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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?
According to the story, they download the file to confirm it.
That won't work with this (At least not according to TFA). It looks like their servers make the content (at least partially) available online for people to search for and download, then other servers make requests for the content and will snag the IP and content blocks that people upload to them which they verify is the content and store for later prosecution. If all you're uploading is a string of zeros they won't have evidence against you.
... And so it comes to this.
After all, it's the Napster suit that prompted the development of central-server-less protocols like Bittorrent.
BT has trackers. They are rather central.
Also, most people find (found) torrents at sites such as suprnova. Also central. More centras than Napster, certainly, but not "central-server-less".
It would be, if they were law enforcement officers, rather than a private firm, and if they were coercing you into downloading the file. They'll just say that they can't force downloads so anyone who has the content they provided did it willingly.
... And so it comes to this.
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.
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)
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.
They probably have a list of common hashes for the file content.
Yes they can change hashes, ofcourse, but theyll just add the new ones ot the db of checks.
"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.
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).
I do not have pointer to any any official translation of Finnish penal law, chapter 38 or the communication law 121 so you must trust me. The communication law defines among other following terms:
person identification All information describing a person or one's properties or living circumstances. Based on this information a single person, one's family, or people living in a same household can be identified. subscriber A person or a legal entity that has made agreement with teleprovider to be able to use services provided by teleprovider. identification information Subscriber's or user's number or other identification generated or stored in establishing teleconnection.Thus, an IP address potentialy identifies a single person and so it must be treated as one. Even if it does not identify user in all, or in majority of cases, because it sometimes does (I know several cases that users name can be found simply with whois), one must handle those carefully. This is a modern version of old letter secrecy law, even learing that some message is sent and informing some other about it is a crime.
For the server logs, you can store them as evidence and hand out for police iff the suspected crime is serious enough. But in normal course of operation, those should not be watched. Recently introduced law "Lex Sonera" (now ex-CEO of Sonera is on charge about finding out who leaked information to press using call logs) puts more strict control on how different logs can be monitored.
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.
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!
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.
The perjury clause is very deceptive. In fact it is completely worthless. If you are ever confused about any portion of the DMCA the first thing you need to remember is that it was literally written by lawyers employed by the publishing industry. As such, they had two primary goals in mind when drafting it:
Primary Goal) Any copyright holder making use of the DMCA shall be immune to any and all prosecution or liability, no matter how stupid, reckless, or abusive their behaviour.
Secondary Goal) Nail anyone and everyone as easily rapidly and effectively as possible, guiltly or not.
So what about that "penalty of purjury" thing? Sounds nasty, right? Sounds like a good and balanced law, right? To protect you from frivolous and abusive attack, right?
NOPE! It's freaking WORTHLESS! Any DMCA takedown notice filed by a lawyer with an IQ above 2 is going to be immune. Why? Let me make up a simplified sample DMCA takedown notice:
I am the copyright holder of X
Person Y is distributing Z
I think Y distributing Z is infringing my copyright X
Now, what's covered by the "penalty of perjury" clause? Well, just remember the primary goal: copyright holder immunity no matter how stupid, reckless, or abusive they are. Well if they are stupid, reckless, or abusive, the claim of copyright infringment might be false. So that's not covered. And if they are stupid, reckless, or abusive, person Y might not actually be distributing file Z. So that's right out too.
What does that leave? I leaves the claim "I am the copyright holder of X". And even an abusive reckless IDIOT can fill in something that they are actually the copyright holder of.
And just in case it wasn't 100% crystal clear, there is absolutely no requirement that the target of the takedown notice - file Z - actually have any connection at all to the claimed copyright X. In fact file Z can be - and at times HAS BEEN - a public domain file. For example Universal Motion Pictures stated they had the copyright on the movie U-571 and issued a takedown notice on the PUBLIC DOMAIN file 19571.mpg because it contailed the digits 5 7 and 1 on a video filetype. Yes, they were indeed the copyright holder of the movie U-571. Everything else was a load of crap. Therefore Universal Motion Pictures is immune to any and all liability.
See how easy it is to read and understand the law once you know who literally wrote it?
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.