. Whether or not the ISP's have a choice in turning over the customer information when they have the IP address subpoenaed it does generate a loss because they will have staff or outside lawyers look into it on every case. If this continues and expands then it may be cost prohibitive to the point that the ISP's just stop logging. I think larger ISP's might do this to avoid billable hours and small ISP's will do it as a feature.

Will people be happy to get rid of that static IP for a dynamic one?

Re:Dynamic IP's Extra

[Mistlefoot]

The ISP's should be billing the RIAA $40 or so per hour (or whatever it costs) to sift through their logs. THere is no way this should be paid for by the ISP. If I try to access records through my local courthouse I pay fees. It is not free for me to get information that I have a right to access. I don't think it should be free in this circumstance either.

Re:Dynamic IP's Extra

[cait56]

Exactly. The ISP needs to be able to prove that it is not the source of DoS attacks and/or spam. So ultimately for reasons totally unrelated to the RIAA they will have logs to show who was the authorized user of an IP address at any given instant.

Don't think of ISPs protecting file-sharers, shift it to protecting distributers of child pornography. There is no way that ISPs will not be forced by explicit law and/or by the need to defend themselves to have such logs.

In fact, I can imagine a strong legal case that providing untracable access to an IP network is an attractive nuisance that the ISP knew, or should have known, would be used in the commission of felonies. Big time liabilities lurking.

Re:Dynamic IP's Extra

[jellybear]

Are logs fair use? Then could you "log" all the video information that goes through your entertainment system?

Re:Dynamic IP's Extra

[Anonymous Coward]

It will not end, but we will win.

Re:Dynamic IP's Extra

[AceM2]

There are great benefits to logging some things, but logging mp3 file transfers and such seems to not be useful.. For a few extra cycles why not set up a sorting system.. An automatic system that can save things that might be suspicious, and throw out the rest? Seems like a decent compromise to me.. Few extra bucks spent on some processing power maybe.. You might lose a little useful log information.. Storage savings could surely be increased though, logs could be saved for a longer amount of time, you could save money on potential legal battles, and useful information would be easier accessed.. Sure, I know people are going to complain that it's a little more intrusive than just logging and letting it sit..but on the other hand, if it's sorted automatically, more legal things that you might want to keep private would be deleted forever as opposed to.. RIAA thinking you're sharing mp3s.. Doesn't find proof of that, but instead tell everyone you're a communist since you downloaded a text file including that word..

Re:Dynamic IP's Extra

[cait56]

To me there is a very clear line. My car might be carrying all sorts of illegal contraband. But the police cannot just stop me and demand proof of ownership for everything within it.

That does not mean I have a right to carry illegal items in my auto, or that the police cannot stop me when they have reasonable grounds to believe that my car has illegal goods in it.

Similarly, the police/RIAA/whomever must never be given the right to "inspect" p2p traffic to see what is in it. My traffic is entitled to both a presumption of innocence and privacy. I should not have to prove on demand that I own the MP3 that I am transferring.

On the other hand, If I put up a web site announcing free Metallica downloads and giving my URL, I believe that constitutes "reasonable grounds" to search the material I offer for download.

At that point, even if I am not charging, I am operating in the commercial space. It has long been recognized that there is no right to provide goods and services anonymously.

Anonymous speech needs protection, not anonymous theft.

We need to focus on the preservation of the privacy of legitimate communications, not that we're losing access to a "free" cookie jar.

Re:Dynamic IP's Extra

[VPN3000]

It's for spam investigations and tracking individual user statistics.

How else would you be able to determine how much utilization is on your servers? Not just an overall, but which groups are used and how often? This sort of thing is very important since you don't want to go deleting whatever new, high traffic, warez newsgroup your customers may be enjoying.

Without that type of information, an admin who only follows the playstation2 might think the xbox groups are not being used by his customers enough to replicate the feed anymore. He'll then delete the group from the servers and have 700-800 users really pissed off. With user statistics assembled from logs, he'll know clearly that the demand for the group is high enough with his local users to keep it.

Also, if you are a software publisher and someone uploaded a software application you spent the last 4 years working on to alt.binaries.warez.whatever and you want to locate the person to file a suit against them. You'd be completely powerless without some kind of data trail in place.

An ISP isn't going to give out this type of information willy-nilly. You have to remember, Porn and Warez are a large part of what fuels the demand for broadband. Anyone who says otherwise is a mis-informed fool. They will protect users as much as possible without putting themselves in a position where they look ignorant or irrisponsible.

I recall a statistic in a meeting with a news administrator in 1996 where he had a printout of various statistics on the usenet server. Images and media in pornography groups out numbered all unrated material 800-to-1. If warez newsgroups alone were removed from the service, the company would save approxamately $11 million dollars in upgrades for the year since traffic and server utilization would drop by a factor of 20.

I hope the above clears up any paranoia about your ISP digging up something nasty and coming after you for it. They won't. They'd like to keep getting your $$$ as long as you don't draw any attention to yourself from outside entities.

Another rambling reply of mine. Enjoy :)

logging your wifi is a good idea...

[mkbz]

proxying port 80 and logging is a good idea for wifi -- why go to prison for your neighbor's kiddie porn habit?

Re:logging your wifi is a good idea...

[sleeper0]

so this article seems to legitimize the approach of

1. make sure your wap is public at home
2. download whatever you like
3. say it must have been someone else but you don't keep logs

no?

I always wondered about this...

[Dr Reducto]

I always thought that the true anonymous internet would come when unsecured Wi-Fi was rampant. How are they going to carnivore anyone when they aren't tied to the other end of a line? There is no way to really know who is doing what on Wi-Fi.

Re:I always wondered about this...

[Slowping]

you're forgetting the "analog hole" of this problem... they may not have perfect technology for tracking WiFi, but they have cameras everywhere. Once they get a big enough case, they isolate the videos around the access point, track down the range of time, and start ID'ing and tracking down the individuals in those videos.

Not a perfect solution, but it has worked for other crimes such as kidnappings and burglaries. And physically moving around is not as easy as hopping electronic signals across the globe.

Logs and whats required

[doormat]

I was thinking about this in lieu of the RIAA sending subpeonas to ISPs, and why ISPs need to keep logs of what MAC address had what IP at what time. Maybe it would be enough to drop the time, or get really vauge? "Yea, three MACs have had that IP address this week, sorry, cant tell ya which one had it at that time." Not quite sure how that would affect tracking the source of hacker and/or hacking. Vauge engough to keep it out of a court of law, specific enough to combat/detect hacking.

Of course, whats the big deal to set my computer to an empty address in the DHCP pool, and DHCP logs wont detect squat.

It's quite simple...

[spectecjr]

Stop copying other people's stuff.
Take the moral highground.

Then, when the RIAA doesn't have a leg to stand on, push the balance of copyright law back to normal.

Until people stop publishing and redistributing material which they have no claim to (or rights to), the people who produce that material will gang up against them. And that gang typically has bigger pocketbooks.

They didn't care about it before now, because it's only with the rise of fast connections to the Internet that people have had enough bandwidth to make it a real problem. The losses were a blip on the radar.

Self regulate, learn the rules, or the fairness police will come down on you. If you think it's fair to copy someone else's material willy-nilly, then I'm willing to bet that you've never produced anything of any worth.

but the RIAA strategy is...

[rritterson]

From what I know, the RIAA is planning to sue sharers, not downloaders (although often they are one and the same). The idea is, kill the supply, and the demand decreases. (Yeah, because it worked so well with illegal drugs.)

Point is, how many people are likely to run persistant shares over a hotspot? I'd think that those who use hotspots have nothing to fear from the RIAA, yet..

There was a previous discussion about an ISP who was encouraging customers to setup an access point and share the connection with others for a reduced rate. /. readers came to the consensus that I can be held accountable for content my neighbors download with my connection. Does this mean that the RIAA can sue coffee shops who setup their own independant hotspots? (Of course, it doesn't apply to the server businesses who have paired with T-Mobile)

Re:What account?

[Fizzlewhiff]

Is it about wardriving for tunes or is it about using WiFi hotspots with your favorite p2p app? It is the latter. Currently P2P traders can't be identified in a WiFi hotspot as was the case with Bryant Park.

I'll agree though, wardriving looking for shared tunes is a big waste of time and gasoline for that matter.

The thought of me getting fined or jailed for sharing would be enough for me to stop doing it as I'm 35 with a wife and kids. If I were 15 I don't think I would think twice about it. It sure didn't stop me from phreaking back then.

Re:What account?

[(H)elix1]

Most people use those services because all you have to do is double-click on a few songs, go to bed with Kazaa on and the next day you have whatever music you wanted.
I doubt there will be a big group of people Wardriving for Tunes.

I suspect there will be more and more willing to unplug the cat5 and leach off the wireless connections however. I've got six unique home networks around me w/o any security. PrettyKitty, TSUNAMI, homeboxen, Blaze, Ford150, and JarJar.

PrettyKitty? JarJar??? These freaks are within WiFi range. Ah well - it is late. Any recomendations? (kidding)

Re:forced liability, coming soon to a lawyer near

[RevMike]

IANAL, but...

If you have the logs, they are business records and can be subject to subpeona. The key is to set up a business policy which purges the logs entirely on a rapid basis, and actually follow it.

If an RIAA lawyer asks you for information about who had what IP address at a particular time last month, and you then delete the logs, you are in a whole lot of trouble.

But, if you only store a week's worth of logs, and regularly delete the logs after they are a week old, you can honestly say "Sorry, that information has been purged in accordance with our document retention policy." There is nothing the RIAA can do about it.

This was what happened at Enron/Arthur Anderson. They had a document retention policy that would have saved their asses, but no one followed it. Only when they realized that they were about to be sued did they shred everything. If they were shredding all along as standard procedure, they would have been fine.

RIAA is getting what is deserved for selling

[truthhurts1]

CD's and Records at ridiculous prices and conspiring with others to control prices.

There is nothing they can do except try and shutdown ISPs'. And why is there no parallel analogies to the us postal service ? Should we shut them down if somebody is sending copyrighted stuff ?

The next to be hit is the movie industry. The movie selection should improve when higher speeds come around which should be never with Time Warner controlling everything.

The only people the RIAA will catch...

[Berrik]

...are people not smart enough to secure their systems. And the more people they bust, the more people will be enticed to secure their systems, thus causing the RIAA's overhead to rise. Frankly, the RIAA is trying to shovel back the ocean with a fork. The only question is how much money they're willing to spend trying. I myself serve almost 500 gigs of stuff (most of it anime, jpop, and the like), and if the RIAA wants to track me they can sure try. I knew the risks when I got into this, and accept them as a cost of doing business. That being said, if the RIAA breaks down the door to get the HDs I keep the stuff on, I have no problems whatsoever with activating the electromagnets sitting on top of 'em and scrambling the whole mess into indecipherable gobbledygook. I got a nice stack of back-up CDs in a safe place ;) Oh, and for those of you who use Kazaa Lite: The latest ver blocks the IP ranges that the RIAA and their minions/co-conspirators use. Who says resistance is futile? Berrik

IP Logs

[Klimaxor]

The IP Log Circle Jerk:
1) ISP's will be required to keep logs, for legal purposes
2) the common folk, with their (insert firewall here) logs will say "hey, if ISP logs are kept for legal purposes, why not track this sonuvabitch down who tried to .winnuke me"
3) The Department of Justice will get involved when they hear of rumors that such and such a ISP has been tampering with their logs, thus costing us more money in them doing their shit.
4) Some random group of people who like to complain will picket the government some more claiming "they are tracking how long i'm on the internet and what i'm doing, invasion of privacy" and that will cost us even more money as they send out the swat teams and the rubber bullets because we all know protesting in any form is pretty much ILLEGAL now.
5) Some Congressman will present a bill to overthrow the IP log law because it's causing conflicts in society (he doesn't want them to catch onto his warez/kiddie porn ring)
6) the law will be discontinued, we'll be right back were we started, a couple billion dollars further in the hole, with nothing more accomplished.

Re:This has been my strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

Ye-ah...ok I'm a criminal? Well... The U.S. constitution, MY Constitution (Non-U.S. citizen), and current Laws state that copyright infringement is, well, not a crime.. you need to learn that...

Yes, it is.

A guide to criminal penalties associated with the crime of wilfully infringing copyright

So umm, yeah I am a copyright infringer, and guess what, so are you...

No, I'm not.

Read the newspaper and ignore the ads, copyright violation

No, it's not. Copy the newspaper and give it to someone else - copyright violation. Ignoring the ads is simply ignoring the ads.

Sing a song around the campfire, and not properly pay for the rights... yuppers, you guessed it, copyright infringement

No, it's not. Unless you're making a movie of it, or are holding a concert around the campfire.

a song around the campfire, and not properly pay for the rights... yuppers, you guessed it, copyright infringement... hell singing a song in the shower is a violation of copyright if your neighbour hears it

No, it's not.

So tell you what, I'll keep doing this until the LAW is changed... copyright law is totally screwed, and is supporting a morribund industry... its like prohibition, I know it is wrong, and I am doing it until the law catches up...

You'd make a much bigger impact by boycotting music entirely. But given that that would be way too harsh for you to stomach as a way of promoting your ideals because - oh, lawks a lordy - you'd be deprived of your God Given Right To Other People's Hard Work, I guess you can keep on justifying and rationalizing your actions regardless of whether it's right or wrong.

And there's a big difference between prohibition and copyright law. One was wrought out of religious intervention into public affairs, and the other is in order to protect the people who create intellectual property in order that they may continue creating that property.

Oh, and something else you're not doing - you could just talk to your local politicians if you don't like the lay of the land. You live in a democracy. And if you're not doing that, then you don't have the courage of your convictions on that point either.

All the evidence points to you just wanting a free ride... not that you're making a 'statement'.

Re:What account?

[inertia187]

What if someone sets up a WiFi LAN just for file trading on their block? It's an open network, but there's no ISP at all. What would the RIAA do then, if they even noticed?

Kind of reminds me of my BBS days when you could uuencode files on and share on WWiVnet. Other than the phone company, there was no connectivity. Files could distribute over night by modem (2400 to 19200, yikes!), sometimes hopping multiple nodes, and no one would be the wiser.

Re:What account?

[Cipster]

This brings to mind an interesting question. How will the RIAA deal with the bad publicity of dragging to court teenagers and branding them as criminals for sharing music?

Data over VoIP

[bigmattana]

This makes me wonder... Wouldn't it be possible to make some sort of data transfer network or "sub-internet" where people communicate using digital channels over internet telephony? It would be pretty hard to trace what people are doing, sharing, etc, because data packets would be coverted to a digital representation of audio being sent out. The digital "soundwaves" could be modulated to any any frequency, so they would in no way look like the digital bits they actually represent. This would probably be fairly slow, but possible.
Any thoughts?

Re:This has been my strategy

[cheshiremackat]

Hmm, well Mr. AC, time for a little history...

Wilfull huh? Guess that will be up to the judge, whether allowing public access to the information highway is willful infringement... I remember something about significant non-infringing use somewhere, but I cannot seem to recall...?

Around the campfire... The Boy Scouts had a little trouble there... and they were only given specific exemption... you probably would not... Do you realise that "Happy Birthday" is copyrighted?

As for the newspaper part... this is a grey area... see your Senator Disney's comments on timeshifting on your TIVO...

Hmm, singing in the shower, yup, if your neighbour hears it, then that would be a public performance, no?

Hmm, now to the part of your part about the boycott... see, now that is silly, why deprive myself of the good works of the artists? I only despise the recording pigopoly, not the artists... so how do I sleep at night? Well, I go to concerts and support the artists that way... in the end they make more money...

Oh and something else I am not doing... well it must be nice to be an AC, b/c that way you can post without doing any research... seems that I am very involved... writing several HUNDRED letters, to my politicians, and yours... so don't tell me, that I lack conviction, when infact I am very concerned for the well being of the artists that I enjoy...

Now I would like to question whether you really understand the difference between prohibition and the current state of copyright laws... are you so deluded to believe that this is about the artists and protecting their works to encourage more? This is more about the rights of an oligopoly to exploit the public...
Answer this question before you reply... how long does the rights of an artist need to be protected to ensure that they continue to produce works of merit? Hmmm? Why is it that everytime Steamboat willy gets close to becomming part of the public domain that copyright laws get extended? Hmm can't see old Walt producing more cartoons anytime soon...

The current state of copyright law is a flawed... I support the artists anyway I can...

_CMK

P.S. Get a life and stop posting as an AC...

Download my MP3s absolutely free

[MichaelCrawford]

Why violate copyright? Many musicians offer legal downloads of their music from their websites or from music hosting services. While you won't find many big-name bands offerring free downloads, you can get a wide variety of enjoyable music.

I'm one of those indie musicians that offers free downloads of my music so more people can get to know it. Please download and enjoy:

• Geometric Visions

It's a recording of me playing my piano compositions.

If I were ever busted I always thought

[aardwolf204]

If I, or I mean, my close friend, were ever "busted" but the RIAA for sharing/downloading mp3s off p2p networks, my, his best alibi would be that the songs could have been downloaded/uploaded from anyone as I am the only network administrator in the world too stupid to know how to enable WEP on my AP, and the neighbor did it. Of course a simple search of *his HD would prove otherwise.

Oh well, looks like I'm gonna have to build that big red button on my box that will format my mp3 partition over and over and over upon pressing.

Imagines my cat Kerberos brushing up against the button... Then again, maybe not.

Links to tens of thousands of legal downloads

[MichaelCrawford]

I think the whole debate over music piracy will be solved if everyone just started downloading legal music. One reason for that is that the RIAA would then shortly become bankrupt, because we'll all be listening to garage bands instead of Brittney and New Kids.

Probably the best known site for downloading MP3s is of course MP3.com. See especially their genre index. Click the link. You will be quite astounded at how many genres there are.

Unfortunately the website usability of MP3.com is atrocious, and their streaming audio seems to be buggy - I can't get it to work in either Explorer or Mozilla. To get an MP3 file to download to your hard drive, you have to register, which I'm sure will result in merciless spamming. May I suggest registering with a throwaway email address from spamgourmet?

The Open Directory Project has Bands and Artists and Styles indices. Not all the artists offer downloads, but the site says they list 48,000 artists and I imagine many of them offer downloads.

Better sites for hosting MP3's than MP3.com are Epitonic.com and insound.

If you prefer the higher quality, patent-free Ogg Vorbis files you can find several download sites here. Ogg Vorbis players are available for many platforms - WinAmp will play them on Windows, and I understand iTunes on Mac OS X supports Ogg now. There are open source Linux ogg players and encoders, even an open source fixed-point decoders for embedded applications where the CPU doesn't have floating point hardware.

There are also peer-to-peer applications for distributing legal music. See Furthur Network and konspire[2b].

I'm sure if more people availed themselves of the wide variety of music available for free download, we will make short work of both the RIAA and ClearChannel. Our lives would also be richer for it.

n00bz

[lo_fye]

What if i were just a n00b who knew nothing, bought a linksys 802.11b router, followed the "Quickstart Guide" (which does not enable wep), and was unknowingly sharing my connection with others. Surely the RIAA wouldn't sue my ass, would they? This is not the case for me, but it is for my parents and several colleagues...

There are people doing that too & why I don't

[MichaelCrawford]

I have considered offerring a more permissive license to my songs, but one reason I don't is that I feel a more effective way to promote my music is to require downloads to only be on my own website. That way people can get to know me as a whole person and not just hear one song out of context.

I realize there is little I can do to stop someone from cheating, but I expect that as long as I'm providing the downloads, most people will respect my wishes.

I feel it is important to maintain the proprietary copyright and proprietary licensing to my music because it is something that I feel to be a deep expression of who I am. I don't think it's the same as software at all, and in fact I do try to contribute to Free Software when I can, for example by writing about how to create better Free Software as well as by contributing to Free Software projects.

If, say, RedHat were to come out with a copylefted music download service, and lots of people started providing altered versions of my music, I would feel personally violated. It's not simply that I want to keep all the money my music might ever generate.

However, there are people who do as you request, who write, record and distribute Free-as-in-Freedom music. I have read about them online, but I'm afraid I don't know where to find any. Perhaps someone who does can post a link in response.

Correction: Marconi did not invent radio

[ciurana]

Just a pet peeve of mine: Marconi did not invent radio. Nikola Tesla did.

Cheers,

E

Re:There are people doing that too & why I don

[femto]

Fair enough, and thanks for taking the time to reply. I guess it depends on each person's perspective.

Some programmers also view their software as a deep expression of who they are. Lets face it, some software represents decades of a person's life and design is a very individual thing. Even then they 'set it free'. I don't think software and music are as far apart as you think. There is non-artistic software and music (production line pop). There is also artistic software and music.

It's a thing I've battled with and it does take a certain form of 'courage' to release something that is 'Free' and trust the rest of the world. Ultimately, I think it comes back to the fact that someone extending your work does not diminish your original work. Maybe with music the difficulty is the greater difficulty in tracing lineage and so preserving credit for your original work? Perhaps a 'changelog' for music is the way to go? I think the creative commons it taking some tentative steps in this area.

Anyway, as you are the author, I respect your choice of license. Best of luck with the music.

Re:How I wish I had mod points

[Alsee]

Thanks for a very good analogy

Ive seen that exact analogy before, and it's a lousy one.

Replace movie theater with bedroom. I certianly wouldn't let strangers come into my hose and sleep in my bed, even if no one is currently sleeping in it. If someone comes in and sleeps in my bed without permision it ISN'T theft. Tresspassing in my house is illegal, but it would be absurd to call to call it theft. You sue infringers just like you sue people who slander. You wouln't say slander is theft, would you?

The theater business model has absolutely nothing to do with copyrights and everything to do with property rights. Information isn't property and copyright infringment isn't theft.

-

An example from experience

[lysium]

I briefly worked with a forensic psychologist who communicated (by phone and by post) with lawyers on a daily basis. He constantly received requests for informations (copies of voluminous records and such) from parties with which he had no contract, either with or without court order. In both cases he charged the receiver for each and every page he printed, plus $10 as an 'administrative fee'. The money was coughed up with no complaint.

---------------

Re:I wouldn't worry

[glenrm]

Aren't Senator Hollings and Howard Dean in the same political party? Is Dean cozy with Hollywood which is also cozy with the Democratic party? I am curious, I always find the factions within political parties more interesting then the "two" party struggle itself, the factions in the Democratic party are perhaps the most interesting...