Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New Round of P2P Lawsuits from Hollywood

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the at-it-again dept.

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."

35 of 442 comments (clear)

  1. Oh goody. by DMouse · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Let's sue the customers. Because that so worked for the music industry. Instead of accepting that networked transfer of information is the new reality and going with it. There are so many ways of making money here. But no, have to defend the old way. Man, they have NO VISION. No wonder Hollywood is addicted to creating formulaic movies. Risk aversion is fatal in creative industries, ya'know.

    *face desk*

    1. Re:Oh goody. by DMouse · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yes. Because the world is neatly dividable into those good people who buy everything, and the bad people who pirate everything. Yes. Really. The world is that simple.

      Did I mention that the last three computer books I have purchased, I read a chunk of them online before hand? Or that I buy cds based on what i have listened to off the web? Or that the movies I go to in the cinema are influenced by the recomendations of my friends, some of whom are downloaders?

      Moron.

    2. Re:Oh goody. by LiquidHAL · · Score: 3, Interesting

      the movie industry has few methods other than movie sales to generate a profit that would be correct if only they didn't make huge amounts of cash on DVDs, soundtracks, merchandising, promotional tie-ins, and TV/Cable showings. there is simply no evidence to correlate a decrease in theater tickets sold to pirating. There are too many unmentioned variables to consider.

    3. Re:Oh goody. by icedevil · · Score: 2, Interesting

      When we catch shoplifters we don't just ask them to pay for the stuff they stole right? When you catch someone in your house stealing your stereo, do you just ask them to pay for it?

      Do I get replacement cost? If so then hell yes! If a burglar gave me $400 for the home theater system I bought 4 years ago then I can buy a much better system now. The current system is fine, but hey free upgrades are great.

      Stealing content online feels anonymous and somehow ~okay~. But it's not. It isn't civil disobedience. It's illegal and it's wrong. The penalties will exceed the cost of the unsold movie ticket to help impress upon people that it's a Bad Thing to get caught stealing.

      blah blah blah, if the person "stealing" the movie/music/software would never purchase it then its not stealing. There is nothing that was actually stolen, you have lost no goods.

      Personally, I have purchased thousands of dollars worth of movies and music over the years but have not spent a dime on either since the RIAA and MPAA have started suing casual file traders. I will continue my boycott until they cease such practices.

      Given the current state of movies and music in the US I don't think I'm missing out on too much.

    4. Re:Oh goody. by Spectre_03 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It goes so much deeper than that, since the assumption is ALWAYS that it is also illegal to download something.

      Since when was it illegal to download something?

      Just because it is on the net it is automatically ASSUMED that it's illegal to download it. Well news flash, but if I already OWN the film/work, then I have the COPYRIGHT to download it all I like.

      This is not nor ever has been a black and white argument nor is the world ever black and white.

      Both the greedy B@$T@RD$ that @$$ume that it's illegal to download anything as well as the cheap SOB's that leech everything need to shut up.

      But as we should all know right now that if we paint it black and white we all fit into one of the two categories.

      So which are you?

      an SOB or an @$$?

      I on the other hand fit right in the middle. Why do I download the few I have, because I already have them, but I would like to put them onto my server to stream them over my network onto my PS2 when I want instead of having to get up and put in the damn disk.

      And why don't I rip them myself?

      Because every one I have ripped doesn't work but every one I have D/L'ed has. I am still trying to figure out how to Rip my DVD's to Divx, until then, I'll D/L and be glad to ignore the rest of the ignorant one's that assume everything is illegal along with the greedy one's that want my money 4 times for the same stuff.

      But you can both answer me this, why is it if you have your way I have to buy a movie 4 times to get it in all the formats I want it in? Can someone tell me that one?

      GET REAL, Copyright is what it is, get off your pocketbooks and get onto a real revenue model, or go broke, I could care less. I'll stick with my books over the crap that the Hollywood/Music industry's are pushing out these days.

    5. Re:Oh goody. by Seumas · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'll tell you a business model that works.

      I'm not willing to pay $16.99 for a CD in a store.
      I'm not willing to pay $99/track via iTunes.
      I'm willing to pay ~$1.00/CD for tracks from mp3search.ru

      What does this say? Well, I (and many other people) are not willing to pay what the RIAA or Apple say music is worth, but I'm willing to pay something - even though it seems an insigificant amount - rather than wasting my time downloading off of p2p.

      An artist could charge $1/album if they released them online and that would be about as much (or more) than they would have gotten through the traditional industry distribution and production channels. Granted, there's a good chance most of us wouldn't know who they were without the pumping done by their RIAA masters, but that's a little bit beside the point.

      I'm not willing to pay $5 parking, $20 for two tickets and spend several hours of my time round trip to go see a movie that may end up being complete crap in a theater with a sticky floor, shifty seats and annoying audiences. I'm not willing to pay $25 or $30 for a DVD, either. Especially since I'm only going to watch it one time.

      But you know what? Give me a site that I can download any movie from as soon as it is released into theaters (including all of your back-archive) for $3 each in high quality with DRM - but capable of being viewed on whatever hardware I want to for up to, say, 72 hours - and you'll have yourself a happy, frequent customer.

      For the record, I also don't buy books anymore unless I have to. I can't find the justification in charging $10 for a flimsy PAPERBACK *FICTION* book that will give me all of a few hours entertainment.

      On the other hand, with rare exception, I'm willing to pay $40 to $50 for a videogame, because I'll get plenty of use out of it and I'll have a VERY good time in the process. Of course, I have a mac now, so that's kind of a moot point. But... I sure kick ass at multi-player-text-editing!!!

    6. Re:Oh goody. by shmlco · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Okay, seriously. What you're suggesting still implies that people have to pay for content (e.g. "Go out and buy the DVDs.")

      Which means that complete and unrestricted sharing is still out. (Anderson even agrees in the Tail article.) So we still need something "loose" like FairPlay (Apple's iTunes DRM) for movies so that content can be produced and paid for. Especially as we move to completely electronic distribution.

      Second, not everything can be a Serenity. Some movies will still suck, no matter what. But hey, people talk, no one buys tickets, and the movie sinks. (Personally, this is why I think sales are down. More independent internet reviews, blogs, and communities mean that the word gets out faster.)

      Third, not everything can be a Serenity. Or a Million Dollar Baby. Or even a Batman Returns. In fact, without a large pool of profitable and semi-profitable movies being made, there probably would NOT be a Serenity movie. The harder it is to recoup your investment, the more risk-adverse you tend to become.

      Which in turn only makes the problem worse. You need enough profit to cover the flops and bad bets, and to make it worth risking your dollars in the first place. And really, do you think that the producers, directors, actors, and everyone else involved all WANT to make a bad film?

      --
      Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
    7. Re:Oh goody. by akac · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Doing something wrong does not justify that you purchased it later.

      The only moron is the one calling others who make perfectly good remarks of their own opinions a moron. Only a moron would call others names just because you don't like their ideas or opinions. Even if the written letter and spirit of the law is on their side.

      The fact is that you can steal something and then pay it back later - you still stole and still would be found guilty in every single possible court in the world.

    8. Re:Oh goody. by Guspaz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      These people did not.

      That's the problem, though, isn't it? I'm going to totally ignore any ethical questions and look at this from a technological standpoint: torrent site log files are not proof of infringement.

      The MPAA has a bunch of IPs that they identified via the log files as downloading the torrent files. The problem is that the torrent files are just metadata, they don't have any copyright content in them. Downloading such a file doesn't mean a user committed copyright infringement, only that they might have. Certainly users may have downloaded a torrent file but never did anything with it. That is, just left it sitting around or deleted it.

      Normally in a court case this might not be a problem. But the MPAA isn't sueing people, they're sueing john does. They have the IP addresses, and they are sueing the people behind those IP addresses. The MPAA needs to prove to the court that these IP addresses commited copyright infringement in order to get the names of the people out of the ISPs via a court order. But since the only information they have is that the IPs downloaded torrent files, they have no direct proof.

      IIRC, in Canada it was ruled that such things were NOT enough to force the ISPs to give up customer/IP matches. I wouldn't be surprised if the courts in the US denied the MPAA's requests to get these IPs turned into names either.

      Am I saying it's impossible? Well, no, the US courts have a tendency to not rule logically when it comes to such issues, as the cases often go before judges that really have no idea what is going on. Why is this the case? I don't know, it could be any number of reasons, but my bet is that either the US court system is overburdened and these types of cases can't get assigned to the proper judges because there aren't enough judges, or that the MPAA chooses their judges carefully.

    9. Re:Oh goody. by tarunthegreat2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wow this is a great point - it's not people - it's IP addresses. I would think they would at least have to gather evidence that a particular person was using that particular IP (proof said geek was in his momma's basement, e.t.c.). Or am I totally clueless?

      ..US courts have a tendency to not rule logically when it comes to such issues, as the cases often go before judges that really have no idea what is going on. Why is this the case?

      Probably because there are more lawyers than software engineer explaining things to them or more lawyers with some software law. Basically I think analogies and actual studies of who downloads what e.t.c - I don't think these have been covered as thoroughly as they should be. OTOH, you have the DMCA...so why look at anything else, as in, that's the law ergo judges will interpret that and use that for their rulings. And we all know how logical and rational the DMCA is...

      --
      My Favourite Meme
    10. Re:Oh goody. by xiando · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What do you mean "the movie industry has few methods other than movie sales to generate a profit"?

      Why can they not make huge piles of money using BitTorrent when the adult entertainment industry embraces and utilizes the supreme BitTorrent technology in order to generate sustainable, legal returns?

      Could it be that the movie industry simply have failed to accept the new technological area we are in, and therefore also fail to understand that it is oh so incredibly wise to give away some content in order to sell other content which is available for download and purchase on-line?

      Could it be that hard media technology like the CD and DVD are already replaced by BitTorrent and other on-line solutions?

      The main-stream movie industry could be making a lot of money using BitTorrent and other P2P technology. The adult industry understood this years ago. Just look at http://hardcoretorrents.com/ and http://xiando.com/torrents/ to understand that BitTorrent can, when used wisely, be extremely good for you, your health and your shareholders.

      I agree that all kind of illegal action is very bad. But no illegal action is indicated by a person having visited or used a website, even if some parts of that site may or may not have had illegal content. BitTorrent is a perfectly legal protocol and it is also perfectly legal to use BitTorrent sites, and this is specially true now because all the bad illegal torrent sites which once existed are now closed and shut down even though most of them were only trackers and did not host any illegal content at all. It is legal and safe and good for you to use BitTorrent and torrent sites and it can entertain you and make your life better.

      --
      9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
    11. Re:Oh goody. by Danathar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Doing something illegal does not mean it's wrong. It' JUST means it's illegal.

      Your morals don't HAVE to coinside identically with what society deems is right via Law. If you decide to do something that you believe is right and it happens to be illegal then the only thing you need to understand it the consequences for your actions (possible imprisonment).

      There are some Laws that I disagree with, but am definitely not going to risk imprisonment. There are other laws that I might think of violating because I don't believe in their moral correctness AND decide to actually commit because the risk seems low (like say...purchasing something after pirating it)

      [disclamer] Of course my morals are in complete agreement with ALL the laws in my country and I would NEVER think of breaking ANY of them.

    12. Re:Oh goody. by JoeBar · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Wow this is a great point - it's not people - it's IP addresses. I would think they would at least have to gather evidence that a particular person was using that particular IP (proof said geek was in his momma's basement, e.t.c.). Or am I totally clueless?

      This is what I wanna know. Has anyone successfully used the "I have a wireless network, some random neighbor or drive-by hacker was using my internet connection to do this -- not me"?

  2. I hate to say this about IP lawsuits... by amalcon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    GOOD!

    BitTorrent is all but DESIGNED to be traceable. Maybe this will make people finally notice. That would (hopefully) do a lot to legitimize it.

    --
    -Amalcon
    1. Re:I hate to say this about IP lawsuits... by Alex+P+Keaton+in+da · · Score: 2, Interesting

      From the article... "BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen has warned in the past that using his technology to distribute material illegally is a "dumb idea," because the file-swapping tool is not designed to hide the identity of anyone using it."
      So it is sort of like waving to the camera while robbing a bank. Don't be surprised if you get caught. I doubt these were slashdot posters of computer people, likely frat boys and jocks that didn't know any better....
      My favorite stories, which happen a lot up here (Ohio) in the winter, are when the police catch thieves by following their tracks in the snow, from the scene of the crime, right to their house. Seems like the MPAA is doing a high tech version of this...

      --
      And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
  3. Legal? by wlan0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In what ways is it legal for them to use the logs of Suprnova and Lokitorrent?

    1. Re:Legal? by Muerte23 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      One thing though, would this be admissible with regards to hearsay laws?

      If I make a list of random IP addresses and add random movie titles, can I be subpoenaed and those logs used to sue people?

      It's not like the police came to someone's house and found a movie on their computer - an internet lowlife had that person's IP address on their server. Was it created by a bot?

      Where's the proof? Does there need to be any? I understand that civil cases have a lower standard of guilt, but does anyone know for sure?

      m

    2. Re:Legal? by cpu_fusion · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You're absolutely correct: the law is not prepared to deal with digital "logs" as evidence. The simple fact is that any set of bits written on a hard drive could be FORGED and placed there by a hacker with absolutely no trace as to their true source.
      Its a huge problem with "digital evidence" that judges, juries, and lawyers just don't completely understand. But we, as techies, understand all too well how an exploit can compromise a machine, be used to plant something, and then every trace cleaned up. Sure, there are ways to counter this, like creating hard-copy logs on a printer as they are generated, but seriously -- who does that for their weblogs? That's a lot of paper.
      People are rotting in jail right now because the law and the courts are behind the times. Technology is outpacing law in every way and the reactive nature of the legislative process is going to continue to ruin lives.
      Having had an uncle go to prison because of exactly this kind of crap, it makes me bitter when I see people worrying about being sued because of bits sitting on a hard drive somewhere; bits that, again, could have been planted as easily as legitamately created.
      It's only going to get worse; technology isn't slowing down, but the legal system is.

  4. A few points by the_macman · · Score: 5, Interesting


    From TFA: Hollywood lawyers are hoping that the fear of exposure will dissuade more people from trying to download movies for free online. "Internet movie thieves be warned: You have no friends in the online community when you are engaging in copyright theft,"

    I love how the MPAA resorts to terrorism to get it's point across.
    Terrorism - n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

    As with previous lawsuits filed by the MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America, this round of cases is aimed at anonymous "John Does" identified only by their Internet addresses. The defendants' true identities will be sought through a later court process.

    Translation: We really have no proof of who downloaded the material but we're gonna goto court anyways

    1. Re:A few points by Kjella · · Score: 2, Interesting

      From TFA: Hollywood lawyers are hoping that the fear of exposure [to legal prosecution] will dissuade more people from trying to download movies for free online. "Internet movie thieves be warned: You have no friends in the online community when you are engaging in copyright theft,"

      I love how the MPAA resorts to terrorism to get it's point across.
      Terrorism - n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

      a) Legal prosecution is not unlawful. In fact, it is the very basis of the justice system that instead of blowing your head off because I feel it is justified, you get a fair and impartial trial according to the laws agreed upon by our elected representatives.

      b) If we are talking about "casual pirate" intimidation, it is purely an economic threat. Quite frankly, I don't see how that could be considered "use of force or violence". If people decided to boycott the MPAA, that would be an economic threat. Is that too terrorism? It could have been considered extortion except...

      c) It is a liability suit. In other words, they do not approach you unless they have a claim that you have inflicted damage against them as the copyright holders. If I demanded money not to turn you in to the MPAA, that would be extortion because I'm not the one holding the claim. Assuming the claim is legitimate, they have every right to ignore it, settle it or pursue it to the full extent of the law.

      Granted, there is a considerable amount of "Settle this or we'll rack up $$$ in lawyer's fees", plus a horribly disproporional valuation of the goods (97 billion dollar lawsuits anyone?) but those are flaws of the US legal system and copyright law. Now some at least here on slashdot feel those are corrupted, but none the less the MPAAs actions are completely legitimate as it is today.

      "(...) this round of cases is aimed at anonymous "John Does" identified only by their Internet addresses."

      Translation: We really have no proof of who downloaded the material but we're gonna goto court anyways

      Translation: Because there's still some shred of privacy left, a copyright holder (read: everyone) can not obtain the identity of an Internet user just by making a spurious claim of copyright infringment. Once they have the court order, they could in theory demand further searches (read: raiding your house) to determine who the actual perpetrator is. So far, the subscriber information has been considered enough to get a "preponderance of evidence". Feel free to provide counter-evidence if you like...

      Kjella

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  5. Solution: Offshore all Torrent sites to Asia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The simple solution would be to offshore all Torrent sites to Asia, in countries such as China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, etc. Such sites don't require that much bandwidth so they can even be hosted in backwards African countries such as Chad, Niger, Congo, etc.

  6. Maximum age for logfiles 24h ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How about the logfiles, are they really there,
    and how old were they ? 24h, 2d or what.

    Dear former admins of supr.nova or else who got raided,

    please publish your policy how you dealt with the logs, and even if they really exist,

    so that your former users can start saving money for a good lawyer or spend the money for a glass of champagne.

  7. Lawsuits by erica_ann · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So let's see here...
    Guns kill people, we sue the gun maker

    The coffee is too hot, we sue McDonalds

    We eat at fast food and we sue the fast food chains for making us fat.

    We record music off the radio onto a cassette tape, it is ok to listen to in the car.
    We download it off the internet, we get sued.

    We watch a movie off a DVD and resell the DVD a place that sells used DVD's we get our money back from buying it and the Motion picture people don't get a second dime.
    We download it and we get sued

    So, does that mean that the ISP's connection we used should get sued too since we used that ISP's connection to get to the internet to Download what someone else put up there?

    Does that mean we should sue Microsoft for making a majority of the operating systems used to DL the files we get sued for?

    Does it ever end or have we just turned into a lawsuit happy world?

  8. A way out? by gaurzilla · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You could download the torrents from a public computer (no login) at your school/library, and then actually perform the downloading at home. How can that be traced back to you?

  9. Walk softly and carry a big lawyer by imunfair · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't think the issue for them is the file sharing anymore - they've just figured out that it's a cash cow to go around suing people who most likely can't/won't mount a successful defense.

    I wonder if someone could counter-sue them for defamation of character or whatever if they were mistakenly sued by the RIAA...

    I bet they'd think twice if they started losing money on suing people. I think if they do goof up they should have to award the person 100 times as much as the person would have had to pay them. You'd see them get real careful about who they sued real fast.

    They don't really have anything to worry about except making money anymore, the government is doing all the dirty work running around strong-arming other countries into cracking down on piracy (Don't crack down.. we won't trade with you...) ... sorry just had to throw that in :)

  10. Oh Man... by thunderpaws · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It will be such a shame to give up watching super compressed ripped video with 2 channel stereo sound, and be forced into paying for a full home theater expierience. Of course Hollywood would never get any cash from me for so many of the movies available anyway. There are quite a few films that do poorly at the box office, but are popular as rentals and downloads. Maybe if Hollywood looked at the download stats along with rental figures, they might find they could generate interest in moving some product sooner onto commercial cable TV. I would enjoy watching something like "With Out a Paddle" with commercial interuptions, rather than paying cash to rent or buy it. Hollywood needs to broaden their customer based rather than push customers away.

  11. knowledge is power by circletimessquare · · Score: 4, Interesting

    here's circletimessquare's method for defeating riaa/ mpaa AND be an upstanding member of the p2p world:

    caveat emptor: this recipe assumes you are in a jurisdiction and dealing with content that is only illegal to UPLOAD (music files, for example, in the usa)

    1. use emule, great program
    2. load it up with porn, gigs of it. you don't even have to look at it. the point is to have something, anything, lots of it, that other people want to download and that you won't get in trouble for sharing (heh, sorry porn makers)
    3. share the porn all the time. you'll have hundreds downloading from you in no time and be greatly appreciated
    4. now, you've suddenly found a strange desire to download hillary duff (!?), so go ahead, search for it (assume you're getting it from someone in sweden and not hurting whoever is making it available)
    4. find the the hillary duff file with the most sources (for quick download)
    5. stop all of your other downloads
    6. suck down hillary duff in a minute or two (heh)
    7. get it out of your shared file immediately

    why does this work?

    the file you are snarfing is so fleeting, and you've crowded it out with a long queue of people waiting to download jenna jameson gone wild volume 2 and other such sleaze, that you're simply never going to wind up being the source for anything on the mpaa/ riaa's radar. it's a drop in a sea of masking porn

    knowledge is power, use it wisely

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  12. Re:Usenet? by rk2z · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seriously though how hard is it to get caught using newsgroups, I assume that while the quantity of people using news groups is considerably less than the number of people using p2p services so that is probably the main reason, but does anyone know how hard it would be to figure out who is downloading what? Wouldn't your ISP have to actively snitch one you? Sounds like a good way to waste company resources and piss off your customers.

    --
    This is a sig, there are many like it, but this is mine.
  13. I have a list... by E8086 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have a list! A list of 57 communists in the State Department. (or was it RIAA/MPAA?)
    err...I mean a list of seemingly random numbers grouped in four sets of one to three numbers separated by periods and I have no way of proving the authenticity and/or credibility of the list or tell you anything about it and only vaguely explain how it was made and I got it. But I will say that you're on it but I won't let you look at the list to verify that you're accually on the list.

    Sure, that will work. Yes, I'm sure enough people who visited those sights did so for legally questionable reasons, but they may have had forums, like slashdot, but also having .torrent files. That would be like guilty through association. or something like that. Showing that a list created by people doing illegal things showed someone visited a website doesn't carry much weight with me. For all we know the operators of those sights could have made a list of every IP in California or Texas and turned that over.

    --
    F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
  14. Keep your own log by BCW2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Show up in court with your computer that has 8 different versions of Linux (all downloaded) with up to date torrent patches. Oh you thought that amount of traffic had to be movies? The counter suit will be for 10x what you tried to get.

    --
    Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
  15. Betrayal by Kaorimoch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The ultimate betrayal. First Lokitorrent collects donations for a legal defense fund, then rolls over for the MPAA and contributes all the logs to them for downloaders. His idiocy costs the community even today. I must admit, its enough to scare people using current sites away if they think they are getting logged for later. Anyway, I hope all the other sites keep NO logs after this event.

  16. I call BS on the "suprnova logs" claim with reason by plasmacutter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Suprnova closed down on it's own. The MPAA/RIAA were never involved. No law in it's hosted nation at the time allowed any of these organizations to lay hands on the logs. The admins responsible destroyed the site and began working on exeem.

    Any questions or comments?

    --
    VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
  17. So what's up with the Tor network? by ZosX · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When will they start allowing UDP traffic so we can get bittorrents anonymously?

    --
    zosxavius photography
  18. Server logs... by purplepaste · · Score: 2, Interesting

    BitTorrent clients periodically ping the tracker (announce url) with statistics that include the number of bytes uploaded and downloaded to/from other peers. Standard web server logs would record this data, as it appears in the querystring. So it would be possible to determine from the logs whether a specific IP had downloaded the complete torrent, how much data they had shared, and an estimate of how long they had continued to seed the file.

    Absolutely stupid that the admins of these sites kept the logs. Suprnova was possibly the largest torrent site on the web, somebody really dropped the ball.

  19. Big log by slushbat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This reminds me of an old girlfriend of mine. Sometime after we parted she got into dealing amphetamines for extra cash. Not being the sharpest tool in the box, she was caught at it after a while. She was so popular with everybody when the police found her diary with dates details and names of all her friends.

    --

    Don't put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.