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Justice Dept. Raids Homes of File Swappers

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the reasonable-suspicion dept.

Cryofan writes "Reuters is reporting that the Justice Dept. has raided the homes of 5 people in several states for trading music on p2p networks. The traders were, however, not arrested. 'P2P does not stand for 'permission to pilfer,' Ashcroft said. The Reuters story says that the 5 'were people operating hubs in a file-sharing network based on Direct Connect software,' and who had provided between 'one and 100 gigabytes of material to trade, or up to 250,000 songs.' 'They are clearly directing and operating an enterprise which countenances illegal activity and makes as a condition of membership the willingness to make available material to be stolen,' said Ashcroft."

23 of 1,173 comments (clear)

  1. A busy day for the feds... by erick99 · · Score: 5, Informative
    These were some serious downloadin' folks:

    Each of the five hubs contained 40 petabytes of data, the equivalent of 60,000 movies or 10.5 million songs, Ashcroft said.

    In order to join the network, members had to promise to provide between one and 100 gigabytes of material to trade, or up to 250,000 songs, Ashcroft said.

    200 petabytes of songs and movies! Pretty amazing.

    I wonder if the RIAA will ask the feds to turn over all of the involved parties and I wonder if the feds would do it if asked.

    Or maybe they are too busy since they just sued a bunch more customers....

    The Recording Industry Association of America on Wednesday announced it had sued another 744 individuals and refiled suits against 152 others who had ignored or declined offers to settle.

    Cheers,

    Erick

    --
    http://www.busyweather.com/
    1. Re:A busy day for the feds... by McDutchie · · Score: 4, Informative
      200 petabytes of songs and movies! Pretty amazing.

      The website says the whole network contains about 1 petabyte of data.

    2. Re:A busy day for the feds... by dazilla · · Score: 5, Informative

      As someone who has used the DC client before, most hubs run between 10 and 200 TB or user shares. So the idea that there was 40 PB per hub being shared is preposterous. Neo-Modus had a news item on their site when the TOTAL culmination of ALL THE HUBS sharing data reached ONE PETABYTE. I'm sure that each hub was probably sharing around 40TB.

    3. Re:A busy day for the feds... by mothz · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nice math, too.

      If 100 GB is 250,000 songs, then each song file is about 400k. But if 40 petabytes is the equivalent of 10.5 million songs, then each song file must be about 4000 MB.

    4. Re:A busy day for the feds... by Datasage · · Score: 4, Informative

      This requires a little explaintion, each of these people themselves didnt have that much data, but they ran hubs that had that much data over all the users.

      I have never seen any hub have a petrabyte of data, most of them have 5-500 terabytes.

      It also should be said, that most of the data is not unique, many users may have a copy of the same file or similar file. Of course the media spin is to make it look like its more than it really is.

      It looks like they only went after the people who ran some of the hubs, not the users thenselves.

      In response to one of the other comments, There are many hubs that are not on neomodulas list, in fact the ones on thier list tend to be really small, mostly only a couple hundred users. Other hubs accessible via dc++ have several thousand users.

      --
      In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
    5. Re:A busy day for the feds... by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 3, Informative

      the figure quoted by your parent is a fairly old statistic, and was used around the time before dc++ became really popular, neomodus were more in control of the format then.

      But still, hes right in what he says, the dc hub software can only reasonably hold around 2000 people max, even if each was sharing the minimum 100GB each, thats only 200TB, nowhere near the petabyte limit.

      Whilst hub grouping is possible, I've never seen stats showing the combined totals, and from the figures I just worked out, would take an enormous amount of data sharing to get into the petabyte range, let alone the multi petabyte figures.

      --
      liqbase :: faster than paper
  2. so if they werent charged by Comsn · · Score: 5, Informative
    what were the warrants for the raids granted with?

    Authorities made no arrests. But Ashcroft warned that those who copy music, movies and software over P2P networks without permission could face jail time.


    under what penalty of law? last i heard copying things (download) never got anyone in trouble... now sharing on the other hand, is still a civil matter. (but selling is an FBI matter).
    1. Re:so if they werent charged by DeepRedux · · Score: 5, Informative
      Sharing can be a criminal act. Under the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act, sharing copyrighted works with the expectation of getting works in return counts as "financial gain". The act makes it a felony to trade works with a retail value over $2,500 in a 6 month period. It sounds like they were well over that amount.

      The NET Act was passed in 1997 to criminalize warez trading. I do not think that the act distinguishes between software and other copyrighted materials like movies and music. Sixty people have be convicted under the NET Act, with 20 sentenced to jail.

      See Warez Trading and Criminal Copyright Infringement for the details.

  3. Worth noting.... by mblase · · Score: 4, Informative

    Direct Connect, for the three or four of you that don't already know, doesn't work like Napster or KaZaA. The hubs are sometimes public, but in these cases admission to the hub required you to share your own collection for free as well. So the hub owners are not only sharing music with a select membership, they require their members to share large amounts of music as well.

    They were copying, trading, and encouraging others to do the same in large quantities. I don't like seeing people's hard drives raided for any reason, but it's pretty clear these five folks didn't have a leg to stand on.

    1. Re:Worth noting.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's also worth noting that to catch these 5 in the act, the government would also have had to partake in illegal sharing, at least for a little while.

      This is an established, legal method of law enforcement in the U.S., and is hardly noteworthy.

      To catch drug dealers, the government buys drugs from them, while videotaping the transaction. This doesn't mean the government partakes in illegal drug dealing. It's a perfectly legal means of law enforcement.

  4. Press conference tomorrow... by keiferb · · Score: 4, Informative

    Washington Post link, free reg. req.

  5. Re:Terminology by twiddlingbits · · Score: 3, Informative

    Last time I priced it SAN storage was about $2,500 a TB so that makes 1PetaByte 1024*$2,500 or about 2.56 MILLION bucks. Not to mention the floorspace and the power bill for the A/C and the drives. Those guys must have been some fatcat file swappers. There are large companies that don't have that much storage!

  6. Re:Good! by shark72 · · Score: 5, Informative

    "The DOJ should saty out of what is clearly a civil matter."

    Copyright violation becomes a criminal matter once the value crosses a fairly low threshold. This has been the case for several years now. Here's the section of US copyright law that covers criminal offenses.

    --
    Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
  7. More FUD by EdMcMan · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm not sure what to think about these raids. For those of you who don't know what direct connect is, it's not like KaZaA.

    The client connects to a server (there are many), and then can share files and chat with people on that server. The server does not actually have any files; they come from the clients.

    In essence, each server acts like a mini-KaZaA, and judging from the recent Grokster rulings, would mean that they aren't liable for anything. So, basically it means this is just more FUD coming from Ashcroft.

    Although the operators weren't arrested, they probably won't see their equipment back for a long time. I guess that is the Justice Dept.'s way of dishing out justice when the law doesn't fit whoever is paying them off's will.

  8. Re:Doesn't the DOJ have better things to do... by EvanED · · Score: 3, Informative

    Copyright infringement that is either for financial gain or in excess of $1000 in a 180 day period moves from a civil realm to a federal crime. 17 U.S.C. 506

  9. How these hubs work by highlander123 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Guys,

    I dont' think you understand the way these hubs work. Basically, if you have a certain amount of data, you connect, and your data is added to a large pool of data (everyone's files). This means the owner of the hub doesn't host all the files, it's the users that are connecting to the hub that own the files (and as such, the hardware). It certainly is possible that several thousand users are connecting to the hub, and are sharing their files. This could easily add up to quite large numbers, without needing a million harddrives in one server/cluster.

    A wee lesson, brought to you by.. me.

  10. Re:Dont they have better things to do? by shark72 · · Score: 5, Informative

    "which is a f-ing CIVIL manner anyway?"

    Sheesh. This is the fifth or sixth comment I've seen here from somebody insisting that this falls under civil law. Is this one of those Slashdot memes?

    I feel like I'm just banging my head against a wall here, but here's where you can read up on what constitutes a criminal offense in copyright law.

    Please help me spread the word. To fight the law, you must first understand it.

    --
    Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
  11. Re:I call BULLSHIT here... by adamh526 · · Score: 4, Informative

    What they mean is 5 hubs, each with 40 petabytes of content available, probably shared between a few thousand members. If you're not sure how direct connect works, look here .

    There are lots of hubs around the country hosted by people at colleges with fast connections. Those that host them think their hubs are secure since they can limit hub access to only others having on-campus IP addresses.

    I really would not be suprised if the five raids targeted people hosting university specific hubs.

  12. Re:Doesn't the DOJ have better things to do... by jcr · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not just to bad guys. Civil forfeiture laws are basically letters of marque, that let your local cops take your money and property, and make *you* prove your innocence to get them back.

    Do a google search for "forfeiture abuse".

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  13. Re:Terminology by gweihir · · Score: 4, Informative

    Untits, people, units!

    It is Petabyte and the 'pb' somebody further on uses would be a "pico bit", i.e. 1/1000000000000 of a bit.

    Here is a reference for those without clue about SI prefixes: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html

    Just because the media has no clue is no excuse to do it wrong.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  14. Re:Terminology by gweihir · · Score: 3, Informative

    Considering the "pentabyte" thing, I wouldn't be suprised if this was just an iditot reporter who doesn't have a techy bone in his body.

    Especially so because there is no such SI prefix. It is "petabyte".

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  15. Re:Doesn't the DOJ have better things to do... by hab136 · · Score: 3, Informative
    Could you give us some citations? While you're heart-wrenching stories do bring a tear to the eye, they sound -- for the most part -- like bleeding-heart bullshit, designed to make us think that our government is an evil force (rolls eyes.)

    Sure, just check out:

    http://www.fear.org/

    especially:

    http://www.fear.org/victim.html

  16. Re:Doesn't the DOJ have better things to do... by dasmegabyte · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, widespread copyright infringement IS a crime if the value is about $3000 (this certainly applies) and you can display an intent to profit. In some software piracy cases I've seen, the exchange of software was considered an intent to profit. Essentially, the trade of pirated software was its own profit, and I've experienced exactly that...you used to get one sought after game or program and leverage that to get whatever else you needed.

    --
    Hey freaks: now you're ju