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MPAA Caught Uploading Fake Torrents
An anonymous reader writes "The MPAA and other anti-piracy watchdogs have been caught trapping people into downloading fake torrents, so they can collect IP addresses, and send copyright infringement letters to ISPs. The battle between P2P networks and copyright holders seems to be a never ending battle. It will be interesting to see how much the anti-piracy groups practices change once they begin begin selling movies and TV shows legally on bittorrent.com."
If you are part of the MPAA and you download a torrent from someone else just to prosecute, technically isnt the MPAA breaking the law as well??
( I know off topic slightly )
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
IANAL but surely if the downloads they provide aren't copyright protected content and are in fact junk then you're not actually breaking any law because you're not actually downloading copyrighted content.
Contrary to that, surely if it is copyrighted content then the MPAA is making the content available to you. Is it really illegal to download something from the copyright owner if they make it available publicly with no license to agree to prior to download? I'd have thought they'd have a hard time arguing that they didn't intend the content be distributed in the case that they place it readily available on a file sharing site. What's more, even if the MPAA did use this argument then surely if this became precedent then it would have the side effect of destroying any court cases against file sharers as those sharers could merely claim that they didn't intend the files they were sharing to be distributed much like the MPAA might in this scenario?
I just don't see how this really has any legal grounding, however law is a funny thing, particularly in the US so I could be wrong here!
Attempted copyright infringement?? Is that even illegal?
Even in this case would it really be viable evidence? I'm not sure by observing the swarm that you can ever tell that these people have actually received the full file and in that case, with many media formats all you're left with is a file full of random bytes, at what point does it become copyright infringement? I was under the impression in the cases of file sharers they've actually had to demonstrate having downloaded an entire file to prove infringement, merely receiving half a file isn't enough as half a file may quite often be nothing but useless data. Would the same apply to observing a swarm? i.e. being unable to tell if the full file is actually ever being received by anyone?
That doesn't stop the cops from posing as 13-year-olds online to nab child predators. I'm honestly not sure how that works in court. How can one be convicted of soliciting a minor when there is no minor? Very similar to the fake torrent scenario.
If the MPAA is knowingly uploading something to you then they are giving their OK to you to accept it.
This is no different than if I hand you a dollar (or a fake dollar). I am agreeing to give it to you.
The MPAA is in full control of the content or fake content. If the MPAA has agreements with record labels not to give anything away for free then that is the MPAA's problem.
Does anyone recall the media hubbub surrounding the release of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones? That the movie had been released onto P2P networks before it had even hit the theatres in many countries? Incontravertible evidence that something _had_ to be done about this scourge of filesharing!
A cynic might think it an interesting situation that a dutiful journalist would have to admit to committing a potential crime just to verify the report. A less determined one might just settle for the query results, with the less technologically adept ones being completely convinced: ignorant of the fact that no hard coupling exists between a file's name and its content.
When the claims were tested for veracity by secret anonymous squirrels, none of the files found on the Gnutella network contained any footage of the film.
They're not doing this to find content, they're doing this to pre identify suspects for crimes they may commit in the future. Profiling and it's being done by a private party.
produce a copyrighted work licensed for free use by anyone except the RIAA/MPAA. upload copyrighted work to every p2p network on earth using filenames which make it appear to be a copyrighted work which the RIAA or MPAA control. wait to get sued. when sued, show that in fact they were the ones who violated YOUR copyright. rinse and repeat ad naseum until those motherfuckers get sick of their own medicine.
I have'nt brushed up on torrent EULA's recently but the owners of the servers should add a clause that uploading false files is illegal and against the TOS and this might allow the Torrent companies to come back at the MPAA. Just a thought.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
ianal - but there are a few things that i often see repeated in these discussions that are, to my understanding, a bit incorrect. i could be wrong, but i don't think so.
copyright protected content: anything that is written in the us is copyrighted at the time of writing. even if it doesn't have a registered copyright it still technically enjoys copyright protection (thus the mail it to yourself, leaving the envelope closed after arrival, to create dated evidence of copyright). this, i would think, would also make the random junk that they distribute copyrighted.
entrapment: it seems like it, but...entrapments is only a criminal-law defense, and has very strict rules for how it can be used as a defense. and of course in civil lawsuits entrapment just can't happen.
isp's often don't care: even if there's no law you violate, the mpaa can still complain to your isp, who probably doesn't investigate himself, just disconnects you.
the last thing is something i'm shaky-er on
assumed permission: if something is posted on the internet you have to assume you have permission to download it. all the images on someone's photo-blog are copyrighted, but you have to download them to view them at all.
so assuming i'm correct on all of that, then it logically *should* follow that any torrents that you know are being seeded and/or tracked by the **aa should be fine to download, and quite possibly fine to redistribute based on the way the **aa should know the bittorrent technology works.
in any case though it would probably have to wind up in court, and lets face it, by the time you're there you've already lost allot of money.
Has anyone here used PeerGuardian (a P2P IP blocker, with automatic whitelist updates)? Do programs like these actually work at blocker MPAA sniffers, or do they simply provide a false sense of security?
Entrapment only covers law enforcement. Private parties can basically do whatever they want.
At any rate, "when a person is predisposed to commit a crime, offering opportunities to commit the crime is not entrapment, a widely held misconception similar to the idea that police officers must answer questions truthfully if they are asked the same question three times, or that they must say "yes" if asked if they are a police officer." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
IANAL and i think it's ridiculous but i always remember the 'mens rea' principle of law from my small amount of book-learnin'; if you have a guilty mind (ie you _meant_ to break the law), you're just as guilty as if you actually _did_ break the law. and i guess in america it wouldn't be hard to make that stick. :-)
Common law is rrelevant here. These cases are tried under Federal copyright law. The claims are for statutory damages, which require that there be an actual infringement.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Isn't it like leaving in a public place an envelope with "This envelope contains $100 that doesn't belong to you" written on the outside, but just filled with Monopoly money, then deciding to spy on/arrest/sue everyone who looked inside?
Or, given that piracy is illegal (for suitable values of "piracy" and "illegal"), it's more like catching people peeking inside the brown paper bag in the pr0n store entitled "Underage nymphos at it like knives with farmyard animals".
Or something.
This is by no means my specialty, but the difference is the camera and the degree of separation. With pornography, you're not paying someone to have sex with you, but more to the point, they're being compensated for their performance on film. Pornography is very light on the drama and the acting, but technically it's filmmaking. They choose to have sex because the script requires it, and they choose not to fake it because the producers obviously wouldn't like that, but they're not being paid for sex. The fact that there is a certain legitimacy to the whole operation (a real company and production studio) lends it credibility.
Interestingly, though, I wonder if paying two people to have sex with each other is technically illegal. Again, this isn't something I work with, but it seems to me that since the parties having sex aren't exchanging money, it's not actually prostitution. I could see a number of loopholes to successfully prosecute this, but it raises an interesting question.
That analogy doesn't work for downloading, though. Their servers aren't just sitting there with files on them. They are actively sending out data to people who have requested it.
Yeah, there is that. Plus the fact that many people aren't actually recieving any files at all, or the file is a just solid screen color.
Nothing is perfect, least of all an analogy.
if you are sitting on your porch with a bag of money, and I walk up and ask for some, I'm not stealing if you reach into the bag and hand me some of it.
Of course it's just cut up newspaper really, which might well annoy you, because you were actually expecting money, money you had every reason to believe was not mine to give, but you asked for it anyway.
No, there's no reason to sue/arrest you, but you might still be deserving of having your parents sit you down and scold the living bejeesus out of you.
Please bear in mind that in the past I've made it explicitly clear that I am, at the least, supportive of Jefferson's view that copyright has no place in a free society.
I'm not saying this is the way I think it should be, just trying my best, however weak and feeble that best is, to explain how things are.
KFG
By publicly seeding the network with false data they're creating a very effective beta test for denial of service when the roles are reversed and the MPAA needs P2P to sell video.
Strikes me as an idea just a tad short of vision, and the irony is of course that them doing it now without negative effect creates precedent. If in doubt, keep digging?
Insert
I recently received a message from my ISP that they had received notice alleging I was sharing copyrighted material from my connection, specifically "Mission Impossible 3" - a spanish version no less - over the eDonkey network. It showed the IP I have indeed had assigned to my home network for the past month or two, and was indeed using eMule. HOWEVER, I was only using it to download software, and in NO situation did I download ANY movies, especially anything in spanish! I know that it sounds totally typical, but I wouldn't be complaining if I got reported for something I actually did.
Getting reported for sharing something I've never even had is bullshit, though, regardless of what OTHER questionable things I had been doing. It's not a stretch to claim that their incorrect copyright infringement notice leans on illegal because of the possible harm that can come to me as a result. My internet connection could be disconnected at my ISP's will, forcing me to switch to a crappier ISP with higher prices (we have TWO broadband providers here), and my reputation could be harmed due to the false allegations made.
If the MPAA is the copyright holder, they can distribute it however they want. Them offering a torrent would not be infringement.
You downloading it from the MPAA would also not be infringement. Downloading is illegal.
However, once you upload a single bit to the MPAA or another party, you have infringed upon the MPAA's right to be the sole distributer.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
The fun part lies in the Savvy bittorrent user that uses a live CD on the computer and a USB drive for the content. Download like a madman, when they supeona the computer they find a lilly clean computer.
A bartPE cd can give you a nice Windows XP live cd with your favorite P2P apps if you dont like the linux variety.
I suggested this to someone once and their eyes light up and they asked, That would make their case agsinst you in court 100% useless as they have no evidence!
Yup! hide the USB drive full of contraband and you are scott free. Easy to do and thwarts their "computer experts" pretty easy. Add in the mix a wireless router set to defaults with a wide open accesspoint and your plausable deniability goes up so high it's shameless.
Just a nice tip for you P2Pers from your friendly neighborhood hacker.
1) Your analogy sucks.
2) To use the issue a few posts upthread:
Lets say I meet someone online. They claim to be underage. However, I honestly beleive them to be of age and roleplaying. (After all, you generally need a credit card to get internet service, and you generally need to be 18 to get a CC.) Anyway, I (role)play along, and eventually agree to meet them at a nearby park. I get there, honestly expecting a 20-something dressed in a Catholic Schoolgirl uniform, only to have the FBI arrest me.
My INTENT was perfectly legal. But good luck I'll have trying to prove that to anyone.
Worse - a fake TV, made of cardboard, then you arrest the guy for attempting to steal a real TV...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
First, I rarely respond to trolls. But I have seen you posting for this site here multiple times (similar to the way ninenine does; In fact, considering that very few porn sites run windows and your link does, I suspect that you are ninenine).
But do you really find this all that profitable from this site? In addition, I am sure that you are spamming other "tech" sites (digg, pcworld, pcmag, etc). Since you insist on using this site for spam, I have an intersting story for you to submit; show us number on how many actually click though and/or buy your sites. This use to be a hard core tech site. Over the last decade it has become less so. I would be curious to see how this site stacks up for click-throughs vs. other geek sites. In addition, it might be interesting to see how many clicks occur when you are not modded as a troll. Basically, do your link, record the time, and then check how many click through while you are at 0 or above until you hit a troll level. I really think that this could be an interesting story.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The 'spoof' file, that is. After all, the xAA is posting it to torrent sites themselves. Doesn't that make the file obviously legal. Therefore, even if it is named something that would be infringing copyright, wouldn't it still be legal to download? Even better, they are offering a file for download that is from the xAA itself, that claims to be some copyright-protected property. Isn't it then false advertising? If I was a major musician, say a certain comedy-minded one, and offered a file on my website for free download, claiming it is a song asking you not to download it, but the file isn't really that song, but just static; could I sue the downloader for trying to download my song? No.
Even if it is on GooTube instead of my own website, and I don't acknowledge that I put it there, it's still me putting it up for the public to download.
So no illegal activity has happened. So even though someone who would be downloading the file is the KIND of person who is likely downloading songs in violation of copyright, you haven't caught me doing anything inherently wrong, so how can you sue me?
i.e. "I caught this guy stealing a copy of my free pamphlet from the gray-market newsstand, so obviously he is stealing copies of non-free magazines, too!"
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
There really isn't any law dealing with attempted infringement. This isn't criminal law so they can only ask for damages. Well those damamges have to have a basis, either actual or statutory. Since there was no copyrighted material downloaded, no actual daamges can be proved. You can't argue any damage was done by downloading random data. That just leaves the statutory damages, which are the really heavy ones. However if you read the laws on those, they are for infringement, not for attempted infringement. Again since we are talking random data, and random data that the MPAA willing distributed, no infringement occurred.
Now I'd bet they are smart enough to realise this and this isn't for court cases, they just send the ISPs threatening e-mails to try and get accounts canceled. I don't know that the MPAA is doing lawsuits, that seems to be the RIAA's thing. Most groups just send takedown notices. We got one from the ESA. One of our users had downloaded Quake 4. They didn't file a lawsuit or even ask their name, just asked us to get rid of the file and "take appropriate action as per your terms of service."
This will work fine for that, since there's no real legal burden. However I can't see it going anywhere in a court of law with a competent defense. There's no actual damage so it's hard to say you deserve any money.
HOWEVER, how is the downloader supposed to know that they aren't authorized to distribute? The answer is: they can't, until they download the entire file, and then see a distribution notice on the video. Thus, if they are sharing only WHILE they are downloading (before finished), they have no knowing that the material can't be distributed.
Since copyright is automatic you have to assume the material can not be distributed. Though there are many things about current copyright law that are bad, this part is the worst. Before the US joined the Berne Convention the default state of new works was public domain. Protection was only granted if it was requested, which was a much more sensible state of affairs.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
...I get there, honestly expecting a 20-something dressed in a Catholic Schoolgirl uniform, only to have the FBI arrest me.My INTENT was perfectly legal. But good luck I'll have trying to prove that to anyone.
IANAL...
But it doesnt matter as much if the actual illicit item/activity is not itself illicit, so long as your actions go to support only that they are illicit. By that I mean if you are caugh selling ziplock baggies of oregano, but are going around telling people its really pot, and charging like it is, they can arrest you for solicitation. Directly from a (googlecache) NY Bar Practice test, question/answer 2: "solicitation is the asking, inciting, or requesting that another commit a crime with specific intent that the crime be committed." By this reasoning, as long as you make the first contact to the undercover officer posing as a 13yo and are first to bring up meeting them or doing stuff with them thats illeagle if she really is 13, meaning they did not join the chat room and start talking to everyone in there about how they should meet her and do stuff even though shes only 13, etc, you are guilty of solicitation. You have asked the girl, posing or not, to perform an illeagle act with you, ie: statutory rape or contributing to the delinquency of a minor or any of a handfull of those "think of the children!!" laws that might apply. Your "roleplaying" excuse would only hold up if you specifically ask the girl if she was doing so, and confirm that she is really of-age (at which point she, as an under-cover, would probably stop talking to you or blow you off somehow and sit around and wait for another target).
As it applies to the MPAA's actions, they are trying to setup their own sting operation. By requesting an illeagle download, be it the real thing or something that just looks like an illeagle copy of a movie, you are guilty of solicitation. Their ground is a little more shaky though, since they themselves are not officers of the law, and by advertising the fact that they have said files available (by posting to trackers or whatever), they themselves become accomplices, which if you follow that practice exam I posted above, could get at least the MPAA's testimony based on their actions thrown out, or even get the whole case tossed. As I see it, the only way they would/should (who knows what they tell the judge) not be held as accomplices is if they put their files on their own torrent server and nowhere else. Like standing on a street corner posing as a prostitute. But, if they dont post to a tracker, or send out where their torrent site is, no one would know to go there. If they DO post or whatever, they are encouraging people to go there, similar to a prostitute holding a sign over her head advertising her services.
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
On top of which, you didn't actually download that movie, so there was no direct infringement of that movie. Granted, you made a copy of something, but it wasn't a copy of [the movie you were trying to download when you got the fake torrent].
The MPAA can substitute something else for the real movie, but it has to be copyrighted by them to win on copyright infringement. Then an additional defense is fraud: "Your Honor, I thought I was downloading something else, but they tricked me into downloading Spider-Man." That's stupid -- they might as well distribute the real movie in the first place.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
If the movies uploaded by the MPAA are fake, then there is no crime. If the are real, then what is the MPAA doing giving them away for free? Hells bells. A defendant could even say he 'thought the movie was being distributed by the MPAA, so the download was legal'
There is no crime involved by downloading a fake torrent, because you aren't getting any copyrighted material. Intent? What is the intent? "My intent was to see what was in this file that was made freely available (offered even!) via the internet. If I found it to have copyrighted material, I would have removed it. But since it had this lovely monochrome screen and no copyright notice, or end-user license agreement, I kept it as a free and lovely screen saver."
just an idea, people could organize a movement to overload these companies servers. it would make a good excuse because there would be no way to tell the difference between a person who intended to download the file in question, and a person who merely wished to take bandwidth from teh server.
www.americanjapan.com
I downloaded a couple files from Torrent sites and next thing I know my ISP had booted me. Some ISP's bow without even calling to find out. I should better be able to download some of these files, what the ISP did was said:
"You were using Bittorrent and that is against our policy" and I have a BUSINESS account.
Here is the kicker, I was downloading my latest and greatest Linux Distribution of Choice and I got kicked for being a Torrent Downloaded.
They never kicked me for Porn or LimeWire.. just for downloading over bittorrent.
I pay more for a business account, let them send the offending letter to me so my lawyers can handle it.
Actually, I switched ISP's cause I cant stand that kinda of crap.
Anon for a reason, MPAA will find out where I am and kill my kids this time.