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Innocent File-Sharers Could Appear Guilty?
daveo0331 writes " New Scientist has an article about what could be a promising defense strategy for people targeted by the RIAA. Basically, anyone on the Gnutella network can frame other users by making it look like someone is hosting RIAA music, even though they're not. Therefore, the RIAA's "evidence" against file sharers is theoretically unreliable and wouldn't stand as good a chance of holding up in court. No mention of whether this has anything to do with the RIAA's eagerness to settle the lawsuits out of court. The article is based on a research paper (PDF link, HTML version) posted anonymously to a web hosting service in Australia."
How about an entire computer shared to the internet?, like this crazy guy did...
A number of people say they were wrongly accused by the RIAA, or that their children swapped music without their knowledge. The RIAA dropped one suit, against retired Boston teacher Sarah Ward, 66, when it was discovered she couldn't be sharing songs on pirate service Kazaa because she uses an incompatible Apple computer.
Will this really stop them from doing anything? Like the poster said, they like to settle out of court, and they'll probably pull something like "Well, you should've been more protected against this kind of identity theft. Give us $10,000 in amnesty, and we'll go catch the _real_ theif."
- Sherman
When using a modem, or even Cable/DSL one is typically dynamically assigned an address. Many times these can change. It was stated in numerous articles that the RIAA found IP addresses for people, then subpoenaed ISPs for the users using those addresses.
Either due to ISP incomprehension, or RIAA non-specific requests, they most likely received a lot of information based on who was using that address after subpoena, not during copyright infringement.
Shawn's Tech Articles
there is no p2p service in which files pass through nodes. The bandwidth cost would be prohibitive. If user A sends file to user C what advantage is it to send through user B, apart from eating his b/w?
This would be like filesharing on irc send file data through irc servers. This would bring almost any server instantly down. So the files go through only routers etc in between but no acutal end users.
In these programs only the search information is gathered p2p. SO if kazaa runs a supernode it caches search info, passes it on etc.
Here you can possibly fake it as if some other machine has some files which it doesn't have or even a non existent user/machine etc.
There lies the hole.
I was wondering if this kind of Gnutella spoofing (Gnoofing? Spootella?) could be used by the RIAA to DOS Gnutella networks by gumming it up with unreliable information?
I also wonder if this technique could be used to trick the RIAA into subpoenaing itself?
Not that such I would ever suggest doing such a thing.
AC
Someone write a lightweight gnutella client that "frames" everyone within reach on the network. This way, the RIAA will have no clue....
Furthermore, a worm/trojan could be released that secretly installs a Gnutella client and ACTUALLY downloads some tunes. Would ignorance be an excuse, when suddenly every computer in the world is filesharing? Tell you what, if I did fileshare copyrighted material, I would put up a fight.
Someone already sort of asked this but they are modded at 0 and thus might not get heard that easily. I was wondering if anyone had a breakdown of just what P2P networking the RIAA is targetting. If you read the headlines all you would think is that this is between the RIAA and Kazaa. I remember when recently when we all joked about the actual kazaa names people were using and how many "kazaalite" users there would be.
So what's the deal? Any WinMX, EDonkey, Bittorrent users being attacked in this recent spat of 700 cases by the RIAA. Or is it just those Kazaa users?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
That's the thing about innocence until proof of guilt. One has to show evidence that the presumed innocent logically has to be guilty. Not that they COULD be guilty. Not that they might as well be guilty. Not if they have the tools that would allow them to be guilty. Not even if the prosecution can't find anyone else that they think might be guilty.
It's things like these that can make harrassing people a real bummer for a litigious group in the long run. Still - fear and respectful loathing may still "work" in the short term. But again, that short-term respect and fear will die down if cases are ruled against them.
Ryan Fenton
i currently share 976 free songs (~3.58 GB), legally. i got all these songs off of iRATE. so i'd say you certainly can!
i think irate is great by the way, although there's certainly room for improvement (p2p support, perhaps, as well as integration with an external media player). maybe when i have time i'll sit down and (attempt to) throw something together... (hopefully someone will have done it by then, and i can just download it. =P)
On the edonkey net, information about who has what files is collected and managed by edonkey servers. Since the server protocol is open, anyone could write a server that deliberately misinforms clients about the location of RIAA files.
what we need is someone to write a virus that installs inself on windows machines and honeypots the common various p2p protocols and gives results that the riaa hate like a few titles of briney, metallica, etc.
so when your ip address changes and your still listed as a valid source they get scanned and nailed with the legal mess.
that will put an end to this crap when they start suing innocent people in massive quantities.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
No. It is just for someone to benefit from their labors. The common law takes a lot from the Bible, and the biblical phrase is "the fruit of their labors", not "the fruit of their dreaming." That said, so that you don't think I'm pointlessly quoting something, let me ask you: when is the last time that you have seen someone *think* food onto the table or into peoples' hands? Mind you, it has happened [Christ feeding the 5000], yet he was also God. Therefore, it is just for God to benefit from His ideas, since His ideas have power. But it is just for ust to benefit from our labors. IP goes against that.
The point of an idea is that you can then put it into practice. Gut the idea of its point, and it's lost all its essence, and is rightfully worthless.
If you create a great idea You think it; you don't create it. you deserve to have that idea protected as intellectual property so that you can recoup your costs and efforts through the proceeds of your idea.
How quaint. And what, pray tell, are the costs of thinking? Zero? I thought so. So costs are already recouped. And what is the effort of thinking? Metabolic? I urge you not to go on strike. Who, exactly, told you that fib?
You just don't like having to conpensate others for creating the ideas you want to use or just plain couldn't think of yourself. You want a freebie from other people's hard work.
Again, hard work nothing. That aside, no, I don't want any freebees that are not freely given. But the same species has similar brains, and similar thoughts, and the thoughts are the easy part. I don't want peoples' hard work stolen from them, to give freebees to those who had the idea, and lazily chose not to implement it -- or had the idea, and chose to implement it, but did not have enough of an idea to get it right, so that it can't compete.
Who decides what is just? The final judge of all.
Who decides what is natural law?Nature, as designed by the final judge of all, see above. And remember, when your country which violates natural law goes through starvation and the 3rd world, rounds third without stopping, and heads for a home run. That will be the last witness to you that the final judge exists, and is a better judge than you.
What gives you the right to decide or to dare to think you are right? Look in the mirror. Which is arrogant? The man that looks at nature, and says "I see natural law" after studying it? Or the man who ignores nature, and says "who has the right to say what natural law is", as he steps off a cliff? By your actions, you are choosing to be a judge, and far more arrogant a judge, than any who defers to nature or the Bible, or the Koran, or the writings of the practitioners of Wing Tsun. They, at least, are deferring to the judgement of other men, and judgements that have stood the test of time. You are deferring, by your choices, to your own judgements and no other. See your own arrogance, be ashamed, and be silent. Learn.
What if my natural laws and just beliefs say that you should jump off a bridge? Gee I don't see you leaping! I, quite naturally, will follow the laws that I follow [mathematical logic there, identity theorem. You, quite naturally, will follow the laws that you follow. My law is natural law. Your law is yourself. Your law *does* say "walk off the cliff". My law says "do not walk off the cliff." You, from your tone, would say that you pay homage to Darwin. I too pay homage to Darwin, but with my circumspection, as opposed to my feet. I strongly advise you to pick a better law, and to recognize a better judge, for your judgement seems to be terrible.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
So let's see the RIAA crucify every single P2P user whether they're guilty or not. Altogether now - "I'm Spartacus!"
Any form of evidence can be fabricated. In determining whether a piece of evidence is admissible, a judge looks for a proper foundation. One of the necessary elements is a finding that a reasonable jury could find that the evidence is what its proponent says it is. This is referred to as "authenticating" the evidence.
A proper authentication might only require some testimony from an investigator showing how they got the ip address, and how they connected the ip address to the user. If they got it by monitoring Gnutella file requests, you could argue that that carries the same risks as hearsay. It is unreliable because it is not a message coming directly from the accused's computer. But it still would probably go to the jury.
You would have to hope that a jury would not find for the evil RIAA... but they will NOT be told what the penalty is, because that isn't relevant to determining the facts. The liability for copyright violation is specifically defined by statute, so the jury doesn't need to know that to determine whether a copyright violation occurred.
(I am a 3rd year law student)
What we should do, then, is modify the Gnutella client to automatically send lots of spoofed requests. Then my legal defense isn't just theoretical.
Heck, lets go further, and use the spoofing when we actually retrieve files. If I can spoof someone else's address, and have that person forward the file to me, I'd be pretty safe on requests.
I'm still screwed if they request a file from me, though. So what I'll do is, whenever someone asks me for a file, if I don't have it I'll go get it, and just forward it to them. That way they won't be able to tell what files I actually have.
I still might be liable just for forwarding, if I know about it. So I'll use an encryption protocol that keeps me from knowing what's on my own machine. I'll base the key on the filename, so anybody with the name can find the file and decrypt it, but since I just have the files I would have to randomly try keys to figure out what they are.
And I'll wrap the whole thing in a bunch of free-speech-for-chinese-dissidents rhetoric so I have a legitimate noninfringing use.
Oh, wait. I just described Freenet.
[RIAA] Those ugly criminal filesharing programs are stealing the earnings of our poor, innocent artists who are just trying to make a living. [/RIAA]
If you want to try a mind twister, try realizing that RIAAs friends (their customers) are also their enemies (the pirates) and try to apply some "the enemy of my friend is also my enemy" logic.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Show some backbone, people.
You've forgotten something: The "I didn't do it!" argument is a valid one. Or should be, anyway.
My boss recently got "caught" by the MPAA for downloading and sharing movies. When he told me, I laughed out loud, the notion is so ludicrous. This is a guy who drops $15K on a family vacation every couple of years, flying his kids, their spouses and their children to the Caymans for a two-week stay in the beachfront duplex he owns on Cayman Brac. If he wants a movie, he buys it, without an instant's hesitation, or even glancing at the price tag. And he's *way* too busy to spend hours fiddling with P2P clients to download a crappy DivX of Shrek (one of the movies he was accused of downloading -- and which he already owns a copy of).
What had happened was that someone had rooted his box (which was attached to his cable modem directly because he couldn't use the company's VPN software through his Linksys firewall) and was trading files from his machine. I was able to prove conclusively that this was what had happened, but it didn't matter. His ISP got a "ceace-and-desist" letter from the MPAA and they immediately terminated his service. After much groveling and pleading he convinced them to reactivate his account, but they informed him that if they ever receive another such letter, they're cutting him off permanently.
Sure, his ISP sucks, but this "guilty until proven innocent" approach is the real problem.
P.S. His Linksys is now fixed, his machine is patched up and Windows Update is on... so it'll probably be a few months before it happens again.
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