Grokster Launches Fear Campaign

An anonymous reader writes "Slyck is reporting on Grokster's new scare tactic. Suddenly it's become taboo to head over to Grokster.com. In a transparent attempt to scare potential P2P users, Grokster.com has reinforced its anti-P2P sentiment. The visitor's IP address is clearly displayed in large font on the Grokser's homepage while indicating the address was logged."

Comments

Common Action?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it common to log an Ip address if you run a website? I do it all teh time

Re:Common Action?

[Eideewt]

That's part of why it's so ridiculous.

Re:Common Action?

[schweinhund]

you are both clever foxes.

Re:Common Action?

[melonman]

More to the point, don't you have to work quite hard not to log it with Apache (and I suspect, most other web servers)?

Re:Common Action?

[deprecated7]

I just made about ten thousand requests to grokster.com. Wonder if they logged me. *sad*

Re:Common Action?

[WebCrapper]

I think what they're doing is logging the IP's into a datbase instead of rummaging through the Apache logs (or whatever they're using - I can't hit it from a Gov Network...) but I do agree that its pretty stupid - they're trying to scare the dumb people of the earth - wait, thats most of them...

Re:Common Action?

[wealthychef]

what they're doing is logging the IP's into a datbase instead of rummaging through the Apache logs

The Apache logs ARE a database. Any organized collection of information which is searchable/"minable" is a database, IMHO.

Re:Common Action?

[jdhutchins]

No, it's not much work to not log IP's, all you do is change the log template, one line in the config file.

Re:Common Action?

[werewolf1031]

Wow. Hey, they got these new things now. They're called "sentences".

Score:-1, Illiterate

Re:Common Action?

[h4rm0ny]

You call it scaring people, I call it educating people. It's about time people began to understand how the Internet works, how to use proxies, etc. The more people who are aware of this, the more audience there is for those who say "hey, want to know how a proxy works?" It's these sort of scare tactics that increase interest in things like .

Re:Common Action?

[WebCrapper]

No, I wouldn't call it educating people.

Unless your view of education is skewed to favor completely false information - they're not educating. They're specifically scaring the ignorant. If they put up a sign that says "Almost every website you visit has your IP address - by the way, here is yours: ...." then I would call it educating.

The notice:
The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed
that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal.
Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files
using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is
prosecuted by copyright owners.

There are legal services for downloading music and movies.
This service is not one of them.

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 217.188.2xx.xxx AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.
Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous.

is specifically designed to scare someone. Those who are stupid & ignorant will probably dump their MP3's when they see this notice.

Re:Common Action?

[h4rm0ny]

The first rule of bluffing is not to bluff anything you can't follow through on. Right now, how to use proxies is not common bus and pub conversation. But the more threats like this get bandied about, the more people will be popping up saying - "do this and your safe." You and I probably both know how easy or hard it is to move from IP address to prosecution. Quite possibly we both know how to find good proxies too. This knowledge is not everywhere not because it is difficult to learn, but because few people care. But rubbing people's faces in these issues does my job for me. Next time I talk to someone about privacy, there's a greater chance they'll have an interest.

I view it like the ridiculous anti-drug campaigning. That was very harmful. They say 'Taking an E will destroy your life' and then someone does it and is fine, then they lose credibility when they say that cocaine is harmful. They bluffed, they were called out, people lost respect.

Won't you be my neighbor

[quokkapox]

That's funny, when I visited the site it displayed my neighbor's router's IP address.

Good thing he's a lawyer...

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[trezor]

"The lawyers will have a field day" indeed.

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Gordonjcp]

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 62.252.128.17 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.

Mine and most of NTL's Scottish customers. Haven't these spackers heard of transparent proxies?

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[jZnat]

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 67.184.93.222 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.
Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous.

Oh noes, my IP address! Whatever shall I do???

*** Megahurtz st0l3d by p33r

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[ArcticCelt]

I decided to access the site this way:

"http://www.grokster.com/?thanks_for_your_free_ip_ information_service_could_you_add_some_helpful_fea tures_like_trace_ping_and_dns_info_please"

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[thegrassyknowl]

neighbor's router's IP address

Funny that. It displayed a whole bunch of random addresses every time I went there... hmns. They say you can't hide your IP on the Net, but there exists still anonymous proxies. You just gotta know where to look.

But this will likely scare off all the 1337 h4x0rz that think there "IP stealthing" software they paid $100 from some SPAM for is great.

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[DrSkwid]

ntl nottm. : YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 62.254.0.30 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.
Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous.

Name: nott-cache-5.server.ntli.net
Address: 62.254.0.30

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[jmcneill]

The site appears to be logging your IP address (!!!). Google Cache.

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Dr. Evil]

Who really runs these anyonymous proxies? I mean if I were in law enforcement (and I might be), I would strongly consider creating a website of an anonymizing proxy (which I might have done), put in some text about how illegal actions will not be tolerated (which I think they all do). I would "report" all illegal activity (as advertised), then get paid to investigate it professionally (which I might do).

When I observe people using multiple anonymizing proxies in series, I'd probably create a few more, because especially when being randomized, it's just a matter of time before somebody uses all of my proxies in series for criminal activities.

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Ooblek]

Your geek merit badge is hereby REVOKED!

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[DrSkwid]

why?

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[DrXym]

Mine and most of NTL's Scottish customers. Haven't these spackers heard of transparent proxies?

Which I assume covers web traffic only on port 80. When you start hitting sites with random, proprietary protocols on other ports, the chances are that the other end see your real IP address.

Your only chance of anonymity on a P2P network was if there were proxies set up between you and the powers that be that prevented you from following the trail. This in itself is non-trivial and requires lots of benevolent people to cover your tracks when you use them as a conduit for your illegal activites. Even such people existed (and weren't RIAA plants), performance would go the tubes. Hence the reason that Freenet sucks.

I would say that you're never going to cover yourself completely but it occurs to me (a naive thought no doubt) that a bittorrent-esque protocol could be formulated that made it a lot harder to prosecute people if all clients allocated 15% of their bandwidth for proxying some other data aside from the data requested. To make statistical analysis harder, the data you proxy would not change over time so all intents and purposes you would look like you were downloading it, except you're not.

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[qubezz]

Why only just look at the cache, when you can let Google be your proxy?
http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u =www.grokster.com

(no link because slashcode can't deal with the pipe in the URL....)

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[AndroidCat]

Your lawyer neighbour probably leaves his wireless slightly open so that he can plausably deny that it was him that downloaded all the XXXXX slasher kitty pr0n. "My router was open, it must have been that darn quokkapox next door."

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Fordiman]

Why does this remind me of the cheap-ass old school javascript "You're in the wrong place and we're going to show you your own IP to scare you off" pages from forums and CMSs of old?

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Kitsune78]

Isn't this Tor?

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Lifewish]

"it's just a matter of time before somebody uses all of my proxies in series for criminal activities."

Not really - if everyone uses, say, three proxies at a time and your proxies represent 1% of the available ones (this would be a very generous estimate), that would mean only one in every million connections was only using your proxies. Not really worth waiting for.

Even this isn't strictly accurate as most people with any brains would not pick two proxies with similar IP addresses. This means you'd have to get accounts with dozens of different service providers, probably in different countries, which would make it extremely hard to operate even 1% of the anonymous proxy resource.

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Undefined Parameter]

The juxtaposition of your post and your .sig is entirely too amusing. :-)

~UP

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[hviezda14]

mod parent up!

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Aquatopia17]

That doesn't seem to be the right address anymore, try this instead: http://www.google.com/translate?u=http://www.groks ter.com&langpair=en&hl=en&ie=UTF8

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[MattGWU]

No, and if you are using Tor for P2P, terrible things should happen to you and ideally also your pets.

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[glesga_kiss]

Has this been updated? I'm in Glasgow and it's showing my real public IP. I've not done anything deliberately to bypass NTLs proxies, any ideas what's going on? I've seen other sites list the proxy in the past as my IP (hell, /. blacklisted it once!), perhaps it's just broken at the moment? Curiouser and curiouser...

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Dr. Evil]

Of the proxies out there, very few perform well.

If you're using multiple proxies, delays are killer.

HTTP proxies are an HTTP service, it would not be complex to use inexpensive web hosts to create multiple proxies.

I also don't think people check for "similar" IP addresses, but they needn't necessarily be similar.

I suppose what I'm saying is that if I don't understand the motives of the proxies, I can't trust them at all. It's a silly thing to set up because you know that people are going to use it for illegal activities. The only "legitimate" reason I could think of a person creating such a proxy would be to estblish plausible deniability for their own illegal activities. Do you really want your IP address sprayed all over machines covered in kiddie porn?

Illegal proxies... hacked boxes... worry me too. What if your first-level proxies are illegal? You're spraying your IP address all over those boxes.

Unless you trust your first hop to be secure and trustworthy, it's a dangerous practice.

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Kitsune78]

Reread the parent.. I paid too much attention to the last paragraph and not to the phrase "on a P2P network".. A "WTF?" on my part. I'll go beat myself with a clue bat now. (Fortunately, Fluffy is safe.)

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[ePhil_One]

Ex. The probability that two people share a birthday = 1/365, but the probability that in a group of 60 individuals that there are 2 people that share a birthday is 99.4%.

But the probability is much higher if they are twins. Selection criterea can play a big role, don't forget

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Gordonjcp]

Strange you should say... I've noticed that sometimes sites get my "real" address, and sometimes they get the proxy. Possibly it depends what head end you're on.

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[E 99]

That's funny, when I visited the site it displayed my neighbor's router's IP address. Good thing he's a lawyer...

Well, not such a good thing for you, if you're accessing the Internet through his router!!

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Lord_Dweomer]

IANAL but if you intentionally left it slightly open so that he could "plausably deny" having downloaded certain content on his computer, wouldn't he be in even deeper shit if he was found to have done that intentionally to cover his ass?

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[R4venS0ng]

I'm not sure, but I believe this depends on how the page is designed. If they are doing something on the server side, dynamically generating the page with php or something, they will end up with your proxy address. If they are running javascript on the client side, they can show YOU your real IP address, but they won't really have it. Kinda like those stupid Iframes that would show you your own C:\ drive "we can see your entire hard drive!!! oh noes!!!111eleven".

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Ifni]

Good thing he's a lawyer...

That depends - does he KNOW you are using his router? Because his lawyerliness can cut both ways...

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Alsee]

http://www.grokster.com/?Shop@www.AllOfMP3.com

-

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[pfleming]

Well it didn't show mine. Mine is 10.23.1.75. So looks like I'm safe.

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[qubezz]

Methinks someone at Google reads Slashdot...

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[ArtStone]

Just because an HTTP client is running through a proxy does not mean your "real" IP address is hidden from the web server.

The HTTP protocol has two headers just for this purpose - HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR and/or HTTP_CLIENT_IP which forward the requesting IP to the destination http server. These are arrays of IPs indicating the path in the event the request was proxied more than once.

Of course, the header information is only as trustworthy as the operator of the proxy - but in the case of an Internet Service Provider, there really isn't a motivation for them to hide your IP. Passing through the real IP means an abuse complaint is much simpler to trace back to its origin - rather than having to search through the proxy server's log files to locate the specific request at a certain time.

It also protects the ISP's customers from being globally banned rather than just the specific origin IP (as in the /. example)

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[Lifewish]

You need to to open up google and look into the "Birthday Problem". Then you will see while the probability of catching any particular individual is small, the probabililty of catching some individual is actually much higher than you think.

Ex. The probability that two people share a birthday = 1/365, but the probability that in a group of 60 individuals that there are 2 people that share a birthday is 99.4%.

Dude. I'm a Cambridge university maths undergrad (third year). I've been aware of the birthday problem since I was about 13. I'm now aware of the problem's foundation in elementary combinatorics (haven't got to Ramsey theory yet though). Trust me, it doesn't apply here.

Re:Won't you be my neighbor

[quokkapox]

I could say the same about your sig and username in some perverted mathematical sense, I suppose.

The sig is an obscure reference to a very old album. The post was just me being silly at 3:00 am :)

In the end, we'll all lay the blame for the illegal filesharing and slasher kitty pr0n downloads upon the crazy lady with 9 cats and DSL who lives on the corner with her weird goth grandkids.

In other words, these RIAA scare tactics are meaningless, futile attempts to intimidate their [former] customer base in a world with ubiquitous free wireless internet access.

Stolen technology

[Spy Handler]

Grokster is unlawfully using technology from this site!

http://danasoft.com/sig

Re:Stolen technology

[Eythian]

Not quite. To start with, that site claims my ISP is 'net.nz'. That's pretty broad :) Secondly, the first random quote I got said "No, I am not a meat popsicle". I think it's been shown that the RI/MPAA folks are nothing more than meat popsicles.

Get a sense of proportion

[Linker3000]

Site displays IP address of visitor - world quakes - EVIL EVIL EVIL. Get a sense of proportion.

Re:Get a sense of proportion

[archeopterix]

Site displays IP address of visitor - world quakes - EVIL EVIL EVIL. Get a sense of proportion.

There's displaying and there's displaying. "I know where you live" might range from innocent to beejesus scary, depending on the context.

Re:Get a sense of proportion

[KiloByte]

It's not about knowing the public IP of the machine that issued the http request.
It's about sending lies and propaganda to the uneducated users.

We do know that visiting a site tells them about the IP address -- your, your proxy's or a random TOR server's; and also your browser's ID string which usually mentions your operating system.
But we, users who are knowledgeful about how this works, are not those who are the intended target of this scare campaign. Just as those who know how a washing powder works are not a target of most TV adverts.

People who are knowledgeful about washing powders balk at nonsence spewed in adverts, but this doesn't stop the nonsense from affecting 99% of the society.

Re:Get a sense of proportion

[ScrewMaster]

The context is the same as it has always been for the RIAA. In other words, every content protection measure (for that's all this is) is aimed at the people who are clueless about the law and the technology, and can be easily intimidated by such means. Unfortunately, that means we are talking about the bulk of the population of most countries ... fortunately, because most P2P users are clueless they're pretty hard to intimidate anyway since they have no idea what they're doing.

Re:Get a sense of proportion

[Eideewt]

The part of this that's interesting is not that they know how to display IPs. It's that they choose to do so in an attempt to scare us that's worth mentioning.

Re:Get a sense of proportion

[Eideewt]

Mod parent up! Of course no one here is scared. Think about the clueless masses who don't even know what an IP is. All they'll see is "YOU HAVE BEEN LOGGED FOR VISITING THIS SITE".

Re:Get a sense of proportion

[forgotten_my_nick]

>It's about sending lies and propaganda to the uneducated users.

Agreed and this tactic is hardly new. I remember back when I saw a popup one of them used to say "WARNING YOUR MACHINE MAY BE BROADCASTING YOUR IP ADDRESS!" or something like that.

Re:Get a sense of proportion

[Pieroxy]

People who are knowledgeful about washing powders balk at nonsence spewed in adverts

What?? Do you mean there is no scrubbing bubbles? I just can't believe you. These tiny little guys looks soooo cute!

--
Krazy Kat

Re:Get a sense of proportion

[jacksonj04]

And it's dermatologically tested!

Re:Get a sense of proportion

[RickPartin]

Umm I have to ask. What is a washing powder? *ducks*

Re:Get a sense of proportion

[Gleng]

Once again, a bash.org quote is appropriate:

#136504

<a_passerby> fuck, well, i got an offer to be keyboardist/pianist for a band for "funk music"
<a_passerby> but i dont listen to funk music
<a_passerby> and the guy who asked me is a moron
<a_passerby> "yeah man, i dont use kazaa anymore. you know your computer broadcasts an ip address?"
<a_passerby> thats an EXACT QUOTE
<Everdraed-sleepytime> MY GOD AN IP ADDRESS
<Everdraed-sleepytime> MY HOUSE IS BROADCASTiNG A STREET ADDRESS

Re:Get a sense of proportion

[Anonymous Monkey]

When my big brother was a kid he emptied an entire can of my uncle's shaving cream into the toilet looking for scrubbing bubbles. When he told me there weren't any I emptied an entire can of my dads shaving cream into my bathtub to prove him wrong. I suppose that means the people who believe advertising are mentally between the ages of 3 and 7.

Re:Get a sense of proportion

[hurfy]

SO they are helping the distributors of those infected emails saying the fbi/cia logged your address now, eh? And here i thought they were going legit.....

hehe, get someone to go there then they get one of those infected emails and i bet you get an infection rate close to triple digits ;)

You mean some people don't use gnutella?

[Colin Smith]

Who'd have thought...

Predictable joke:

[tulare]

In Soviet Russia, IP logs YOU!

For real, who are they kidding? This is nothing more than the same cheesball .js that every forums troll uses in their sig to brag about how leet they are. I'm also debating whether or not I think this matters...

Re:Predictable joke:

[pla]

This is nothing more than the same cheesball .js that every forums troll uses in their sig to brag about how leet they are.

True or not, that doesn't mean they haven't logged your IP address.

For both Apache and IIS, they would have needed to deliberately disable logging your IP from the default.

Re:Predictable joke:

[tulare]

Oh, I'm quite sure it's logged - I leave logging enabled on my apache boxes also. And honestly, I don't care: even if they weren't currently being bombarded by mad slashdotters, my browser quite properly sent along a referred-by (because I haven't told it not to) that clearly says I went there by clicking on the story linked in TFA. So, assuming they actually chase down each and every one of the 250K uniques they get this evening and attempt to prosecute, it'd be trivial for me to show that I was not visiting grokster as an attempt to obtain software that's not being used lawfully, but rather as general interest following a news story where it led me.

In other words: what-evah!

Re:Predictable joke:

[Anonymous Coward]

And what exactly is the problem with visiting the site, anyway? On what grounds could they possibly sue you? It's such an absurd idea that I can't think of a legal theory that would sound even slightly credible to a three year old. You didn't distribute copyrighted material, and there's absolutely no evidence that you would even download the program, if it were available, let alone actually use it to illegally distribute copyrighted works.

Re:Predictable joke:

[Vo0k]

I guess it could be done, but through a script of elevated permissions. Either dig in ActiveX, or in internals of Mozilla/Firefox (userScript, extension), or through some kind of smart xmlHttpRequest() headers mangling by bouncing it against some remote host.
There's a lot of things that can be done in JS despite people telling you otherwise (and specs saying so too).

Re:Predictable joke:

[aussie_a]

It can be used to strengthen their case against you if they catch you uploading material to another P2P network. It certainly won't make or break the case, but it does offer another piece of evidence.

Plus it's propaganda for the masses to be used as a scare tactic. Those who know they're doing the wrong thing by infringing on people's copyright, but aren't very technically savy will be scared.

Re:Predictable joke:

[Ugly American]

He's talking about one of these things that some people like to stick in their sigs. Believe it or not, some people really do think that they're an evil h4x0r tool.

Re:Predictable joke:

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Most people use p2p programs to download content without the copyright owner's permission. You can cite as many iso downloads as you want, unless you can show me some real statistics that show 51% of downloaders do so with the copyright owner's permission, I don't believe that.

I agree with you and never said otherwise. The analogy was born of the idea that visiting a defunct web page that once hosted a p2p client was tantamount to downloading a p2p client for the express purpose of committing copyright infringement. Perhaps, if the client were still available from the site and one tried to download it, it might be more like buying a handgun.

Or, to modify your analogy a little, this "evidence" is tenuous because it is similar to presenting as evidence at this same murder trial a blurry video recording (since IP addresses aren't good evidence) of someone who resembles you looking at a broken firearm left over from WW1 that was on display at the side of the road, and then leaving empty-handed.

Re:Predictable joke:

[EzInKy]

Bullshit. Most people use p2p programs to download content without the copyright owner's permission.


Question...how do you know whether the copyright owner has given permission until you download the content and look at the license? Seriously, with all the millions upon millions of files available on the internet how is it even possible to know for certain what can be downloaded legally and what can not?

Re:Predictable joke:

[Shakrai]

I guess it could be done, but through a script of elevated permissions. Either dig in ActiveX, or in internals of Mozilla/Firefox (userScript, extension), or through some kind of smart xmlHttpRequest() headers mangling by bouncing it against some remote host. There's a lot of things that can be done in JS despite people telling you otherwise (and specs saying so too).

Even if you could do it in ActiveX or with an undocumented script it wouldn't be reliable. My machine's IP address is 10.0.0.122. Something tells me that IP isn't much use to RIAA. Of course it would be funny if they filed some John Doe lawsuits against 10/8s or 192.168/16s ;) Have they yet?

It has to be server side to do what they want.

Re:Predictable joke:

[Shakrai]

Actually combine both the js script answer of 10.x.x.x and their server logs and they have machines of lots of guys behind the NAT. Knowing you're 10.0.2.2 behind a NAT gives them nothing. Knowing you're someone behind a NAT of 142.213.23.13 gives them little. Knowing both gives them your precise address.

Yeah, because I wanna see RIAA subpeona the logs off my Linksys NAT Router. Ooops.... the power flickered because I turned the dryer on and the unit reset. Sorry, better luck next time ;)

Re:Predictable joke:

[noamsml]

And I suppose "most users use this program for copyright infringement" is proof beyond reasonable doubt, even if they were proven to have used the program? The visiting of the site says nothing at all.

So..

[Drac8]

If its so bad.... How come they created it in the first place. Looks like Grokster(along with sharman) is more scared of the RIAA then we are of it logging "our" ip addresses.

Re:So..

[aussie_a]

Didn't Grokster enter a lawsuit with the RIAA arguing about whether or not it was doing anything illegal, and was found guilty and that part of the settlement was to display a message on their website?

Is this just an extension of that? Or are they mocking the RIAA?

There's only one thing to do then . . .

[Cyberllama]

Obviously we have to slashdot it. Why is there no link in the story?

Here: for those too lazy to type it out

Grokster.com

Re:There's only one thing to do then . . .

[jZnat]

Also, take a look at the validator results for the site.

Re:There's only one thing to do then . . .

[MonkWB]

Obviously we have to slashdot it. Why is there no link in the story?

Here: for those too lazy to type it out

Grokster.com

Slashdot: Helping Lazy People Be Even Lazier.

Re:There's only one thing to do then . . .

[tritab]

Their server seems to be handling this quite well. Why isn't everyone spamming F5?

proxy?

[qwp]

Awe.. they logged the wrong ip address..
Think if i email them they will fix the logs?

The Warning Is Misleading

[Scarletdown]

Quoting from the Grokster homepage...

The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal.

It should read...

The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material without the copyright owner's permission is illegal.

The way they worded it makes it sound like it is even illegal for people to distribute their own materials that they have created themselves via P2P. So, I guess according to the powers that be, I'm now a criminal for using Gnutella to distribute my own stories and animations that I have created, and to which I own the copyrights.

Of course, it isn't illegal, but the way these warnings are worded can sometimes make it seem that way.

Re:The Warning Is Misleading

[Kjella]

It should read: The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material without the copyright owner's permission is illegal.

Of course, it isn't illegal, but the way these warnings are worded can sometimes make it seem that way.

I'm not sure whether it's malice or the "Well, doh" factor. Is taking a CD from the record shop stealing? I'd answer yes. It could read "Is taking a CD from the record shop without paying the sales price at the check-out counter stealing?", but you normally don't mention all the things you didn't do or don't have. Unless you explicitly mention that you have the copyright holder's permission, my presumption would be that you didn't. That makes it copyright infringement, and is illegal.

Re:The Warning Is Misleading

[MadJo]

"Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is prosecuted by copyright owners."

Are there even authorized peer-to-peer services where I can copy copyrighted motion picture and music files? I thought not.. sure there are download services, but you can't exactly call those things P2P.

Oh and it's not exactly the copyright owners, but just their dogs (RIAA & MPAA) that prosecute the trespassers.

Re:The Warning Is Misleading

[Scarletdown]

Are there even authorized peer-to-peer services where I can copy copyrighted motion picture and music files? I thought not.

If I was musically talented, and decided to write and record a song, that song automatically becomes copyrighted as soon as it's created. The way the warning on Grokster is worded, it sounds like it would be illegal for me to then distribute my own works on a P2P service like Gnutella, since those works are copyrighted. That was the point I was trying to get across in my original post about the warning being misleading.

If the owner of a copyrighted work authorizes his or her creations to be distributed via P2P, then that makes whatever P2P sevice it is distributed on authorized for those copyrighted works. Just because someone releases their work via P2P does not mean those works are no longer copyrighted.

Re:The Warning Is Misleading

[Scarletdown]

It should read: The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material without the copyright owner's permission is illegal.

Of course, it isn't illegal, but the way these warnings are worded can sometimes make it seem that way.

Leaving out the paragraph between those two lines makes your quoting of my original post way out of context. For more info, see my post further down in this thread. And as an example of a legal download via P2P of a copyrighted work, fire up a Gnutella client if you have one, then search for and download a file called otterwars_0001.wmv (Sorry about it being a Windows Media file. A friend of mine on an action figure forum I frequent took, with my permission, the original ogm file I posted and added the sound effects, then saved it as wmv. I'll be reworking it into a different format eventually though, now that I'm finally getting the hang of AVIDemux and mencoder.)

Anyway, that file is a copyrighted work, which I am making freely distributable via a P2P service. The original point of my previous post was simply to point out the ambiguity in the warning on Grokster's site. They state that distributing copyrighted works via P2P services is illegal. If taken to the extreme, that would also make distributing the above little animation that I created also illegal, since it is copyrighted. And that is all I was trying to get at when I said the warning should be changed slightly to reflect that it is only illegal to trade copyrighted works without the copyright holder's permission.

Re:The Warning Is Misleading

[Tommac2005]

The US Supreme Court? Im in the UK, so they have no authority over me. *downloads*

Re:The Warning Is Misleading

[MadJo]

Don't get me wrong... :) because I do fully agree with you..

I just took another portion of the text on that site for further scrutiny.
In fact the whole statement on that site is ludicrous at best.

Re:The Warning Is Misleading

[wagemonkey]

Except that there is an extradition treaty with the US where the UK can be required to extradite a UK national to the US if the US asks them to.
Once upon a time the US had to show some sort of case, not any more.

Re:The Warning Is Misleading

[SpacePunk]

Of course it's illegal to trade your own copyright material. You should be using the services of one of the mighty music or video cabals.

Re:The Warning Is Misleading

[j. william]

then my friends are criminals as well. i've got friends in 2 different local bands, they distribute a lot of their songs for free on dc hubs that're usually just for kids on our campus. the mpaa SO has their ips...and THIS, i haven't been bothered about a web site having my ip since i was 11 years old and using aol. such a juvenile scare tactic.

Re:The Warning Is Misleading

[E 99]

The way they worded it makes it sound like it is even illegal for people to distribute their own materials that they have created themselves via P2P.

Yes, but A) this type of use constitutes a tiny fraction of the use of these services, and B) it's a web page, not a legal document.

Re:The Warning Is Misleading

[Scarletdown]

You are incorrect. Just creating something does not copyright it. You must go through the process of registering it with the USCO.

BZZZT! That is an incorrect answer.

From the Copyright FAQ on the U.S. Copyright Office's web site: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html #mywork

Do I have to register with your office to be protected? No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section "Copyright Registration."

Registering a work with the Copyright Office just gives you a little more legal ammunition should you need to defend your copyright.

This is for works protected in the U.S., of course. The regulations in other countries may be different.

Re:The Warning Is Misleading

[Tommac2005]

They are 'required'. I would hope that the UK would give them the 2 fingered salute!

Well hell. . ..

[Great Beyond]

Damn, I guess they caught me! Well, I guess I'm off to delete my 13.6 gigs of MP3s now.

Re:Well hell. . ..

[ScrewMaster]

13.6 gigs of MP3s now.

That's all?

Re:Well hell. . ..

[egypt_jimbob]

13.6 Gigabytes!

Amateur.

Re:Well hell. . ..

[Vo0k]

Well, they caught ME too! With all 200 or so computers of the intranet (and about 300 users) sharing the same IP!
Oh, and they caught my ISP's proxy as well! Bummer, they will have to search about 10000 users to see who accessed the pages.

Re:Well hell. . ..

[Great Beyond]

Hey, hey - fellas, give a guy a break. I took christmas week off! A man cant hoist the Jolly Roger *ALL* the time, ya know!

Re:Well hell. . ..

[Skreems]

hey now...

most of the space on his server is probably tied up with porn ;-)

Re:Well hell. . ..

[jZnat]

If you were using FLAC, you'd have filled up at least one 80 GB harddrive with legitimate CDs. Or that's just me.

go go "Slashdot effect"

[happy*nix]

SlashDOT 'em
  Log this bucko

http://www.grokster.com/

Give'm hell boys!

Re:go go "Slashdot effect"

[dolphinling]

Server not found

Firefox can't find the server at www.grokster.com.

• Check the address for typing errors such as ww.example.com instead of www.example.com
• If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection.
• If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

Looks like they're slashdotted all right... That or my DNS is messed again.

Re:go go "Slashdot effect"

[killeena]

I wonder if they look at their error logs?

http://www.grokster.com/idownloadmusicillegally.ht ml

Re:go go "Slashdot effect"

[forgotten_my_nick]

I can just see the RIAA taking the logs from that site and saying to a judge "Look! See how many people accessed this site, that is how many are stealing from us!".

Re:go go "Slashdot effect"

[Blackknight]

LIMIT=99; for ((a=1; a http://www.grokster.com/ > /dev/null; done;

I just made a couple hundred requests.

Settlements tend to do this

[Emperor Tiberius]

Am I the only one who thinks the RIAA/MPAA "wrote" that message?

Re:Settlements tend to do this

[LordSnooty]

It's pretty much the same wording as that which appeared on another p2p site that was shut down last year - I can't remember which. But they got busted and something very similar to this message apppeared. Was it demonoid?

"Your Computer Is Broadcasting an IP Address"

[miyako]

This reminds me of those banner ads that have freaked out so many (l)users in my family that bounce around saying "Your Computer Is Broadcasting an IP Address" as though the number is your SSN. I would guess (based on how many people I know who bought the software advertised by those banner ads) that this will probably scare a lot of people into compliance.
Another thing that I've noticed is that a lot of the same people who would be freaked out that a site knows their IP address ALSO tend to not realize that downloading stuff via P2P networks is not exactly legal.
I remember recently (like within the last couple of weeks) my aunt expressed amazment that all of the music downloading they had done was considered piracy. She'd also never heard of iTunes or any other way of buying music legally online.
It might be nice if they at least provided some links to places to legally get music for the people who genuinely don't know. For everyone else the whole thing is pointless anyway.

All youre IP are logged by us

[gtoomey]

Humph, 99% of the world population is outside the USA & could not care less.

Re:All youre IP are logged by us

[Aranth Brainfire]

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/world.html

U.S. 297,835,838
World 6,489,060,591

297,835,838 / 6,489,060,591 = 0.04

(ps, whoa, a "no karma bonus" button...)

Re:All youre IP are logged by us

[ScrewMaster]

Humph, 99% of the world population is outside the USA & could not care less.

And the other 1% is in the USA and still could not care less.

Re:All youre IP are logged by us

[eyepeepackets]

Woah, you're right. Confused by that one, oops. So much for trying to be witty at 2 a.m. *blush* Nighty night.

Re:All youre IP are logged by us

[aussie_a]

Aaaah, but how much of the illegally downloading RIAA content population is outside of the USA? It could be 99%, but it might not be either.

Re:All youre IP are logged by us

[trollable]

Sorry, these numbers are outdated.

Re:All youre IP are logged by us

[Flyboy Connor]

Actually, 96% of the world population is outside the USA. However, 99% of the world population (including the USA) could not care less.

Re:All youre IP are logged by us

[Daytona955i]

Actually it's 0.04589802.... Which rounds up to 0.05 or 5% which means 95% or the world doesn't care, not 99% of the world.

Re:All youre IP are logged by us

[slavemowgli]

Actually, it's about 96%, not 99. Still the lion's share, though.

Re:All youre IP are logged by us

[Busy]

You're forgetting the 80% of Americans who also don't care. (The number may actually be much higher.) So yes, it's safe to say 99% of the world doesn't care.

Slashdot 'Em

[rookworm]

Show them how scared you are!

http://grokster.com/

Re:Slashdot 'Em

[jZnat]

Fun way to Slashdot them:

while true ; do wget -qO /dev/null --no-cache --no-cookies http://grokster.com/ ; done

Re:Slashdot 'Em

[acariquara]

Nitpick...

while true ; do wget -qO /dev/null --cache=off --cookies=off http://grokster.com/ ; done

Re:Slashdot 'Em

[jZnat]

I was just doing what the Debian manpages told me! :(

By the way, I did leave this on (but with true and wget swapped so that when they got slashdotted, I would stop), but I don't know how it turned out.

Gotta love the XXAA

[Great Beyond]

Slightly off topic - I followed the Grokster link to www.respectcopyrights.com, and I *LOVE* this bit of argument for why you shouldnt pirate movies: "And last but not least, you're cheating yourself out of the movie experiance!" What - I'm cheating myself out of sky high movie ticket prices, jackasses who wont shut up during the movie, numbnuts with C-phones, screaming children at an R rated movie, and half an hour of commercials before the previews? And youre trying to convince me NOT to pirate a movie? Yeah, keep it up fellas - youre doing a REAL good job.

Re:Gotta love the XXAA

[m50d]

You forgot the best part - half an hour of "the pirates are out to get you" adverts when you actually paid to see the movie.

I used to have a music teacher who would spend the first half of each orchestra practice complaining about how many people weren't turning up to orchestra practice. Guess how popular her orchestra was?

Re:Gotta love the XXAA

[agraupe]

Just out of curiosity, what does your red button do?

By the way, I also saw the incident that precipitated this sig... very funny.

Re:Gotta love the XXAA

[SComps]

"And last but not least, you're cheating yourself out of the movie experiance!"

Did they *really* spell it experiance??? That might explain a lot!

Re:Gotta love the XXAA

[EzInKy]

"And last but not least, you're cheating yourself out of the movie experiance!" What - I'm cheating myself out of sky high movie ticket prices, jackasses who wont shut up during the movie,..."


This is exactly why I won't take my rather large family to the theater...I'm just too afraid they will upset the other patrons. And besides, it sure is a hell of a lot cheaper to rent a movie and order a half a dozen pizzas to be delivered then to spring for a couple of hundred dollars worth of tickets and stale popcorn. Thank goodness for home theaters because the cinemaplex quit being entertainment for the family long ago.

Re:Gotta love the XXAA

[m50d]

I was thinking of the guy from /Interesting Times/ who Cohen the barbarian says can have some ministerial post, to which his response is something like "The hat with the red button on it?". But the one I have is an "easy button" (I would have included the link but there wasn't space)

Gee!

[SmoothTom]

First thing I did when I saw this topic was to run off to Grokster.com for the first time ever to take a look... :o)

I actually hope about half the planet does. ;o)

--
Tomas

Re:Gee!

[c]

earth:/etc/ppp# cat >/etc/ppp/ip-up.d/loggrokster
#!/bin/sh

exec /usr/bin/wget -O- http://grokster.com/ >/dev/null 2>&1
earth:/etc/ppp# chmod 755 /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/loggrokster

Re:Gee!

[teklob]

I love how right after the giant warning "WE ARE COMING TO GET YOU" it says "In the mean time, please visit our other sites"
In the mean time... like until I am arrested or what?

Re:Gee!

[charliedontsurf]

Don't forget to hold down the shift key (Firefox) while you bang away on the reload button.

Re:Gee!

[creepynut]

Or, if you'd prefer, CTRL-F5

why..

[munkay]

What are they trying to gain by scaring their users away, anyway.
Why don't they just close up shop and be done with it.

Re:why..

[Coniptor]

I've only ever heard this out of the mouths of women on TV but have your heard the phrase, "If I can't have him NO one will!"?

If so I think it should now be obvious.
If they can't be the ONLY one's making money off music then NO ONE can.
Think about it. The internet allows for a new distribution channel.
The RIAA's members *CAN* utilize this new distribution channel instead of
or along side their current physical distribution channel but now they
have to, *OH MY GOSH*, compete on value and price. Those who can now
distribute via the internet via P2P, web, bittorrent, etc... can't just go
distribute physically like the RIAA's members can.
What has the RIAA been doing for years now? Going after ***EVERY*** online
distribution channel until they kill it or bring it over to the dark side.
Selfishness, Greed, and lust for control and power.
The only outwardly virtuous thing (from the perspective of anyone but them) about them in my opinion is their hubris. Great thing about them is they probably have no ability for reflection and so won't ever be able to say hindsight is 20/20.

Umm which computer

[AgNO3]

Ok there are 5 computers in this house with 3 non related people all using the same ip. Who gets the seach warrent served against them? I am pretty sure they have to define what and who. I don't think they can seach all 3 of us because they are not sure which one is doing what. (MAC ADDRESS spoofed by router as well) So umm who gets served?

Re:Umm which computer

[ScrewMaster]

Depends ... if the FBI gets involved they just take every machine they can find, clone the drives before performing any forensics, and if you're lucky they give you a receipt. Even if they do, odds are you'll never see that equipment again (apparently they aren't very good about returning stuff they seize.) So I wouldn't assume that just because you have multiple machines using non-routable IPs that you're even remotely safe.

Re:Umm which computer

[McTrex]

Probably the sucker who's name the internet abo is registered on.

Re:Umm which computer

[rodoke3]

In most cases like copyright infringment, I would assume any notices and charges would be against whosever name(s) is on the account. Of course, once someone sics the FBI on you, everything and everyone is fair game.

Re:Umm which computer

[tsotha]

Doesn't really matter, in the end. When you file a lawsuit it's absolutely free to add names to a lawsuit - it costs them the same to sue one as to sue everyone in the house. That's why in malpractice suits they sue the doctor, the nurse, the hospital, the department chair, the gardener, the bum sleeping on the heating grate... No matter how innocent you are you'll have to pay a lawyer to defend you.

The whole point of the exercise is for you to realize you'll spend the least money by settling, no matter what the facts of the case are. Lawyers like settlements, since they don't have to do as much work and they still get paid.

In the end it costs you minimum a couple grand to be sued even if you win, unless you can prove that was the intent of the suit. Good luck on that one - judges, former lawyers all, are in no hurry to discourage the filing of lawsuits. You'll pretty much need a memo that says "let's sue them until they run out of money, even though we don't have a case." Anyone who can pass the bar exam is too smart to write a memo like that.

In more civilized countries they have "loser pays" systems to discourage this sort of thing, but that's why lawyers donate millions to political campaigns, isn't it?

Re:Umm which computer

[MPHellwig]

Wait, now your router is also a gateway? How mind boggling ...

Re:Umm which computer

[MPHellwig]

of course: http://www.mcdonalds.com/

Re:Umm which computer

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how innocent you are you'll have to pay a lawyer to defend you.

That is a direct result of big government. In the US there are now so many laws, and the system is so complex and ambiguous, that it is literally impossible for an innocent man to defend himself. What's more, it is literally impossible for a man to be 100% law-abiding.

Imagine that -- an innocent man cannot possibly defend himself without hiring a professional to decipher the law. A system where there are so many laws that everyone is a criminal in one way or another. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I reckon we're looking at the holy grail of "justice" for the power elite.

Re:Umm which computer

[geminidomino]

And that's just how the lawyers like it. Yes, even the ones on Slashdot.

"Ignorance is no excuse" from lawbreaking, and yet they make it impossible to be anything but ignorant about the whole of the law.

And they accuse perl coders of "making their own job security."

Re:Umm which computer

[rgoldste]

Actually, the real reason you sue the doctor, hospital, and nurse simultaneously is as follows.

Suppose I go in for an operation, and it goes wrong. I don't know who or why, but somebody screwed up. I decide to just sue the surgeon. We litigate, he wins. Then I find out it was the nurse's fault for not doing something she should've done. In federal courts (and I think most state courts), I can't then sue the nurse for the botched operation. When I sue somebody, I have to make all claims arising out of the same transaction or occurence (here, the operation) or lose them forever. This is actually an efficiency rule, since it prevents one jerk from bringing up dozens of successive lawsuits until he wins. The courts want to hear a dispute and resolve it with finality.

In fact, this rule hurts plaintiffs, since all of a sudden they have to face down a literal army of defense lawyers; they can't divide and conquer.

The "loser pays" system certainly has its merits, but consider one of its main drawbacks: legal stagnation. When a plaintiff might get stuck with the total bill, he's more likely to not sue. Since courts can only decide the cases before them, the law develops and adapts as a result of actual cases; fewer cases means it won't keep up with the times as quickly. Many people here already think the law is too slow to adapt (especially in the tech sector), so a loser pays system would only make things worse in this regard.

Judges are indeed not thrilled with frivolous lawsuits. For one, each new suit means more work for them, and they're not paid by the case. Two, frivolous cases often don't present real and interesting legal issues; presiding over the frivolous case eats into the time a judge can spend on more interesting cases. There's a federal rule against filing frivolous or harassing lawsuits, and courts have great leeway to come up with creative punishments for violating that rule (Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11).

IANAL(yet)

Re:Umm which computer

[novus ordo]

Only thing that would discourage a lawyer would be a "loser dies" system.

Re:Umm which computer

[harl]

What about the states in which you don't have to take the bar to practice law?

Re:Umm which computer

[rgoldste]

That's a good point. I was thinking (and I should've stated my assumption) that the nurse, hospital, etc. were necessary parties to the action, which would make their joinder compulsory under FRCP 19. In my mind, after P sued the surgeon and commenced discovery, he found evidence showing that in fact the nurse was liable. It wouldn't be P necessarily deciding to sue the nurse, but the surgeon bringing in the nurse as co-defendant under FRCP 19, or alternately under FRCP 14 as a 3rd-party defendant. (If the nurse wasn't joined/impleaded, the patient could theoretically sue the surgeon and win, then sue the nurse and win, then the surgeon could sue the nurse and win, subjecting the nurse to double liability). Of course, the court has discretion to compel joinder, and P may have a sufficiently good reason to not sue both parties.

Who knew that reading Slashdot would help me prepare for my Civ Pro exam?

Website knows IP address. Film at 11.

[iainl]

And there was me thinking that there was no possible way for the website to know which IP was requesting page data, and so where to send it.

Shock horror...

Do as I say, just not to me

[mc6809e]

This is the same industry that sells Slap My Bitch Up and Been Caught Stealin then expects people to follow copyright law to the letter.

Hypocrites.

Re:Do as I say, just not to me

[Monkelectric]

The funny thing about Prodigy is that first album was pretty much just the use of a sample cd called 160db IIRC. The link is of course to a reissue as the original is quite old. At the time the prodigy sound was pretty "fresh" (at least in the states), but when you realize you can buy fresh for a few bucks, its pretty weird :)

There is some irony there but Its a bit too early in the morning for me to work it all out.

Re:Do as I say, just not to me

[radish]

Damn fine video though....

Re:Do as I say, just not to me

[RESPAWN]

You forgot System of a Down's "Steal this Album", er, album. I mean, who can blame the consumer when it's the band itself telling them to steal it?

Re:Do as I say, just not to me

[mattwarden]

That is horribly incorrect and you're being disingenuous by even suggesting it.

Everyone knows the song is Smack My Bitch Up.

shaking in my boots

[aendeuryu]

<script language="JavaScript">
VIH_BackColor = "palegreen";
VIH_ForeColor = "navy";
VIH_FontPix = "16";
VIH_DisplayFormat = "You are visiting from:<br>IP Address: %%IP%%<br>Host: %%HOST%%";
</script>
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.hashemian.com/js/visitorIPHOST.js. php"></script>

Yeah, I know, this is client side and the page does it server-side, but do you really think anybody idiotic enough to be scared by this will know the difference? It's not like I'm able to do anything illegal through grokster.com at this point ANYWAY.

Re:shaking in my boots

[dolphinling]

Oh, I just love the fact that they're hotlinking the script of someone else's web server. I just wish so badly it were mine...

Re:shaking in my boots

[Toba82]

Oh, we all do. We all do. So badly.

Re:shaking in my boots

[daaan]

it wouldn't matter, go read the script /* Author: Robert Hashemian http://www.hashemian.com/ You can use this code in any manner so long as the author's name, Web address and this disclaimer is kept intact. */

Re:shaking in my boots

[commodoresloat]

The point is, the person who runs the server can replace that code with whatever code he wants. It would be interesting to see the script post messages about the evils of the RIAA rather than an IP address...

Re:shaking in my boots

[MadCow42]

Nice try with the sig, but even that's wrong. Unless you missed describing the third option, there are only 10 types of people in this world. :)

MadCow.

Re:shaking in my boots

[geminidomino]

I think the joke is that he's one of the ones who can't. ;)

Re:OH NOES!

[dolphinling]

[dolphinling]$ host grokster.com
grokster.com A 67.15.22.17

They might have my IP, but I have theirs too! MUWAHAHA!!

Ooo. Very scared. Look. No. Seriously. I'm scared.

[Phariom]

I think I'll head over to their page now and start clicking the refresh button over and over. I encourage everyone else to do the same.

Re:no, it shouldnt.

[Lord Bitman]

"Taking things which don't belong to you is wrong."

Whoopie

[gbobeck]

Its a damn good thing that I view their website only on a text based browser on a machine I accessed though several ssh sessions.

More seriously though...

BFD. If I remember correctly most web servers can (and do) log IP addresses by default. Hell, my Apache and IIS (both web and ftp) logs show logged IP addresses.

Not that it matters much because IP addresses can be forged, or even better, anybody can use an unsecured wireless AP or wired connection to access a site.

Re:Whoopie

[Eideewt]

For that matter, it's hardly illegal to visit a a P2P website (especially one which now has nothing on it) or use P2P software. That's like trying to scare somebody by telling them you saw them walk past a crack house that's been shut down anyway.

Re:Whoopie

[Mortimer82]

Someone else feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

One cannot forge an IP address for an established TCP connection. Before any actual data is tranferred, the client says hello to the server, the server says hello back, if the client forged their IP address on the initaial connection request, the servers response will simply not return to same computer, the TCP connection never becomes established and no data is ever transferred. The web server software itself is probably not normally even aware of the connection attempt, unless you are using some sort of packet sniffer or firewall to do logging of these kinds of failed connections.

One can however forge IP addresses to some usefullness on some of the other IP protocols such as UDP and ICMP, it is still one way, but the recipient of these packets, who may be getting flooded has no way of knowing where packets are actually coming from, unless they look at every router between themselves and the attacker and manually trace back to the attacker by seeing over which interface the packets are coming from.

There is one way one can sort of forge IP addresses, but this technique is more accurately termed as hijacking. Spammers have been known to do this, they abuse BGP which automaticly queries neighboring routers for the networks they manage, and then use this date to decide where to route packets. Don't know if it still can, or still does happen, but hijackers would incorrectly publish that they managed a block of IPs, then, until someone works out what has happened, those IPs, under certain circumstances could be used for established TCP communcation.

One could also hijack a users connection or computer using malware, or alternatively you could perhaps intercept their DSL line between their house and the ISP. However, when the authorities come to investigate the alleged perpertrator, they should be able to notice some strange activity.

And finally, there are ways to mask, or make it diffuclt to find one's originating IP, this can be done by bouncing your TCP connection through one or more servers. Serious hackers use this technique, so for example, a hacker in Russia connects to a server in Brazil, then from Brazil to a server in Europe, and finally from that server in Europe through to the U.S. server he hacks. While this is still backtracable by the authorities, it requires co-operation between multiple authorities in different countries which can be quite difficult and time consuming to organize.

Re:Whoopie

[TallMatthew]

Someone else feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Ok.

One cannot forge an IP address for an established TCP connection.

Wrong. You need to be on an L2 net between the forged sender address and recipient address, at which point it's trivial. But generally more trouble than it's worth.

There is one way one can sort of forge IP addresses, but this technique is more accurately termed as hijacking. Spammers have been known to do this, they abuse BGP which automaticly queries neighboring routers for the networks they manage, and then use this date to decide where to route packets.

No. I don't know where you get the term "hijacking" and spammers don't have any claim over this technique. Injecting more-specific routes into BGP to divert traffic away from where it should be going is a drastic maneuver that can take any site on the web down. It requires having access to a router at a major NAP or within a network that peers with other major networks without filtering. That's not simple and I don't know that it's happened very often, if at all.

One could also hijack a users connection or computer using malware, or alternatively you could perhaps intercept their DSL line between their house and the ISP.

I don't know what you mean by "intercept their DSL line". You can't tap a DSL line.

And finally, there are ways to mask, or make it diffuclt to find one's originating IP, this can be done by bouncing your TCP connection through one or more servers. Serious hackers use this technique, so for example, a hacker in Russia connects to a server in Brazil, then from Brazil to a server in Europe, and finally from that server in Europe through to the U.S. server he hacks.

"Serious hacker"? I don't know what a serious hacker is. There are so many compromised boxes out there, on cable modem / DSL networks, in universities and other institutions, that anyone who wants to cover their tracks and knows the right people can simply hop from machine to machine. I don't know if this is what you mean by "bouncing your TCP connection"; that seems to imply your packets are hopping from one place to another, when in fact you're logging into one place, then to another, then to another, etc., the final connection being made from a machine which is not your own and any trace efforts requiring the participation of every machine in the path you created to get there.

The way you forgot to mention is the use of an open proxy that doesn't log, of which there are dozens out there.

quick followup...

[aendeuryu]

Here's another weird one. Check out the pdf that shows all these violaters' identities on the www.respectcopyright.com ad.

They ask at the top, "Is this you?" and I'm buggered if I can answer that, because I've never had an IP that ended in ".xx.xx".

Re:quick followup...

[TallMatthew]

I love that.

We're the MPAA. Our profits are slipping. What's the problem?

Maybe $10 for a movie ticket, $7 for a tub of popcorn, $5 for a soda or candy bar is a little much. Nah, couldn't be it.
Maybe laser pointers, cell phones and chatty kathies are ruining the experience. Nah, couldn't be it.
Maybe big-screen TVs make watching movies at home more enjoyable. Nah, couldn't be it.
Maybe showing 15 commercials before the movie starts is a little obnoxious. Nah, couldn't be it.
Maybe we're putting out absolute drivel that no one in their right mind would sit through. Nah, couldn't be it.
Maybe it's the online pirates, sucking down our profits over high-speed Internet connections. Yes, that's it! That's why no one goes to the movies anymore!

Call the lawyers!

Re:quick followup...

[rufty_tufty]

I'd call your's the most insightful post I've seen this year, so let me try to add to it:
I'm trying to persuade my local theatre group to learn from what is making the movies popular - Think about it:

Food: Forget the nice bar we have and the other food treats we sell at our theatre - sell popcorn and plasic cheese on cardboard nachos and quadruple the prices!
Trailers before the main show - we can do that, drag in the people who are rehearsing next door and get then to do a 5 minute preview of the show they're reheasing.
Content - stop looking for challenging new plays and instead do sequels to the shows we did last year!
Acting - forget about choosing actors based on their skills, as long as they're good looking we'll keep the audience interested with our lighting effects and superb set designs.

After all, Hollywood is a multi billion industry, so we should be emulating them!

Re:quick followup...

[Warshadow]

We're the MPAA. Our profits are slipping. What's the problem?

Maybe $10 for a movie ticket, $7 for a tub of popcorn, $5 for a soda or candy bar is a little much. Nah, couldn't be it.
Maybe laser pointers, cell phones and chatty kathies are ruining the experience. Nah, couldn't be it.
Maybe big-screen TVs make watching movies at home more enjoyable. Nah, couldn't be it.
Maybe showing 15 commercials before the movie starts is a little obnoxious. Nah, couldn't be it.
Maybe we're putting out absolute drivel that no one in their right mind would sit through. Nah, couldn't be it.
Maybe it's the online pirates, sucking down our profits over high-speed Internet connections. Yes, that's it! That's why no one goes to the movies anymore!

Well you can really only blame "Hollywood" for the ticket price and the shite movies they put out.

The rest is the fault of either the theater or the idiots attending the movie.

Re:quick followup...

[axelbaker]

Uhm the MPAA doesn't have slipping profits ... its the hollywood box offices that have slipping profits. The MPAA doesn't care if you got to the cinema because DVD's are still selling like hotcakes (Mmmm ... sweet golden syrup). They just like to claim they are loosing money so they have an excuse to complain. It's the RIAA thats in a downward spiral because they still think they are selling sheet music to traveling bands of musicians.

No counter... :(

[interactive_civilian]

One can only wish that they had had a counter on the page. It would have been interesting to see how many hits they get from this story.

I visited the site for the first time, which I'm sure is like many here. Good thing their logs are now probably spammed with useless IP addresses. :D

Re:Apparently...

[Anonymous Coward]

We traced the call... He's calling from inside your house!

Why I "pirate" movies

[quokkapox]

I "pirate" movies and music and television shows in order to better choose which ones to go see in the theatre, and which ones to buy... My dollars are being guided to better purchases by Adam Smith's inevitable, invisible hand.

I'd happily download torrents of my favorite shows which happened to include commercials. I might fast forward through them, or go to the bathroom while they're playing, but I might do that anyway if they were on TV.

For media companies, this is a wake-up call that's getting louder and louder. Get with the program, or go out of business. You choose.

Telnet is fun

[Guspaz]

They're hosted at ev1servers.net, meaning they're hosting this on a budget dedicated server.

The domain also resolves to s1.avres.net and avres.net.

They are running SSH-1.99-OpenSSH_3.6.1p2 on port 22.

They are running an internet-visible MySQL 3.23.58 server on port 3306.

They have port 21 (FTP) open and accepting connections, but disconnecting a second later

While SMTP (port 25) is closed, they are running an unidentified POP3 server on port 110.

They are running Apache 2.0.46. The box identifies itself as running RedHat, most likely RHEL3.

Amazing what you can find out by telnetting to a few common port numbers, no?

Re:Telnet is fun

[davek]

log this

#!/bin/bash

while /bin/true ; do
wget -O /dev/null http://grokster.com > /dev/null 2>&1
printf "\r%d   " $i
i=$((i+1))
done

Re:Telnet is fun

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped this script when the counter matched my IP address! :-)

Re:Telnet is fun

[Blakey Rat]

The only part you're missing is the part where you explain why I should give a crap what software the server's running.

Re:Telnet is fun

[Guspaz]

You don't, maybe somebody else does.

Maybe somebody is going to head over to http://www.securityfocus.com/vulnerabilities and notice that there are forty or fifty vulnerabilities listed for the software that I was able to identify versions of. Maybe somebody will be kind enough to notify the people about their insecure box. But since there isn't any contact info directly on the site...

Re:Telnet is fun

[Guspaz]

SSH is responding though. When I try to connect I get a login prompt. You're right that they've change the behaviour of port 21, though. The rest seem to be the same ones I reported as being open, IIRC, but I don't recall the exact precise contents of my post.

Makes things easier for me...

[skyman8081]

grokster.com is much easier to type than whatismyip.com. A real timesaver, that is, if I hadn't already memorized it. Thanks anyway RIAA!

Re:Makes things easier for me...

[Tiram]

Now the others in the office are giving me funny looks, thanks to your making me laugh out loud. Thanks!

Re:Makes things easier for me...

[Kijori]

Doesn't always get it right, but http://norp.com/ is fairly easy to remember. (Friend of mine found it while trying to write porn.com backwards...)

Re:Makes things easier for me...

[BushCheney08]

I take it your friend is dyslexic?

Re:Makes things easier for me...

[Kijori]

Nope. A fool.

Re:Ooo. Very scared. Look. No. Seriously. I'm scar

[Skythe]

We should organise a 'slashdot the RIAA' day.
What are they gonna do, sue us?

any connectino between grokster and groklaw?

[putko]

Is there any connection between grokster and groklaw?

I got confused by this story. What is/was grokster, anyway?

Re:any connectino between grokster and groklaw?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groklaw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grokster

Re:any connectino between grokster and groklaw?

[MichaelSmith]

Is there any connection between grokster and groklaw?

The word "Grok" was coined by Robert A Heinlein in his book "Stranger in a strange land", which was incidently the result of a private joke between RAH and L Ron Hubbard.

I think Hubbard's go at the joke has come to be better known in the succeeding years.

Re:Ooo. Very scared. Look. No. Seriously. I'm scar

[Eideewt]

I question how effective you'll be. Even if a large number of people did it, that page doesn't have a large amount of content to use up bandwidth.

From TFA

[renrutal]

"The IP address, or Internet Protocol, is the unique numerical identifier assigned to each computer connected to the Internet."

It's hardly unique, except if you consider it to be 0-dimentional.

Many computers can have the same ip at different times. Also many computers can have the same ip at the same time within the same network. Indirectly, in hacking cases, even two computers can have the same ip at the same time and not really be in the same network. Well, even one computer can have some different ips assigned to it... or even many networks connected to the same computer... I could go on multiple people using the same computer... or many.

Ugh... this is funny, now even I don't know if I'm being insightful, informative, or if I'm trolling some modern physics.

Re:From TFA

[jZnat]

They're trying to push IPv6 so that your IP might mean something!

IP address

[BadassJesus]

Regular ISP provides local IP space for its clients and they SHARE public IP addresses that are assigned dynamically. So your IP address may be shared with hundreds of other people, making it a very diluted evidence.

Re:IP address

[Secrity]

"Regular" ISPs log a user or account identifier, start time, and end time for each session that uses a dynamic IP. When an ISP is presented with a subpoena or other valid court order from a law enforcement agency that includes an IP address, date, and time (with proper timezone information); the "regular" ISP returns the name of the user or account along with every other piece of information it has regarding that user and/or account to the law enforcement agency. The information from "regular ISPs" is not diluted at all just because dynamic IPs are used. ISPs vary in how they respond to subpoenas from other than law enforcement agencies.

That's it!

[Anonymous Coward]

We're suing all of Scotland!

You can pay us in whisky.

Your fiendly RIAA lawyer.

Re:That's it!

[leuk_he]

Be afread, very afraid.

You ask for wiskey buy may end up with sheep or haggis.

    AC, with an logged ip.

Re:That's it!

[Ixne]

Nitpick...

"Whisky" = "Scotch"
"Whiskey" = American whiskey & bourbon

In case of /.ing

[jZnat]

Coral Cache

Nice to see that they're checking the X-Forwarded-For header...

Re:I can't believe the press isn't all over this!!

[Vo0k]

Well, mr Governor, I have this little piece of truth about you. How much is it worth to you?

Re:OH NOES!

[Anonymous Coward]

This literally made me laugh out loud. Thanks!

Re:Ooo. Very scared. Look. No. Seriously. I'm scar

[Phariom]

I wasn't referring to the usage of bandwidth; I was referring to them having to expend futile effort sorting through thousands...no...millions of IP logs that just keep showing over and over.

ha-ha!

[bazorg]

It doesn't work! they can't see me! they don't know I'm at 127.0.0.1 ! ha-ha!

Er, I'll spoof my ip

[eericson]

Anyone else feel like firing up hping2 and hitting them with a bunch of UDP based HTTP GETs with randomly spoofed IPs?

Let them log 127.0.0.1, I'd love to see a John Doe warrant with that as it's IP.

Re:Er, I'll spoof my ip

[bbrazil]

UDP based HTTP GETs

For those who don't know HTTP is a TCP procotol rfc2616, so this won't work.

must get new lenses

[bazorg]

I actually read evilservers.net ...

Re:must get new lenses

[AndroidCat]

Close, ev1 is short for Evil One. As for servers, well, it's a cookbook.

Re:no, it shouldnt.

[aussie_a]

"Taking things which don't belong to you is wrong."

No it's illegal. Whether or not it is wrong is up to people's personal beliefs. What is right and wrong isn't carved in stone, but instead decided by each and every person.

Re:OH NOES!

[lazarus2004]

w00t!! that was l33t! u t0tally pWn3d th3m!

Actual Supreme Court Decision

[kf6auf]

According to the actual Supreme Court Opinion: One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribution with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device's lawful uses.

Thus, the fact that Grokster designed their services to be copyright-infringement-capable and advertised it as such is what resulted in their being liable for copyright infringement. While the website is not strictly incorrect, none of it is anything new from the MGM v. Grokster (2005) case.

Google can take the blame

[Anonymous Coward]

by using Google's translate tool, just translate from English > English and you can use Google as a proxy. Works well when a site is blocked at work.

Grokster, by Google

Re:no, it shouldnt.

[bit01]

"Claiming ownership where none exists is wrong."

Modern IP cartels sound like the royalty of the middle ages who thought they had the divine, and legal, right to rule.

Just because modern IP cartels have managed to game the legal system doesn't mean they have the moral or ethical right to control what others do.

---

Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.

A Much more effective approach

[User 956]

Isn't it common to log an Ip address if you run a website?

It is. Wouldn't their approach be much more effective if, in addition to logging your IP, they also installed a rootkit on your machine? That's legal, right? (And maybe they could make it so you're violating the DMCA if you remove it. Excellent.)

Re:A Much more effective approach

[ChairmanMeow]

Wouldn't their approach be much more effective if, in addition to logging your IP, they also installed a rootkit on your machine?

They could place a suspicious ActiveX control on the page. I don't know if they could install a rootkit through that, though. And, it wouldn't affect non-IE browsers.

That's legal, right?

Probably not, but that wouldn't stop them.

Imbiciles

[ds_job]

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 62.254.0.48 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.
Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous.

Hmmmm. I hope that they try to 'catch' me from this IP address. Especially as it is one of the transparent proxies of my ISP which is located in a seperate city to the one I reside in. To give them a fighting chance of 'catching' me, my name is David Smith, I was born in Lancashire in the 1970's, I'm 6'0" tall, I have long dark brown hair and a beard, I'm slightly overweigh because of Christmas (yeah right) but most importantly I'm not scared of rudimentary, ill-thought-out script gimmicks from another continent.

I'll expect the black helicopters to descend on me later today then...

Re:Imbiciles

[ds_job]

Obviously I qualify as an imbecile too as I can't spell imbecile. :-/

Re:Imbiciles

[cgenman]

I think you just described half of Slashdot.

Re:Imbiciles

[mattwarden]

"my name is David Smith, I was born in Lancashire in the 1970's, I'm 6'0" tall, I have long dark brown hair and a beard"

Bachelor #2: If you were an ice cream flavor, which would you be and why?

Re:Imbiciles

[Itanshi]

no kidding, i have the same hair x_x *considers shaving now* that it tho meh this is dumb, say, there an alternative p2p for people who want to share their own homemade content?

Re:Imbiciles

[cobras2]

Yeah, the other half has short dark brown hair and is clean shaven :D

Article is wrong

[AviN456]

From the article:
The effort is incredibly weak, much like Sharman's attempt to dissuade Australian users, as it's little more than some JavaScript code that can be implemented into any web site. Dozens of scripts, even those usable by forum users, can easily display an individual's IP address.

The actual URI of the web page is http://www.grokster.com/index.php
It is not JavaScript, but is in fact php (i suspect they use the $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] php variable, but I can't be sure.)

Re:Article is wrong

[jZnat]

Well, they aren't using register_globals as far as I can tell. :(

Can I Have Your Attention Please

[Emporerx]

Folks, I'd now like to direct you to a wonderful little extension for firefox called, "Reload Every". You can set it to reload every second. You can go to the extentions section of spread firefox and do a search on 'reload every'. There are two results. It is the second. Now, some would use this power for evil, but, noone here. Right? Wow, I wonder how a bunch of slashdotters using this at www.grokster.com would go? Hmm. Not much, but I bet the logs could get messy.

Hitting refresh is so 20th century.

Don't have to much fun at www.grokster.com now.

Re:Can I Have Your Attention Please

[jZnat]

Or you just put `while wget -qO /dev/null --no-cache --no-cookies http://grokster.com/ ; do true; done;` into the console, run it, and wait a while.

Re:Can I Have Your Attention Please

[Godwin O'Hitler]

Into my WINDOWS console?

In a couple of years

[t_allardyce]

There will be a law requiring users (even home users) to ensure that their hardware is installed by 'qualified engineers' who can certify that there are no open access points especially on wireless networks. This will be similar to the wae you need to get your car, or maybe gas/electric systems certified. It will be against the law to share an IP address with anyone unless you can guarantee certain conditions such as being able to prove which real person has access at any moment. You will need more ID to open an ISP account, no more free dial-ups! and obviously you will have to have your ID scanned at internet cafes. In the interests of freedom (to make more revenue from lawsuits) many P2P networks will be allowed to operate, however they will need to provide full logs with all sorts of court mandated fields, and they'll need to store copies of every file shared across their network so its content can be used as evidence. Im surprised this isn't law already - there are so many cards you can play on this one - pedophilia, terrorism, piracy, hacking, stopping free 'communist' internet access...

Re:I can't believe the press isn't all over this!!

[User 956]

you want the truth? you can't handle the truth.

/Get on your tippy toes America. You must be this tall to ride the TruthCoaster.

Grokster IP log + Slashdot Effect...

[Jack Schitt]

Scare-tactic sponsored by Grokster by logging your IP and mentioning it: 18 unique clicks
Slashdot story posting that mentions said scare-tacting: 182,395,483 unique clicks in 8 hours
102mb log file and an $8000+ bandwidth overage charge: priceless

There are some things scare-tactics can do. For everything else, use Google.

(I'll laugh when they try to open that log file in notepad before checking it's size...)

Billions of defendants

[The OPTiCIAN]

My question is...
Will they sue China?

Honeypot?

[CrazedWalrus]

Me too. Odd thing is, they've logged the fact that I saw a page telling me that my IP has been logged for viewing the page. I've never used Grokster, and only have a topical idea even of what it is.

Apparently, viewing Grokster.Com in a web browser may bring the *IAA to my door if the web server logs are used to generate a hit list. Never mind that I've never downloaded a thing from Grokster.

Sounds like the site is being used as a honeypot -- and not in a very intelligent way, either.

Re:Honeypot?

[TheSpoom]

Exactly what would they sue for?

Criminal intent to infringe copyright?

Cause clearly a) the website is reading your mind, and b) said thoughts are illegal in the US.

Re:Ooo. Very scared. Look. No. Seriously. I'm scar

[jrcsnet]

What I find hiliarous is that the only people likely to even be visiting their site are us, the ones that are sitting here having a good laugh at it. Doing a search for any term that is remotely descriptive of what a person wanting to use a P2P service would look for doesn't return any links to grokster.com in the first couple pages, so I highly doubt they'll actually scare many.

Ahhh... they're coming to get me :-/

[muffen]

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS XXX.88.133.115 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED. Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous.

Oh noes, anyone else had to go wash their pants after reading that?

I do feel sorry for my proxy though, there's like 10K people using that poor thing, I really hope my proxy doesn't get caught by the xxAA.

Re:Ahhh... they're coming to get me :-/

[Large Green Mallard]

And yet.. you've still blanked out the first 8 bits of the IP address ;)

(PS: Is it 213? :)

Re:Ahhh... they're coming to get me :-/

[muffen]

And yet.. you've still blanked out the first 8 bits of the IP address ;)

No it's not 213 (it's not even 3 digits, I just always blank out things with 3 X's), plus the IP belongs to an ISP, I just blanked it out for added effect (showing how scared I was) :)

Re:Ahhh... they're coming to get me :-/

[Tatarize]

And yet you only blank out 8 bits of the IP address? And even then the number number of possibilities is well below a 256 if you knock out the restricted ones that are highly doubtful. You just made it remotely inconvenient. You have no fear (of anybody who wants to do 2 minutes of work to find you).

Re:Ahhh... they're coming to get me :-/

[Large Green Mallard]

Some stalking suggested you were from Sweden. A perl script doing host on everything between 1. and 254. showed 213. as the only one with a .se address ;) My mistake

Re:Ahhh... they're coming to get me :-/

[muffen]

impressive :=)

You are correct, I am from Sweden, I do not however live in sweden (haven't for quite some time now, think 9 years or so) which would be why you got it wrong :)

Re:Ahhh... they're coming to get me :-/

[muffen]

See my reply to the previous post.

Re:Ahhh... they're coming to get me :-/

[Large Green Mallard]

193, Denmark? :)

Re:no, it shouldnt.

[Lord Bitman]

perhaps you haven't met my friend Context. Allow me to introduce you.

Re:no, it shouldnt.

[Lord Bitman]

It was in quotes for a reason. Try clicking "parent".

Re:no, it shouldnt.

[Lord Bitman]

no, but if it were your opinion that such was the case you certainly wouldnt need to say "without mother nature herself's permission" when talking about it.

Well, in that case....

[barefootgenius]

http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/
Has unix source but I prefer the Kommute version.

http://antsp2p.sourceforge.net/
Java version.

http://kommute.sourceforge.net/
KDE version.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=133178
Windows "nice" version.

Mashboxx

[User 956]

Am I the only one who thinks the RIAA/MPAA "wrote" that message?

Grokster sold out all their assets to Mashboxx (including their domain).

Mashboxx itself is a sham RIAA front company that pitches itself as "the world's first P2P application with content authorized by major record labels". Which is a total load, considering they don't even have a client available to the public.

So, in short, this is all nothing but a marketing ploy driven by smoke, mirrors, and fear. What else were you expecting from the RIAA?

Re:Mashboxx

[One Childish N00b]

I love the way they have 'Designed by ElipseNetworks' at the bottom of the page, like we're supposed to bow in wonder at those 1337 designers who came up with a centred table filled with text on a white background - oooh, they have red paragraph titles, gotta employ them for our next great website design!

This post designed by One Childish n00b! For all your circa-1990's bog-standard net fare!

Re:Mashboxx

[qzulla]

From their site:

The Mashboxx application is expected to begin testing shortly and potential beta testers are currently being enlisted at the Mashboxx web site, www.mashboxx.com.

I wonder how this is working out for them. The date is June 2005 and nary a link to any software.

I think this may explain it:

Domain Name: MASHBOXX.COM

Administrative Contact:
Pacific Northwest Software
Thompson Hayner
11 Outlook Ridge Drive #208
Revere, MA 02151
US
Phone: 425-218-6779
Email: thayner@pnwsoft.com

Correct me if I am wrong but MA is not in the Pacific Northwest. I think someone took a wrong turn somewhere.

qz

Re:Mashboxx

[shark72]

"Mashboxx itself [mashboxx.com] is a sham RIAA front company"

Mashboxx is, of course, Wayne Rosso's company. Wayne was the pirate's best friend back when he was Grokster's CEO and when he later ran Optisoft, which provided Blubster -- he was not shy about defending the rights of P2P applications to exist, and regularly told the record companies to fuck off, in so many words. He even founded a trade group of P2P application providers called P2P United.

Providing a P2P application that's compatible with the rights and wishes of copyright holders does not make one a "sham RIAA front company." Yeah, yeah, all those greedy copyright holders are the enemy, and entertainment wants to be free, and all that, but Wayne saw the writing on the wall. At least he's having some measure of success -- remember when Kazaa printed those full-page newspaper ads to try to get the record company's cooperation in migrating to a permission-based P2P network? Kazaa wasn't a "sham RIAA front company," either.

For years, Mr. Rosso was trying to separate the concept of P2P (highly efficient file sharing) from the current primary application of P2P (piracy); now he's doing something about it.

Mac address

[commodoresloat]

Do you even know what a mac address is?

Isn't it 1 Infinite Loop; Cupertino, CA 95014?

What on earth?

[trabisnikof]

(not work safe) Porn ads? Good to see from such a quality company

Re:What on earth?

[Ilgaz]

If any evil lawyer reading this page: That image is really some evil porn thing.

Sue them if you can!

Re:What on earth?

[Barbarian]

That porn ad. also tries to forge a security certificate for localhost.localdomain, no doubt to try to get around image blocking.

Cast iron defence against IP logging

[Zog The Undeniable]

"Someone has been leeching from my WiFi connection". AFAIK there is no legal requirement to use encryption or hide your SSID.

Of course, if the feds find 100GB of mp3, warez and barnyard love on your hard drive this might not work.

Come and get me

[TallMatthew]

I'm at 127.0.0.1 ...

Re:Come and get me

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! Prepare to be DOS'ed into oblivi@#$%!@& [NO SIGNAL]

Re:Come and get me

[Shimdaddy]

Psh... old man. They can come and get me at ::1 ...

Correction!

[blorg]

And the other 1% is in the USA and still could not care less.

The 1% in the USA, strangely, could care less.

Re:Correction!

[cgenman]

The 1% in the USA, strangely, could care less.

I don't know. Those Americans are the best in the world at caring less. They have just about reached the theoretical minimum of caring. Of course, they might not be trying that hard right now because, well, they couldn't care less.

Re:Correction!

[ScrewMaster]

As an American myself, a citizen of a nation that gives more than any other in history to other countries and people in need, I could take exception to that remark. But ... frankly, I don't know you from Adam and couldn't care less.

Re:Correction!

[cgenman]

As an American citizen too, I think we can do better.

A: we give more foreign aid than any other country, but not per-capita or as a percentage of GDP.
B: a lot of those "gifts" include military aid. This aid does far more harm than good.
C: a lot of American foreign aid is required to be spent on American companies and contractors... basically all of our military aid, most of the aid we're sending to Iraq, the Saudi aid, etc.
D: most Americans couldn't point to Iran on a map. Very few of us travel the world, keep up with international news, or could describe any structure of government besides our own. Many can't even describe our own with any accuracy.
E: We elected a leader who claims that "I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves."

Sigh. You just don't get it.

[mumblestheclown]

Those of you bragging about your 'anonmous proxies' just dont get it. If you're smart enough to know what an anonymizing proxy is, then the warning on the website was not directed at you.

For the 1000000th time, people: ANTI PIRACY MEASURES ARE ABOUT REDUCING THE RATE OF PIRACY, NOT ABOUT REDUCING IT ABSOLUTELY IN ONE FELL SWOOP. The most technologically savvy pirates will likely be the last (or least likely) to fall, but if a relativey simple measure such as grokster's (however noble or ig the intentions might be) might reduce P2P use by a few people, then some measure of success has been achieved. You might argue that while 100 people fewer might use P2P because of this, 1000 new ones might have signed up anyway, but this is irrelevant to the basic argument, which is that this is a war of attrition, and so both sides use weapons of attrition meant to wear down the other side, not win in one blast

Re:Ooo. Very scared. Look. No. Seriously. I'm scar

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

You do are aware computers are very good in sorting and removing duplicate data? How long do you think it would take to write a script to remove the duplicates?

My turn

[future assassin]

http://www.grokster.com/?I_buy_my_cds_used_from_pa wn_shops_and_save_money_instead_of_giving_it_to_th e_rich_music_artists_my_ip_address_is_24_83_69_104

Re:My turn

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.grokster.com/?because_of_your_silly_bus iness_practices_i_no_longer_buy_new_cds_from_major _american_record_labels_instead_i_buy_secondhand_c ds_and_imports..._you_have_my_ip_address_would_you _like_my_street_address_too?_you_could_come_visit_ and_i_could_put_my_foot_up_your_ass

Re:My turn

[pfleming]

Huh. All those links seems to point to the same page. What's up with that?

Re:My turn

[johnlcallaway]

Nice .... I added a auto-reload tab into Firefox so that it reloads this URL every 15 seconds.

They aren't

[blorg]

That was just a (poor) example used in the article. The example needs to hotlink to a php-generated JS as it needs the PHP to fill in the IP address server-side.

Grokster.com are filling in the IP address server-side and serving it out as plain HTML (check the source.)

Re:Ooo. Very scared. Look. No. Seriously. I'm scar

[MPHellwig]

Given that they still are obsessed by medieval property logic, about 600 years I guess

Busting Google

[Jugalator]

Ha, busted!

Washing Powders

[NSash]

Now I want to hear more about washing powders!

Re:Washing Powders

[nelsonal]

I'm no chemist, but as I understand it laundry detergent/washing powerder is basically just a water softening agent. Soft water is a better solevant and removes foreign particles from your clothing better than hard water.

Re:Washing Powders

['nother poster]

Well, not really just a water softener. It's usually mostly a surficant. It lowers the surface tension of the water which lets it get into even smaller crevices between the threads. This allows the dirt to be either disolved or simply washed away to be suspended in the water. A water softer is usually added because the minerals in hard water can keep the surficants from functioning well.

Re:Washing Powders

[KDR_11k]

Doesn't it also include tensides to allow fat to solve in the mixture or does that fall under "water softener"?

Re:Washing Powders

['nother poster]

No. That is usually done with a caustic material like washing soda (sodium carbonate, not to be confused with sodium bicarbonate). The washing soda turns the fats into old fashoned soap, which is, ta da, a surficant. So you have a surficant in the detergent, and make a very small amount of other surficants with the washing soda in the detergent.

Isn't that how people get sued?

[mosb1000]

But doesn't the RIAA use IP logs to file their John Doe suits and track down file sharers? Just because you know how to use a proxy doesn't mean that everyone else uses one. Consider this a kind of public service announcement. They're just saying that you are probably not as anonymous as you think you are, and that you may be vulnerable to lawsuits by the RIAA or MPAA.

What Aholes

[TallMatthew]

Does anybody remember how it used to be?

I remember creating a list of CDs I wanted. They'd be prioritized. Some CDs would have multiple songs on them I liked; I'd buy those first. Others would have only one song.

Every once in a while, I'd splurge. I'd create a "mix tape", which was in fact a cassette tape with several singles recorded on it (yes, I'm old). This would require plunking down $15 on several CDs with only one song on it I like. Creating a mix tape like that would require somewhere in the neighborhood of $300. That was the only option to get those singles I enjoyed.

The RIAA had it good for years by monopolizing the means of distribution. Then the Net stepped in and I haven't forked down a penny for a CD in years. It started with FTP servers and search engines (remember share ratio?), migrated to Napster, then to the other P2P networks that operate without a central authority. I don't feel a speck of a guilt. The RIAA has been paid in full, as far as I'm concerned. In fact, they owe me.

This loathesome bullying is typical of an industry that was jerking the public around for years and now is getting it back in spades. I'm glad. Let us eat cake.

Re:What Aholes

[Politburo]

Does anybody remember how it used to be? .. That was the only option to get those singles I enjoyed.

I assume you mean the only legal option? Even so, it's not completely true. If the songs were truly 'singles' then they were also released... as singles! Which means you didn't have to buy the whole album. There's also the chance they were released as a B-side.

If you wanted to go quasi-legal, you could have grabbed them off the radio (if that particular song got airtime). To go whole hog, you could have taken the track from a friend's copy of the album.. that double tape deck more than paid for itself.

Re:What Aholes

[radish]

That was the only option to get those singles I enjoyed.
No. If you wanted singles, you could have just bought the singles. If you wanted album tracks, well that's another story.

The RIAA had it good for years by monopolizing the means of distribution. Then the Net stepped in and I haven't forked down a penny for a CD in years. It started with FTP servers and search engines (remember share ratio?), migrated to Napster, then to the other P2P networks that operate without a central authority. I don't feel a speck of a guilt. The RIAA has been paid in full, as far as I'm concerned. In fact, they owe me.
What crap. I like cookies - but those asshole cookie manufacturers have the distribution mechanism locked up so I have to buy an entire pack at once! I only want one! Bastards! Now I just use my extra-large pockets in the supermarket to make sure I never pay for another cookie ever again. Screw them!

Sound absurd? So do you. Look if you don't mind ripping off the artists, engineers & producers who make all that music you like so much thats fine by me - it's your morality after all. But don't use these lame excuses to try and justify it. Say it how it really is - you found a way to get stuff for free and you don't want to pay for it anymore.

Re:What Aholes

[hackstraw]

you could have taken the track from a friend's copy of the album

That is what he did, but in 'net speak he got it from "a friend of a friend" to remove himself once more from the actual "friend".

Works wonders.

Re:What Aholes

[alienw]

I could see your point -- if the artists actually made money by selling CDs. In reality, the artist has to pay for the recording and mastering costs and then try to recover the investment from the royalties (which are something like 5% of sales). If we estimate that 20% of the cost of a CD goes to the store, and 10% for manufacturing and distribution, the publisher gets about 65% of the retail price for doing next to nothing, and the artist does not generally make money at all.

Re:What Aholes

[TallMatthew]

No. If you wanted singles, you could have just bought the singles. If you wanted album tracks, well that's another story.

I know what a single is. So I guess because I like a song on an album that's not the popular choice, then I should fork over and shut up, huh?

I like cookies - but those asshole cookie manufacturers have the distribution mechanism locked up so I have to buy an entire pack at once!

It's more like buying a 12-pack and getting one Heineken and eleven National Bohemians. If you want to get twelve Heinekens, you'll have to buy twelve 12-packs. Yes, they could sell you a 12-pack of Heineken and yes, they could sell you a single. But they don't. You have to buy the 11 Natty Bos to get the Heinken. Would you do that? I guess you would. Otherwise all those poor bottlers would go hungry.

Look if you don't mind ripping off the artists, engineers & producers who make all that music you like so much thats fine by me - it's your morality after all.

Thank you for that gesture. If it gives those artists any pleasure to know that I'm enjoying to their music when I otherwise wouldn't, that's cool. If all they want is my money, oh well. At least I'm happy. Doo do doo.

Send a message to the RIAA

[danielrendall]

I wonder if anyone is checking the logs on this? If so, perhaps they'll have spotted my request for http://www.grokster.com/?riaa=a+bunch+of+twits Part of me things it would by amusing to write a script to store song lyrics in their logs which I assume would be a violation of someone's copyright - The Smiths' "Paint a vulgar picture" springs to mind for some reason. Another part of me thinks I should get on with something more productive...

Hey that isn't my IP!

[tod_miller]

503?

Seems a little too short for my liking. ;-) wangeded.

I would love to be in the court

[SmallFurryCreature]

Lawyer: Your honor, we want you to award us 1 million dollar in damages for copyright infringement against the defendant.

Jduge: Indeed, do you have any evidence of this charge?

Lawyer: Of course, the defendant visited a website!

Jugge: and?

Lawyer: AND we logged his IP!

Judge: and?

Lawyer: and? your honor I don't understand, we got his IP!!!

Judge: yes but what do you alledge the defendant did.

Lawyer: he visited our site!

Judge: and downloaded copyrighted material wich the original copyright owner did not give him permission to do?

Lawyer: wha? He visited our site!

Judge: That is not actually illegal you know. In fact I can see only one criminal act and that is your site records personal information without a privacy statement.

Lawyer: ah.

Judge: Indeed.

Re:I would love to be in the court

[CaptainTux]

Actually, recording someone's IP address isn't illegal and doesn't require a privacy statement (at least not in the USA). If so, every single webserver in the country would need a privacy disclosure statement as ALL webservers record the IP address of their visitors. The only difference here is that this site spews it back at you.

Eat some bandwidth

[dagnabit]

#!/bin/bash
URL=http://www.grokster.com
for ((i=0;i<2;i++));
    do wget $URL -q -O /dev/null
    i=0
    echo -n .
done

Since the site doesn't do diddly squat...

[Godwin O'Hitler]

...what exactly is the point of their warning?

"There are legal services for downloading music and movies.
This service is not one of them."

Dead right it isn't.

Not legal, not illegal, not music, not movies, not downloads, not any kind of service - bugger all in fact!

Oh No!

[Dunbal]

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 196.40.12.129 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.

Oh My GOD! My IP has been logged! I'm in COSTA RICA. Come and GET me, idiots...

Re: Won't you be my neighbour

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people in the US persist in spelling the word "neighbour" as neighbor?

Maybe we just don't want u in our neighborhood.

Indeed, You just don't get it.

[SmallFurryCreature]

I know already what will happen. Because it already happened. One of my friends from work already called me with this message. After I was done laughing I explained to him that this is bullshit, showed him why (by guessing his ip from his visits to my site) and told him that he should be using better p2p programs anyway.

I know plenty of people who know next to nothing about computers but who are told by their friends/co-workers were to go. How did you learn about napster? I heard about it from a friend. And I spread the news.

This war of attrition is not happening. P2P use is rising.

Do you know what those stories do about P2P in the news? Educate millions to the existance of P2P. A recent dutch program highlighted the use of Freenet for downloading childporn. Eheh, thank YOU Nova. Wanna make a bet that Freenet saw a spike in the number of downloads that night?

Nah, the MPAA/RIAA are fighting a loosing battle as long as they keep alienating legit buyers. I can watch a ripped movie on any device (like my PSP) and not see any bloody unskippable fbi warnings (I am dutch the fbi got about the same power of me as it got over terrorists (None whatsoever)) and boring ads.

Give us cheap content free of hazzle, iTunes shown the way. Yes the MPAA/RIAA seem to only want to raise the prices on iTunes not extend it with their back catalog.

Noob users who might be scared by this go to their friends who know and tell them the real deal. Have you turned someone to the piracy side today? Resistance is futile, you will be torrented.

Porn pays for the Grokster.com lawyers?

[Teun]

Ha they just showed how this is subsidised!

Never trust a XXAA lawyer...

So which law do they prosecute me under?

[Conor Turton]

As common with alot of UK ISPs, I'm in the UK but on the IP address pool for their EU backbone link so therefore have an IP address that resolves as a German one.

So what law do they try and prosecute me under, British, German or European?

And would a judge manage to keep a straight face as the **AA tried to convince him that they hold any importance outside the US?

Not JavaScript

[SpaceAdmiral]

It's funny that the article claims the site uses JavaScript to display the IP. Viewing source indicates that it's something server-side, not JavaScript.

. . .PHP, in this case.

But seriously, who doesn't log IPs?

[Pac]

Everybody keeps access logs, at least for a while (ans "a while" may be a couple of minutes or an hour or weeks). Most sites just don't display it back in bold letters, because no one needs to waste space with such an obvious piece of information. And, as said elsewhere in the thread, it may scare the occasional 11 year old girl, everyone else knows how to hide this kind of information.

Stop overreacting

[Aumaden]

Put yourself in their place. The **AAs are breathing down their necks. They may know their logs are going to be subpoenaed and this is a way to add a few tons of hay to the needlestack.

OK, let's swap

[The_DoubleU]

Now you have my IP and I keep on downloading your IP.
Everybody happy.

So now they're running...

[slapout]

...a free IP display tool? How nice of them. :-)

Re:What press?

[Kitsune78]

Your kidding me, right? You think that people, press included, have only known about NSA unwarrented wiretaps for the past year or so? A quick search of google groups shows usenet postings about Eschelon and Carnivore going back to the early 90s. The problem is that when you try to explain to most people what the ramifications of programs like these are, they generally either sort you into the 'tin-foil hat' crowd, or feel that if it does exist, it is 'Necessary'. What we are experiencing now is main stream coverage of old news. Then again, most people don't grasp the concept that their cell phone is a radio transmitter and not equivelent to a wired telephone, either.

someone should sue grokster

[spammyd]

Since grokster got sued and taken over by a front company for the RIAA. Someone should sue them and confiscate their computer to make sure that the ip logging code isnt stolen from someones site. That message looks suspiciously like code i wrote that logged ip addresses.

So you want to know my IP?

[knarf]

Here it is:

mkdir grokster && cd grokster;while :;do wget http://grokster.com/;sleep 1;rm -rf *;done

Good luck with this information. Hope it is useful

Re:OH NOES!

[hcoder]

"There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't." I think you mean 10 types of people in the binary world...

Re:no, it shouldnt.

['nother poster]

Hell, they codified this in a national pasttime. I believe the goal of Australian Rules Football is to drink a lot of beer, and then perpetrate as much mayhem as possible on the opposing team members, especially by whacking them in the head with their elbows. I saw more broken jaws when I used to follow that sport than anywhere else.

No way

[Axess Denyd]

Wait, you mean Linux can be used for EVIL?

The circle strives to complete

[DannyO152]

So, this makes RIAASCOSource, found in the convenient RedHat box.

Re:The circle strives to complete

[DannyO152]

Take 2: So this makes (RIAA (Mashboxx (grokster.com))) a customer of the largest suc... (scratch that) licensee of SCOSource, and the brand found in the convenient RedHat box.

Oh dear

[megla]

Jesus christ that's a weak effort. As has already been pointed out, it makes no allowance for proxy access. Obviously they're not really logging, but few simple lines of PHP (or equiv in any other language) can pull the real IP from a non-anonymising proxy:

<?php

if ($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] == NULL) $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
else {
$source = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];
$pattern = "/\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}/";
preg_match($pattern, $source, $matches);
$ip = $matches[0];
echo "Proxy detected (" . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] . ")<br />";
}

echo $ip;

?>

Scare Tactics With Their Bandwidth

[Khyber]

reloadevery plugin, custom reload time of 1 second. Let's see how well their scare tactic works when their budget server goes belly-up and over their bandwidth limit and they have to pay huge costs. 'Cuz personally, if I make my own material, I can distribute it as I see fit, because it's MINE.

grokster.com

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

== grokster.com ==
#REDIRECT [[whatismyip.com]]

Mod Article Down

[the eric conspiracy]

-1 Retarded

Message to Grokster.com

[blueapples]

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 67.15.22.17 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED

RIAA's head legal counsel

[RecycledElectrons]

The RIAA's former head legal counsel now teaches at DBU (Dallas Baptist University) near Dallas, TX. His address is now public. Am I the only one planning a picket? Am I the only one planning a small claims court suit for civil compensation for a criminal act? (terrorism) Andy Out!

Oh that silly thing called reality.

[James_Aguilar]

Actually, only about ninety five percent of the world's population is outside the US.

Grokster is wrong..

[Joseph_V]

My IP is 10.0.1.101

Bad assumption

[Otto]

I would say that you're never going to cover yourself completely but it occurs to me (a naive thought no doubt) that a bittorrent-esque protocol could be formulated that made it a lot harder to prosecute people if all clients allocated 15% of their bandwidth for proxying some other data aside from the data requested.

You're assuming that they need evidence that you are actually sharing the file. Unfortunately, so far all they've ever produced is an IP address with a claim that somebody at that IP was sharing "filename_of_something_that_looks_like_a_movie_or_ music.ext".

If they actually had to prove that the user was sharing the file itself and not just on this list they got through some unspecified and magical means, then they'd lose every case.

Re:Bad assumption

[DrXym]

If they actually had to prove that the user was sharing the file itself and not just on this list they got through some unspecified and magical means, then they'd lose every case.

True, they could threaten someone and some might pay out. But if the number of people supposedly sharing a song doubled or tripled, yet most of them weren't at all, you can sure as hell bet that they'd soon be up against numerous class action lawsuits in no time. They would soon have to pick their fights extremely carefully.

The problem with such a scheme (which I still admit is naive), is convincing people to use it since conceivably you could be unwittingly be downloading stuff far worse than music, not to mention using up some bandwidth. If it were to happen, it would have to be such that people have no idea what they're downloading. Data should be sent encrypted and then discarded, cached temporarily or decrypted / saved by the client. While the bandwidth hit sounds like a sucky idea (though not compared to Freenet), it might have unexpected benefits such as increasing the number of peers and thus improving download rates.

From the actual article...

[FrankBlues]

"YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 12.345.67.890 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED. Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous."

Anyone else notice that 12.345.67.890 is an impossible ipv4 address?

Copyrighted code and legal standing

[geek2k5]

I wonder if any of the sites use copyrighted code without the permission of their owners. I seem to recall a US Senator who sold his own copyrighted music on the web and, until it was brought up in several tech forums, failed to pay for a legal copy of the web software used to sell the music. I also wonder if the RIAA has ever run into instances where the IP addresses they get from the ISPs are inaccurate due to things like migrating hardware. MAC addresses are tied to hardware and not all hardware is permanently attached to a given computer. While I favor intellectual property laws, I do NOT want corporations armed with lawyers hounding normal citizens who may be clueless about what is happening with their computers.

Movie experience

[geek2k5]

With a family of five, I find that the so called movie experience is vastly overrated. If we go to a first run theater, our expenses would more than pay for the deluxe edition of the DVD package usually associated with the movie. If we go to a budget theater, the comparative expenses are better. But by the time it reaches the local budget theater, the release of the DVD is weeks if not days away. We've found that waiting allows us to get more enjoyment for the dollar. Being the first person to see the latest and greatest movie is trivial from our point of view.

Re:Movie experience

[rynthetyn]

And this would be why, as a child I saw a grand total of three, maybe four, movies in the theater (one of which being Return of the Jedi). When we were bored with nothing better to do, my parents would take us to the planetarium, which offered a much more affordable family membership and was educational as well. Umm, whoops, I think I just proved why I grew up and turned into a geek, maybe I shouldn't admit that out in the real world...

Re:OH NOES!

[bmalia]

I think you mean 10 types of people in the binary world...

Naw, the 11 is pretty funny. "Three types of people.. those who can count and those who can't" binary style.

Genericized IP address

[geek2k5]

I would guess they wanted to make it a 'generic' address to avoid incriminating the innocent. It is also the numbers one through '10' if '10' is represented as 0.

Oooh! I'm so scared!

[anorexiclexicon]

As if it's not uncommon to log IP addresses to begin with...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

unauthorized p2p????

[HelloKitty]

quote: " Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files
using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is
prosecuted by copyright owners."

Since when do p2p services have to be "authorized" and with whom do they have to "register" with to become authorized?

p2p services themselves aren't illegal, it's the users doing illegal things.

Re: Won't you be my neighbour

[cayenne8]

"Why do people in the US persist in spelling the word "neighbour" as neighbor?"

For the same reason that we don't spell color as colour, and labor as labour....

It looks funny the other way...

Re:Internet Population

[E 99]

World population is hardly relevent anyway. 95% of the world population is outside the U.S., but only 55% of the active Internet user population is outside the U.S. Not that I'm bragging or anything.

Intent and the Grokster site

[geek2k5]

If they try something like that they had better be able to prove intent. At this moment the site itself doesn't appear to have any access to any copyrighted material that the RIAA is concerned about. Furthermore, I have a reputation for NOT downloading music because I respect many of the artists that create the products. Of course, most of the people I buy music from are small label artists who aren't getting rich from what they are doing. These are the people that are hurt the most from those downloaders who do not buy the music they have been sampling.

Web Company

[geek2k5]

The registered owner of the PNWSOFT.COM domain is in Sammamish, Washington. For those of you who don't know the area, Lake Sammamish is in the Seattle/Redmond area. Of course from what I've found using WHOIS, there have been recent changes to the information. Oddly enough, there is a Pacific Northwest Software domain PACIFICNORTHWESTSOFTWARE.COM whose owner is based in Oregon. There could be some trade name issues if one organization or the other got up in arms about it. Given the nature of the web, the owners and contact points of a domain don't have to be in the area that the domain name specifies.

Musicians are not all millionaires

[geek2k5]

Which musicians are you talking about? The megastars who make milllions a year or those who make music and barely get by? If you want to boycott the music industry because of those musicians that earn lots of money, go ahead. But do consider buying music from those musicians that put out a good product but aren't part of a big label. Those are the ones that both benefit and suffer from downloading. They benefit when people discover their music through downloading. They suffer when people fail to buy their music because many of the downloaders are too cheap to pay.

Re: Won't you be my neighbour

[martian265]

By the by, I'd also like to mention that some 60% of the English speaking world speaks the American English dialect compared to only about 15-20% that use the Commonwealth English dialect.

By this, I meant native speakers of course. I wasn't able to find a reliable source for non-native speakers, which I would imagine is a bit more even due to British colonization, pidgins, creoles etc.

Re:Ooo. Very scared. Look. No. Seriously. I'm scar

[Syrrh]

You assume they're actually taking action based on their http logs. Well, besides just running traffic stats and deleting them.

Kind of defeats the purpose of scare tactics if you actually follow through with the threats.

Not that they *could*, but the whole stunt is a stupidity contest to begin with.

Free speech varies per jurisdiction

[tepples]

The only "legitimate" reason I could think of a person creating such a proxy would be to estblish plausible deniability for their own illegal activities. Do you really want your IP address sprayed all over machines covered in kiddie porn?

Child pornography and wanton infringement of copyright are not the only reasons to want to cover your tracks. Some countries don't even guarantee the meager protection for free speech that the United States does. For instance, it's not easy to lawfully criticize actions of the Chinese government from within the People's Republic of China.

Optimize for the common case

[tepples]

[A host's IPv4 address is] hardly unique, except if you consider it to be 0-dimentional.

In the case of a user on residential broadband, a single cable or DSL modem will have only one publicly routed IPv4 address and keep that address over a period of days to months.

Slashdotted

[808skeptic]

Looks like this plan backfired...servers are now slashdotted.

hmm!

[EK103]

This is niiice... their servers are much faster than ipchicken.com's. Whenever I want to check my ip I can head to grokster.com!

That is for logging

[SmallFurryCreature]

It is different when you use it for commericial purposes. Such as building a database of people to sue for money.

I am afraid that the moment you collect information other then purely for information you do get involved with privacy laws. Or at least in holland. Even something as simple as getting people to give their email adress for a contest needs a privacy statement. That the law is rarely enforced means nothing.

NET Act

[tepples]

More to the point, go read the court decision in US v. Lamacchia

The NET Act was enacted expressly to reverse the LaMacchia precedent.

I did my bit :-)

[donak]

Sounds like a fun waste of time, maybe we should all go there daily! Then again, I don't do P2P ... do you think they'll know the difference?

Re:Ooo. Very scared. Look. No. Seriously. I'm scar

[srussell]

I think I'll head over to their page now and start clicking the refresh button over and over. I encourage everyone else to do the same.

I've been running this since I started reading the Slashdot posts:

while true
do
curl 'http://www.grokster.com/' >& /dev/null
done

For kicks, you could use the suggestion of another Slashdotter and change that URL to:

http://www.grokster.com/?thanks_for_your_free_ip_ information_service_could_you_add_some_helpful_fea tures_like_trace_ping_and_dns_info_please

Re:Actually no...

[The Wicked Priest]

"Alacoha"?

Oh, you must've got this from Wikipedia... I never heard of Alacoha, so I Googled it, found a link to Wikipedia's article "1995 in film" as the only result. Clicked there, no "Alacoha"; checked the History page, and read, "removed what appeared to be a made-up entry ('Alacoha') from the top-grossing list"; edit done last night, probably by someone who read your comment here. Gotta love it.

Anyway, I've seen all the 1995 flicks, but not the 2005 ones (several are waiting in the pile), so I can't compare them myself. But "Apollo 13" got much better reviews than "Madagascar", and "Toy Story" is surely more loved than "Revenge of the Sith". I won't deny your general point, though: there were plenty of good movies this year. Just not good enough to make me sit through the dreadful theatrical experience.

Let's correct this, slhall we?

[Travelsonic]

The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal. Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is prosecuted by copyright owners. There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.

This seems more appropriate (not to mention accurate):

The U. S Supreme Court has not declared the use of file-sharing services illegal, nor the trade of files that do not violate copyright laws to be illegal, only that the promotion of file-sharing products for copyright infringement, or violating copyright laws by sharing copyrighted works without permission to be illegal. Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files in a way that does not constitute fair use is what is illegal, and using peer-to-peer services is not illegal and unless it is being used illegally and can not by any means be prosecuted by copyright owners in this context. You people really think we are dumb? There are legal services for downloading music and movies. These services can and are one of them for independent artists the industry has shunned for it's own power hungry greed trip.

It's true

[CarpetShark]

I'm at 127.0.0.1 ...

Yep, that nicely summarises the entirety of the RIAA's enemies.