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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?"
The free WiFi hotspots I've used don't require accounts at all. They just serve bandwidth and you connect thru DHCP.
Are they going to log MAC addresses? Good luck. I can use ifconfig on my Orinoco card and set the MAC. 00:00:00:00:00:00 and a prepaid debit card in a pseudonym works nicely on the AT&T Wireless hotspot in the Denver airport.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Granted that Verizon was willing to spend quite a lot in a protracted legal battle, but I think they'd be more willing to do that then stop logging. There really is a huge incentive for ISPs to log, even if they no longer charge by the hour.
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.
The RIAA has brought suit against the descendents of Guglielmo Marconi for his invention, known as radio.
"Using a special radio receiver, a listener, or 'criminal', can listen to copywrited music for free," said Hilary Rosen, of the RIAA. "Some special units even have the ability record. All without one cent going to us, the true owners of the material."
Rosen added that the recent use of public WiFi radio-based internet to evade prosecution for file sharing was the last straw.
"This Marconi guy's got a lot to answer for. This 'radio' thing clearly has only ilicit uses."
Rosen also complained that her wallet wasn't big enough for all her fifties, and her diamond pants were too tight.
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.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
...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
Current karma: Terrible (due to mods without a sense of humor)
The IP Log Circle Jerk: .winnuke me"
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
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.
your sins into me, oh my beautiful one.
Try this: Go to your local theatre. Right after the movie starts, ask the owners if there are any empty seats left. If so, ask them if you can go in and watch the movie for free. Tell them your theory that you weren't going to pay to get in anyway, and they aren't losing anything by letting you in. Report the results back here to /.
For even better effect, take a movie camera. Tell them that recording the movie won't cost them a cent.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Beautifull. If the RIAA doesn't agree to the EULA, then they can't prosecute. Then they'd most likely go to court over it, if they lose all ISPs can do this. If they win, EULAs are invalid.
Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
I used to work for a major ISP and had a security/abuse role.
About 95% of our customers were on dynamic IP dial-up accounts. If we were contacted to locate a user who was using a specific IP at a specific time, it would take all of 3 minutes to identify the user, duration of login, newsgroups accessed, pop3 mail access, phone number they dialed in from, and any other transactions that produced a line in the radius logs.
We are talking about a simple grep here, not a big search requiring many man hours like you guys make it seem. Sure, the logs are huge, but computers are fast these days.
These logs would archive on a raid array and be accessible for 90-120 days. After that, it would require a tape restore to locate them. Either way, it takes no time at all. There was usually a 365 day log attached to the user's billing information that kept track of time connected, access numbers utilized, etc for billing dispute purposes (ie. "I didn't use your services for 150 hours two months ago and I want my money back" BS people would try and pull).
Small ISPs have more trouble with this? Lord no, they have less users, thus logging requires less resources. I'd hate for my fellow geeks on here to think it actually requires a bunch of work to log properly, you should know this if you've ever been any type of admin. tsk tsk.
ISPs have to log this sort of thing for the sake of liability. If the FBI shows up wanting information about a users and you consistantly have no information for them, eventually they will hold you responsible for your user's crimes. That's how it works here in the states.