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New Round of P2P Lawsuits from Hollywood
An anonymous reader writes "There is a new story on ZDNet about more lawsuits against P2P file sharers. The catch is that Hollywood is using the log files off Bit Torrent sites like Suprnova and LokiTorrent."
Well with theater profits plummiting, the movie industry has few methods other than movie sales to generate a profit; and just because it is easy to do something illegally does not> mean that it is legitmate to do so, or that it is in some way unacceptable to defend yourself against these illegal actions. And just so you know, customer generally implies people who paid. These people did not.
Links are all you can download from those sites.
The Sneaker Net may still be alive. Except it's now on DVDs instead of floppies. Is Blu-Ray next?
And I was so looking forward to offset my higher fuel prices by downloading the summer's blockbusters (have there been any?)...
The article is a bit sparse on technical details. Are they talking about using log files from web servers that distribute .torrent files? Because downloading the .torrent file, itself, isn't proof that a user has gone any further than that, which means no infringement is demonstrated.
Or is there a log file, somewhere, like the tracker, that keeps track of who's connecting and what they're getting? What if you don't succeed in downloading the entire movie? Are you still infringeing, even if the data that you've got is unuseable without the parts you haven't got?
For that matter, why did those sites keep logs, anyway? That seems like a pretty dumb idea to me really; there was at least one case in the past where a site (Cryptome?) was subpoenaed for httpd access logs but came back saying that they didn't keep any.
I don't want to advocate copyright infringement, but if you do it, then you at least shouldn't do it in a blatantly amateurish way...
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Well, if you're downloading the movies from BitTorrent, you're not exactly a customer anymore than a shoplifter is a customer at a store. I mean, he might buy stuff now and again just like we might watch a movie now and again, but . . .
What I don't get is, since they have said they couldn't (or wouldn't) go after downloaders, exactly how is this going to work? Has it been deemed that downloading via torrents is inherently the same activity of UPLOADING, even if you terminate your connection before you've fully uploaded the file? or rather, how can they be at all sure that you have ever uploaded the entire file back to the community? I could have a 500:1 upload ratio on a file, but that doesn't mean i haven't just been uploading the same 30 seconds worth to everyone.
Q: Why do trackers keep logs?
A: Because they want their users to go down with them!
They are violating copyright law over which Federal government has full jurisdiction as provided by the Constitution. The proper course of action is to present suits against the infringers directly.
Then arrest them, and allow hollywood to sue them for actual damages done (not theoretical damages over people who may have theoretically bought a movie). How much money/physical goods did Hollywood have, that was then taken away by the filesharers? Allow them to be reimbursed for that.
If it's against the law, then charge these people.
Dear MPAA:
Please explain how the logs you cite prove I downloaded your movie. The logs show a 28k ".torrent" file. I was unaware that your movies could be compressed to such a degree! I would now like to direct you to my large DVD collection.
Fuck You,
Your Customer.
.
Illegal does not imply morally wrong. Not all laws are justified or "correct".
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
This new approach makes it a lot harder for them to win at trial. All they have is a file that lists some IP addresses.
In the previous cases they hired people who connected to p2p filesharers and observed what exactly was being shared.
Not a single one of their previous cases has gone to trial. It's not cost effective for them to go to trial even when they can win!
The formula is simple...
1. Send threatening lawyer letters to people you believe to have violated your copyright...
2. Wait for a response...
3. Look for an admission of guilt...
4. Profit!
"Providing copyrighted material for upload without explicit permission by the publisher is illegal." - no, actually, copyright infringment is a civil tort (notwithstanding the ludicrious new laws congress has been considering lately)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Surely some of these WAPs are located in buildings where the neighbors are leeching free broadband using granny's DHCP server and downloading all sorts of copyrighted torrents.
I wonder how many of these innocent granny types are going to be getting nice subpoenas from the MPAA. If they are senile and ignore them they might get default judgements when the case goes to court. Is the MPAA going to take away their money/home/valuables when they win by default?
Hell, my own home WAP was temporarily wide-open and unsecured for a while when I first set it up. Do I deserve to get potentially sued for being temporarily clueless?
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
You think people have a moral right to download copyrighted material? You think that making downloading films illegal isn't justified? What world do you live in?
The sense of entitlement on this site is astonishing. Now apparently it's immoral to have copyrights. The film industry should just let everyone into the cinemas for free because people have the moral right to take things for free rather than paying.
Jesus the shit that gets modded up on here... Was Slashdot always this bad? When did the freeloading teenagers take over?
It seems to me that the logs from SuperNova can contain two things:
1) The IP addresses of people hosting bittorrents
and
2) The IP addresses of people being redirected to download from the above people
In both cases I fail to see how there can be any effective legal case. Unless the MPAA actually went to the sites in question and downloaded the files, they can't prove that "Matrix.avi" was actually the movie Matrix. And they certainly can't prove that the downloaders ever actually completed their downloads, regardless.
I call "bullshit". No way any guilty verdicts can ever be reached here.
UNFORTUNATELY, however, with the FUCKED UP legal system in the U.S., some people might not have the resources to actually hire a lawyer to point this out, even though doing so would guarantee an innocent verdict. So expect a few po' folk to negotiate settlements...
No, it hasn't been debunked.
The lady SPILLED COFFEE ON HERSELF. What kind of idiot holds a drink between their legs, especially a hot liquid? This is begging for a Darwin award.
End of story!
Why did McDonalds keep their coffee hot? Becuase people WANT HOT COFFEE. They want their COFFEE TO STAY HOT FOR A WHILE.
My parents told me when I was a child that certian things in the kitchen are DANGEROUS. This included the pot of coffee!
McDonalds isn't responsible for some stupid lady's lack of common sense.
They are suing customers because they want to pressure Congress into passing laws criminalizing file sharing beyond the extent which it is right now. They figure the people sued will complain to government. Their lobbyists will deflect the complaints by saying they'll stop if they get what they want legislatively. Otherwise, they'll whine, they will be put out of business eventually.
The politicians cave and we lose more rights. It's really rather masterful if you think about it. In a really evil way.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Exactly.
The httpd-access.log can only prove that your computer had download the torrent. It may serve as a supplementary information on where you got the torrent for that illegal download. Only the dumbest jury will find it persuasive to prove an illegal movie download / copyright infringement.
Certainly it's illegal, and it *should* be wrong and yet I don't think it is wrong. Let me try an analogy: Murder is wrong. Killing someone who is trying to murder you is not wrong. I believe the movie industry is at war with consumers so I feel it is justified to be at war with them. I would like to have a hi-definition digital video recorder. The industry is trying to make sure it can only record what they allow and degrades analog outputs. I would like to watch ultra high resolution movies on my computer but again they plan to degrade signals to non "secure" monitors. They have attacked people for decrypting DVD content that they have legally purchased. They have planned to fuck over people who bought early HDTVs by refusing hi-res content since they may have a non secure signal path. They insult movie goers with anti-piracy ads. Who the fuck but a paying customer is going to see those guilt trips on film-stock? Myself I don't care to download movies. I just rent from the cheapest place I can find and my disgust has led me to many fewer DVD purchases.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
This is why the go for the people sharing, not downloading, is it not?
If you connect to a swarm, you soon get a list of alll peers in the swarm. Why do they need to get log files from the servers when they could have sampled all the swarms at any time and gotten a complete list live? (AFAIK this is what they did with suprnova before it got closed, because ppl got letters from RIAA a few weeks before it was closed)
Only thing I can figure is they are technically inept and can't figure out the protocol so they have to rely on logs? Or there is some information or coalation/summary in the logs they are interested in?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
People like to watch the latest movies from the comfort of their homes. What about doing like iTunes and offer them an internet showing of the movie for let's say 5 bucks a movie? You get better quality than torrents, faster downloads, no people getting up in front of the camera all the time all from the comfort of your home. The movie studio saves on distribution costs and get extra income from the geek crowd who would never dare be seen in the bright daylight but prefer to bask in the warming glow of a computer monitor. Everyone wins.
There should be a "-1:Groupthink"
It may be a good idea to switch to trusted file-sharing. Remember the days of old (pre-napster) when one had to search out a good ftp site or hotnet server, contact the admin by email, etc. Did you ever worry that the admin was some RIAA/MPAA agent setting a trap? Did you worry that an RIAA/MPAA agent was sniffing packets between you and that ftp server? Did you even know that the RIAA/MPAA existed for a purpose other than putting warning labels on your entertainment?
Too many of us have bought into the "my way, right away" mentality, in which if we can't find what we want in less than five minutes, someone's done us wrong. To many, this is a way of life, and they have stopped caring (to the point at which they routinely risk the longterm health of themselves and their society) who provides them a service or product just as long as it is provided right away. Now, i appreciate the immediacy of (some) file-sharing utilites as well as the broad range of content available on their networks, but is the risk really worth it? Why would anyone in their right mind risk a heavy fine for downloading dukes of hazard or the latest jason mraz album? Anyone who uses any of the top five file-sharing protocols takes that risk each time they download something that someone in california happens to care about.
If you really want the "phat loot," make sure you know who's providing it to you, or at least make sure they can never find out who you are. I've found that the best way to get anything free is to personally know someone who has direct access/control over it. Next chance you get, go visit the helpdesk or IT department or whoever's responsible for installing software onto the machines where you work/go to school. If you don't have a job or go to school (get a job, hippy!) then go visit the local community college during the next open house (and then visit the IT dept). Those people are (or will shortly be) your friends. Chat it up with them, talk about your favorite video game/author/movie/pet - you will have something in common with them (it's inevitable, Mr. Anderson). Any place with a respectable IT department has either site licenses or several extra licenses for just about anything you could ever need/want. Guess what... if you need a software package - and your newfound friend has a few extra on hand - he will share with you (unless he's a total tightwad).
As for movies and music... be honest with yourself. The tripe that has come out within the past few years (White Chicks? You got Served?? Catwoman???) is far below you, and you don't need to watch the whole movie (or listen to the whole cd) to figure that out. Invariably, any movie or music worth experiencing is also worth at least a rental if not an outright purchase - otherwise, don't waste your time. Indie movie makers and musicians probably don't care (and might even like it) if you download their stuff, so go wild on that one.
Trust is good. Patience is good. We could all use a little more.
The group previously said in February that a Texas court had ordered that the server logs of one big site, called LokiTorrent, be turned over to Hollywood investigators. An MPAA spokeswoman said that none of Thursday's suits were related to that action, however.
For most people they're far more likely to listen to believe their friend when they hear a movie is good than they will if they hear some random person they don't know claimed that Movie X was the best!
As for sample chapters and promo mp3's, I'm not sure if that was what the grandparent was referring to, it could well be that they infact downloaded various ebooks/mp3's illegaly, but their content encouraged him to go out and purchase legitimate versions.
It shouldn't be a hard idea to grasp, it's something I've done myself quite recently, where a friend gave me a pirated copy of Sin City which after viewing at home I chose to see it at theatre's despite the cost. Given what I knew of before I had been given that copy, it's entierly likely I wouldn't have seen it at theatre's at all, as what was shown on tv regarding it (reviews, movie clips) didn't give me a sufficient idea as to the content of the movie, and therefore I could not be sure if it would be worth seeing at theatre's.
In small words, just for you. The hollywood movie system has had a habit of producing crap movies, and then buying their gross on the first weekend of release with lots of marketing.
But, sometimes, a product gets made that is really quite good. Like say firefly. Some friends download it. We sit around, watch the first couple. Go out and buy the DVDs. Watch the DVDs religiously. Get involved in communities pushing the upcoming release of Serenity. Go to the previews.
See a pattern here? It's all about finding the occasional signal in the wall of noise. And the nature of the meta communication that happens around the file downloads is helping to spur winner takes all for good content.
It's not the p2p file downloading which is tanking the industry, its the communities forming around movie sharing that is doing the current industry in.
This move will actually make the survivors stronger, because good content will again matter. Instead of who has the top name actors and the marketing budget.
That is if the tracker is hosted on the torrent site. Most of the time this is not the case. Typically all the originating site is providing a torrent which connects you to the tracker site. So the parent is correct. In 90% of the cases you are just downloading a 28k .torrent. Hardly infringement unless they can prove that you downloaded the whole file and went on to seed. See, it isn't the downloading that they typically look at, its the distribution. They want to go after the people setting up seeds and trackers a lot more than the casual person that downloads last week's episode of Deadwood.
Personally, I would love to buy things on DVD like Deadwood, but when I went out and priced Season 1, they wanted $100 for it. Since I already payed HBO to watch their channel for the whole season, I couldn't justify spending $100 to watch it again. I ended up missing the last few episodes of seson 2 and they expired on On Demand, so I was left with two choices: Wait 6 months and pay $200 for both seasons or download them all for free. It wasn't a really tough decision for me, especially considering how much more I could use the $200 for better things. I could see if it were to be like $40-50, but come on. They would probably sell a whole lot more if they dropped the price too. I mean that works out to a little less than $10 an hour for entertainment. That's more expensive than a movie ticket, nearly twice as much.
Great series though! I can't wait to see if they do a season 3 and I really hope they pick of the pieces of Carnivale because the season 2 finale was a really cheap way of ensuring there will be a season 3. All that buildup to the most anti-climatic ending of a series I've seen in a long time.
zosxavius photography
Assumption 1: you need to spend a hundred million dollars to produce two hours of entertainment to capture my attention.
Assumption 2: you do this in one off hits.
Both of these assumptions are based in the manufacturing reality, where spools of film had to be manufactured, transported, and then shown in specially built cinemas. Both of these assumptions are now completely bogus.
In fact I prefer listening to podcasts, which have a budget in the order of $50 an hour, to watching the latest block buster crap, with it's $50 million an hour budget.
Why? Because the podcasts are closer to my interests, they treat me as an intelligent, thinking, emotional human being, not a pair of eyes to be dazzled with tits and explosions.
Story telling. It's an amazing tradition. Something I'm hoping Hollywood rediscovers sooner, rather than later.
If someone copies something I did, it in no way diminishes what I have done. I could more easily argue that keeping knowledge from people is morally wrong than putting people in jail for sharing knowledge is wrong.
He's a big Star Wars fan (as in actually owns figures, not just a movie fan). He's seen the latest one 5 times that I know of. At a minimum of $8 per ticket, he's given the franchise $40 + drinks/popcorn/milkduds. This is on top of the 3 or 4 collectable box sets of the originals he owns (mucho dinero). He also got one of the downloaded copies of Episode 3. He hates the quality of it, but it's a piece of Star Wars history to him.
I on the other hand saw the movie once, really liked it, but won't fork over any more money to see it again. I'll wait for someone to loan me their DVD to watch.
Now, who should the studios more likely sue, him or me? What's ironic though is that if I'm correct, I'll be the one 100% legal. He'll be the one committing a crime, even if Hollywood benefitted much more from him. It's people like my friend that they are in business at all.
Give them a dollar, and they'll suck you dry. I'm almost scared to use anything but cash at the theater for fear of what other craziness they may come up with next if they had my name on a reciept.
I8-D
Do you suppose that might be because when something is stolen, a single owner is deprived of the thing, whereas when something is illegally copied, the original owner loses out on selling multiple copies of the thing??
Well, think of it this way. The fact that I got addicted to firefly has sold at least three box sets and ten serenity tickets. In most marketing text books the original content would have been called a "teaser", because it was low quality et al.
But, if you had your perfect world, where i couldn't get access to the pirate firefly content, you know what would have happened? I would have gotten addicted to something else. A web comic series, say...
" You think people have a moral right to download copyrighted material?"
You have a MORAL right to do whatever you want to do, unless that action causes greater harm than good.
The question is.... does an owner of intellectual property have a MORAL right to monopolize that IP to the point of dictating what other people may do with their own physical property?
Saying they do, don't make it true.
Making it law, doesn't make it true either.
"The film industry should just let everyone into the cinemas for free because people have the moral right to take things for free rather than paying."
This is a straw man attack. No one is arguing that. That is a matter of tresspassing on someone elses land (inside their building no less). NOT a matter of immitating something you have seen somewhere. i.e. COPYING.
"When did the freeloading teenagers take over?"
I've never downloaded a single movie or song. I've spent over $3000 on my DVD library, and something over $2000 on my CD's. I visit the theatre between 3-6 times a month. But your arguments on morality are way off the mark.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
A movie, OTOH, and to use your analogy, is a commercial shrinkwrapped product. Of one piece. Like a book, it has a start, middle, and "the end". There may be sequels, but they too, are self-contained.
What holds true for one model and process may not neccessarily hold true for the other.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I got into Joss Wheadon and bought the entire Buffy/Angel series on dvd because i got to watch a half dozen eps of each on p2p(No WB where I'm at,No cable either).That equals a very big payoff to them thanks to p2p.The same goes for games.I bought the entire Mechwarrior series because of a ripped version of Mech3.
While i don't agree with dvd iso's i don't see anything wrong with the "ripped" versions.They are either lower quality(Videos) or have features removed/missing(games) and are a great way to check out something that if your only choice was shell out cash you'd probably never try.
There is so much money they could be making.Imagine a p2p channel with all the movies over 5 years old for 19.99 a month,Or a channel with all those great games from the 9x era, All you want for 19.99 a month.If they didn't use DRM in return for no support I'd be happy to sign up.Instead they just keep beating the dead horse while wondering why no one wants their latest formula crap.Greed+stupidity+lack of vision=lousy business.Just my 2 cents.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Every single one of those vendors is an old vendor. Selling versions in excess of at least version 5. Where are the version 1 shrink wrapped box versions? Where are the new software startups who are selling shrink wrap software?
Apart from the two to ten person teams rolling out software on OS X, I don't know of any.
Well, I've said this before:
Most people, given the choice, want to pay a reasonable price for a legit copy of something. However, currently the pirated material is often "better" than the legit version (for some values of "better").
For example, the distribution mechanism for illegal movies is better:
- You don't have to drive to get to see the movie
- You don't have rediculously overpriced food pushed at you
- You don't have to put up with 30 minutes of adverts before watching the show you paid an overpriced fee to see (goes back to the "reasonable price" thing above)
- Not so much an issue these days but it used to be that a lot of movies were released here in the UK long after they hit the US - I can't see how they can complain too much about people getting impatient to see something they've hyped up (still applies to TV though).
- You don't get accused of being a copyright infringer when you're infringing copyright, whereas you do if you go to the cinema or buy a DVD.
And yes, I fully agree with you about music - almost all the CDs I buy these days have been (partly at least) downloaded first so I could hear if what I was buying was worth it - the only people who lose out from that are the crap acts who aren't worth buying.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
The moon is not fully subjugated. I demand a second assault wave preceded by a massive nuclear bombardment.
BNBT, as used on http://xiando.com:6969/, does not log anything if you leave these settings blank in bnbt.cfg:
bnbt_access_log_dir =
bnbt_error_log_dir =
BNBT is very fast and does not store any non-needed information about anything. It logs how many people have totally completed the file but does not waste the oh so valuable storage space available to store who happened to transfer what ages ago. This tracker is easy to install and uses virtually no resources.
Suprnova used a completely different tracker and perhaps it logged a lot of useless information. That would have been very stupid and unwise, specially because they had no control what so ever over the content available there (at least, that is the general attitude all the now closed sites hid behind).
Detailed logs over the tracker usage would not be need or required or desired so it sounds highly unlikely that any logs would contain anything useful to anyone or even exist. Detailed logs over tracker usage would generate a huge amount of data useful for no practical purpose what so ever, so it is highly unlikely such logs were ever created.
Logs over the website usage are useless for any legal purpose because whatever the hash of a torrent and it's purpose when used with a bittorrent client, it still remains a simple torrent file with some hash code in it - perfectly legal to download by anyone. This is probably just some big pr-stunt to try to make people think bittorrent is bad. BitTorrent it not bad, it is excellent and you should try it today.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
I live in a country that thinks it's very hip and cool, but it's more like a 3rd world country (no offense to them!)... So, basically, between low coverage and monopolistic practices, I only have 4 (four!) TV channels.
Anyway, I read about Futurama on the net, and I downloaded a couple of episodes (shame on me!). I got adicted! :D So much that I bought the whole 4 seasons on Amazon! (Yeah, we don't have much TV series on DVD on the retail stores around here either). And I got some seasons of South Park too! And now I'm waiting for "Penn & Teller's B*llshit" to arrive!
And you know what? If it weren't for P2P, I wound have never get contact with those shows and I would never bought the DVDs...
Like someone said, P2P would be a awesome way to distribute low-quality "teasers" of TV shows. It worked for me, and I believe it worked for many more people.
Family Guy is another example. I never saw it (I intend to download an episode or two to try it), but I read that the DVD sales were great. I guess that one might presume that an portion of those sales were directly related with people downloading episodes and enjoying it.
Maybe the media industry (music, movies, TV, and games) should start listening to their customers, instead of the army of lawyers that they have. And by saying "listening" I really mean "LISTENING", as in opinion polls and stuff.
And the games industry should really wrap their heads around the whole emulation scene. I mean, emulating a PS2 is wrong, but I sure would pay for the change to have (for example) a thingamajig that I could hook to the TV and get me to play a bunch of Megadrive games or SNES games (you know, like they did for the Atari, the controler-thingy).
Sorry for the long rant, but it ticks me that we the paying customers are being treated as thiefs, when we are actually willing to pay (and paying!) for the entertainment. Just listen to us, for real, and don't try to ram your both arms and legs up our collective asses...
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
Notice the use of the words "sites like". The MPAA isn't using Suprnova's log files because Suprnova shut themselves down, and didn't have any reason to give log files to anyone.
Webserver logs wouldn't record the information you refer to, because the trackers usually run their own web server; you're not going to have it as part of your standard Apache log.
Furthermore, even if you did have webserver logs from the tracker, it is still not direct proof. I can send requests to the tracker that say whatever I want. I can send a requset to the tracker indicating that I have uploaded 100GB of data even though I'm not even running a BitTorrent client.
Log files are really not going to help them here, the only way to prove it would have been if they connected directly to the swarm and seen if the IPs sent them any copyrighted data. Since the swarms are long dead this won't work.