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BayTSP Provides Automatic DMCA Notices
ruvreve sent in a pointer that BayTSP is promising to identify Bittorrent uploaders for the entertainment industry to file suit against. Slashdot has run numerous stories discussing what happens when you automate DMCA takedown notices - see also chillingeffects.org.
Rather than go after movie/music/software BTers by hand, they'll invent some kind of automated webspider to go through every website looking for torrent links. If it has a certain key word, it'll be tagged.
Knowing them, a C&D order will be sent out without looking at it. If its not removed, they'll pull something else equally banal and stupid.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
BayTSP, a leading provider of online intellectual property monitoring and compliance systems, announced FirstSource, an automated system that identifies the first users to upload copyright- or trademark-protected content to the eDonkey and Bit Torrent peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.
So, in other word, the new legal environment (the DMCA) is attracting more and more profiteers and schemers, like putting cheese attracts mold. It's sad that some people would want to earn a living hurting other people by leveraging a law almost nobody wants...
But the good news is: if automated monitoring of P2P protocols becomes commonplace, you can bet there will be other, new exciting development in P2P technology. Perhaps some kind of "stealth" protocol will be developed. After all, it's the Napster suit that prompted the development of central-server-less protocols like Bittorrent. So effectively the people "route around" the new legal roadblocks, and are prompted to do so because of scumbags like BayTSP and their disgusting masters, the **AA.
...misleadingly named materials in order to create false positives?
And if enough folks do it will it make resistance via auto-notices futile?
Stop the world; I need to get off.
Is this software good enough to notice the difference between a movie and 120k of source code?
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
May the curse of a thousand monkeys defecating simultaneously befall them! Either that or a daily slashdotting effect, I'll be happy with either.
Lawsuit-bot honeypot. Check it out. It has a huge list of randomly generated filenames (with all sorts of well-known/recent game titles, movie titles, musicians, etc.). Designed to attract lawsuit-bots and give ironclad PROOF that the files are not real (they're just long strings of zero bytes) :)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I cannot see how this should impact the "serious" BT filetraders that much. Most clients used nowadays include dynamic blacklists, effectively blocking requests from services such as BayTSP to the torrent? BayTSP can't keep hopping IP's all the time without some ever increasing expenses?
If you can use DMCA so force *GOOGLE* to remove a link to a *GPL* Firmware, it has to be seriously broken...
? NoticeID=1471
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi
Got hit last month for downloading unaired Stargate Atlantis episodes that haven't been aired in USA. The C&D letter had BayTSP and BitTorrent references.
If I remember correctly, I was taught in school that the government represented the people...
For piracy, it's just another brick in the wall.
Has anyone had any success in getting the RIAA/MPAA/ESA/etc to recoup any expenses you might get dinged with while doing work to prove your innocent? I know the letters aren't an actual lawsuit, but if you don't respond, one can only assume it's a matter of time until you do get sued.
You asked for this!
... that the cost of threatening legal action without any basis whatsoever is too low for these big corporations. The legal system has become a way for big corporations to push individuals and small companies around and basically create a parallel state were the punishment for any behavior big corporations doesn't like is litigation.
Remember this story?
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
is that theres something wrong with society when society is breaking laws at such an extent that it requires an automated process to identify and punish those offenders. Yes, automated processes catch innocents, especially as some on this page have suggested if they deliberately make themselves look guilty when they arent (if they carried around a white powder in a bag, they would expect to get arrested by the police if its discovered - wheres the difference?). But then again, why should it be costly for the 'victim' in these cases to bring offenders to justice? Kazaa has well over several million files available for download, why should the RIAA/MPAA have to spend inordiant amounts of money just to defend their property?
This is all a personal opinion, but if slashdot isnt the place to voice it, then where is? Copyright Law exists, and it exists for a reason. You do not own 'Britney Spears - Toxic.mp3', and you do not have a right to give it to other people. If you wanted to have that right, make your own music, distribute that, but until then dont think you have any rights to other peoples intellectual property. Intellectual property laws exist for reasons, one of which is that it may be costly to initially develop, but cheap to manufacture.
Mod this as you will, I dont care. I know slashdot is heavily biased, and I can expect damnation. What I do care about is that I have had my say.
I would be happy to offer such a service in competition with them, for a lower price, if the studios would all send me their most popular copyrighted works for comparison. I make no guarantees as to how many copyright violators I will discover.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.net)
One quite interesting angle is that in countires with strict privacy laws (many EU countires), it may be illeagal to record IP addresses that carry pirated content. Copyright infringement is a petty crime that does not warrant home searches or disclosing communication (IP addresses, telephone numbers) unless you ask money for it.
Thus, a company that records IP addresses of file swappers could be liable under Finnish penal law facing upto four years of physically limited freedom for management.
whay makes them think they have the right to notify anyone ?
some 3 months ago the ISP i used to work for here in brasil received a notification that someone in our network was downloading "exorcist - the begining", complete with IP address. happens that a simple "whois " returned the name of another ISP, with an IP address range in a neighbour AS (autonomous system. huge IP address ranges ISPs and network operator have). we simply had NOTHING to do with that.
lucky them they were in US. if they were here with the threatening tone of the e-mail we could sue them. threatening a person or a company on an empty basis or based on false information is (IIRC, IANAL) ilegal here.
What ? Me, worry ?
Expanding on the honeypot idear, it probably wouldn't be tough to create a Perl script using the LWP mods to grab the most popular song/movie titles every week and just automate this process.
Guess I'll be adding all of Bay's IPs to my Azureus Safepeer blocklists........
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
Possibly, but how do you compare this in an automated fashion in real-time like they claim to be able to do? If I have a HDTV recording of a show and encode it with XviD, I'd like to know how you plan to compare that to the original and make results available immediately, with the option of firing off a C&D or filing a lawsuit without the huge liability of suing someone who's doing you a favor by poluting the P2P pool for you.
I'm sure they want to minimize false positives as much as possible to avoid looking like complete asshats in the media the next time they sue a 60-something grandmother who's never even HEARD of the artist or TV show she's accused of pirating.
... And so it comes to this.
We can never block them from, finding the files, because the point of p2p is that ANYBODY can find and download the files. So, we cannot hide, we have to block. ..... and this system will be very hard to scale !
I dont know exactly how blacklisting works, can someone tell me ? If they use some nondescript machine registered as a private user, how can we know if this is a DRM enforcement company ?
And really, how much can it cost to shifting ISPs for their sniffers ?
However, identifying video/audio files can be tough, and I dont really believe they can still identify the file after reencoding
Well, how do we call massive broadcast of irrelevant unrequested e-mails? According to some (fortunately I don't live in US) sources messages like this should at least contain valid return address. So why don't just sue whoever sends this? After adding his IP to all known realtime blackhole lists of course.
How do I go about blacklisting American IPs?
Is there a nice range, just like for blocking out spam from eastern countries?
If I'm gonna be sued, I might as well get it from my own country.
liqbase
And how do they know im not just downloading the latest release of *insert oss app here* ?
Using the technology does not automatically mean you are pirating.. This presumed guilt crap needs to stop. ( at least here in the USA, where the law states you are presumed innocent )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Someone's going to go through, and start documenting all the names and addresses for all the people who work at BayTSP. And then they'll post THAT list on some Russian tracker.
Combine that list and a couple kilograms of teenage angst, and we're in for a party.
Bittorrent was designed for efficient transfer of files via a peer to peer network.
Bittorrent uses centralised trackers and indeed it was never intended to "go under the radar" it simply became popular for distributing copyright material when third-parties discovered that it was faster than what they were already using.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
If this software works as advertised and isn't a load of hot-air, it sounds fairly acceptable.
In theory, it checks who has what parts and if those parts are actually legit pirated data and stores that in a database. Isn't this exactly what one needs to do to catch pirates? Yes the DMCA is Bad and has chilling effects, but it doesn't seem to be abused in this case.
Go to hell
Stop the Roland Piquepaille assfest now!
I think the problem here is that any normal person can see the greed of the RIAA and MPAA and thier so called piracy is beyond any form of reasonability.
They are like the 2 year olds screaming "mine, mine, mine" without any rhyme or reason.
Copyright Piracy IS when you take a movie or song, duplicate it on a media like a CD or DVD, and SELL it as if it was genuine.
Sharing a song with a friend so that friend can decide if it is really good enough to BUY, is not worng in my opinion.
What if the movie or song is just bad, rotten, trash? You cet to decide to be a "CUSTOMER" or not based on if you like the product. Having to pay these greedy folks just because you heard the horible song or watched even some of the lousy movie is not PIRACY by any rational thought process.
The RIAA and MPAA do not want customers where they have a choice, but CONSUMERS ready to be culled.
This whole thing gets too much press, and to many good people are being called thieves because of the greed of the RIAA, MPAA.
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
"I think the GP has an interesting point. Not one that I imagine would ever brought up in a legal setting of course; it still tickles me though."
Courts have traditionally recognized that evidence held against you must be obtained in a legal way. One of the defenses that can be used against the MPAA suit of a turrent user is "unclean hands". What this means is that the person doing the suing is also guilty of the same offense (that of sharing "illegal material"). Unless turrents allow downloading without uploading anything, the MPAA attack dogs are just as guilty of doing what they are accusing the ohter end user of.
IANAL and all but it sounds good to me...;-)
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
The issue here is not the use of P2P. It is using P2P to steal things that do not belong to you.
It would be a shame if legitimate uses of P2P were subsumed by the folks who just want to steal a movie or someone else's music. They worked for it, you didn't. If you want a copy pay the folks that created it their proper due.
P2P = good, stealing = bad. Not much gray area there.
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
Since the tracker is central to uploading and downloading BitTorrent data, I would think this would make it that much harder to track down anyone. Of course, there's the issue of actually setting up the tunnel, but I think you get the idea. The traffic going through the ISP would be meaningless.
Any thoughts?
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
How are they going to send a user of a proxy chaining encrypted network with a DCMA notice .BatTSP cant find a originating IP becuse it is usually proxied bt various methods and the data is usually encrypted in some way.
AntsP2P is a distributed p2p network that offers these features and works on the principle of plausible deniability
Features
* Open Source Java implementation (GNU-GPL license).
* Multiple sources download.
* Torrent download from partial files.
* Automatic resume and sources research over the net.
* Search by hash, string and structured query.
* Embedded support for etherogeneus data types (not only arrays of bytes...).
* Completely Object-Oriented routing protocol.
* Point to Point secured comunication: DH(512)-AES(128)
* EndPoint to EndPoint secured comunication: DH(512)-AES(128)
* Automatic serverless peer dicovery procedure.
* IRC based peer discovery system.
* IRC embeded chat system.
* Full text search of indexed documents (pdf, html, txt, doc etc) -> QUERY REFERENCE.
* Distributed/Decentralized Search engine
* HTTP tunneling.
http://antsp2p.sourceforge.net.nyud.net:8090/
this is the shit my isp sent me a month ago... thought i had seen this baytsp name before. The mpaa can go fuck themselves.. i'll be using I2P bittorrent for my stuff from now on.
> Notice ID:7957592
> Notice Date:16 Dec 2004 01:18:22 GMT
>
> Dear Sir or Madam:
>
> BayTSP, Inc. ("BayTSP") swears under penalty of perjury that Paramount Pictures Corporation ("Paramount") has authorized BayTSP to act as its non-exclusive agent for copyright infringement notification. BayTSP's search of the protocol listed below has detected infringements of Paramount's copyright interests on your IP addresses as detailed in the attached report.
>
> BayTSP has reasonable good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of in the attached report is not authorized by Paramount, its agents, or the law. The information provided herein is accurate to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, this letter is an official notification to effect removal of the detected infringement listed in the attached report. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the Universal Copyright Convention, as well as bilateral treati
es with other countries allow for protection of client's copyrighted work even beyond U.S. borders. The attached documentation specifies the exact location of the infringement.
>
> We hereby request that you immediately remove or block access to the infringing material, as specified in the copyright laws, and insure the user refrains from using or sharing with others Paramount's materials in the future (see, 17 U.S.C. 512).
>
> Further, we believe that the entire Internet community benefits when these matters are resolved cooperatively. We urge you to take immediate action to stop this infringing activity and inform us of the results of your actions. We appreciate your efforts toward this common goal.
>
> Please send us a prompt response indicating the actions you have taken to resolve this matter. Please reference the Notice ID number above in your response.
>
> Nothing in this letter shall serve as a waiver of any rights or remedies of Paramount with respect to the alleged infringement, all of which are expressly reserved. Should you need to contact me, I may be reached at the following address:
>
> Mark Ishikawa
> Chief Executive Officer
> BayTSP, Inc.
> PO Box 1314
> Los Gatos, CA 95031
>
> v: 408-341-2300
> f: 408-341-2399
> paramount-picture@copyright-compliance.com
>
> *pgp public key is available on the key server at ldap://keyserver.pgp.com
>
> Note: The information transmitted in this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, reproduction, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from all computers.
>
> This infringement notice contains an XML tag that can be used to automate the processing of this data. If you would like more information on how to use this tag please contact BayTSP.
>
>
>
> Infringed Work: Machinist, The
> Infringing FileName: The.Machinist.LIMITED.SCREENER-VideoCD
> Infringing FileSize: 1070386415
> Protocol: BitTorrent
> Infringers IP Address: x.x.x.x
> Infringer's User Name:
> Infringer's DNS Name: x.cablecompany.net
> Initial Infringement Timestamp: 14 Dec 2004 14:11:25 GMT
> Recent Infringement Timestamp: 14 Dec 2004 15:45:09 GMT
>
>
Somebody ought to really read the sites referred to in this thread. BayTSP is hacking into the computers of thousands of users and reading directories. It is also hacking ISPs and reading the content of servers. It may also be hijacking data streams in other ways. This company is engaged in a massive fishing expedition for which it has no right. In short, it is 'gathering evidence' illegally at the price of compromising the privacy of millions if not billions of citizens all over the world. The question is, what ELSE is it finding in its quest for other people's information. Is it also finding government secrets and forwarding them to North Korea? It could you know. Scientists work from home as well as at offices. In courts, this 'evidence' is tainted, and all conclusions and further 'evidence' gathered along these threads should be considered simply more fruit from the poison tree. These laws that encouraged this illegal behavior on the part of greedy corporations will eventually be struck down by the courts or repealed by new governments replacing the corrupt governments that passed them in the first place. And the old view about protecting artists is a sham. Look what happened to Billy Holliday and what happened to the real inventor of the CD!
What happenes if they knock at my door and claim that I have shared certain files and I decline? Well, I guess, they want to have a look at my hard drive. But what if they cannot read it because the drive is crypted? How are they gonna prove that there are the claimed files on my computer? Is there any law which says that I have to hand out the key?
I thought that one of the requirements for the DMCA takedown notices was that the party making the claim about copyright infringement had to declare, under penalty of perjury, that the works were being copied in violation of copyright.
If someone deliberately put up a safe/public domain file with a misleading name and get sent a notification, could the people running this auto-DMCA service be hit with perjury charges?
I expect that would shut it down pretty quickly. I thought that a perjury penalty was put in there to make sure that it was only invoked when absolutely justified.
REVOLUTION NOW.
I'd hate to be growing up today and forced to deal with such Gestapo tactics. Unless you've taken the most careful steps in each and every action you take, someone has at least the ability to watch your every move. We have antiquated copyright laws which never expected a world where communication really was so cheap and so ubiquitous (let's face it, I agree with the **AA on this one, times have changed and our laws have to change with them, I just disagree on how they should change). Slashdot doesn't really help the matter; people still think the enemy is the DMCA, as though copyright law can't be enforced without the DMCA and ISPs won't cooperate with the **AA without a court order.
If you're going to look at the law, you've gotta look at copyright law. Reversing the No Electronic Theft Act would be a good start. But perhaps the biggest enemy is the music industry (and movie industry). In that sense, we have a choice. We don't have to buy, or listen to, (and get addicted to) **AA music and movies. And for sure we don't have to work for the bastards.
As a techie friendly ISP, does anyone know what Speakeasy's stance is? Will they go to bat for the customer, or do they give up info?
I'm seeing talk of SSH and other forms of obscurity to mask uploader's privacy... Face it, the protocol doesn't work like that folks. You want to hide the trackers? Great, now no one can get the files. Seeds and peers are what make torrents work. The fact is, your IP is up for grabs the moment you connect. Why it has taken them so long to figure this out is the real question at hand. Until proper bandwidth exists to allow all users to act as a proxy, torrents are destined to fail. The MPAA and RIAA's worst enemy is time and bandwidth will be the sword in their chests. Music will always be created for profit or simply the love of the art form. Say goodbye to the corporate trash being forced down our throats. It is a good time for music. However, the big budget nature of movies and our inability to realize that without studio's ability to turn a profit, the death of the pictures as we know them is all but inevitable.
...but I was serious
I can tell you for a fact that BayTSP is already offering this service. If you use BTEfnet to obtain your torrents you may have already been identified. Right now they are only looking at very new torrents, so if you wait a couple of days then you are likely safe. The way I know this is that PeerGuardian has been picking up BayTSP quite a bit on fresh torrents but not at all on older torrents.
Now making it difficult for BayTSP to identify your IP is quite easy. First, use a proxy to connect to the tracker, next do not allow remote conections (yes that isn't friendly and cuts down your speed, but what are you going to do), finally use PeerGuardian to block your client from connecting to BayTSP. Now you don't exist on the tracker (you used a proxy remember) so if you do accidentaly connect to BayTSP and are identified you have plausible deniability as that could be spoofed and they never conected to you (although if you keep your PeerGuardain defs up to date hopefully you wont conect to BayTSP at all).
From my point of view Bittorrent is awesome. And I am not using it and don't plan to use it any time soon.
Why is it awesome? Because the net effect is to take the load off of main servers, decentralize the web, and basically lower the total amount of data passing around the web.
I am surprised that Bittorent hasn't gotten the EPA Energy Star rating. How many cancer deaths has it already prevented?
So what do I do to block IP ranges on a *nix computer? I've got my blocklist (peerguardian), so is it just a case of adding the addresses to ipfw?
Comeon, schools were orginally designed as a way to keep the kids off the street.
What you learn about politics in school is politically motivated. You don't learn the real truth about the monolithic group think of corporate and government policy at a public school.
and the fact that you don't know this shows how bad the schools are.
Unfortunately a lot of laws are written to dictate a propriatory solution to an alledged problem to allow for a small and special group to get rich at the expense of everyone else.
Your idea of law is a great one, but that is not how it is in the real world.
That I had pulled from a beach along Big Sur. I took it out of my suitcase because the case was over 50 lbs and I didn't want to have to pay an extra $25 for an overweight bag.
the airport security guide was very interested and wanted to know where I got the jade. I told him where and he told me that he'd always planned to go to that cove and do exactly what I did.
They let me carry my stones onto the plane.
Is there any law which says that I have to hand out the key?
First of all, only people with a warrent have the power to enter your home and search your hard drive. If you let someone else in, it's your problem.
In most juristications, you can be FORCED to hand out the key to your encrypted partitions, but only if the judge sees a reasonable reason suspicition.
There's an easy work-around though, but it has not yet been technically implemented in GBDE, CFS or other crypto filesystems: use multiple keys for different purposes. If you provide them key1, you'll get at something irrelevant. They'll see that you're cooperating and will give up harrassing you. Once you're safe again, use key2 to decrypt the bits that really matter.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Maybe we should all start sending BayTSP's ISP DMCA notices. Just make some shit up about what you think they are infringing.
If you are legitiamately sharing legal things, then why try and entrap these A-holes?
Don't you realize that many movie and hollywood types are connected players in a much bigger game?
They have a right to try and protect what they produce. So they are doing what they think is correct. It seems that what they do is wrong to me and to you, yes. But why would you want to mess with these people? They will eat you alive and spit you out and feel good about it.
Your crys of "gee, it was a honey pot, I didn't do anything wrong" won't make a damn bit of difference. Meanwhile your life will be ruined and you will loose your computer and your reputation and may even go bankrupt in the process. What will happen to them? they will go to their beachhouse and have another drink and laugh about the dork who dared to mess with them.
The best way to deal with this is to go about your day-to-day whatever you do and stop trying to poke the grizzly-bear in the eye.
And if you aren't actually doing anything illeagel you won't get into trouple.
Everyone knows that there are currupt parts of government and industry. These powerful forces will do whatever they can to have their way. And they don't really care what happens to people who taunt them and try to make them look the fool.
So move on and do something else with your time that doesn't involve creating scenarios with you as the David that takes down the evil Gollith of the Movie/Music Industry.
Did this notice show up in a paper form?
If not does it have any leagally binding effect at all?
If this was email how do they even know that you rea d it?
"If not does it have any leagally binding effect at all?"
/dev/null since then..
No idea..
I haven't even read it.. just noticed my ip and stuff at the bottom so cleared that stuff out. They sent it to my ISP and they forwarded it to me...
I have evolution filtering these kinds of notices right into
Who knows....
You're correct....they might not be lying, but I've seen NO evidence of actual letters being sent to downloaders of TV yet so as far as I am concerned I have yet to be convinced it's actually happening.
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
But just because I can't prove to you flying pink elephants don't exist does not mean they DO infact exist.
These two points of logic apply to UFO's, conspiracy theories and rumors about letters from the MPAA.
It's far easier (and just as effective) for the MPAA, RIAA to spread rumors that people are getting sued than it is to ACTUALLY sue people
And how is that not Barratry?
Couldn't the organization sending out such notices be sued themselves, and the lawyer who had their name automatically signed to the letter be disbarred?
At some point it's just good business to troll for their legal threats, and sic ones own amoral blood-sucking lawyers on them.
This just highlights the need for corporate IT personnel to secure their open Wireless Access Points. Because, as you know - with the cheap cost of portable computers and old hardware - someone might end up leaving a Peer-to-Peer node running over an open AP and shift the liability to the AP owner. Think of the real risk given the amount of bandwidth available to most corporations and how long a rogue node could go undetected.
It is clear that those motivated to seed the BT networks of the world could very well end up costing your company in legal fees. So you better set that MAC filtering up right now.
If a company is that evil towards users I am sure someone smart and capable enough is going to take them down pretty soon.
BayTSP is in Chapter Nine.
Please note: the full-text search works, but the aautomatic links do not ... you can search, but tthen need to go back to the index page and click oin the appropriate chapter. (sorry! And apologies for the MSWord thing ... since offering it for free, I have not had the time to go back and change the search program code or get rid of the microsoft evil-format. Open with OpenOffice.
They're going to give us tort reform to stop corporations from harassing citizens with frivolous lawsuits!!!
:(
What? What do you mean "it doesn't work that way?"
While Bittorrent's problems are becoming clear Freenet and Tor are gaining momentum quite rapidly.
Freenet is an anonymous encrypted system that allows you to post and share files completely anonymous: http://freenet.sourceforge.net
Tor protects your privacy and security while browsing the web and downloading files with your browser anonymously: http://tor.freehaven.net
Enjoy!
They have to be able to download it from the bittorrent network first in order to ascertain that it actually IS their copyright material... more and more bittorrent networks are going "members only" where you have to actually join and log in to the server in order for your IP to be authorised for that torrent... Any sensible network runner will have several clauses in the joining procedure where the prospective new member will have to be reccomended by an existing member or else they'll have to declare that they are not acting for or as agents of RIAA/MPAA etc.
All they're gonna do is drive users with any sense underground... whilst only the newbies with no sense will get picked on...
Expect to see more closed torrent networks springing up... rather like speakeasies did back in the old "Prohibition" days... Prohibition didn't work very well now did it... all it did was make normal people lawbreakers and give an opportunity for organised crime to fill the void created by the lack of easily available drink.
In fact, all the RIAA and MPAA members have got to do is to actually take advantage of bittorrent, and create a perfectly legal means of people getting their hands on movies early in the distribution cycle by making them available on pay per torrent servers, where you actually pay for the privilege of getting the movie first, well before it hits the cinemas.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Yes but BayTSP is the grand-daddy of the profiteers, having been around since the heady days of the original Napster...
On a different note, BayTSP is looking for top quality college grads for "Internet Analyst" positions. Pay? $12 / hour. Yup, top quality! And that will sure support my ass in Los Gatos, where BayTSP has it's operation...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
if it's cheap to bring the suit, it's cheap to defend it, and if you're doing nothing wrong, then you should be safe from bankruptcy
There is no relationship between how easy it is to file the suit and how easy would be to defend it. Defending depends on the merits of the suit and the pocket of the defendant.
You are also confusing law with ethics. You can certainly go bankrupt even if you did nothing wrong, if someone wants it really bad.
From the article..
"FirstSource monitors for the first uploads of a client's intellectual property to the eDonkey and Bit Torrent networks. When the system spots a file name matching the client's content, it initiates a download to confirm that the file is what it appears to be. Once the content is validated, the system captures the IP (Internet Protocol) address and identifying information of other users downloading and sharing the pirated material."
Can some one explain why you couldn't simply name the file gobbledygook.torrent or some such nonsense? Of course you are still guilty of copyright infringement, but would seem to defeat this automated detection system.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
isn't it illegal to attempt to assert copyrights over "IP"(ugh) you don't 'own'. That would stop all this BS cold.
I'm waiting for someone to go postal and waste a few **AA executives. should be amusing.
There was massive carnage predicted when the national 55 mph speed limit was raised. The Roads Would Run Red With Blood.
As I recall, the death rate dropped significantly. It's climbing again, but that's due to the number of passenger and vehicle miles climbing. If we're honest with the numbers the death toll would skyrocket if we went back to double nickel limits.
Anyone who has driven across the midwest or intermountain west could tell you why. At 55 mph your attention wanders and you'll miss something important. At 75 mph you'll pay more attention to driving. You don't know boredom until you've driven I-70 across western Kansas, I-80 across the Great Basin or I-84 through central Oregon.
A secondary effect is that traffic now travels at about the same pace. There's some spread, but on a rural interstate (outside of mountains) I'ld guess 80+% of the traffic is within a 10 mph band. A lot of drivers ignored the posted speed limit in the double nickel days and the same 80% band would have been over 20 mph wide. That meant you had a lot more passing and a significantly larger difference in speed as cars passed.
Does that mean that the speed limit should be 75 mph through urban cores? Or 40 past elementary schools and parks? Of course not. But the argument "slower speeds mean lower deaths" is not borne out by the facts. Accidents, when they occur, tend to be more severe. But the accident rate is lower... and newer cars are so much safer that people often walk away unharmed from accidents much more severe than the ones that would have killed everyone a few decades ago.
BTW, a while back I read that the Colorado Dept. of Transportation does monitor actual speeds and will adjust speed limits accordingly, if possible. (US highways often have restrictions.) Their position was mentioned by the GP - the overwhelming majority of drivers will travel at an appropriate speed.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Anyone can download from a standard BT peer without first uploading to them. This behavior is required when new nodes join the network--they have to get their first few pieces 'for free' before tit-for-tat becomes viable. Otherwise, new users could never join the swarm.
Also: a BT seeder by definition uploads to others for nothing in return. This does raise the issue of how to incentivize people to seed after their own download completes--often insecure web-site ratios are used based on what the client tells the tracker. This technique is like your parents asking you if you cleaned your room because they can't actually look inside. In that situation, smart kids tend to always say 'yes'
Anyway, if you absolutely must use BitTorrent for illegal material, make sure you keep its TCP port closed. This prevents your node from showing up in the tracker peer list, which may slightly reduce your chance of a DMCA complaint. Better still though to not use BT. It's really designed to make it EASY to catch illegal traders (Bram Cohen covered his ass so he could get a real job).
I think it was in the early 1980's that people were suing the light-aircraft manufacturers Cessna and Piper for causing injury to people who walked into spinning propellers!
This action, while completely stupid in every sense, was successful and effectively stopped Cessna and Piper from producing light aircraft for a number of years.
But how could Piper or Cessna possibly be responsible for accidents involving third-party operation of their aircraft??
The phrase "Only in America" seems apt.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
If the notice does not claim it is affirmed/sworn "under penalty of perjury" it is invalid. If you are a DMCA agent, you can disregard that notice.
If it does claim that, and it is wrong, the person sending it just committed perjury, a Federal felony with a sentence up to and including 5 years in prison.
NOT LEGAL ADVICE
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
will people deliberately upload stuff with embedded windows DRM viruses designed to only target the MPAA/RIAA? seems to me these guys are leaving themselves wide open and just asking for trouble
Four problems:
1. In a site with 150k or 200k users, at least some of them will be RIAA/MPAA spies, or exploitable into becoming spies (think MSIE holes, plaintext logins at defcon, etc).
2. When you cap the site to 150k or 200k, you are locking out a huge potential audience ("friendly fire").
3. Even if you want to run a site with more than 200k users, the web infrastructure these sites use simply does NOT scale much higher.
4. The site is an obvious centralized target. The site owner is taking an enormous personal risk (especially since there is no legal precedent).
So frankly the closed site scheme sucks. Far better to fix the p2p protocol to provide some level of anonymity (tor, MUTE, and many others are in the R&D stage).
IP blacklisting is not technically viable. This fact should be obvious to slashdot readers, and we need to stop modding these posts up.
BayTSP can trivially acquire new IPs. I bet they could even get a few in the same subnet as PeerGuardian's web server. Until you figure out what IPs your opponents use, you are fully exposed. In other words, PeerGuardian and others rely on continual sacrifice of their 'sheep' userbase to figure out what IPs are being used by the 'wolves' to prosecute illegal distribution.
Another problem is that PeerGuardian blacklists a huge amount of the IPv4 space (~20% IIRC), which means there are many high performance "allied" nodes it won't be able to access.
IP blacklists are not acceptable over the long term and basically doesn't even work over the short term. Please stop modding this stuff up.
What you've described is missing the nuisance component.
I suspect they have a private copy of the copyrighted file which they do not offer for download, but simply compare against the file offered for distribution.
:)
Which a machine can only do if the files are identical. To find out if the file is infringing content takes a human being. Even if people were uploading the entire contents of a DVD it would be fairly trivial to scramble the content in ways which would not affect use, but would make any file comparison fail.
A machine to spot copyright infringement soon runs into similar issues that a machine to spot pornography. To do the job requires the kind of AI which dosn't exist outside of science fiction. Even if you could build one that last thing you'd want, to do, would be to give it access to the Internet and lawyers. The MPAA would probably get very upset when their machine repeatedly quoted the 14th ammendment to the US Constitution though
Sharing their contents anonymously is not the answer. You can't win as long as you enjoy their works, even if you didn't pay them now. You may think you're not paying them now, but you'll eventually pay them for something. Moreover, aggravating them only makes them aggravating against you.
Consuming their contents is counter productive. Ignore and boycott them is the only solution. They won't change because you won't change. Why should you expect them to change, when you won't change?
Actually this is debatable. The exact wording of the 5th Amendment is:
"... nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself"
When a judge orders you to hand over a key, you are not being forced to testify against yourself; you are being ordered produce an object that the court wants to see. Let's say you have 100 pounds of cocaine locked up in an unbreakable vault in your basement. Judge can order you to give him the key. If you refuse, he can jail you indefinitely for contempt of court until you comply.
As I said, this is open to interpretation. In a real case the lawyers on both sides will be arguing about it back and forth.
The only one who can sue you for copyright infringement is the copyright holder. Therefore, by definition, the people who are suing you must've had the right to distribute the work in question in the firt place, ergo their hands are perfectly clean. Remember that there is no such a thing as an "illegal material"--there is only an illegal distribution of said legal material. The question to ask is more subtle than that, namely if the copyright holder herself had been uploading the work, was it illegal to download? The answer is: no. But was it legal to upload by other people who were downloading it? Again, the answer is: no.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I carry white powder in a plastic bag around when I go to the climbing gym.
IT'S CALLED CHALK!
Climber's use it to keep their hands dry (as do gymnists).
please don't assume that Chalk
is something else.
In regard to your notice identified as follows: > Notice ID:7957592 > Notice Date:16 Dec 2004 01:18:22 GMT
I have no idea what you're talking about. Could it be related to my new WiFi Router? Ever since I installed it the internet has been slow. It's possible my neighbor is using it.
Please send instructions on how to find out from my router what's going on.
Your innocent customer
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I would have no objections to this process if 'false positive' automated DMCA notices resulted in perjury convictions and prison sentences against staff, managers, executives and shareholders of BayTSP.
Its this kind of legal crap-flooding that the perjury clause of the DMCA is designed to prevent. Despite this measure, I'm not aware of a single successful perjury conviction against the self-appointed 'copyright enforcers' though there have been many documented cases of false or fraudulent DMCA notices.
Perhaps if they themselves are going to violate this specific provision of the DMCA while claiming the legal and moral high-ground, then there is no legal or moral basis for any party to comply with the DMCA.
Nobody is starving.
More correctly, no large mainstream group is simultaneously without food supplies when they were well-fed before. And they would also have to believe the establishment was to blame.
People will not abandon civilisation by rioting until their lives are at risk if they don't. Hunger is the only motivator strong enough, apart from religious conviction. We are also smart enought to recognise we'd be killing for low-value commodity items, possessions, things.
Anyway a sufficiently arrogant nuclear power can assure itself that a revolution will *never* succeed. E.g. a rebellion starts, in order to 'win' it will have to capture the Capitol. The Gov't says oh no you don't, and *Kaboom* no more Washington D.C. Then what? The rebels will want to capture the financial centres to assure themselves of income. From Cheyenne Mountain or wherever, the establishment can threaten these also. It's bound to win.
...until the spam trojans setup redundant bittorrent seeders and leechers?
It seems to me that the most obvious solution to this is to overwhelm the ignorant public with infections that the RIAA red flags as compromised intellectual property. Once people who are unaware that such silly laws exist actually become affected by it will anything begin to change. What if the next major exploit revealed in Windows NT-class operating systems were to setup a exactly the kind of thing seen here? Courts would be overrun with baseless cases and the Supreme Court just might make a real effort to get rid of this annoying leglislation known as the DMCA.
Neutiquam erro
And if you lost your key? Or for computers, can't remember it?
...if you disable uploads, BitTorrent will be ridiculously slow, as is the case when you start, as you have no pieces to upload.
However, there's no need for the MPAA to download the whole file. They just need to get a few pieces, with matching hashes of known infringing files. At which point they'll send your lawyers at you.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
When a judge orders you to hand over a key, you are not being forced to testify against yourself; you are being ordered produce an object that the court wants to see.
You are being ordered to produce an object. A password is not an object; it is speech. There is a distinct difference.
I've already seen it: transimt encrypted rar's with passwords on sites that require login.
Or transmit a password but only after a few hours. this way, many seeders get their content but can't know what it is until it's too late for BayTSP to send a copyright notice to first seeder for early prevention.
Or a private network, where only after a few hours people from outside are able to connect, thus allowing seed to spread first(possibly to outside from USA), without RIAA's knowledge.