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To Media Companies, BitTorrent Implies Guilt
kripkenstein writes "The big media companies immediately assume you are guilty by your mere presence on a BitTorrent swarm, an investigation by a university security worker reveals. Turns out companies like BayTSP (which the media companies employ) will send shutdown notices to ISPs without any evidence of copyright infringment; all they feel they need is an indication that you are reported by the tracker to be in the swarm." From the post: "For my investigation, I wrote a very simple BitTorrent client. My client sent a request to the tracker, and generally acted like a normal Bittorrent client up to sharing files. The client refused to accept downloads of, or upload copyrighted content. It obeyed the law... With just this, completely legal, BitTorrent client, I was able to get notices from BayTSP. To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs."
Choose your ISP wisely and you won't run into these problems. The issue is that your ISP rats you out. Go find one that respects your privacy a little better.
Does this really surprise anyone that reads Slashdot? I've certainly come to expect tactics such as this from any media company.
One of the best ways of getting arrested and released - repeated - is to hang around with drug dealers and users when they are dealing and using.
Sure, you are going to get released most of the time. But it is going to be a significant hassle for you. You got to choose that course when you chose your dealing and using friends.
I believe the same is applicable to BitTorrent.
Anyone who buys a VCR is CLEARLY only interested in pirating as many movies as they get their hands on, camcorder owners are only interested in filming screeners, people who run spyware scanners and firewalls obviously have something to hide, and anyone who asserts their rights is obviously doing something illegal...
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
Hanging out in a Pawn Shop. Cops know there are stolen items in there as well as legitimate items. So, anyone going into the pawn shop has to be only there for stolen items. Therefore you are served a warrant. What a bunch of A$$ Hats.
Should people really have to choose where to live based on the ISPs available in the area? Often, there is only one or there are only two ISPs in a particular geographic area apart from dial-up: the local cable television provider and the local land-line telephone provider.
To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs.
Or it'd be like getting arrested for engaging in prostitution (or whatever the actual offense is) if you're seen with a prostitute, even if you haven't actually had sex. I've always been amused by that one, too.
Everyone "caught" by these scumbags should band together and file a class action lawsuit against BayTSP.
If I use my PC to connect to a BitTorrent tracker that offers legitimate free software, free media, and fair-use parody media, I still get a notice. This is as if I were to get arrested for hanging around outside a legitimate drug dealer such as CVS or Walgreens or Rite Aid.
So let me get this straight. A guy designed a special BitTorrent client to make it look like he was downloading copyrighted material and it's news that he got a letter? He was specifically trying to appear as if he was downloading it to everyone. If I make a substance that looks and smells like pot and then smoke it outside the police station, I'll get arrested as well. If you try and convince people you are doing something wrong, why is it news when they then think you are doing something wrong?
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
In the spirit of slashdot, could I request that we instead get a car analogy? Preferably one involving hookers... and blackjack. You know what? Forget the analogy.
2^4 * 3 * 20929
"To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs."
It's more like being arrested for being a pirate because you own a boat or have been in water. Even if it's a toy schooner and you're in the bathtub.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
" I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs."
Reminds me of the time i was pulled over, handcuffed, searched, and my car ripped apart looking for drugs because (as the cop said) "I was in the wrong part of town".
They file suit against people because their IP downloaded something. Easily could have been someone leaching an unsecure wireless connection. Even if the **AA has no way to prove it was them, they file suit anyway because their strongarm tactics allow it.
The analogy doesn't sound surprising. Maybe I misunderstand the law, but I believe you CAN be arrested for hanging out with known drug dealers. They can certain search you (probable cause) and can probably make you submit to a drug screening. I just think that if you're actually innocent, they would have to drop the charges. That doesn't keep you from being arrested and fingerprinted, and spending a night or two in jail. It's one of the things I have never been able to get most of the teenagers I know to understand. If you are hanging around with the wrong crowd, it doesn't matter whether you are a participant. Trouble will come your way.
BTW, I think that unlike drug charges, people who lose their ISP *would* have some recourse. The Media Companies are not a law enforcement agency, and therefore *might* be guilty of defamation if they committed libel when telling your ISP that you were doing something illegal. I'm not sure how far you could get with that, though.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
You aren't getting arrested for being in a bittorrent swarm.
Also, if you want a fair comparison, this would be like finding a notice board marked "people who buy/sell drugs", copying all the names off it, and putting yours on. Now, this isn't something you should be locked up for, but I think it's reasonable for the police to pop around and ask a few questions.
This kind of technical fiddling really doesn't help anyone, although I'm sure it helps you feel clever.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
There's a word for people "hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs". They're called look-outs -- their job is to watch for law enforcement and to notify the dealer so he can get away clean. Of course they get arrested as well if they're caught. Hanging out with any aquaintance while you are knowledgeable of them committing a crime (espcially on a regular basis) and you not stopping or reporting that crime may make you an accessory to the crime. You can't simply "hang out" with a murderer while he's killing people even if you don't get any of the blood on yourself.
Now legitimately using a bittorent client isn't the same at all as hanging out with drug dealers. It's more like stopping in a book store to pick up a book on chemistry and being arrested because the book store happens to be selling child pornography.
These torrents...what were they of exactly? If they were of Linux ISOs or other legally available material, then sure, get angry. But if you're connected to a torrent for movies, games, music etc...well, they can't tell how much you've uploaded or downloaded, can they? Whether you're connected to a torrent or not is the only truly reliable metric that there can be. I mean, if you're seen hanging around with drug dealers and talking to them in places where they tend to deal drugs, isn't it fairly safe to assume you're trying to buy drugs?
Outside of this application, a BitTorrent client designed to not do anything BitTorrent was designed to do except connect to a torrent, how many other people connect to torrents only not to (attempt to) download/upload what's on them?
So, the message here is: don't try to download copyrighted stuff and you won't get sued for downloading copyrighted stuff.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
There are numerous legitimate reasons for joining a swarm and not participating in the exchange, including doing research like this.
Should it also be illegal for me to drive along a shady avenue downtown and count the number of prostitutes for research on a book or a blog post I'm writing about prostitution in my city? If I ask them if they're prostitutes but don't offer them money for sex, what did I do wrong?
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
...t'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs."
Hmmph - sounds like you're on the side of the Terrorists!
There once was a crazy ass country that had laws about "innocent until proven guilty", but in these Terroristic times it's just so much safer to fall back on "Suspicion of being under suspicion."
Three Squirrels
...Media Companies imply greed and incompetence.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Basically, it had the connection setup but kept it idle.
Doing nothing.
And he got a letter saying that he was downloading illegal content while it was...
...doing nothing.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Is coming back into vogue? It never left, the media companies have based a lot of their cases on it. Mostly they make money from the cases where their target simply doesn't have the cash to fight back. Thing is, they want to blame the net for their problems, well, it's true to an extent. Before the net and widespread cable TV, videos and DVD's, they had very little competition. Those were the glory days. Now they unfortunately for them, they are creatively bankrupt as a result of flooding the market with so much crap that a lot of people are going back to 60's, 70's and 80's music. Therefore, a lot of sales of new music suffers and kids are listening to ACDC and Led Zeppelin again.
Ditto for movies, only this time the industry is rehashing old TV shows, old movies and dusting off hackneyed plots that wouldn't see the light of day when they made fewer movies. Kind of like you see what happens to sports leagues with uncontrolled expansion. The more you try to produce in such endeavours, the closer you move to mediocrity.
So their sales suffer. It must be the web's fault. Like an old has-been blaming the new kid on the block, they whine and complain, and in this case lobby. Next, they will be demanding a tithe if you own a computer.
After all, the problem couldn't be with their product.
Yeah, that doesn't surprise us any, but it DOES provide proof. Why is that important? If you happen to get sued by them, it undermines their case!
This could, in theory, be introduced as evidence in a case and might be enough to shoot down their allegations of copyright infringement. I'd say that THAT is pretty important, wouldn't you?
Here's to hoping that it screws up a few of their copyright infringement lawsuits!
Look, any time that the media companies can scare people into thinking that they're doing something illegal, then they will do it, up to, and probably including illegal acts themselves. They are not interested in following the letter of the law, or any kind of reason. All they want to do is scare people back into the pre-ordained channels that they have set up, e.g., Best Buy and Fye in the mall.
That's a poor analogy, it's even more innocent than that - they saw you with a pipe. I mean the kind that can smoke tobacco, and is often used to do just that. Nothing inherantly illegal about it.
What a crock of bull-poo.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Don't vote. Don't voice your opinion to the representatives most of you didn't vote for. Don't organize a coordinated political attack on the DMCA and this is what we all get.
For dog's sake don't support the eff either. http://www.eff.org/ You wouldn't want to be marginalized as a zealot, fanatic or crackpot.
[\rant]
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
... not bittorrent! Having bittorrent implies guilt? Imagine when that apply to firearms!
So say we all
Your article on these BayTSP notices reminds me of when large parts of the Windows NT4/2000 source code were leaked. I created a fake "Windows Longhorn Source Code" file which was about 1.2GB in size and full of zeroes, and then shared it on eMule to see how far it spread (quite far, initially.)
A couple of weeks later I received a copyright infringement notice from my ISP for this fake file. They had been contacted by one of Microsoft's agents who obviously conducted their analyses using a method of similar incompetence to BayTSP's.
Besides this particular individual, who would waste computer resources being involved in a tracker unless they were sharing bits in the torrent?
I thought court cases involving copyright law was based on "reasonable doubt", not "beyond all shadow of a doubt". It certainly sounds reasonable that being on a torrent means there is intent on sharing bits in the torrent.
As for the bit about an individual hanging out on the corner with drug sellers: It does sound reasonable for police officers to question people associated with illegal acts, right?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
BitTorrent is tool, just like fire, guns, and wood chippers are tools. They can be used to good, and they can be used for evil. Possession of BitTorrent doesn't mean that you are using it for evil. In the movie Fargo, it wasn't the possession of the wood chipper that was the problem, it was the way that it was being used.
It kind of makes me glad I live up in the Great White North (TM). Both of the ISPs in this province (Sasktel and Access Communications; I live in Saskatchewan) refuse to give out any information relating to the identity of users. You can get my IP if you like, but that won't help you track down who I actually am.
Plus, there's the whole fact that sharing files in Canada is a grey area under the law, and you'd have a hard time getting prosecuted for it, unless you're selling the stuff on the streets or some such.
It may be impolite in this circle to say as much, but 9 times out of 10, anyone on a p2p network IS doing something (currently) illegal. it makes me uncomfortable to see people defend these technologies for their (again, currently) nearly insignificant "legitimate" uses while blatantly exploiting their ability to provide access to pirated copyrighted material.
but, of course, the laws are old and wrong and need to change. it just seems dishonest to claim p2p should be used for currently legal stuff, rather than restating the poor logic in applying outdated copyright law to modern tech.
If someone adds your IP to a swarm by sending you a mysterious link using a URL shrinking site, how could you possibly have intent to break a law? IANAL, but copyright infringement must require intent, no?
It's a really weak legal angle for them to take, and if it's all they have going for them, most people have very little to worry about (except really long and boring lawsuits that cost way too much money and only enrich the lives of lawyers).
Meh.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
it's like diagnostics in C, any conforming C compiler can emit ANY warning they want (whether warranted or not).
BayTSP is not the government (right?) they can issue any non-legally binding warning they want, up to the point they are served an injunction. it doesn't mean you, or your ISP, have to act on its behalf.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I guess this might be due to the success of programs like Peer Guardian? For those that don't know, it is a black listing program that helps you to deny connections from IP addresses known to be used by companies like BayTSP. If you are going to do P2P and download "questionable" content, you should have something like this. It isn't %100 but safer than nothing. Most popular clients will have some sort of plug-in that will do this. I guess it's time now for the trackers to start running this kind of software too.
In Republican America phones tap you.
Bittorrent is the primary means of distribution for that filthy, UnAmerican, Communist, no sorry, Terrorist (that's what they tell you now isn't it?) software that is GNU/Linux.
And the problem here is....? If you hang out with drug dealers when the police come calling, you can pretty much rely on getting arrested. Doesn't mean you'll get charged, and it certainly doesn't mean you'll get convicted.
And I don't think BayTSP actually qualify as being comparable to law enforcement agents. This is more like getting sent a letter from your landlord saying there's been complaints that you've been seen hanging with criminal looking individuals and you better not be dealing drugs.
Isn't associating with a known criminal a quasi-valid reason for being arrested? Not necessarily convicted, but arrested.
Quoth the article:
"To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs."
That may not be the best choice of examples for a reductio ad absurdum argument.
Remember, the war on drugs has given us all kinds of asinine laws to let courts prosecute suspected drug dealers that they can't actually catch dealing drugs. Just possessing large sums of cash can be a crime these days, even if there is no evidence that it was gained illegally; that's at least as much of an unjustified leap as claiming that being connected to a bittorrent tracker implies you're actually up/down-loading the tracked file(s).
The only real difference is that legislators made (or at least endorsed) that cash=drugs leap, while the media companies' minions made the more current bittorrent leap.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
I was using eMule (for eDonkey) to grab some files. I forgot about it and left the thing on.
After a couple days, I get this email from my ISP.
Greetings,
We have recently received a report that there has been activity originating from your circuit that is in violation
of the Speakeasy Acceptable Use Policy. The IP address in question is:
xx.xx.xx.xx
The following complaint is concerning copyright infringement from a shared filesystem or server at this IP. We
request that you immediately cease and desist this activity and remove any content that is possibly considered in
violation of copyright laws.
If you are using a wireless network on your Local Area Network, it is possible that it has been compromised. If
you are using a wireless network, we highly recommend you at least take these steps to ensure the security of your
wireless connection:
* Use Network Segregation- place your access point on a separate subnet, with a firewall separating wireless and
internal (wired) users
* Update your access point's firmware
* Change the administrator password on the wireless unit
* Change the default SSID of the wireless unit
* Disable SSID beacons/broadcasts
* Enable MAC address filtering
* Use WPA authentication and encryption
* If possible, use VPN connectivity
Please contact your vendor for further assistance, specific to your wireless device.
Here are a few good links that provide information and best practices for the security of a wireless network:
http://www.lawtechguru.com/archives/2004/08/01_w ireless_networking_best_practices_version_20.html
http://www.giac.org/practical/GSEC/Thomas_Stripl ing_GSEC.pdf
http://wifinetnews.com/archives/002452.html
For your reference, please also visit the Speakeasy Security Zone at:
https://www.speakeasy.net/security
Note: You will need to login to MySpeakeasy in order to view this page.
PLEASE NOTE: Speakeasy, Inc. is legally obligated to forward this notification to you, regardless of the scan
results appearing in the original complaint sent to us. Additionally, we believe it is important for you to be
aware that these scans of your machines are taking place.
It is vital for the security of your personal network and the Speakeasy network as a whole that you address this
issue. If we continue to receive similar reports about your circuit, we will be forced to temporarily suspend your
broadband service until this issue is resolved. Please understand that we consider an interruption in your service
only when it is absolutely required to ensure both your security, and the overall security of the entire Speakeasy
network.
PLEASE ALSO NOTE:
If this is your first notification from abuse@speakeasy.net, there will be no Service Ticket created for this
incident. If there have been abuse incidents reported on your circuit in the past however, there will be an open
Service Ticket on your account. To ensure that your service is not interrupted, it's important that you update us
once you have resolved this issue. Please call Speakeasy Support at 800.556.5829 or login to MySpeakeasy
(http://www.speakeasy.net/myspeak) and update the open Service Ticket referencing this issue.
Please review the relevant portions of our Terms of Service under "Moderations of Use" and "Acceptable Use Policy"
at this link:
Speakeasy AUP/TOS
http://www.speakeasy.net/tos
We thank you for taking the time to address these Internet security concerns,
Network Security Department
Speakeasy, Inc.
abuse@speakeasy.net
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is a U.S. trade association that represents the
"it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs."
Wow dude, great way to make your case there. I mean who doesn't totally sympathize with people that get arrested while hanging out with drug dealers?
the city in which i used to live(Rochester,ny) once sent me a letter in the mail telling me that my car had been spotted parked in a known drug trafficking part of town.and as they had no evidence of the reason i was there(they seem to forget decent law abiding citizens live in the mix of this everyday shit).to make a long story short i was there visiting a friend ,and was told by mail that if i was seen there again that i would be arrested.
life sure is fair when you make the rules
I and my company will, as sure as night follows the day, sue anyone that takes (or tries to take) me off the Internet for using BitTorrent. I use BitTorrent to download things like Fedora Core 6. I need BitTorrent (and p2p in general) for work, and my work is my livelihood. My livelihood feeds my family. I would have no choice but to sue.
...with time & money on my hands then I'd set up a tracker for sharing all sorts of F/OSS ISO's via Bittorrent. Then I sue these idiots back to the stoneage for making such unfounded claims.
class action lawsuit.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The drug metaphor should really be that you get picked up by the cops for getting a legal prescription filled at your local Walgreens.
The problem with all of this is that it costs those companies a pittance to send out those take down notices and it causes a lot of trouble for the people who get them. The burden should be on them to have solid evidence and, if they don't, to leave people the hell alone.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I disagree with the metaphor, because you aren't really hanging out with "drug dealers" in this case. Instead it's more like you are crossing the street where drugs have been traded, which is sadly how many city streets are from time to time. Although perspective would have to be applied and this would probably be like some distopyan Neotokyo Gotham, but that's another argument altogether.
And because everyone else has an alternative analogy, this seems most like if a person was caught burglerizing a house, and then claimed you were an accomplice. Reason to investigate further, but not enough to declare even a proponderence of the evidence (the standard in copyright cases) suggests you are guilty.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Oh wait, at least 99% of bittorrent traffic is piracy, and sending a notice is a reasonable response. If people were getting arrested, the bar of proof would be set a little higher.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
bad analogy, because bittorrent can be (and is) used for completely legal things, while "drugs" (as you seem to intend in your wording) are always illegal...
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
"To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs."
The problem with analogies is they break down somewhere, and now you will get many replies showing where it breaks down or offering counter analogies.
Some people say that proxying all tracker requests via the tor network is a good idea. This news seems to support that suggestion.
If everyone routed all bittorrent traffic (the peer-to-peer part) via tor would clearly destroy the network, but it should easily be able to handle a few people using it for the tracker traffic.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
The system is unjust, and getting worse. I simply obey the laws I agree with, and disobey the ones I don't agree with. If the chance of getting caught is high, and the penalty stiff enough, I MIGHT not do the illegal things...but then again I might.
Can't let my 18-year-old son have a beer with dinner? Fuck you, bust me.
Can't trade DVDs in person with my friends? Fuck you, bust me.
Government using misleading statistics to incite fear (and then over reaching legislature) for issues like drunk driving and terrorism? I simply make misleading statements to police when given the opportunity. Alas, it isn't often I get that chance since I moved out of the city.
I can't imagine I'm the only freak like this.
Blar.
My experience with BayTSP came a few months ago. My ISP, Adelphia, sent me a notice that they had received a complaint from BayTSP (on behalf of a movie studio), that I was sharing the movie "Mission Impossible 3." I was confused, since I do not trade Hollywood movies. I read further in the complaint, and found the Hash for an eDonkey file, supposedly the movie in question. Checking my "shared" files, I found that this movie was, in fact, a file that was being mislabeled by others that were sharing it. It was not Mission Impossible 3 at all, but an old porno movie.
My repeated emails to my ISP (explaining BayTSPs idiocy) were not acknowledged, so I chose to ignore the entire thing.
This entire conversation has been derailed because of your terrible analogy.
it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs.
It's not the same as your current situation. The problem is that you are being harassed for doing something legal, inconsequential, and within your right. You should diagram it out:
it'd be like < bad thing happens > because I <was in the act of doing some innocent thing>
So a correct analogy should be "it'd be like having my house searched for illegal drugs because I have a medicine cabinet." Or, "it'd be like getting arrested for drug trafficking because I have a mailbox."
How much work does the **IA have to do to protect themselves from being sued for false infringment claims and legal recourse for improper invokation of the DMCA to a user's internet provider? It seems to me that in this case of his faux BT client, what the content companies have done is broken the law, but not in a realistic sense. As much as I hate to say it, I do not see this helping Joe Sixpack's from being falsely accused. Yes the masses may be able to claim such a client was employed at the time the bots were watching the swarms, but if push comes to shove nobody will really be able to use that as a defense (unless they really were using it for something like research or legit content).
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
You expect he's actually going to RTFA? Or comprehend what it's said if in the unlikely chance he actually does?
For a nerd site there sure are a lot of semiliterates here. I'm talking about the parent poster, not you. As to you, you actually DID RTFA. For shame!
The specific reason for an arrest is the belief by the police based on evidence that you are involved in specific criminal activity, not merely associating with a criminal. That could be done for any number of legitimate reasons.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
And the police analogy.
I realise it is just an analogy, and sorry if I'm a little paranoid, but I'd rather avoid equating BayTSP with a police force, or copyright infringement with a criminal, rather than a civil offence.
Clearly their "evidence" of infringement is highly suspect, and they're basically either too lazy, incapable, or it's illegal, for them to have any real evidence. I hope now everyone will use this to show that BayTSP doesn't know what the hell they're talking about, and should be ignored, or discounted, from now on.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Can anyone suggest another alternative (besides moving your house) to download a wide variety of stuff at high speed, without being prosecuted? Exeem? Freenet? Surely there's something. BitTorrent is not the final word. It's just today's biggest target.
Trackers could as well poison their /announce pages with a fair amount of completely random IP's. It will only slow down the downloads slightly at the start if at all (mostly because of the 10-opening-connections thing in SP2). The "bad guys" cannot actually connect to those IPs/ports to be completely sure of sharing taking place, but unless they actually join each and every torrent and waited -- which is very unlikely and easy to detect if they did -- they will have to assume those users are simply behind a firewall.
Handwringing by asshole parents over DUI deaths and 'house parties' where some misguided parent lets other children drink alcohol has resulted in this ban. What happened to punishing only the person who broke the law? It'll come soon to your state, just like the blanket smoking bans and now the trans-fat bans.
Blar.
Hang around pro-democracy banners in Beijing and they will arrest you as well.
No difference.
Maybe you just recheck the concepts of freedoms. It seems that many in the US believe that our rights are elastic enough for any eventuallity the police would find they need to deal with.
Luckily for police now, they can always clams terrorism as an excuse.
I'm in deep trouble. I am obviously guilty of heinous criminal behavior...Opera on my Mac laptop has a Torrent Client built in...
I know that the answer is probably "The law only applies to the poor", but it makes me wonder, If I were to:
create a music file that I wrote, sang, and recorded,
found out that some unscrupulous pirate added it to the front of a audio file that was owned by an RIAA member,
found out that someone was being sued for downloading the combined file,
found out that the RIAA had downloaded the file themselves as evidence against this third party,
Would I have grounds to sue the RIAA, and insist on criminal prosecution?
No, you're not missing anything. Notice that this guy had to write a special bit-torrent client in order to avoid actually doing anything wrong during his tests. Anyone connected with normal software would be either a) downloading the file and/or b) providing parts of that file to others. No one connects to a swarm just to "hang out". They are only targeting people connected to swarms that are sharing copyrighted works. I'd say the media companies method is sound, and accurate - if you're going to pretend to engage in illegal activity, you have to expect people to treat you like a criminal.
I would offer this analogy: The building (bittorrent) where your mother (a legitimate file, like a linux distro) lives in midtown. There is a drug dealer (sombody sharing movies) that lives on the second floor, unbeknown to you. When you visit her, the police catch you outside and arrest you for being in the same building as the drug dealer.
This would be assuming that there is only one building (network protocol) that these illegal activities happen on. Now, when you factor in how the internet works as a whole, what they are doing becomes more like arresting you for being inside any building (a p2p network of any type).
A big part of these problems are the fact that the laws and legislation are driven most of the time by individuals who have no understanding of how the digital world works. I suggest creating a secondary governing body whose sole charge is legislation and law as it pertains to computers, software and the internet. This group of individuals would be comprised only of people who have at least a bachelor's degree in computer sciences. I honestly think a separate, disjoint governing body is what is needed, due to the fact that more often than not, in the modern day, law makers and lawyers try too hard to assert laws and regulations that were designed for real-life property and values. This is what needs to end, preferably before the internet that we enjoy is run aground by people that know nothing about what they are governing.
Remember, the internet is just a series of tubes.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
I downloaded Green Street Hooligans through BitTorrent, Universal sent the campus computing people a notice that I had violated a copyright, campus computing people send me a notice to delete the file immediately, and if it happens again my Intarweb is banned till I leave the dorms.
I won't lie, I can sympathize with this, this is exactly what they're fighting, I just never knew you could actually get caught that easily. This all happened in a week of downloading the movie. And I never even watched it!
Freenet and high speed? Give me a break. Or has the speed dramatically improved in the last couple versions?
The problem with this garbage is these guys aren't law enforcement. Do you trust their standards and their margin of error? They have very little evidence to begin with. Then tie in the fact that they have no idea who's using your computer, if its been highjacked etc. There are way too many factors to consider to go on such little evidence. The only reason anyone puts up with such low standards is because they are sympethetic to these gangsters, I mean record labels cause.
The problem is bittorrent requiring you to surrender your privacy. This flaw has never been fixed and probably never will be.
Looks like a good class action sting in defence of bittorent is needed real quick.
A good legal slap-back should be worth a couple hundred million againt the media cartels.
Copyright law is supposed to be about promoting the arts and sciences.
It is written to to protect against unauthorized copying, thus encouraging people to produce works without fear of being taken advantage of by publishers. Distribution implies multiple copies, so in that sense, distribution will get you in more trouble.
BayTSP knowingly submits dmca takedown notices for transit traffic to isp abuse desks, bypassing the registered dmca contact. Some abuse desks might go 'oh, copyright violation!' and give the user a nastygram or turn them off, but the dmca limitations on liability is pretty specific on the differences between transitory data and hosted data. The takedown provisions only apply to hosted data. Takedown notices are only valid if sent to the dmca agent registered with the copyright office. Transatory communications has no takedown provisions, and the ISP can not be held liable for transit data _even if it breaks the law and they know it_.
You all keep saying that you haven't done anything wrong and mere presence on a tracker doesn't infer infringement. But what you don't get is it doesn't matter whether you have infringed or not. The point is to get your ISP to pull your high speed connection and ban you as a customer for life. Your ISP isn't going to take any chances. You don't have a right to broadband. These blacklists are real. Once you are blackballed by all the high speed net providers in your town how much torrenting, legitimate or not, are you going to be doing on dialup? You guys are waving around a law book trying to defend yourself when the guy you're up against has a shotgun and will gladly use it to take you, and any one around you, off at the knees.
It's like getting arrested for participating in a charity blackjack game for transient hookers. Sure you're giving them money, but you aren't asking them to do anything illegal.
Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac, you can always take something for it.
I can't drink and drive? Fuck you, bust me.
As long as you don't cause any damage to anyone, I don't care.
Why can't I randomly fire my handgun into the air in urban areas? Fuck you, bust me.
Ditto.
I can't drive 100mph? Fuck you, bust me.
Don't care.
Now, if you cause any harm to me or my property, then I'll fucking bust you. It's up to you.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
a nationwide class action lawsuit ... that'll teach them right from wrong ...
Read radical news here
They connected to the swarm to determine who was in it. And being in it is clearly an indication of guilt (to them) regardless if you download/upload or not. Seems to me that they are just as guilty as the people they are harassing.
Now that that's out of the way, shall we all return to our torre--er I mean stations? We just wanted to know their uh, stance on this whole thing...
Cases like this build precedence in support of pirates. If the "industry" wanted to take me to court for piracy, I would use cases like this (among many others) to defend myself. I would also counter-sue for mental distress, lost wages, etc... I think judges would help the little guy if they were confronted with this kind of evidence.
I have received DMCA notices (twice) for files that I hadn't finished downloading. How do I know it's a copyrighted work if I haven't even seen it yet? Even if I do watch it, how am I supposed to know it's copyrighted? If all I'm doing is watching it, why is it my responsibility to make sure everything piece of media I see is properly licensed?
The "industry" tells me it is with the DMCA notice. That is the only way they can prove that I know that it was copyrighted.
The "industry" is hurting themselves with these tactics...
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
Or, if you just move things aroun a little...BTSpay! Remember to spay or neuter your tracker!
I did. http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/tags/speakea sy -- read the chat. Thrown out for going >100G a month. "Unlimited" my ass. Do not do business with SpeakEasy; they provide inaccurate information during presales!
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
To DDoS/slashdot these companies...
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
..Anti-Trust against those sending such notices out.
As a side effect is against competition of anything that might be gotten over a bit torrent.
Just a few days ago I used it to DL several of the Ubuntu distros and I had no problem leaving it running well after I had finished, that others might benefit. I mean hey, having DSL but not currently using it myself... Helping to distribute free software... should it be a crime?
I know logic sometimes has very little place in law, but still.
Do they claim to be the only Torrent monitors out there? If I run my own system to collect information about usage/spread of files in swarms by running similar to their client, that simply collects swarm info, without uploading/downloading, then that is illegal too? Wouldn't that be an attempt to monopolize Torrent monitoring/searching market?
Hyperom.com
The analogy given is certainly decent, on the other hand, you can get possession for being with someone possessing drugs. So, perhaps a better analogy would be getting arrested for a drive by shooting, merely because you own a car.
They have to, there are way too many laws already. Ever wonder why the guy on the side of the road only gives out speeding and seatbelt tickets, but nothing for following too close or unsafe lane change? They're told to concentrate on certain laws. The Police already decide whether to give someone a ticket or a warning. What was your point?
Blar.
I know that the answer is probably "The law only applies to the poor"
The line is actually from Anatole France's Le Lys Rouge (The Red Lily), ch. 7 (1894): "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
A variant used in an episode of The Tomorrow People (and the three-part title of a three-part story) is, "One law for rich and poor alike which prohibit them equally from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges." The irony being that the rich have no need to steal bread or sleep under bridges, therefore the law only truly applies to the poor.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
One even easier trick you can use: the BitTorrent clients BayTSP uses support Peer Exchange. You can give them the name of another peer for them to rat out to the ISP. It seems to be fairly trivial to incriminate any BitTorrent user in the eyes of BayTSP. Given that, can they have any possible legal standing for filing these notices when they can be so easily manipulated and can offer no proof of their claims?
...does that in any way change the mechanics of what organizations like BayTSP and the MAFIAA can do to you?
Say you run servers from a home office, with IP addresses registered to a LLC or the like. If a customer has a remote console, remotes in, installs Gnutella, swaps a bunch of crap, then cleans up afterward (and assume you don't log the traffic), what gives if the goonies come knocking?
Given that there are common scenarios where multiple machines share an external IP address, it seems this situation would make it difficult to impossible to assign responsibility to an individual. Can the MAFIAA attach the assets of an LLC? Demand forensics on all the machines on the subnet in question?
I'm basically wondering how best to protect a SOHO operation from this kind of crap without having to cripple or spy on one's customers.
Pi Ran Out
What's to stop some people from adding a "screw BayTSP" feature to trackers and BT clients? I.E. the tracker could feed random IPs into the mix, or because TFA states that the BayTSP clients use peer exchange, they could exchange lots of phony peers with them.
This is even more a possibility due to the fact that TFA gives a number of features by which one can detect them. And when you further factor in the fact that they do such a poor job of figuring out whether or not they actually own whatever content they complain about people sharing, well...
The point is that BayTSP is not a law enforcement agency. They have no more authority to send out notices of infringement to an ISP than I have the authority to send a bunch of mercenaries to clean out the druggies down the street. The amount of sh*t that police have to go through to bust up dealers is insane, so a lot of time times they just ignore the problem because of the red tape they have to cut through. Here, all you have to do is log onto a swarm and you are automatically logged and punished (what about the rights even a common criminal has?). To me, this seems like outsourcing law enforcement. Whats next? Are we going to have private companies set up speed traps? Also, according to a license agreement, you pay for a license. Now, according to that way of thinking, if you lose your CD or even your CD key, you should have a new provided at cost if you can prove that you already own a license (Having to buy a new CD (which comes with a new license is BS, all you need is that magical license, the rest are details). The reason I bring that up is I recently downloaded a two game ISOs. I actually own both games, but the CDs got ruined. Now technically, I didn't really pay for what was on the cd, just the right to use it, and so, according to the thinking of the IP cronies (if they actually looked at this logically), I did nothing wrong by participating in that swarm, I was simply acquiring the data I needed to facilitate my usage of a legitimate (and expensive, $100 brand new) license (although I could still get hauled off to court at any time).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
That's a bad example the drug dealer thing. The way that the US is going, its already illegal to hang out with terrorists. As soon as they figure out a way, it will be illegal to hang out with drug dealers, then drug users. (Go see A Scanner Darkly for a nice example).
It's already illegal to write p2p sharing clients in Japan as Slashdot has reported the arrests of such authors, so soon it will be illegal to torrent anything anywhere at all.
The internet will soon be a collection of entirely controlled and mediated transactions, with everything approved before sending, and attempts to do anything illegal are logged and used against you.
Are you arguing that individuals should be able to choose which laws to obey? Is this better for our society?
The analogy is flawed, and you're actually somewhat rebutting yourself by using it. Using BitTorrent is not like hanging out like a bunch of drug dealers, but you can't be arrested because nobody saw you actually using any drugs. It's more like being arrested merely for being in a shop because some shoplifters tend to steal things. That's what BitTorrent is like; it has plenty of useful and legal applications, and only some people are going to "shoplift" using it. The analogy breaks down because the drug dealers are already doing something wrong, and it's really a stupid thing to be hanging around a bunch of active drug dealers if you're not using the drugs yourself, but there's nothing wrong whatsoever with being in a shop.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
No, I'm serious.
Move copyright infringement from a civil case to a criminal case, in all cases. Make it a gross misdemeanor with a jail term of, oh, six to twelve months.
Suddenly, it will be top priority of legislators and prosecutors NOT to prosecute. Just like, magically, the law against possession of a controlled substance, i.e. Mary Jo Wanna, became an unenforceable law because no cop is allowed to search for it and prosecutors won't prosecute it even if you are arrested. Legislators will suddenly see the projected budget line-item for prison space skyrocket to accomodate all the non-violent offenders.
Best of all, the accuser has to prove his case to criminal court standards. If you're found not-guilty, the civil case is pretty well hobbled, yes?
Additionally, if there ever is another draft, a copyright infringement charge will certainly get to sent to the Group W bench. Then you sing a few bars of Alice's Restaurant, which you conveniently got via a Bittorrent download, and tell the induction sergeant that they have a lot of damn gall to ask if you are rehabilitated from your special crime of copyright infringement. Be sure to Cause A Nuisance, as well, or all the father-rapers and mother-stabbers on the Group W bench will give you the cold shoulder.
That isn't the case here though. The RIAA would have commited copyright violation against me during their investigation of copyright violation by Mr. Partyof III. They would have then entered into evidence the file that contained my music, and thus admitted to the courts that they commited a copyright violation. So, contrary to your quote, they would in fact have 'stolen my bread'. Of course I would be more than happy to negotiate a settlement giving the RIAA the right to make internal copies of my music, but they should keep in mind that I work very hard to make up songs, and I place great value on them.
So the question becomes, "would the law against stealing bread and sleeping under bridges actually be enforced if the rich started doing it?"
Tracker requests are based on HTTP. So I just route them through my favorite CGI Proxy. Downside is I can't accept incoming connections then, since the peers will go for the web server CGI Proxy is hosted on.
Don't you all realize that the obvious solution now is to simply flood the "spy" trackers with every possible IP address? (Or at least a broad sampling. For example, the entire Time Warner IP space). They can't sue everybody - and if they tried I'm not sure that it would work.
No, making copies for evidence to be used in court is explicitly stated as fair use in copyright law. If they removed your song from the file they found on the pirate's machine, they would be unnecessarily tampering with evidence.
Very creative question, though.
On the other hand, it could be a useful way to trash the RIAA's credibility:
1) Bunch of dud clients connect to torrent.
2) Bunch of downloaders connect to torrent.
3) Monitoring service has no way of telling which is which, unless it is actually monitoring who actually downloads stuff.
4) It becomes really, really difficult to tell who is infringing and who isn't.
All of a sudden, we have another way to discredit RIAA/MPAA "evidence" in court. Interesting. Very, very interesting.
Herr AncientPC -- let us know if you are hiding any Jews in your attic. Also let us know of any neighbors you suspect of doing so. Then appear at 6 am at the public square, where you will be issued a rifle to allow you to assist us in dealing with the multitude of discovered Jews who have violated our sacred (and legal) law against hiding themselves from our justice.
Herein fail not. (Snippet of language lifted from my last jury summons.)
I'm not talking about finding it on a pirate's machine. I'm talking about them downloading it themselves to see what is in that file called 'hit me one more time.mp3'. At the time they would be downloading it, they would not have yet started a lawsuit. If saying that you committed piracy because you were planning to sue was a valid defense, I would think we would have heard it before.
Anarchy Online is primary downloadable by torrent these days.
From Funcom that is.
What's BayTSP's address? I want to send them some roses. ;)
Maybe if you didn't hang out with drug dealers, you wouldn't get busted all the time. Just an idea. :-)
The original poster should release his modified client. Even better: the client should be modified to visit popular torrent sites and acquire several .torrent files. It would then connect to the respective tracker and do it's thing.
There would be so many false positives, the Media companies would have to have another way of finding offenders. They can't upload the files to you - that would imply them giving you permission to download the files. I'm not familiar with the specifics of the protocol, but this seems like a good way to create a pretty large smoke screen that would dilute the efforts of the major media companies.
But exactly how much illegitimacy is needed to trigger this? What if the software is an original work under copyright law but is alleged to violate a patent? What if the music I'm downloading turns out to have been an unintentional subconscious copy of substantial portions of an existing work (compare "My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison)?
By definition, "criminal" breaks law. Many laws nowadays make no sense. For you US folks, your Founding Fathers probably were not only criminals but guilty of TREASON.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
I'm at college, where downloading copyrighted stuff over the residence network is prohibited. To enforce this, they automatically lock student accounts that try to download anything via torrent.
So yesterday, I headed to a popular Windows help channel on DALnet to ask if there were any torrent clients that supported SOCKS so I could download America's Army over Tor. (America's Army, as you all probably know, is a freeware game, and downloading it via torrent is endorsed by their site.) I promptly got accused of trying to pirate things, break my residence contract, break international copyright law, commit acts of terrorism, etc.
Clearly, anybody who wants to download anything via a torrent is a criminal.
I'd rather say "because I was hanging out with someone who does drugs". That fits the picture better imho, and makes you even less of a target.
Having to pay your attorney even if you are found not liable is a de facto fine, even if the government or the owner of some exclusive right doesn't receive any of it.
Just face the fact that $9.95 per month isn't enough to make an ISP want to go to bat for a file sharer. Plus running a server is probably against his TOS anyway.
Depending on who you believe, only 22-28% of users have ever even tried a P2P program in their entire lives. Those that use them regularly are in the mid-single digits. Yet that tiny percent still uses the lions share of the bandwidth. Just another reason you ISP isn't going to defend file sharers.
Downloading a full length high-def movie costs the typical ISP about $1.20. Is it any wonder the big ISP's are looking at tiered Internet service?
So if I write and record a song, then how do I know whether I own the copyright? George Harrison wrote "My Sweet Lord" but his copyright was yanked after a court found that he had subconsciously copied it from an existing work.
Um, we do have the ability to choose what laws to obey. Assuming that we have free will as humans. There is no possible way to take that away from us (as far as we know). He wasn't even saying that he shouldn't be punished for it, he was just saying that he didn't care and was willing to take the risk (thus the 'bust me' line). So unless you are advocating behaviour control chips being implanted in everyone, so that they cannot choose to violate the law, what are you asking?
I'd go so far as to say that it is our duty as Americans (assuming you are one) to disobey unjust and especially unconstitutional laws, since that is the only way to get them thrown out (and set court precedent). You just have to be willing to pay the consequences. Along those lines, I tend to think that Ghandi and MLK (and even Scopes) were good for society as a whole (they chose to disobey laws that they viewed as wrong). The key is to be willing to pay the consequences, should you get busted.
It might be nice to setup a website where we can all list the laws we don't obey (anonymously), rather than simply silently disobeying. That way, we can provide some sort of feedback to legislators and law enforcement -- basically, if 90% of people disobey a given law, and think it's a bad law, it's probably time to change that law.
In any case, I'm mostly with you. I don't care much for alcohol, but I do plenty of things that are illegal -- mostly filesharing, also speeding (on occasion). I do take steps to ensure I'm not caught, but I also am prepared to defend my actions: Where the law and my ethics are at odds, I follow what's right, not what's legal.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I vote that someone creates a BitTorrent client which announces via a tracker, even claims to be on a particular torrent, but downloads absolutely no data (refuses connections). Then we can all run it in the background, have it scour Google for .torrent files and join the torrents.
I'm guessing this wouldn't cause too much of a problem with the tracker, hopefully -- if we don't announce much, and if we refuse incoming connections. But it would demonstrate, quickly and easily, that this approach is flawed.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Guilty by association - or even profiling... no it's not legal but law enforcement does it everyday.
They sell beer in America now?
Wouldn't BayTSP need to connect to the same swarm in order to see other IP addresses. They're probably downloading illegal copyrighted materials too. Since these are civil cases, anyone want to start a lawsuit against them?
To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs."
And why, exactly, are you hanging out with drug dealers?
--
Franklin
Someone builds this into a spyware program (legal or illegal). They'll get hits from all over, and waste thousands trying to prosecute / send notices to all the grannies and others that are doing absolutely nothing illegal. Will also bring up so many false positives that they'll have to measure traffic (and check its validity) to get any meaningful results, which is what they should be doing in the first place...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
...or to put this in to perspective, if the USA were trying to bust me for terrorism, it'd be like ending up in Guantanamo Bay because I was hanging out with some Afghanis, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any weapons.
Isn't that saying a getaway driver for bank robbers isn't an accomplice to robbing the bank ?
Hell, the driver never even went on bank property.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
This means that you can end up on BayTSP's list of bad people, without ever knowingly using BitTorrent. Incidentally, this could be a efficient way of DoS'ing their system - flooding them with IPs.
does this mean 6 million users a month using blizzard's background downloader to get the latest class nerf give the user a nice email from isp saying they been a bad bad boy?
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
It is quite obvious that the RIAA lawyers and BayTSP understand neither the term "good faith belief" nor the the term "reasonable doubt".
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs.
Not to defend BayTSP, but hanging out with drug dealers is bad mojo EVEN if you aren't doing drugs. Duh! The judge will eventually let you go, but not before the cops arrest you, bust your skull for resisting, and put you in a small cell with a large horny roommate. No amount of whining will make the situation fair. So get over it and stop hanging out with drug dealers.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
You have clicked on a link. You have "joined a swarm". You are not actually going to upload or download a single byte. It's that easy.
Will you get a takedown notice? Who knows :-)
Nick Waterman, Sr Tech Director, #include <stddisclaimer>
I know people will hate me but check http://www.bittorrent.com/ the 'Official" site. That is what Media Execs/Law Agencies see when they wonder what the heck is Bittorrent.
For example, Civilization III "Gold Edition" (remember there is freeciv, opensource!) is Number 1. I didn't hear Sid Meier posting it to bittorrent for free distribution.
I am evangelising Bittorrent in every legit way possible, some morons even accused me of being "Bittorrent author" on Versiontracker OS X but currently, Bittorrent.com does everything to prove it is piracy software.
Something similar happened in the Shareaza community: see this forum. They believe the threat came from BayTSP too.
PeerGuardian. And continue to be paranoid. No amount of technological security can protect us against the oncoming hoard of dickless morons who will sell out our freedom for a buck.
Possessing a gun doesn't make you a killer,
Using bit torrent doesn't make you a pirate,
Having certain body parts doesn't make you a whore,
and being on the internet doesn't automatically associated with any of the filth that might be found on it.
Otherwise, anyone reading this is guilty.