This is How We Catch You Downloading

marto writes "All over Europe thousands of people are being threatened with court action for allegedly sharing games like Dream Pinball 3D on P2P networks. Now, documents obtained by TorrentFreak show details of the anti-piracy company's techniques for identifying alleged file-sharers on the internet and the gathering of claimed 'forensic quality' evidence for use in court cases."

Comments

Good thing you can't mask your IP address

[beavis88]

Or these guys would be SOL.

Oh, wait...

Automated lawsuits

[ConfusedSelfHating]

They seem to be very sure that an ISP keeps accurate IP address records. Why do I feel that this will result in a semi-technical employee of the ISP pulling up who the IP Address is currently leased to? I feel sorry for all of the people with a wireless network using a SSID of "Linksys". Expect a letter tommorrow.

Does anyone else feel that it doesn't matter to the RIAA/MPAA if their lawsuits are accurate or not? If you send intimidating letters to people, some of them will settle even if they are innocent. You can then claim X number of settlements and declare victory.

This is a great scam for someone who wants to commit fraud on a national scale. Send people letters claiming that they breached copyright law and demand a settlement. Offer an opportunity for settlement for $2000. If they get a lawyer, drop any claim. If they ignore it, write it off. If it costs you a dollar per letter and 0.1% of people accept your "offer", a million letters will net you a million dollars. Maybe this is the new business model for big media.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[mgv]

This is a great scam for someone who wants to commit fraud on a national scale. Send people letters claiming that they breached copyright law and demand a settlement. Offer an opportunity for settlement for $2000. If they get a lawyer, drop any claim. If they ignore it, write it off. If it costs you a dollar per letter and 0.1% of people accept your "offer", a million letters will net you a million dollars. Maybe this is the new business model for big media.

I'm not sure what the law says in Australia, although vexatious claim comes to mind. In the USA, people seem to use the term racketeering, although I don't know enough about US law to know if this is correct.

Michael

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Kjella]

This is a great scam for someone who wants to commit fraud on a national scale. Send people letters claiming that they breached copyright law and demand a settlement. Offer an opportunity for settlement for $2000. If they get a lawyer, drop any claim. If they ignore it, write it off. If it costs you a dollar per letter and 0.1% of people accept your "offer", a million letters will net you a million dollars.

That would be an illegal business model. However, if you do follow through on the rest and take them to court and win most, then it's perfectly legal. It is illegal to threaten lawsuits without cause. It's not illegal to offer a settlement if you do have cause.

The statistics aren't really in since the legal system is a slow turning one, but I'd be surprised if most people managed to show a preponderance of evidence against. Sure, you can point to hackers, open wifi, lack of computers/equipment/skill, but they're more doubt than making it *probable*. Is that his excuse? Has he sent in a different, clean hard disk? All of these defenses rely on evidence you bring yourself, there's no official log anywhere to back you up.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Anonymous Coward]

That is pretty much what the RIAA is already doing.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[ScrewMaster]

I think we use the term "barratry" here, although I only think that from having read it on Slashdot, so, you know, grain of salt and all that.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking from personal experience, records kept by ISPs are dodgy at best. I became a subject of a police investigation due to database errors....

Re:Automated lawsuits

[mithras the prophet]

They seem to be very sure that an ISP keeps accurate IP address records. Why do I feel that this will result in a semi-technical employee of the ISP pulling up who the IP Address is currently leased to?

I served on a grand jury that saw several fraud cases that involved the use of ISP IP lease records, and the employees that testified were very knowledgeable and diligent. That's not to say that they would be in every case, of course, but what direct experience I do have suggests that your concerns are misplaced.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[ScrewMaster]

It's not illegal to offer a settlement if you do have cause.

True, but on the other hand if you're going to be suing people on the scale that the RIAA has been suing people, your evidence had better be pretty solid or you're treading on thin ice. Judges are starting to wake up to what the RIAA is doing, and I hope that trend continues.

All of these defenses rely on evidence you bring yourself, there's no official log anywhere to back you up.

Also true, but there's no "official" evidence to back up their claims either, which is the crux of the matter. And no, the information ISPs record hardly qualifies as an official log. Those are typically for provisioning, diagnostic and statistical use, and are not intended to serve as evidence against their own customers. Nor does a screenshot from Kazaa showing a list of IP addresses count as strong evidence.

The chain of evidence is pretty weak, given that they're depending upon data that was not recorded with the intent of being used in court, isn't particularly reliable anyway, and is subject to human mishandling outside any forensic chain established by the courts, and isn't guaranteed to point to the actual "criminal" in any event! The problem here is the (unfortunate) human tendency to accept information generated by a machine that you don't understand as being valid, when there's a substantial chance that it isn't.

That effect is very real ... in my years as a software contractor I saw it all the time. I would imagine that judges are just as subject to it as anyone else. I had to tell my customers repeatedly that they can't trust the software until they've done end-to-end on it and know that the results are valid. Mistakes get made, people (even me!) screw up on occasion. As far as I'm concerned, log files spit out by a router or DSLAM shouldn't be admissible in court, certainly not as the primary evidence against someone. I wouldn't want my future dependent upon a few magnetic domains on a hard disk somewhere. Let the RIAA collect some actual evidence (say, a picture of me at my computer doing something illegal) and take me to court. ISP logs are a joke at best, or would be a joke if their use weren't unfairly injuring lot of people.

It's not as if there's some official Federal standard in place for ISP data monitoring that would be guaranteed to hold up in court so long as the ISP could be shown to be upholding the standard. I can guarantee that ISPs wouldn't want such a standard because it would cost them a fortune.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[rikkards]

With Rogers in Canada (notoriously the least favourable for Bittorrent usage), if you look at the TOS that they provide, they can shut you off at any point if they find that:
A. You are downloading intellectual Property that you are not supposed to have.
B. You are running any server based application (i.e. FTP)
C. You are letting anyone in your local area to get free access to your link other than people in your actual residence. At one point they would even threaten if you had a router. Nowadays you would be stupid if you didn't have a router. So C isn't really enforced anymore.

I received a Cease and Desist from Rogers regarding downloading software which I don't do much anymore if at all. In this case it had been about 6 months since the last time. Someone I know got one for downloading a couple episodes of BattleStar Galactica which I told her if I had got it, I would have responded back for them to go fvck themselves as most of the time I download anything recent tv-wise would be because the stupid Explorer 8300HD PVR I am renting from them didn't tape it or that the show they provided wasn't in widescreen format even though it was available.

I haven't heard of anyone being shut off from A yet and I know of people who have gone past the 100G per month limit so I think it is just a CYA. Plus from what I understand Sympatico isn't throttling BitTorrent so Rogers knows that their threat of cutting someone off is missing some teeth as it is easy to jump over to their competitors. Plus if they did, they would lose about $160 a month as I would move everything over to Bell.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[octopus72]

It is not collected by authorised and trusted institution (like police),
instead it is performed by some company and this is no proof in a court (at least not in Europe contries)

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Shabbs]

If it costs you a dollar per letter and 0.1% of people accept your "offer", a million letters will net you a million dollars. Maybe this is the new business model for big media. And no profit!

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Deorus]

> I feel sorry for all of the people with a wireless network using a SSID of "Linksys".

Aren't Linksys and Default free wireless broadband ISPs?

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Rukie]

Has anyone considered the fact that IP addresses can be spoofed?

Re:Automated lawsuits

[ScrewMaster]

Everyone but the lawyers involved, apparently.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[westlake]

on the other hand if you're going to be suing people on the scale that the RIAA has been suing people, your evidence had better be pretty solid or you're treading on thin ice.
but there's no "official" evidence to back up their claims either, which is the crux of the matter.

In the U.S. there are profound differences between civil and criminal law - differences which the geek seems determined to ignore.

The burden of proof is lower. Much, much lower. Decisions are based on the "weight of the evidence," or, most simply stated, by what seems more likely than not.

That does not put the geek in a strong position when he spins out his tales of what might have been.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[ScrewMaster]

Yes, I know ... "a preponderance of evidence", and it's true that the ratio of something to nothing is significant ... even when the "something" is little more than nothing. However, the fact that the RIAA has invariably had major problems when they've actually been forced into court (and "forced" is the correct word: they really don't want to be there) indicates to me that their so-called evidence isn't up to even civil suit standards and they know it.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[ScrewMaster]

And worse, even when they have gone to court, the only way they have of proving guilt has been to demand that the defendant turn over his or her computer for "forensic analysis", by (apparently) clueless "experts", and if there's no usable evidence we'll demand the computers of anyone associated with you. In other words, we'll sue you over evidence that we know is insufficient to win in an actual trial, and then demand that you provide us with whatever evidence we need to have you convicted and if that doesn't work, we'll use suspect expert testimony to try and fool the court anyway.

Is that how the system is supposed to work? If I were a judge, that would really torque me into a pretzel, and in fact there are a number of judges that have gotten pretty bent out of shape over those issues.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[E8086]

Now that's an idea, I only borrowed it from the internets because your service I'm paying you more than enought for didn't work, if your ISP is also your cable tv provider. Which seems to happen often with the Sci-Fi channel. The neither of the new Stargates recorded properly and I set their great [I]Explorer[.exe] box to record both showings, got less than 2 for 4 that day. I noticed the Sci-Fi channel signal dropping to the quality of a heavily scratched DVD during every showing of BSG. You could see most of the show but with all the skips and artifacts it was no where good enough to record for use on my PC and ipod. Maybe someone wants to encourage you to buy it off itunes tomorrow. Now why would I want to wait until tomorrow and pay another $2, or however much they're charging, when I should be able to record/convert it myself with all the services I'm already paying for and have it done in under 30min after the show ends and not have to wait until tomorrow.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[rikkards]

Course that doesn't explain why I downloaded the first 5 seasons of Smallville but that's another story....

Re:Automated lawsuits

[cpt kangarooski]

It seems to have more to do with wanting to avoid juries. Juries are likely to be sympathetic to defendants in these cases, meaning that while RIAA's evidence could support their case, if a jury disagrees, then it didn't matter that it could have worked. RIAA probably prefers bench trials to jury trials, and settlements to any trial at all.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[cpt kangarooski]

and then demand that you provide us with whatever evidence we need

Yes, that's how discovery works in the US. It's not a bad system, actually. You might want to read up on it.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Sancho]

In the US, civil suits don't need as much evidence as criminal suits. All the RIAA has to do is convince the judge/jury that it /probably/ happened this way. Iron-clad logging isn't really necessary for that.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Sancho]

I work for an ISP.

They seem to be very sure that an ISP keeps accurate IP address records. Why do I feel that this will result in a semi-technical employee of the ISP pulling up who the IP Address is currently leased to? We keep meticulous logs for a variety of reasons, both legal and for the security of the network. It's a blessing and a curse--when we need to track down someone for abusing the network, it's easy. But when we need to find someone who is about to be harassed by the MPAA/RIAA, it's also easy.

The people who search the logs are quite competent. The log audit software we have takes a timestamp in any format accepted by strftime, which means that we can give it a timestamp with a timezone which is not ours (99% of the complaints) and it will automatically convert it to UTC, search the logs, then return the information in UTC, our TZ, and the TZ from the complaint (so that spot-checking is easy). If the complaint is recent enough, we also check current leases as a secondary check (most of the time, the complaints come in within a couple of days of the alleged infringement, and the owner hasn't changed). If it is the same, we check to see if the IP appeared anywhere else on the network (it could happen, due to a glitch or malicious behavior).

It's honestly pretty foolproof, from our end. Smart people wrote the software, smart people use the software, and the software itself is absurdly simple. We are confident in the answers we give, and in the people who give them. Whether or not they were legitimately asked for is not in our hands. You can thank the cartels and the DMCA for that.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Khabok]

Ya know, even encrypted networks are pretty hackable. Couldn't one protect themselves, legally speaking, simply by owning a wireless network?

Re:Automated lawsuits

[compro01]

That would be an illegal business model, if you weren't a corporation

fixed that for you.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[compro01]

Everyone but the lawyers involved, apparently.

oh, they know it, but who cares? they still get their fees.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[laffer1]

As someone who worked at an ISP for close to three years, I can tell you that ISP logs are not reliable. Our logs were stored in an unpatched Microsoft SQL Server running on a Windows NT 4 SP4 server (after SP6a was out). The radius server logs were imported periodically into SQL Server. Considering our Linux boxes were hacked due to poor setup and outdated software, anyone could have altered the logs before the import or after the import.

That ISP had like 4000 customers so we're not talking big time. As I left, we were rolling out aDSL service.

I know some of you think hacking a Linux box is impossible, but consider an id10t who uses BIND 4 for DNS well after BIND 8 had been out, old versions of apache, Microsoft FrontPage extensions for Linux, and a slew of other misconfigured, old software. Almost everything ran as nobody or root. If you hacked one service, everything else was probably running as the same user anyway.

Our logs were deleted several times. I wore many hats, but one of them was Windows sys admin. I was not allowed to fix/patch the billing database server. At the time, my servers were never hacked and the linux machines were often hacked. It was like being in the mirror universe.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't spoof TCP past the first packet because the acknowledgement gets sent to the false IP. So no problem there unless the P2P network is using UDP.

(Which suggests an idea for anonymous file transfer: use a low-bandwidth anonymous protocol (like Freenet) to say "Y, I wanna download X". Y then sends you UDP packets with a forged source IP. Nobody can tell who Y is without breaking the low-bandwidth anonymous protocol or sniffing Y's actual physical connection. Throw in challenge-response through the anonymous protocol and you're set.)

Re:Automated lawsuits

[ScrewMaster]

You're evil, you know that? I like the idea though.

Frankly, I'm surprised this hasn't been done already. Huh. For all we know, maybe somebody has.

From a purely technological perspective, services like MediaSentry are workable only until file transfer software reaches a certain level of sophistication ... at that point they will become useless. The only hope the RIAA-types will have is if they can convince/coerce ISPs into monitoring P2P activity at the source. That would probably an easy task if you're dealing with the likes of AT&T, SBC or Comcast. They haven't exhibited the slightest backbone regarding customer privacy, and at some point they'll start piping user activity info right to the lawyers. That would be a dream come true for those people: automated "justice" at its finest.

At one point I kinda thought the RIAA's lawsuits were targeted solely at suppressing P2P usage, and I suppose initially that was true. Now I'm not so sure, since it does look like they're making a significant amount of money from their campaign, I mean, now there's a profit motive directly attached. They aren't just the paid legal arm of the studios any longer, now they're actually making money from their lawsuit machine. Does anyone know where those funds go? Is the "take" from all these settlements only enough to fund the law firms involved, are they losing money, or are they stashing some away for a rainy day? What are they doing with it?

If they are profiting by this, what it means to me is that the RIAA wouldn't be happy even if they managed to stop all file-sharing tomorrow: they'd lose a significant source of revenue.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[greenbird]

the employees that testified were very knowledgeable and diligent.

If they're like most IT shops I've encountered they probable have one competent admin and a couple dozen morans. Who do you think they're going to send to testify in court.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[HiThere]

"barratry" refers to repeatedly filing lawsuits...but I think that in order to be barratry it has to be against the same defendant. Also, I think that if you drop the lawsuit, then it can't be used as a part of an action against one for barratry. And I'm fairly certain that if they win you can't use the action against them. The only time I've seen it used by someone who knew what the word meant it referred to repeatedly filing lawsuits, losing them, and then filing a slight variation as a new lawsuit. (IANAL)

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Durandal64]

It's fool-proof for identifying which IP address an infringing file was sent to, but that's like saying, "I saw your car at the crime scene". You have to actually show that the person you're suing is the person who was using the computer at that time, in criminal court, at least. And that's where these cases should be if the RIAA wants criminal penalties such as jail time for violating their copyrights. (Which, if memory serves, is what they've lobbied for.)

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Sancho]

That's an issue with the legal system. I was addressing the issue of incompetence with the people checking the logs.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[ScrewMaster]

No, because once they decide to go after you (rightly or wrongly) you're pretty well screwed unless you settle, or have the means (and the cojones) to defend yourself. What's needed is a proactive defense, which pretty much has to be technological in nature. A retroactive defense such as an open WAP doesn't do you much good if you're trying to stay out of court in the first place, and probably isn't much of a defense anyways.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Sigma 7]

Has anyone considered the fact that IP addresses can be spoofed?

Only on UDP packets and TCP connection requests. If you want to spoof an IP address in order to download something, don't expect to get anything. At best, only 4K is transmitted as soon as the destination IP address either times out or resets the connection.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[FutureDomain]

From a purely technological perspective, services like MediaSentry are workable only until file transfer software reaches a certain level of sophistication ... at that point they will become useless. Just wait until someone makes "Paranoid P2P", a heavily encrypted and anonymized P2P network. Bit torrent is working towards that, but not to the same degree.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Anonymous Coward]

I was falsly accused of using P2P eMule network to trade some random Symantec file I had never heard of. I was not even notified, they just shut off my entire network access. I called to find out why, and was told I had traded some file. I had never ever searched for that file, or downloaded it, and the file did not exist on my HD.

When I asked the ISP guy how they verify I am sharing the file, they said they just "take the letter at face value," in reference to the legal notice they received. I asked then how they planned to verify I was no longer sharing the file, and they said they just take my word for it.

After ripping them for violating the DCMA process, I told them in no uncertain terms that if they didn't immediately and permanently restore my access, that I would sue them in small claims court and it would be a wonderful civics lesson for their staff.

Everything has been fine since, but I am wary.

Never believe the ISP. They are full of it.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Anonymous Coward]

and a couple dozen morans

I've even heard that their customers are morans too.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[ScrewMaster]

Just wait until someone makes "Paranoid P2P"

The way things are now, with all this legal stuff flying through the air, you can just shorten the name back to P2P (Paranoid To Paranoid.)

Re:Automated lawsuits

[renegadesx]

Yes but if next time they go after a 10 year old girl, she can tell the nice old judge that the RIAA lawyer touched her, case dropped

Re:Automated lawsuits

[renegadesx]

The RIAA themselves too, they don't seem to be that tech smart. Even if they do, they would put their head in the sand about it, as it does not do them any favours

Re:Automated lawsuits

[morgan_greywolf]

At one point I kinda thought the RIAA's lawsuits were targeted solely at suppressing P2P usage, and I suppose initially that was true. Now I'm not so sure, since it does look like they're making a significant amount of money from their campaign, I mean, now there's a profit motive directly attached. They aren't just the paid legal arm of the studios any longer, now they're actually making money from their lawsuit machine. Does anyone know where those funds go? Is the "take" from all these settlements only enough to fund the law firms involved, are they losing money, or are they stashing some away for a rainy day? What are they doing with it?

Hint: they have to pay for all those lobbyists somehow.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Shadowlore]

That's not to say that they would be in every case, of course, but what direct experience I do have suggests that your concerns are misplaced.

No, it does not. Concerns that people will be involved that do not understand what they are doing or the implications are well founded in pretty much every avenue. We have historical accounts that show that not all dictators are evil, but that does not mean that any concerns about dictatorships are misplaced. We also have evidence that says that not all power "corrupts" (as in millions of parents) but that does not mean that concerns about power aggregation are misplaced.

Indeed in most walks of life most of the time the people are competent/reasonable conscientious, etc. But that does not say that concerns about the general case are misplaced.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Dan541]

That would be an illegal business model. However, if you do follow through on the rest and take them to court and win most, then it's perfectly legal. It is illegal to threaten lawsuits without cause. It's not illegal to offer a settlement if you do have cause. The RIAA cant prove anything If I download a file they cannot prove that I did so why not just accuse them of making up all their evidence? Even then I have a wifi access point I don't use but leave open for the public it could have been anyone.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[bob frost]

Kjella is 100% correct. There are provisions in the otherwise despicable DMCA (US-only, of course) that explicitly penalize "fishing"-based IP claims. It'd be great to see EFF to sue RIAA on that one.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[orclevegam]

There's a reason that we usually tag these articles with mafiaa. You know, that other organization that prompted the creation of racketeering laws in the first place.

Re:Automated lawsuits

[Anonymous Coward]

Course that doesn't explain why I downloaded the first 5 seasons of Smallville but that's another story....

Is that the story about you being gay?

Re:Automated lawsuits

[hatredman]

For them, IP is some other thing and, also for them, the filesharers spoofed THEIR IP.

Why don't we ...

[Sod75]

put the entire internet behind a NAT router ? :)

Re:Why don't we ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because a 15 year old might decide to shutdown the internet with a single email?

Re:Why don't we ...

[maxwell demon]

Because a 15 year old might decide to shutdown the internet with a single email?

No need for email, there's a convenient web interface available.

Re:Why don't we ...

[digitalhermit]

OK, I just reconfigured my Linksys by switching the LAN and WAN ports. Please use 192.168.0.1 as your gateway and it should work.

Re:Why don't we ...

[Anonymous Coward]

we tried that with small towns.. kills the router pretty quick.

Re:Why don't we ...

[awarlaw]

Hey, that's my gateway. Go get your own!

Re:Why don't we ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Much more funny without javascript.

Re:Why don't we ...

[ioshhdflwuegfh]

It works though if one turns off the pop-up blocker...

To quote...

[galenoftheshadows]

In an age of Wintel-virus created bot-farms, spoofs, and easily cracked WEP encrypted wireless home networks (among other easy hacks), the only tech-savvy response to such . . . an accusation . . . is, "You've got to be kidding."

'Nuff said. And thanks to Merl Ledford III. (Pardon my edit, by the way.)

I find it so hard to believe that these companies continue in the thought that they can make these cases work.

Re:To quote...

[Sancho]

Are you kidding? They think that they can make them work because...they work. 99% of people settle, fueling the machine so that it can continue to file suits.

Re:To quote...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I think you would need to have some proof that someone other than yourself did the activity. Just like some one could steal my car hit a pedestrian and return it to my garage. I'd need proof of that to make it a convincing argument.

Re:To quote...

[galenoftheshadows]

I think you would need to have some proof that someone other than yourself did the activity.

No, they have to prove it was you who did the activity, innocent until proven guilty, etc, beyond a shadow of a doubt still exists in civil cases. Even if running someone over fell under civil penalty, they would have to prove that you were the one behind the wheel. It can't be simply, "Oh, we think he/she did it." They've got to show that you actually did, no matter whether it's civil or criminal. The only difference between the two is what is admissible and what is not, the requirements of preponderance and validity of the evidence is exactly the same.

Re:To quote...

[galenoftheshadows]

I'll give ya that one.

Sadly though, that's a simple lack of knowledge on the RIAA victim's part.

Re:To quote...

[Kadin2048]

The only difference between the two is what is admissible and what is not, the requirements of preponderance and validity of the evidence is exactly the same.

I'm not quite sure if you're implying this or not, but the requirements for guilt in criminal court and civil court are not the same. The standard used in most criminal cases is "beyond a reasonable doubt," while in civil court, the standard is "preponderance of the evidence," basically 51% percent.

To put it bluntly, you can be in no danger of guilt in a criminal court, but still be found responsible for damages in civil court, on far shakier evidence.

Not that foolproof

[mgv]

Couple of problems with their system:

1. It doesn't download the whole file from your system. Which means that they can't really show that you have the file, just that you say that you have it. Some anti-piracy systems are known for responding to any search request with a positive result but full of junk or ads.

2. It doesn't really prove it was you, it just logs it to an IP address (even if it was your IP, you are running a wireless network, right?)

3. It currently doesn't do bit torrent, just other P2P systems.

And probably alot of other problems - just did a quick scan of TFA to produce this post.

Michael

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Couple of problems with their system:
2. It doesn't really prove it was you, it just logs it to an IP address (even if it was your IP, you are running a wireless network, right?)

Exactly. I never illegally downloaded file in my adult life (and likely not before, given that 2400 baud was fast back then), yet I have a wireless (FON) router open to everyone who are near. It's pretty open, you could even print if my printer happens to be turned on. Security doesn't worry me as there is only linux machines on that network, and the internet connection is decently firewalled. But conceivable, someone could drive by, and download the latest Beatles-modern-equivalent file, and I could receive such a letter --- my IP is fixed, so no discussion there. But still, if any ISP is innocent, so am I.

In other words, they have to prove not only what IP did it, but what person. How do you do that? This sounds very much like the naughty-phone-bills case. They had to prove that it was a resident above 18(or 16?) that had called, and if they were unable to (as they were in most cases) they were kicked from court.

Re:Not that foolproof

[rucs_hack]

very Utopian of you. I'm sure you'd be just fine if someone used your open connection to download child porn.

Re:Not that foolproof

[ewanm89]

Tors anonymous proxy network anyone?

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

very Utopian of you. I'm sure you'd be just fine if someone used your open connection to download child porn.

It will bother me no more and no less than if they'd used any other connection. What's next? Not borrowing a screwdriver out because it might be used for a break-in? I will not let a few deviants destroy all that is good and beautiful about this world, and neither should you. I share my connection freely within reasonable limits.

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

But still, if any ISP is innocent, so am I.

I don't think the safe harbor provisions of the dmca would apply to you. The majority of ISPs' AUPs forbid "re-sharing" or re-selling of a subscriber's internet connection. You are a customer, not an ISP.

If you have an account with an ISP that permits you to re-sell the internet access, then you could claim safe harbor. Indeed, the riaa would be left sending you letters for ip-to-user translations.

Try finding a small local ISP and work with them to get re-sellable internet access. Maybe try the neighborhood wireless angle or free hotspot connectivity.

Re:Not that foolproof

[Anonymous Coward]

An ISP's TOS is a contract between you and the ISP stating the terms of continued service, not a legal qualifier that determines whether you are letting others use your network or not.

Re:Not that foolproof

[countach]

I don't see why the private contractual arrangments between you and your ISP would affect whether you are an ISP according to the DMCA. A few problems with your persoanl contractual arrangments wouldn't usually affect something like that. (Someone who's read the DMCA prove me wrong).

As for forbidding "resharing", how on earth can they ask for that? Can I share with my wife? Kids? Friends? Boarders? Relatives? Guests? That's a ridiculous clause if such things exist.

Re:Not that foolproof

[maxwell demon]

Well, if you get such a letter, you better have a log file to show them it wasn't you. Of course, such log files can also be faked, but I guess you are in a much worse position if you can't show at least some evidence that it wasn't you.

Re:Not that foolproof

[pixelpusher220]

In other words, they have to prove not only what IP did it, but what person.

This is always the crux of the argument I haven't seen fleshed out. If a bank robbery is committed and my license plate is seen on the get away car, I can be quite sure I'm going to be bothered by the police until I tell them who I had let use my car at that particular time (assuming of course *I* wasn't driving a the time!).

I suppose if I could prove I routinely left my car on the street, unlocked, with the keys in it then there might be reason for not charging me, but then I'd have to report the car as stolen (since them putting the car back would be quite unlikely me thinks.

So I don't mean this as a rant, but given the ISP customer signed an agreement, aren't they responsible for all use of that service? If they can prove it wasn't them, but they are on the hook to cough up who *was* using it aren't they?

It's the same thing as the recent RIAA case against the granny who claimed she didn't know what the kids in the house were doing. Given that she's the adult, she's responsible for anything the kids did under her watch isn't she?

If I leave a loaded gun outside for anyone to use, aren't I responsible for anything done with that gun?

I fully appreciate leaving open access for all to use, I just worry about the consequences that's all :)

Re:Not that foolproof

[damienl451]

I suppose one could argue that you are responsible for what you do *AND* let other people do with your connection. It's either that, or any person who wants to trade child porn or any illegal material only has to leave his wireless network open to be able to claim that it wasn't him but a random person using Wifi. In this particular case, it is unreasonable to ask the state or the plaintiff to show that it was you who downloaded/uploaded illegal things, since there is absolutely no way they could make such a case. At the very least, you should have to produce reliable logs showing that a third-party was logged on your network at the time the infringing material was downloaded. If someone claims it's not him despite convincing evidence (i.e. that his connection was used), *he* has to prove it.

Re:Not that foolproof

[nurb432]

1 - That shows intent , so dont use that in court..
2 - That is true, though your ISP might cut you off for violating the AUP in the process. ( but better that then fined/jailed ) ...
4 - Dont forget the plethora of viruses/trojans out there.

Re:Not that foolproof

[rucs_hack]

Oh I wish we did live in such a world, really, I'm not kidding, it would be great.

However you could find yourself arrested, your equipment seized, and stories in the newspaper before anyone had time to believe that is wasn't you who did it, if they ever did.

Sharing is a good thing, but unconditional sharing a net connection without checks of any kind is asking for your generosity to be abused.

Re:Not that foolproof

[Creepy Crawler]

According to part 14 FCC code, it is unlicensed band.

As long as you abide by uW/m^2 required for that band and keep your harmonics down below a certain threshold, operating is perfectly legal.

Radio is not comparable to your physical analogies, as they just dont work.

As far as anybody knows, access to your system is forbidden and considered trespass.

Re:Not that foolproof

[number11]

1. It doesn't download the whole file from your system. Which means that they can't really show that you have the file

I haven't seen the OA, because part of it is slashdotted. But, presuming they have the SHA1 (and perhaps TTH) hashes from the victim, and a bit-identical sample (compared to the whole file they downloaded from somewhere else), that may be close enough. (I don't know if they restrict themselves to victims who have files with matching hashes, or even make any check for file bogosity, though. Given that they're on record as threatening to sue people who simply had an offending character string in the filename, they may not.)

2. It doesn't really prove it was you, it just logs it to an IP address

This would seem to be the weakest of their points.

3. It currently doesn't do bit torrent, just other P2P systems

Gnutella/G2 and eD2K specifically. Maybe. But what makes you think this is their only tool? We do know they've sued Kazaa and bit torrent users as well. And Shareaza (the OSS source their program is apparently based on) does do bit torrent, so it doesn't seem like a big step, except maybe for the fact that bit torrent doesn't provide an automatic search mechanism.

Their system is not airtight. But for a lawsuit they don't need to meet the standard of proof that a criminal trial needs.

Re:Not that foolproof

[roman_mir]

The claim is that the "File Sharing Monitor" is totally foolproof and that it can provide forensic-quality information to a court in order that file-sharers be punished. The question remains whether an IP-address is sufficient evidence to sue a person for downloading copyrighted material. Recent cases suggest that the RIAA and the MPAA will need more evidence than that. - of-course this is not foolproof. However I am of an opinion that almost all of the evidence they find is actually correct evidence of the files being offered for upload by someone.

Now, the parent is saying this: 2. It doesn't really prove it was you, it just logs it to an IP address (even if it was your IP, you are running a wireless network, right?) - This is where I can ask the following question: if a red-light camera can be used to send an automated ticket to the car owner, regardless of who was driving, why shouldn't the evidence in this case be sufficient to fine (or file a lawsuit) the person, whose computer is using the IP address in question, the IP address associated with the file download?

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

But still, if any ISP is innocent, so am I.

I don't think the safe harbor provisions of the dmca would apply to you. The majority of ISPs' AUPs forbid "re-sharing" or re-selling of a subscriber's internet connection. You are a customer, not an ISP.

If you have an account with an ISP that permits you to re-sell the internet access, then you could claim safe harbor. Indeed, the riaa would be left sending you letters for ip-to-user translations.

Try finding a small local ISP and work with them to get re-sellable internet access. Maybe try the neighborhood wireless angle or free hotspot connectivity.

What are you going on about? This is about the civilized world, not US :p

My ISP lets me do anything that is legal and non-commercial, and I sincerely doubt that the non-commercial will really hold up in court. Not that it matters, since I have no intentions to. Providing free wireless is well within those parameters.

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

As far as anybody knows, access to your system is forbidden and considered trespass.

Hence the big banner that says "Welcome! You are welcome to use this connection, the password is user and the password is password :D (Well, that is the 2nd part. The first part is the same, but in Danish.

I'm not actually sure if it would be counted as tresspass here. In general, you have to show a clear border... I just don't know. I suppose the courts will have to decide that, should anyone actually press charges. If that happens, I think the accusers would be hard pressed to tell why they didn't at least enable the WEP protocol encryption, since that would clearly indicate to anyone that this is a private network.

Re:Not that foolproof

[buswolley]

I have yet to hear a modern band that is equivalent to the Beatles.

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

I don't see why the private contractual arrangments between you and your ISP would affect whether you are an ISP according to the DMCA. A few problems with your persoanl contractual arrangments wouldn't usually affect something like that.

While I am not a lawyer, I believe it would hinge on the legal definition of an ISP. If your upstream provider doesn't allow you to re-sell your internet access, it makes it pretty difficult to argue that you are an ISP.

As for forbidding "resharing", how on earth can they ask for that? Can I share with my wife? Kids? Friends? Boarders? Relatives? Guests?

From Comcast's AUP
ix. resell the Service or otherwise make available to anyone outside the Premises the ability to use the Service (i.e. wi-fi, or other methods of networking), in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, or on a bundled or unbundled basis. The Service is for personal and non-commercial use only and you agree not to use the Service for operation as an Internet service provider or for any business enterprise or purpose, or as an end-point on a non-Comcast local area network or wide area network;

x. connect multiple computers behind the cable modem to set up a LAN (Local Area Network) that in any manner would result in a violation of the terms of this Policy or an applicable Service plan;

Note: that was just the first ISP's AUP I looked at.

That's a ridiculous clause if such things exist.

Haven't read your ISP's AUP, have you?

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Well, if you get such a letter, you better have a log file to show them it wasn't you. Of course, such log files can also be faked, but I guess you are in a much worse position if you can't show at least some evidence that it wasn't you.

No. It is not my job to show I am innocent. Heck, some guy in this country was let off intensive sharing of child-pornography on the defense that his computer was riddled with virus.. Or some such. I'll just say "I didn't do it. Since I have an open wireless, it could be anyone in the neighbourhood". Then it would be my word against theirs, and the case would drop. Of course, they might bother me, even ransack my harddisks (which are clean). If they actually took my computer, I would be awarded damages if found innocent, and so forth (not much, of course. But still). Since I would be innocent, I don't really worry that I'll be convicted.

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

I suppose one could argue that you are responsible for what you do *AND* let other people do with your connection. It's either that, or any person who wants to trade child porn or any illegal material only has to leave his wireless network open to be able to claim that it wasn't him but a random person using Wifi. In this particular case, it is unreasonable to ask the state or the plaintiff to show that it was you who downloaded/uploaded illegal things, since there is absolutely no way they could make such a case. At the very least, you should have to produce reliable logs showing that a third-party was logged on your network at the time the infringing material was downloaded. If someone claims it's not him despite convincing evidence (i.e. that his connection was used), *he* has to prove it.

You are wrong. Really, you are innocent until it is reasonable proven that you are guilty. Above, you list why child porno addicts are almost never convicted for downloading (in this country). It is too hard to prove it was really them. Creditcard transactions and possesion are the normal means.

However, since child pornography spreading is considered a major crime, conceivable the police could obtain a permit to install a camera or such to get some hard proof. But I have never heard of a case where that was necessary.

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Oh I wish we did live in such a world, really, I'm not kidding, it would be great.

However you could find yourself arrested, your equipment seized, and stories in the newspaper before anyone had time to believe that is wasn't you who did it, if they ever did.

Those things could happen no matter what I do. It happens to the people dealing with children occasionally, unfortunately, but fortunately the police are usually adamant about being very sure before they go around arresting people for such crimes until they are reasonable sure. For a mathematician such as I, I find it unlikely. If my IP did show up in a log, the local police might visit me for a chat, I'd show him what I could show (which would be a likely timestamp, maybe) and he would be on his way.

Sharing is a good thing, but unconditional sharing a net connection without checks of any kind is asking for your generosity to be abused.

Really? I think you fear your fate too much. In fact, my very open network has only ever been used by one person, and that person is me. What I do is legal, makes the world a bit nicer, harms noone, and the chance of mishaps are small. I'd be a coward for not doing it.

Let me put the risk in perspective for you. The police claims that they monitor several child porn sites. And that lots of lots of people tune in and stays there for more than 1 minute. Yet, charges are rare. Doesn't that tell you something?

Re:Not that foolproof

[Anonymous Coward]

very Utopian of you. I'm sure you'd be just fine if someone used your open connection to download child porn.

It will bother me no more and no less than if they'd used any other connection. What's next? Not borrowing a screwdriver out because it might be used for a break-in? I will not let a few deviants destroy all that is good and beautiful about this world, and neither should you. I share my connection freely within reasonable limits.

Wow, you're mellow. I have a friend in prison because unsolicited child porn passed through his network. He's not feeling so mellow any more.

Re:Not that foolproof

[agibbs]

According to the DMCA (17 USC 512(k)) (k) Definitions. (1) Service provider. (A) As used in subsection (a), the term "service provider" means an entity offering the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the user's choosing, without modification to the content of the material as sent or received. (B) As used in this section, other than subsection (a), the term "service provider" means a provider of online services or network access, or the operator of facilities therefor, and includes an entity described in subparagraph (A). So that sounds like an open wireless network would count as a service provider. However, service provider liability is only limited if:

(i) Conditions for eligibility. (1) Accommodation of technology. The limitations on liability established by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service provider-- (A) has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network who are repeat infringers; and (B) accommodates and does not interfere with standard technical measures. (2) Definition. As used in this subsection, the term "standard technical measures" means technical measures that are used by copyright owners to identify or protect copyrighted works and-- (A) have been developed pursuant to a broad consensus of copyright owners and service providers in an open, fair, voluntary, multi-industry standards process; (B) are available to any person on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms; and (C) do not impose substantial costs on service providers or substantial burdens on their systems or networks.

So unless you're putting up a warning to everyone who accesses your hotspot you're probably not complying with 512(i)(1)(A). Note also, 512(a) which provides that "conduit" ISPs, i.e. those that don't store data on their servers, but merely are common carriers of information, are not liable for copyright infringing data that moves through their wires. This pretty straight forward interpretation was upheld in Charter Communs., Inc. v. Charter Communs., Inc., 393 F.3d 771, (8th Cir., 2005). Note, however, that the DMCA only applies to copyright violations and doesn't address the child porn case suggested above.

Re:Not that foolproof

[phantomcircuit]

He could easily just say that he was acting as an ISP and was breaking the TOS with his ISP.

What're they going to do?

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

I have yet to hear a modern band that is equivalent to the Beatles.

Hehe. Point taken, but I meant equivalent in popularity.

Re:Not that foolproof

[Paradise Pete]

Oh I wish we did live in such a world, really, I'm not kidding, it would be great.

The only way to get there is to start behaving like he is. And since you don't seem even close to ready to do that, it's going to take a while. You can't have a great society if nobody trusts anybody.

Re:Not that foolproof

[stsp]

Sharing is a good thing, but unconditional sharing a net connection without checks of any kind is asking for your generosity to be abused.

Sure.

But consider this: in Berlin, there's a free as in speech wireless mesh network with more than 200 nodes. They are all more or less connected to each other and happily pass data around. A lot of them offer internet access. There's a map of the network you can look at. Now, even though this network is publicly known, freely accessible and run in a very large city with a virtually unlimited supply of people who are after doing bad stuff, as far as I know there has never been an incident so far (the network runs since about 3 years).

I know this does not invalidate your point in any way, because an incident could occur at any time. And a lot of people don't want to share their connection for the precise reasons you stated. But isn't it amazing still?

Re:Not that foolproof

[Paradise Pete]

Many languages don't have separate words for the two sides of the transaction. If you would take the time to learn a second language you'll find that your tolerance for imperfect use goes way up. And you'll certainly stop thinking of people as "tools" for improperly using a word. Your use of the word tool, for instance, would have been considered laughably improper not very long ago. But now it gets the message across, and that's the real purpose of language.

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Not borrowing a screwdriver out because it might be used for a break-in?

I realize you might not be from the US but "borrow" means to "lend from" not "lend to". It's a real problem these days for people, especially in the Midwestern US, to use that term incorrectly and look like a tool.

No I am not from the US, but I thank you for clearing that up. I mostly learned English from reading, so I do get the occasionally word backwards. Any good word for lend to, then?

Re:Not that foolproof

[AK Marc]

I don't think the safe harbor provisions of the dmca would apply to you. The majority of ISPs' AUPs forbid "re-sharing" or re-selling of a subscriber's internet connection. You are a customer, not an ISP.

I do not think those two statements are related. Whether he is allowed to open his network is not relevant to whether he has. One is a civic contractual matter between him and his ISP. The other is a point of law involved if someone commits a crime through his connection. If my ISP was found to be violating its agreement with its upstream provider (too many peering partners?) that doesn't mean they are suddenly responsible for all traffic that flows over the network.

Re:Not that foolproof

[Anonymous Coward]

No I am not from the US, but I thank you for clearing that up. I mostly learned English from reading, so I do get the occasionally word backwards. Any good word for lend to, then?

"Lend" works nicely.

Re:Not that foolproof

[Paradise Pete]

you agree not to use the Service for operation as an Internet service provider

The very fact that you have to agree not to do so implies that it is technically possible to act as an ISP, so I'd think that would help support a defense that you were acting as an ISP. The violation of your contract with the ISP is a separate issue.

Re:Not that foolproof

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have any friends do you?

Re:Not that foolproof

[MLease]

No. It is not my job to show I am innocent. Heck, some guy in this country was let off intensive sharing of child-pornography on the defense that his computer was riddled with virus.. Or some such. I'll just say "I didn't do it. Since I have an open wireless, it could be anyone in the neighbourhood". Then it would be my word against theirs, and the case would drop. Of course, they might bother me, even ransack my harddisks (which are clean). If they actually took my computer, I would be awarded damages if found innocent, and so forth (not much, of course. But still). Since I would be innocent, I don't really worry that I'll be convicted.

I don't know about Denmark, but in the US, there's a big difference between the rules of evidence for a criminal trial and those for a civil trial. For a criminal trial, the prosecution has to prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt". However, in a civil trial, the plaintiff needs only a "preponderance of the evidence"; the plaintiff prevails if the judge/jury thinks that its more than 50% likely that the defendant did, in fact, commit the tort and cause harm to the plaintiff.

It appears to me that the suits referred to in the article are civil suits, so unless Denmark has radically different rules about the level of evidence required for a plaintiff to prevail, you might be more exposed than you think. You might actually have to prove that someone else actually did commit the infringement, not merely that someone else could have.

-Mike

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

What are you going on about? This is about the civilized world, not US :p

My ISP lets me do anything that is legal and non-commercial, and I sincerely doubt that the non-commercial will really hold up in court. Not that it matters, since I have no intentions to. Providing free wireless is well within those parameters.

Yeah, my reply was us-centric. What does your ISP's AUP say?

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

Acting as an ISP and being recognized as an ISP under the law are two completely different beasts. Not being recognized as a legitimate ISP under the law means he forgoes the safe harbor protections(he was relying on).

Re:Not that foolproof

[sjames]

"Outside the Premises" is the operative phrase. Premises referrs to the whole property. If you live in an apartment, the whole complex is the premises. If you are a home owner, your property lines define the premises.

A common principle in law is that you are not liable for mis-appropriations of your property for criminal purposes so long as you used ordinary care. Given that the vast majority of all people never change the default allow everything configs on their AP (and don't even know how to change it), that IS ordinary care.

Ask questions in court about how sure the average person is that their AP is secure and that their kids haven't installed on they don't even know about and watch the jury start thinking (because they won't be so sure THEIR ISP connection can't be "borrowed"). In short, they will find it an entirely believable scenerio.

For many (perhaps most) people, leaving an AP open makes plenty of sense. In exchange for a minimal risk, they get no hassles at all for themselves and their guests. Permitting the RIAA to draft the whole population as defenders of their copyrights is not reasonable.

Re:Not that foolproof

[AntiNazi]

If I leave a loaded gun outside for anyone to use, aren't I responsible for anything done with that gun?

uhhh, not under any US law I have heard of. The person who did the "anything" would be responsible for what they actually DID. Maybe you could get some sort of negligence charge, but if they killed the mailman you wouldn't be a murderer.

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

If we are in agreement that safe harbor protections are only afforded to ISPs, then the agreement between him and his access provider do come into play. Is he an ISP as recognized by the law?

Your example of your ISP found violating an agreement with an upstream providing fails a couple of ways.
1) The ISP still has other upstream providers.
2) They are an establish business entity(e.g. corporation) built to provide internet access vs jow blow in his basement sharing out a wifi connection against his ISP's AUP. This goes towards establishing them as an ISP under the law.
3) If the ISP's upstream provider found them to be violating an agreement the upstream provider either terminates service(the ISP no longer is providing access to the internet, where's the traffic to go, how's the riaa going to check it;think private wan at this point) or fines the ISP.

If the ISP loses its designation as an ISP under the law, then yes they would lose safe harbor protections and become responsible for the traffic.

Re:Not that foolproof

[Sancho]

Furthermore, common carriers must register a point of contact for DMCA violation complaints. Even people who do manage to comply with 512 above probably don't do that.

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

The very fact that you have to agree not to do so implies that it is technically possible to act as an ISP, so I'd think that would help support a defense that you were acting as an ISP. The violation of your contract with the ISP is a separate issue.

Wishful thinking at best. Acting as an ISP and being recognized as an ISP under the law are two different beasts. One will grant you safe harbor protections and the other not so much.

I can act like a cop, does that mean I can be afford all of the protections&privileges of a cop?

Re:Not that foolproof

[FlyingGuy]

As someone else said, "very utpoian of you"!

Sorry, but I have to say "very stupid of you"!

Imagine, for a moment, this little scenario.

Someone is crusing for un-secured wireless conections and finds yours. That person then sends the following e-mail:

+-+-+-+-+-+-+- EXAMPLE ONLY +-+-+-+-+-+-+-
To:Info@whitehouse.gov
Subj:I am going to kill the president

I am going to kill the president ( add in something even remotely plausable, such as a campaign appearance, fundraiser, speach etc.)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+- EXAMPLE ONLY +-+-+-+-+-+-+-

You will be arrested, have every last bit of electronic equipment that is computer related seized and your house turned upside down and inside out. The fact that you did not personaly send this will not matter for quite a while. The Secret Service will simply kick your door down, snatch your dumb ass, and all your gear up and no one will see you for a while.

It wont matter what you say for at least the 1st 36 hours or so. Your ISP will rat you out in a nanosecond and they will confirm this came from YOUR connection that you are responsible for.

The Secret Service has has even less of a sense of humor then the FBI does, if thats possible. After they have disected every bit on your hard drive(s), every scrap of paper in your house, spoken with everyone you know, have ever known, or have ever made a phone call to or sent an e-mail to, you will be feeling mighty sheepesh.

You will have ZERO recourse as the Secret Service is protecting POTUS. No court in the land will give you standing to redress any wrong or indignity you feel has been leveled at or on you. You will have a brandy new file in the Secret Service, FBI, State & local police files and you damn well might find yourself on terrorism watch lists.

Re:Not that foolproof

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who are disagreeing with you live in much more of a police state than you. As in: The police doesn't come in for a chat, they come in with weapons, armor, and shouting, and your accusations will be forwarded to he media as 'facts', and they will happily comply and publish them as such...

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

A common principle in law is that you are not liable for mis-appropriations of your property for criminal purposes so long as you used ordinary care. Given that the vast majority of all people never change the default allow everything configs on their AP (and don't even know how to change it), that IS ordinary care.

But he is not using ordinary care, he is intentionally&actively sharing his internet connection via open wifi. Those are his words. He believes that act classifies him as an ISP and grants him the same protections(i.e. safe harbor). I disagree with that opinion. What are your thoughts on a subscriber relying on safe harbor protections?

I am not interested in getting into a discussion about whether technical ignorance is an "out" for criminal or civil matters. Equally dis-interested in talking about default configs of APs. I know they are lacking. They are slowly improving, the newer APs I've seen have a setup wizard that take the user thru changing the default stuff.

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

Thank you for digging that up.

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

It appears to me that the suits referred to in the article are civil suits, so unless Denmark has radically different rules about the level of evidence required for a plaintiff to prevail, you might be more exposed than you think. You might actually have to prove that someone else actually did commit the infringement, not merely that someone else could have.

-Mike

Suing for damages is all but impossible in this country (a practice that the US should really think about adopting). Damages are are reward in cases of incest, rape and child abuse; that's about it. Even in those cases, the maximum is a few thousand dkr... divide by 5.5 to get to dollars.

Not sure if copyright infringement is civil or criminal here, though. Civil cases are mostly about contracts, sales and such.

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

What are you going on about? This is about the civilized world, not US :p

Yeah, my reply was us-centric. What does your ISP's AUP say?

It has a lot of stuff about termination times and payments, and the bit about not for commercial use. That's about it, except the usual stuff about civil war, natural disasters and that kind of thing.

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

... lots of paranoid stuff, I really hope it isn't that bad in the US...

As I said to someone else, this is a somewhat civilised country. Yeah, I might get framed, but the connection doesn't change that. Other than that, the above scenario is very unlikely, to say the least. (Not the email, but it would *laughed* at here. )

Re:Not that foolproof

[really?]

What you say is, basically, true, but, not all of us live in the United States of AmeriKKKa.

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

The people who are disagreeing with you live in much more of a police state than you. As in: The police doesn't come in for a chat, they come in with weapons, armor, and shouting, and your accusations will be forwarded to he media as 'facts', and they will happily comply and publish them as such...

:( I know it is bad in many places, but surely, it is only in the movies it works like that in the US?

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Wow, you're mellow. I have a friend in prison because unsolicited child porn passed through his network. He's not feeling so mellow any more.

I will not live in fear. I've investigated the area pretty thouroughly, and I believe I am quite safe doing what I'm doing in Denmark, at the very least, and probably nearly everywhere in the EU.

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

ISPs have no special permits in this country. If they are big enough, they have some extra restrictions (about data retention and such). Anyone can be an ISP, if they like. You don't have to register.

But all that is beside the point. Is I've said, I sincerely believe that what I do is firmly within the law. I just gave the ISP as an example, the same could be said about any hotel, restaurant and company that have open wifi networks, which is many. Is there no cafes with wifi in the US? How do they cope?

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Acting as an ISP and being recognized as an ISP under the law are two completely different beasts. Not being recognized as a legitimate ISP under the law means he forgoes the safe harbor protections(he was relying on).

Eh. No I was not relying on the safe harbour protection (I didn't even know about them, US law is not my strong suit). I can see now that the ISP example was a bad one, so think of a cafe or hotel or company or whatever, if you wish.

Re:Not that foolproof

[mrchaotica]

The point was that operating the the WiFi without permission doesn't mean he's not an ISP, it just means he's an ISP operating in violation of his contract.

Re:Not that foolproof

[shmlco]

" Is there no cafes with wifi in the US? How do they cope?"

Great. It's not enough that the parasites have caused ISPs to trottle legitimate BT traffic, and then trottle legitimate SSL traffic. Now I have to worry about my favorite WiFi-enabled resturants dropping free wireless because they're about to get hit with legal issues due to people torrenting on their networks.

Just pay for the damn music.

Re:Not that foolproof

[rucs_hack]

well first off, what an awesome network.

Secondly, that's not a net connection owned by an individual, so it bears little relation to my point. A public network that is meant to be shared by many people is whole different ball game to a home network that can be easily co-opted.

If the police, for example, found it being used for illegal activities, then it's a different problem to find to offender, because there isn't a single nominated person who owns and is solely responsible for the connection.

Re:Not that foolproof

[zippthorne]

What? pop-stars that, while pretty good, were way over-hyped, and whose later stuff was crap influenced by a woman who's very name has become synonymous with breaking up bands by turning their music to crap?

Re:Not that foolproof

[rucs_hack]

care to enlighten me as to how this 'everyone being wonderful and trustworthy' could be achieved? There are a few billion people who might like to know.

Sad to say there are a lot of criminal types out there. Some social conventions survive in the face of this, but right now at this point in history when governments and business are so paranoid about this freedom they've inadvertently leased on the worlds population (and no, they wouldn't have done it if they'd known what would happen, you can be assured of that), it's not good to be trusting of strangers on your network.

I may sound paranoid, but look at what's happening. The dream of a completely free and profitable internet died with the Dot Com Bust and Napster. Those two events showed that the wonderful internet could, shock horror, not always be made to work how people wanted! Not every person in the world was interested in online shopping or best bar guide websites and being nice web citizens. Certainly not enough to support the huge investments that were made. Then some inconsiderate people showed the world that if you made stuff free, people flocked to it in droves. Bummer.

Now there's huge amounts of traffic that does not in fact all generate the vast profits that were anticipated in the late nineties, and people are starting to don their own thing, quite a lot of which is illegal, and a great deal of which is that most horrific of combinations, popular and free. The barstards...

So the internet has gone from this supposed gold mine of a shopping Mall to a hip little town in a constant state of flux as these darn freeloading internet connection paying philistines keep doing their own thing, and alas, there isn't in fact a well established security force in shiny boots to stop people pissing on the flower gardens.

well, that's my take on it anyhow

Re:Not that foolproof

[sjames]

I was only commenting on the scenerio of someone actually hopping onto someone else's WiFi with or without permission. If I loan my neighbor a nail gun and he goes and shoots someone's tires full of holes, that's not my liability. Even less so if he just picks it up out of my garage without asking.

In other words, I have no duty to prevent others from mis-using my property.

Safe Harbor won't help him if the RIAA can show that he did it himself, it's not a license to violate copyright. If they could actually prove that he left the WiFi open explicitly to muddy the water, it could well count against him. Judges really hate it when people knowingly create a legal liability and try to cover their tracks.

I am not interested in getting into a discussion about whether technical ignorance is an "out" for criminal or civil matters. Equally dis-interested in talking about default configs of APs. I know they are lacking. They are slowly improving, the newer APs I've seen have a setup wizard that take the user thru changing the default stuff.

I maintain that someone else abusing my deliberatly open AP still woundn't reasonably attach liability to me, though as a practical matter, it COULD cause me to spend time in court defending against an allegation that I was the downloader.

Re:Not that foolproof

[Kjella]

While I am not a lawyer, I believe it would hinge on the legal definition of an ISP. If your upstream provider doesn't allow you to re-sell your internet access, it makes it pretty difficult to argue that you are an ISP.

Title 17, section 512
(k) Definitions.
(1) Service provider.
(A) As used in subsection (a), the term service provider means an entity offering the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the users choosing, without modification to the content of the material as sent or received.

(a) would be acting like an ISP, (b) covers caching, (c) hosting and (d) search engines. There's really no other qualification to being a "service provider", and I see no reason to disqualify anyone from using that defense. It *would* protect you from liability if you can prove someone else used your open wifi, or if your tenant used your network, or if a visiting guest did it, but it doesn't automaticly prove someone else did it. You still have to show a preponderance of evidence that you only acted like an ISP and that 512(a) applies.

Re:Not that foolproof

[zippthorne]

Although this is a US-centric website, I wouldn't change my habits re: word choice unless there was a clear problem with understanding or I just wanted to practice writing prose in American English.

Most of us can understand you guys pretty well; the language isn't so different to preclude easy communication.

This side of the pond, we usually say 'lend to', and 'borrow from' exclusive of each other. But you were quite clear when you said 'borrow out.' I suppose it could be different if you'd used something more ambiguous, like expressing a wish to 'hire a cab' or insisted on referring to steak fries as 'chips' or tried to claim british cooking was materially better than scottish cooking...

Re:Not that foolproof

[Grym]

I don't think the safe harbor provisions of the dmca would apply to you. The majority of ISPs' AUPs forbid "re-sharing" or re-selling of a subscriber's internet connection. You are a customer, not an ISP. If you have an account with an ISP that permits you to re-sell the internet access, then you could claim safe harbor. Indeed, the riaa would be left sending you letters for ip-to-user translations.

Forgive my ignorance on this subject, but what does the ISP's service agreement have to do with the actual crime of copyright infringement? I just don't see how it follows. There are two sepearate and distinct grievances being conflated into one. First, the customer breaching his ISP's service agreement, and then an unrelated passerby infringing on a completely separate company's copyright.

So, for example: Person X infringes upon person Y's copyright, but because person Z is not properly following a private contract between him and his ISP, person Z is now guilty of X's crime? Am I missing something? It's like saying A = B, and C = D, so A=D. A very important step is missing.

This immediately brings up three thoughts:

1.) If a person with an unrestricted wireless access point can be held responsible for not practicing due diligence in stopping a crime of copyright infringement, why couldn't the same be said for anyone with an "unsecured" copier, fax, telephone, or printer? Why is one person considered irresponsible and a facilitator of all sorts of nasty crimes (invariably involving child porn), and the other not?

2.) Since when does one need a license to freely distribute information? Isn't this a first amendment issue? I can understand why an ISP might be upset with a customer redistributing their service, and why that might lead to a termination of service or even private lawsuit. But why should the fact that you are breaking a private contract make you automatically liable? I suspect the answer is "because the lobbyists wrote the DMCA that way," but that still seems to be in violation of the first amendment in that some entities (namely, ISPs) have greater legal capacity for communication than everyone else. Isn't that a form of relative restriction on free speech and thus unconstitutional?

3.) If (1) is true and a customer can be considered irresponsible and a participant in the crime of copyright infringement because he or she failed to adequately secure their network, why shouldn't an ISP be held responsible for the presence of unsecured wireless networks as well? It would be trivial for an ISP to drive around and identify their customers with unsecured wireless access points, and yet, I have only in 5 years of following and being involved in the ISP industry heard of ONE case where that has ever happened. If the ISPs can't be bothered to protect their own networks, why joe sixpack? Why should responsibility for the task of ultimately securing the network fall solely onto the non-experts of the general public?

-Grym

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

Forgive my ignorance on this subject, but what does the ISP's service agreement have to do with the actual crime of copyright infringement?

The safe harbor provisions limit the ISP's liabilities; they're not liable for the copyright infringement.

To qualify for the safe harbor protections, one needs to be recognized as an ISP under the applicable law(dmca).

My US-centric reply was because the upstream provider's AUP forbid the subscriber from sharing or selling his internet access he would have a difficult time claiming he was an ISP. And that leads to he wouldn't be able to claim safe harbor protections if someone on his willingly open wifi connection violate the law either child porn or copyright.

1.) If a person with an unrestricted wireless access point can be held responsible for not practicing due diligence in stopping a crime of copyright infringement, why couldn't the same be said for anyone with an "unsecured" copier, fax, telephone, or printer? Why is one person considered irresponsible and a facilitator of all sorts of nasty crimes (invariably involving child porn), and the other not?

short answer, because the law isn't perfect. I believe there have been cases bought against university student facilities about the copier issue you brought up. I am not a lawyer. You bring up good questions, if you find answers I'd be interested in them.

2.) Since when does one need a license to freely distribute information? Isn't this a first amendment issue? I can understand why an ISP might be upset with a customer redistributing their service, and why that might lead to a termination of service or even private lawsuit. But why should the fact that you are breaking a private contract make you automatically liable? I suspect the answer is "because the lobbyists wrote the DMCA that way," but that still seems to be in violation of the first amendment in that some entities (namely, ISPs) have greater legal capacity for communication than everyone else. Isn't that a form of relative restriction on free speech and thus unconstitutional?

I never commented on the ability to distribute information. I only stated safe harbor protections are only afforded to ISPs. You'll need to ask a lawyer for an answer to your question.

3.) If (1) is true and a customer can be considered irresponsible and a participant in the crime of copyright infringement because he or she failed to adequately secure their network, why shouldn't an ISP be held responsible for the presence of unsecured wireless networks as well? It would be trivial for an ISP to drive around and identify their customers with unsecured wireless access points, and yet, I have only in 5 years of following and being involved in the ISP industry heard of ONE case where that has ever happened. If the ISPs can't be bothered to protect their own networks, why joe sixpack? Why should responsibility for the task of ultimately securing the network fall solely onto the non-experts of the general public?

In a word... lobbyists. ISPs are common carriers and as such a different set of rules apply to them than joe six-pack.

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

There's really no other qualification to being a "service provider", and I see no reason to disqualify anyone from using that defense.

There is a little more than the bit you quoted that separates us mere morals from common carrier status.

As agibbs pointed out in his reply there are conditions to elibility.

(i) Conditions for eligibility.

    (1) Accommodation of technology. The limitations on liability established by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service provider--
        (A) has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network who are repeat infringers; and
        (B) accommodates and does not interfere with standard technical measures.
    (2) Definition. As used in this subsection, the term "standard technical measures" means technical measures that are used by copyright owners to identify or protect copyrighted works and--
        (A) have been developed pursuant to a broad consensus of copyright owners and service providers in an open, fair, voluntary, multi-industry standards process;
        (B) are available to any person on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms; and
        (C) do not impose substantial costs on service providers or substantial burdens on their systems or networks.

And as Sancho pointed out common carriers must register a point of contact for DMCA violation complaints.

You still have to show a preponderance of evidence that you only acted like an ISP and that 512(a) applies.

So, yes you agree with me that to be afforded safe harbor protection one needs to be recognized as an ISP/common carrier under the law. The grey area is whether violating the terms of your ISP and offering an open AP allows the individual to claim common carrier status.

I think the individual would have a difficult time claiming common carrier status. The prudent thing to do would be to consult with a lawyer before opening oneself up to the possible liabilities involved.

Re:Not that foolproof

[cdrguru]

Better hope you live someplace without a police force, like Serbia or Iraq. Because if you are in Western Europe the US Secret Service will have all of the power of your local federal police right there with them.

Worse, in Europe you get your wireless connection borrowed to send an email to some fun body like the UN, NATO, EU Commission or something like that saying you're with Al Queda and going to set off a nuke under them and they have 12 hours to evacuate.

Japan? I would recommend using a threat with the words Sarin and subway in it.

Good luck proving it isn't you. Most places take bomb threats really, really seriously.

Yes, I would say having an open or easily hackable wireless connection (WEP) means that you have nothing the world over but admiring friends that love you. Easiest way to get someone in plenty of trouble is through their Internet account these days. Probably more trouble than they can handle.

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

Safe Harbor won't help him if the RIAA can show that he did it himself, it's not a license to violate copyright.

Agreed. From my US-centric view his "if an isp can, why not me" comment meant he was thinking safe harbor applied to him because he intentionally was offering internet access.

I maintain that someone else abusing my deliberatly open AP still woundn't reasonably attach liability to me, though as a practical matter, it COULD cause me to spend time in court defending against an allegation that I was the downloader.

For sure, you'll be spending resources defending yourself. The child porn & presidential threat examples in this sub-thread will cause a great many hassles&headaches.

Deliberately providing an open AP before consulting with a lawyer on the liabilities is fool-hearty at best.

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

Almost. The question is does operating an open AP without the upstream provider's permission(i.e. against their AUP) help or harm the person's chances of be recognized as an ISP/common carrier under the law?

I am of the opinion that it does not help, in fact it works against him.

Acting like something and being legally recognized as something are two entirely different things.

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

What no link? ;)

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

Yeah, anybody can be an ISP in the US. My question/comment boils down to
1) are ISP/common carriers afford safe harbor provisions. It's the DMCA that grants this to ISP
2) How does the law identify entities that are ISP/common carriers? see agibbs' reply & sancho's reply

You bring up a good point with hotels, cafes, etc. They would have to meet the requirements&eligibilities of the law to be afforded the same protections. It looks like section 512 of dmca is broad enough to over them, too.

My point was I don't believe joe sixpack randomly providing an open AP is going to be afforded the same protections as an ISP or common carrier. One must be recognized as an ISP or common carrier aka meet the legal requirements before being afforded those protections.

Acting as something is different than being legally recognized as that something.

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

No problem, laws are different the world over.

Cafe, hotel, joe sixpack, whatever... there are still certain requirements that to be met before protections are afforded. For example posting TOS/AUP, registering a (DMCA) point of contact, etc.

Re:Not that foolproof

[stsp]

If the police, for example, found it being used for illegal activities, then it's a different problem to find to offender, because there isn't a single nominated person who owns and is solely responsible for the connection.

There is a single person. Most uplinks are just regular private ADSL connections. They all do NAT. So from the internet you cannot tell the difference. Technically, the only difference to a regular private home wifi network is that this one is rather large, and if something bad happens on a shared uplink and the person owning it gets into legal trouble, the community will (hopefully) try to help as much as possible. Note that file sharing is frowned upon though simply because it massively disturbs the infrastructure. There's lots of layer 7 filtering going on etc. Still won't help you with child porn. It's a tradeoff between collective freedom and individual security. The community lets everyone think and make decisions about these matters on their own.

Re:Not that foolproof

[buswolley]

I call bullshit. Yes, absolute bullshit.!

Re:Not that foolproof

[ealar dlanvuli]

Oh come on. I have dealt with the police and feds several times in my life in situations even worse than this.

None of the nonsense you are spouting makes any sense. The police are reasonable if you are. If you are friendly and comply with everything the request, within the leter of the law, it works out fine. Lawyers are always granted, because even if your actually a terrorist, if they fuck off your right to a lawyer you might get off on a technicality. All the law enforcment know this, and will gladly comply with miranda rights to avoid giving you a free ride to do anything without a conviction.

If anyone acuses you of being a child pornographer, and you are not, you will make media again with the slander/libel case.

I strongly suggest you take a few steps outside, away from your conspiracy theories on the internet. You'll find the FBI and police are quite considerate. The media, while discraceful, does generally try to avoid getting sued. When they get letters from your lawyers they tend to clean up their act.

Re:Not that foolproof

[FlyingGuy]

Oh come on. I have dealt with the police and feds several times in my life in situations even worse than this.

Ohhh really? Have you ever threatened the President of the United States? Even threatening the presdeint is a 5 year prison sentance in this country.

None of the nonsense you are spouting makes any sense. The police are reasonable if you are. If you are friendly and comply with everything the request, within the leter of the law, it works out fine. Lawyers are always granted, because even if your actually a terrorist, if they fuck off your right to a lawyer you might get off on a technicality. All the law enforcment know this, and will gladly comply with miranda rights to avoid giving you a free ride to do anything without a conviction.

You are either naive, stupid or both. Ask any lawyer, Police Officer, FBI Agent or Secret Service Agent what might happen then talk to me. That is one of the only things the movies get right. If the Secret Service comes for you, especialy if they think you are threatening the President of the United States, they are just going to show up and drag your ass into a black unmarked SUV and take you to a Federal Building in which they will have a very intense conversation with you.

I strongly suggest you take a few steps outside, away from your conspiracy theories on the internet. You'll find the FBI and police are quite considerate. The media, while discraceful, does generally try to avoid getting sued. When they get letters from your lawyers they tend to clean up their act.

Dude this is not tinfoil hat talk. The Secret Service can just come and take you, legaly. You will eventualy get a lawyer, but that will be after they have grilled your ass for a serious number of hours.

Re:Not that foolproof

[turbidostato]

"Wow, you're mellow. I have a friend in prison because unsolicited child porn passed through his network. He's not feeling so mellow any more"

Let's assume you told us the whole truth. Then obviously the problem is not child abusers but your own legal system. And once you start having real problems like this with your legal system (thus, with the government) they won't vanish just because you hide your head under your arm. They'll only get worse.

Re:Not that foolproof

[X-treme-LLama]

In severe cases of child pornography? I doubt it. Depends on where in the U.S. you live, and how much child porn we're talking about. Best case is probably detectives coming in with warrants, taking what they want, and likely you as well. Worst case is the guns..

Remember to idiots an IP address is like a street address. They only understand that 64.233.167.99 is YOU and therefore YOU must have done it. If it happened over your router YOU MUST have known about it, and assisted. You fucking pervert!

I like your idea, and I love your style, but if you were in the US, and someone was hosting a bunch of child porn on a comp connected to your router (they go after people who host it far more frequently than people who just download, although both happens..) a 'friendly chat' is very unlikely.

Oh, and what he said about the media is true. If your job in any way interacts with kids. Or if you have any. You'll be fired, harassed, and have your kids taken away even if they haven't convicted you of anything. Good luck getting a job as anything but a janitor with the accusations out there.. Innocent until proven guilty is for the criminal court system, not the court of public opinion.

Re:Not that foolproof

[lawpoop]

The network itself is a fascinating example, but I wonder if it's relevant to the topic at hand? Maybe the network is protected by the fact that it is so public in nature. Because it is publically wide open to so many people, nobody in particular is gonna take the hit if it is abused in such a manner (they can say they are like a common carrier in certain respects), and since it is so public, nobody would abuse it like that because there is more of a chance of getting caught.

However, in the case of an individual with an open network, somebody can abuse it, and it still looks like the personal usage of the owner, and there is little chance that the owner is even aware that the abuse is taking place. "It's an open network, officer, I swear I had no idea what was going on!" That's probably the first excuse a lot of investigators hear. "Somebody must of hacked my computer and placed those files there! Anybody could have done it. I have no idea where they came from!"

I've heard a lot of horror stories about BBS operators, ones running legal adult porn trading BBSes, getting busted for stuff that was traded on their boards which they claimed they had no idea about. These could be just rumors, but in the early days of computer crime and computer law, this may not have mattered.

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Not sure if it is online... but I know it is in Danish :p

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

In severe cases of child pornography? I doubt it. Depends on where in the U.S. you live, and how much child porn we're talking about.

As I've said many times already, and as you can see otherwise, I do not live in the US, for which I am thankful. I lived there for 10 months, and frankly, that place stunk :) (Alright, so it was Minesota, and small towns stink everywhere. But I've never had the desire to visit US again).

Best case is probably detectives coming in with warrants, taking what they want, and likely you as well. Worst case is the guns..

I doubt they would draw on me. It causes them a lot of paperwork, you see. They might take the computers, if they had a warrant, but that costs them a) paperwork and b) money, so I don't think they'd do it for an IP address.

Remember to idiots an IP address is like a street address. They only understand that 64.233.167.99 is YOU and therefore YOU must have done it. If it happened over your router YOU MUST have known about it, and assisted. You fucking pervert!

Around here, there are special units handling these cases. Odds are, they even know what a MAC address is.

I like your idea, and I love your style, but if you were in the US, and someone was hosting a bunch of child porn on a comp connected to your router (they go after people who host it far more frequently than people who just download, although both happens..) a 'friendly chat' is very unlikely.

Hosting it would be a bit hard. It's just an ordinary wireless, they'd have to park the car around the corner or so. In a small suburb, that would cause a few comments :) Besides, it's behind a NAT firewall (2 actually), so that makes it a bit harder still.

Oh, and what he said about the media is true. If your job in any way interacts with kids. Or if you have any. You'll be fired, harassed, and have your kids taken away even if they haven't convicted you of anything. Good luck getting a job as anything but a janitor with the accusations out there.. Innocent until proven guilty is for the criminal court system, not the court of public opinion.

I think you fear your fate too much. At least here, I'd be cleared eventually, and the mark removed. At worst, I'd have to move town. Quite likely, my name would be protected from publishing until the case had concluded (that is standard procedure in these cased). Of course, some wacko might still pin my picture to every available wall, but what's to prevent that from happening in any case?

Re:Not that foolproof

[funkdancer]

look like a tool
He's talking about lending one out, not trying to look like one. :P

Re:Not that foolproof

[James_Duncan8181]

Under EU law you *can* sue for damages. This seems to open the gates to mass suings. Unfortunately for our local copyright MAFFIA types, damages are generally limited to the retail value of the product.

Good luck turning a profit on court fees there. In addition, if the defendant offers some settlement (even £1 will do) then they are generally not liable for the legal fees the prosecution run up. So you can sucessfully come out with £1000 for a hard disk of music (let's base this on 1200 tracks or so). Of course, this would require you to prove each infringement. One film==1 DVD price.

It's conincidental that the EU does not have mass suings like the US does, I'm sure.

Re:Not that foolproof

[grrrl]

'loaning out' would be what I would say, but 'lending out' would also suffice.

Re:Not that foolproof

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize you might be an idiot, but "lend from" is not the proper phrasing. It's "borrow from."

Re:Not that foolproof

[ioshhdflwuegfh]

I didn't quite get how this freifunk works: does one register and then can use the network in areas that are covered or is it also necessary to contribute to the network by sharing one's internet resources?

Re:Not that foolproof

[pixelpusher220]

fair enough, but negligent homicide would seem to fit that situation.

*responsible* probably is a broad term, the penalties ascribed would be based on the specific circumstances.

Re:Not that foolproof

[Jesus_666]

I think you fear your fate too much. At least here, I'd be cleared eventually, and the mark removed. At worst, I'd have to move town. Quite likely, my name would be protected from publishing until the case had concluded (that is standard procedure in these cased). Of course, some wacko might still pin my picture to every available wall, but what's to prevent that from happening in any case?

Where do you live? Over here in Germany it's similar, but that doesn't stop BILD (Europe's biggest tabloid) from "accidentally" printing your name (full) and your face (unscrambled) and calling you a convict before the police are done collecting evidence. Three months later they have to print a reprimand from the German Press Council, which they usually do using a ten-point font.

Yes, the German Press Council is toothless and BILD makes sure we suffer from it.

Re:Not that foolproof

[stsp]

I didn't quite get how this freifunk works: does one register and then can use the network in areas that are covered or is it also necessary to contribute to the network by sharing one's internet resources?

You register one or more IPs on a website, giving an email address. The IP is then added to a whitelist. Some nodes heed this whitelist, but not all do. Everyone gets assigned an IP so it's not used twice. That's all. There's no authentication mechanism or anything. You don't have to share your internet connection if you don't want to. Many people on the network do not have their own internet connection. Many nodes just relay traffic. No obligations, no real name required, albeit you are expected to look after your own nodes especially if they aren't marked as mobile, and to keep in touch with the community and cooperate. Otherwise nobody will be willing to give you tech support or otherwise help you out. It's all voluntary.

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

I think you fear your fate too much. At least here, I'd be cleared eventually, and the mark removed. At worst, I'd have to move town. Quite likely, my name would be protected from publishing until the case had concluded (that is standard procedure in these cased). Of course, some wacko might still pin my picture to every available wall, but what's to prevent that from happening in any case?

Where do you live? Over here in Germany it's similar, but that doesn't stop BILD (Europe's biggest tabloid) from "accidentally" printing your name (full) and your face (unscrambled) and calling you a convict before the police are done collecting evidence. Three months later they have to print a reprimand from the German Press Council, which they usually do using a ten-point font.

Yes, the German Press Council is toothless and BILD makes sure we suffer from it.

This is Denmark, and while the Danish Press Council is toothless, breaking a name ban is a criminal offense.

I can't recall it ever happening, and from a googling it is rare and mostly accidential... most cases are about 2 independent papers publishing enough information to deduct the who the person is, or maybe one being a bit too speific (the accused, which is an Englishman training children at this club). I might be wrong, of couse, but then we can take heart that the newpaper is dying, and good riddance.

If they a newspaper in Denmark does, the editor resposible (every paper has a search) would face a fine.

But as I said, sharing my connection really has little bearing on this.

Re:Not that foolproof

[ioshhdflwuegfh]

Thanks for the explanation!

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

An ISP who's AUP isn't online? Riiight.

So, instead you dug thru your file cabinet to find your ISP's AUP? Riiight.

Cheers :)

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Such a mistrusting person you are :) As it happens, I signed up for this connection a few months ago, so I have it fresh in memory.

If it really interest you, here is the document. Heh, they even change a word to from sell to something that means "to drive on". Somebody should give them Danish lessons. Now, apologize for claiming I lied, or I will declare thy for the coward you are :p

But even if they really had such a provision (and if they added them, there is really little I could do), it doesn't really matter. ISPs are dime a dozen, switching is quick and rather painless. And if they make a fuzz, I will take my considerable network bill elsewhere :)

A friend of mine actually provide his entire building with wireless, and no fuss there yet either. But not everyone anymore, too many leaches.

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

I like to think of it as more healthly scepticism. :)

Never ment to call ya a liar, just found it odd that an ISP didn't have their AUP online. When reporting abuse to an ISP, I like to check their AUP. Never came across one that didn't have it online. I formally apologize. :p

Hmmm, reasonable ISPs is yet another reason to consider moving to the Netherlands.

cheers :)

Re:Not that foolproof

[EsbenMoseHansen]

I like to think of it as more healthly scepticism. :)

:)

Never ment to call ya a liar, just found it odd that an ISP didn't have their AUP online. When reporting abuse to an ISP, I like to check their AUP. Never came across one that didn't have it online. I formally apologize. :p

I formally accept your apology :o) I did give you a link last time, but as you might notice, it is actually in Danish.

Hmmm, reasonable ISPs is yet another reason to consider moving to the Netherlands.

I live in Denmark, which is not exactly Netherlands, but I'm sure it is a wonderful place to live regardsless :) Funnily, I'm going to visit a friend there this summer, so I suppose I will see for myself :)

Denmark is nice if you don't mind cold and rainy weather :o)

Re:Not that foolproof

[grimwell]

I live in Denmark, which is not exactly Netherlands, but I'm sure it is a wonderful place to live regardsless :) Funnily, I'm going to visit a friend there this summer, so I suppose I will see for myself :)

Opps... ok add Denmark to possible locations.

Denmark is nice if you don't mind cold and rainy weather :o)

Coming from Minnesota I'm used to varying weather conditions and actually enjoy having different seasons. Might also be why Sweden, Norway & Finland are on the list of places worth living in. :)

Re:Not that foolproof

[ealar dlanvuli]

Learn to deal. If I wasn't guilty, I am sure I would have no problems in this situation. Know your rights, conduct yourself well, and say nothing you will regret in court.

It's pretty easy to handle yourself without a lawyer for a short while.

Sean

Industrial fascism

[aurispector]

When are these guys going to adopt a really cool logo, like a cross with bent arms or a bundle of sticks wrapped around an axe?

Once these tactics are accepted and legalized, eventually governments should begin experimenting with the use of webcams and computer microphones to monitor people for other illegal behaviors.

Re:Industrial fascism

[arachnoprobe]

Germany is already doing that...

Re:Industrial fascism

[Anonymous Coward]

governments should begin experimenting with the use of webcams and computer microphones to monitor people for other illegal behaviors.

We already do that...why do you think there's a free microphone in every laptop?

Sincerely,
NSA

Re:Industrial fascism

[lawpoop]

"When are these guys going to adopt a really cool logo, like a cross with bent arms or a bundle of sticks wrapped around an axe?"

How about an impersonal, all-seeing eye on top of a pyramid of money and lawyers, watching everything you do on the computer?

Re:Industrial fascism

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only person who pictured a sai to be an accurate description of "a cross with bent arms"?

Sigh. The problem of actually regarding swastikas in their non-contemporary usage.

"foolproof"?

[mqj]

The claim is that the "File Sharing Monitor" is totally foolproof

Wow. That sounds like a challenge. Seems like somebody ignored the saying "It's hard to make a program foolproof because fools are so ingenious."

Re:"foolproof"?

[Ticklemonster]

Sounds to me like quite a few people need to create some word documents of the exact same size as the files searched for, name them accordingly, then orchestrate a file sharing orgy amongst themselves to create a rather large target for this fool proof system. Flood'em with bullshit, then see how credible they are...

Re:"foolproof"?

[maxwell demon]

What if I take some (mathematical) matrix, make a recording of me reading it aloud, and put the result on p2p under the name "The_Matrix.mpeg"? Will that system detect that it's not the movie?

Re:"foolproof"?

[avelldiroll]

i like that one too: "If you make something idiot-proof, the universe creates a better idiot."

Proxy servers

[dour power]

This is how you won't catch me downloading.

Re:Proxy servers

[ATwentyCharacterName]

How do you know that a random proxy server you use isn't merely collecting more evidence on you to prove your guilt?

Re:Proxy servers

[Anonymous Coward]

You could do like I do.

1. Run Tor.
2. Access JAP through Tor.
3. Access proxy servers through the JAP over Tor connection.
4. ???
5. Profit!

Re:Proxy servers

[DanFM]

Because you run it through a proxy in a country that hates America. So thats what 100+ counties to choose from? Nice. Even better, run it through two counties who hate each other and who both hate America. And if you have trouble finding that, just run it through Venuzela. For the people.

Wonderful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Great story. Thanks for the warning, the minute they decide to come over here I'm going to see how many thing I can have their entire marketing board arrested for. "Forensic-Quality Evidence"? Any IT tech can prove that one false in court, so that's fraud against everyone you sold your software to. The people using it really don't have *any* admissible evidence either, because unless it can be readily confirmed with ACTUALLY admissible quality by a law enforcement body, they've got nothing, and will likely get themselves arrested.

Of course, that's if the damn cops weren't dirty. Better solution is to just sleaze the White House's external IP so they'll all start suing the American government. ;)

Use an alternate P2P

[hjf]

www.freenetproject.org

Dream Pinball 3D huh?

[stratjakt]

I thought they were sharing stuff like Final Fantasy XII, Quake 4, and other top tier titles.

Why minimize the initial act? Thousands of people are not being threatened over "dream pinball 3d".

Re:Dream Pinball 3D huh?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

10:1 the agency responsible for that news article is also a client of whoever makes Dream Pinball 3D

Re:Dream Pinball 3D huh?

[Fred_A]

Thousands of people are not being threatened over "dream pinball 3d".

I don't know, you could certainly threaten me with something called "pinball 3D"... If I have to be stuck on a machine with inane games I'd rather play minesweeper.

Re:Dream Pinball 3D huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all the things to go to jail for... bad pinball games are *not* something that will score you a carton of Luckys.

Although you may find yourself becoming a "bumper".

Just a thought

[pytheron]

how would it stand in court if you had a wireless access point that was open. Just claim that someone else used your network without authorisation to download the offending files (assume that the authorities did not find evidence on your storage mediums).

Re:Just a thought

[Planesdragon]

how would it stand in court if you had a wireless access point that was open. Just claim that someone else used your network without authorisation to download the offending files (assume that the authorities did not find evidence on your storage mediums). 1: IANAL. This is semi-layman's conjecture. If you want a real answer, spend the $100 and ask a real lawyer.

2; Since these are civil suits, most likely with a "preponderance of the evidence" standard, your claim won't hold enough water. So what if there was a possibility of an open connection: is there any proof that someone else actually used it? If the sum total of the evidence better supports their story than yours, you lose.

IMHO, if you want to genuinely protect yourself, you'll start logging your wide-open router's MAC address connections, and keep them for as long as you can -- six years if you can manage it. (A lawyer in your state could tell you the precise statute of limitations in your hypothetical case.)

OTOH, if you want to break the law, you should be "browsing anonymously" with a proxy server and a "privacy" enabled P2P system.

Re:Just a thought

[AlgorithMan]

aren't botnets already working as torrent seeds for any file the botnet controller wants to have?

just download and install such a botnet and any lawsuit should be dismissed because "in doubt, on behalf of the [alleged] culprit"... if a file on your storage media COULD have been downloaded by a botnet this should be enough doubt for dismissal of the case...

Re:Just a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello:

The plural of medium is media.

Grrrr.

Re:Just a thought

[koma77]

Most ISPs put a line in the fine print telling that you are responsible for your internet connection and must not share it with anyone. So, if you have an open WLAN, you probably are violating the agreement and are responsible for whatever is going on via your connection...

Re:Just a thought

[Ash-Fox]

Most ISPs put a line in the fine print telling that you are responsible for your internet connection and must not share it with anyone.

That's the agreement with the ISP, not really related in my opinion.

However, how the music industry tends to file these lawsuits, is against the bill payer, claiming THEY were the ones that downloaded the content. Not somebody else. If they were fishing around saying it was someone on that Internet connection, they couldn't really claim they have 'forensic quality' evidence, as it doesn't lead to a specific person.

Re:Just a thought

[Ansoni-San]

Actually I'm pretty sure it would hold water if you can provide proof that people have used/use your internet connection and justify why you take this stance. As long as your reasons for wanting to provide free internet access do not make you sound irresponsible then I can't see a problem with it. Of course, the fact that we have to justify allowing people to use our things when we're not talking about a gun or something similarly deadly is possibly a cause for concern.

Just a minute, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this Europe we're talking about?

IANAL, but I don't think they'd get far in a Belgian court, with evidence that is not collected by police services or by a judicial expert appointed to collect that evidence.

I think legislation in other European countries doesn't differ much from ours. You just don't step up to a judge saying "here's the IP address of the guy that did this or that last week, please have the cops find out who it is and sentence him, will ya?"

So either the lawsuits are fake (which makes it extorsion), or the whole story is.

Re:Just a minute, but

[Basje]

This is a civil matter, not a criminal matter. All evidence in civil cases is collected and presented by the parties, not by the courts or police services.

Re:Just a minute, but

[janrinok]

Not necessarily so - what you say is correct for the USA but not for most of Europe.

Juicy bits pulled from server to prevent /.'ing

[carpe_noctem]

-Link to PDF temporarily removed, will return later-

What, no .torrent file?!

Re:Juicy bits pulled from server to prevent /.'ing

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the pdf

http://www.bundybovines.com/20070414093506062-1.pd f

Re:Juicy bits pulled from server to prevent /.'ing

[mathd]

http://www.bundybovines.com/20070414093506062-1.pd f

Re:Juicy bits pulled from server to prevent /.'ing

[Anonymous Coward]

And because I am an asshole, here is a rapidshare link to it with the "redacting" removed.

http://rapidshare.com/files/26209910/howwecatchyou .pdf.html

How?

[icedcool]

Please explain.

Re:How?

[Fred_A]

Simple :
ifconfig eth0 127.0.0.1

Now they'll never find me ! Hahahaha !

Eh, wait...

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

ifconfig eth0 127.0.0.1

Now they'll never find me ! Hahahaha !

That's what you say! I can see your ssh port open, and I'm already in! Count down to "rm -rf /": five, four, three, two...

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please Google.

Re:How?

[Technician]

That's what you say! I can see your ssh port open, and I'm already in! Count down to "rm -rf /": five, four, three, two...

Damn... That command asks for the administratior password. Anybody know the root password?

Re:How?

[numbski]

Just type sudo first, then use the one you used to get in via ssh. Odds are pretty good that it has admin rights. :)

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what you say! I can see your ssh port open, and I'm already in! Count down to "rm -rf /": five, four, three, two...

You forgot *@&)!)(F(NO CARRIER

Re:How?

[didde]

You can easily use a (open) proxy or similar to mask your HTTP traffic. But if you'd like to take it one step further, Relakks (based out of Sweden - also accepts foreign users) uses VPN to route all packets from your machine out onto the Internets. You can check their legal FAQ to read about their restrictive policy regarding your personal information. It'd take a subpoena from the Swedish gov't to for them to hand out your originating IP address. This is rarely done - and as I understand it copyright violations are not considered "serious" enough.

Works like a charm and the performance drop is insignificant. You could easily saturate even a 100 Mbps link using this service.

Re:How?

[Khabok]

Just avoid the password request altogether, by using plain ordinary rm without the -rf keyword. The smart way to do it is to delete by levels and leave the directories.

rm /*
rm /*/*
rm /*/*/* ...etc.

Re:How?

[cerberusss]

Now they'll never find me ! Hahahaha !

. . . says "Fred @ N48 53'06 E02 19'15" . . .

Re:How?

[google]

Please what?

Re:How?

[powerpants]

From Relakks:

Only SEK 49.00 per month or SEK 449.00 for 12 months From google:

49 Swedish kronor = 7.14004692 U.S. dollars

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can check their legal FAQ to read about their restrictive policy regarding your personal information. It'd take a subpoena from the Swedish gov't to for them to hand out your originating IP address.

From what I could tell, they don't even keep logs, so even if there was a subpoena, it would do diddly squat. Apparently there is a loophole in the legislation in that prepaid telecom subscriptions doesn't have to be logged. As opposed to regular comm services which the carriers have to log for a certain amount of months.

Responsible party?

[nurb432]

Too bad my PC has been hacked into in the past ( ok, actually it was my PC based router and all i had to do was reboot, but still you get the idea, trojaned PC's are quite common these days ).. And i use WEP for my laptop...

Techniques

[noz]

details of the anti-piracy company's techniques for identifying alleged file-sharers on the internet

People who visit the linked article?

Where the hell have you been?

[Weaselmancer]

This is a great scam for someone who wants to commit fraud on a national scale. Send people letters claiming that they breached copyright law and demand a settlement. Offer an opportunity for settlement for $2000. If they get a lawyer, drop any claim. If they ignore it, write it off. If it costs you a dollar per letter and 0.1% of people accept your "offer", a million letters will net you a million dollars. Maybe this is the new business model for big media.

Um...hello?

The greatest anti-piracy effort today....

[3seas]

It's called FreeSoftware.....

But if you are a game player and what's in FreeSoftware is not keeping up with Rob and Brazilton then isn't it really a choice to extend the game to real life, not getting caught? The 1337 game, so smart so smart with all your tricks ....

Live by the game, die by the game.

I found that my DSL (the new AT&T) provider can see everything I do including my password (which I can't even see on my system when I enter them). And since this is going over two copper wires or thru the phone system controlled by ... trace capable technology and knowledge how to use it.

Oh so smart.....what we make we can break and we can also certainly trace it...

Only when a system is set up to intentionally break trace ability can a trace fail, but a trace will lead to that system, just not beyond it. Here is where pressure might be applied, unless its run my a university of law supporting anon.....

Some of what goes on is like shoplifting in a store with hidden cameras, only you are doing it from anywhere in teh world with the camera being somewhere on the data transfer path.

If you want to pirate stuff safely (more or less) don't use data lines, use something more detached from data lines, like CDs, DVD, USB thumb drives, or even removable or external hard drives., etc...

For those who think I'm uninformed about the tricks, well there have been deception tricks long before computers came about. The only thing new here is the illusion of not being seen in broad daylight doing something you shouldn't and even more important, don't need to do.

Support FreeSoftware.... or play a game for real and risk punishment...

BTW, my expreience with bittorrent (dl'ing free software DVD distros like ArtistX and Debians latest) has been poor, problemmatic and anti-productive (I have no problem in giving back since being on DSL is a constant connection that runs when I'm not using it)... but when the p2p connection has problems that don't help me give back....

It took me 3-4 days, and alot of restarts to get the first DVD for Debain Etch, while the last two parts took alot less as a direct download. ArtistX (formerly MusicX) is only available thru bittorrent and its just over 2 gigs. Took over a week and a total download of probably more than twice that... alot of wasted band width.

I've tested my bittorrent ability and can get as much bandwidth incomming as the plan I'm on gives (my setting are fine), but apparently there are other factors the can influence specific targets.

direct down load mirrors are much better, using wget.... Only I can't give back....

torrents are a good idea..... but not so reliable. And apparently risky for pirates.

So

[Rik Sweeney]

This week: Download Feisty Fawn from a torrent
Next week: Jail

Yay

Shareza should sue them...

[Newer Guy]

Shareza should sue them for hacking their program without permission.

Easy way to avoid being sued

[JackMeyhoff]

If you get a letter, if you dont have a copy of the item in question then go out and buy a "license" for it. When it comes to court, wave your "license" and what can they sue you for? End of court case. Everybody should do this.

Re:Easy way to avoid being sued

[walt-sjc]

p2p means sharing, not just downloading. If anything, you will get yourself in MORE hot water - "I bought this item and shared it with the world!!!"

Re:Easy way to avoid being sued

[rriven]

If you get a letter, if you dont have a copy of the item in question then go out and buy a "license" for it

Then just say your kid/dog/cat/mom/brother/etc broke the cd or dvd so you just dl it

that is the simplest but best idea ever.

They would probably ask for your credit card statement to prove you did just buy so so remember, buy with cash

Re:Easy way to avoid being sued

[JackMeyhoff]

Doesnt matter, its a valid license which is what the court case is about, THEFT, well if you have a license, then the case is thrown out. Do this often enough and the RIAA/MPAA lose credability and money.

Re:Easy way to avoid being sued

[JackMeyhoff]

Well use a hacked client that doesnt share, hello. Also, etc/hosts block their IP's, they are published you know. Risk mitigation. It also helps being in a different country :) They have to "liase" with their local counterparts which takes time through beurocracy. Static IP's not a good idea. No need for them anyway its so 90's.

Re:Easy way to avoid being sued

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually the dumbest thing they could do, because the faux shareaza is searching for (and finding) people who are sharing the stuff, not mere downloaders.

Without a legal copy, you can tell the judge that you only wanted to download it for personal use, but the default settings of your P2P app made that you started sharing it at the same time. Ehm, unwittingly, your honor :)
You plead guilty of downloading 1 copy.

With a legal license, you didn't need to download it, so by showing up with a valid license you're telling everyone that it was your intent to start spreading it.

Guilt is of prime importance in court, but intent can have a BIG influence on the verdict.

Re:Easy way to avoid being sued

[JackMeyhoff]

With a legal license, you have the RIGHT to have a copy of it.

Re:Easy way to avoid being sued

[rriven]

unless they go after the sharing part and not the downloading part.

Your license does not give you the right to share it only to have and use it (how they say)

yes i know the eula has not be tested in court

Re:Easy way to avoid being sued

[ThePhilips]

With a legal license, you have the RIGHT to have a copy of it.

Geeee. Another poor soul fallen to RIAA/MPAA propaganda. Having a copy is (and always was) OK. (They would need to prove that you have acquired it illegally - and knowing of illegality - but this is extremely complicated. And of course, you might have acquired it legally e.g. in course of private sharing (you friend made a private copy for you) (*).)

It is distribution for which you need to have a permission of copyright holder/licensor.

They aren't trying to confirm that you have a copy - they try to confirm that you share a copy with others thus distributing file without proper license. That's a breach of copyright law.

IOW, getting file off P2P is pretty OK - you were not bound by license agreement nor were you aware of copyrights attached to the file. (Protection of copyright is duty of copyright holder, not yours.) Putting that file back on to P2P network is of course illegal since that's distribution.

(*) In US they might try to ask who is your friend and try to convince him for breach of DMCA - for removing copy protection measures. But they cannot force you tell them who your friend is. You are not obliged to tell them.

Re:Easy way to avoid being sued

[JackMeyhoff]

Im not in the US so fuck your DMCA :)

Re:Easy way to avoid being sued

[cdrguru]

The RIAA doesn't sue over one item. They don't sue downloaders. They sue people that are sharing thousands or tens of thousands of files.

If you think the folks that have discovered they don't have to pay for music, movies and software anymore are going to run out and buy 4,000 CDs so they have a "license" for everything they are sharing, you are wrong.

Also, the fact that you bought it does not give you the right to share it, period. Not a defense.

Now what the original company is doing is trying to drag in downloaders and that just isn't going to fly very far.

Of course the mere fact they have an IP address and not your name, SSN, fingerprints and DNA means they have no real case even in civil court. They would have to prove you did it, rather than the neighbor kid next door that sneaks into your house to borrow your computer.

Re:Easy way to avoid being sued

[JackMeyhoff]

All the more reason to leech and not have it doing it 24/7. I do it "on demand" :) Less visibility. If you run a "sharing" server non stop for the purpose of sharing (I am aware of partial sharing when you download) then tough titty, they are after YOU. As for "partial" sharers like me and those that leech "on demand", we have less visibility and we usually fall off their radar.

Re:Easy way to avoid being sued

[walt-sjc]

use a hacked client that doesnt share

You do realize how p2p works, right? Kinda hard to download when people don't upload too...

Also, etc/hosts block their IP's, they are published you know.

Really? And this list is complete? Accurate? Are you personally willing to risk thousands of dollars to verify this?

Static IP's not a good idea. No need for them anyway its so 90's.

The ONLY time dynamic IP's are "better" is if you are attempting to use them as a layer of security, which is of dubious benefit at best. I hope you also realize that due to lease times, automatic renewals, etc., it's HIGHLY likely that your "dynamic" IP rarely changes. I've known some people who haven't had theirs change in years. Also note that unless your ISP is cooperating with the RIAA and friends or you have a reverse DNS entry that points to a domain name you personally own, a static IP is no more of a risk than a dynamic IP. The statement that there is no need for static IPs anymore is totally ridiculous. There are many services which are totally impractical with dynamic IPs. Now if you QUALIFIED that statement saying that few DESKTOP machines need static IPs I would agree. Personally, I would take static IPs over dynamic any day of the week. In fact, I pay extra to get them.

All about time Re:The greatest anti-piracy ....

[3seas]

To Pirates:
what do you spend your time doing?

And more Important: Why?

There is plenty to do, be entertained by, etc. without pirating.

It didn't use to be like that however. Things change and just as old hardware gets tossed as new and better comes out, software piracy and piracy of other digital data is going to wear out and be replaced by that which isn't so considered piratable.

And where will that put those who support the media of interest to pirates today?

Obsolete ... or 55371337

Good thing you can't block them

[TheSpoom]

Oh wait...

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and that's foolproof because they'd only ever use IP blocks belonging to themselves. They'd never think to conduct investigations from outside the **aa.org domains, would they? And PeerGuardian's got an exhaustive list of all the IPs belonging to them and the myriad PIs they hire, obvs.

—Tickletaint (forced to post logged-out due to modbombing)

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[TheSpoom]

Good for you! You can bash a technology without researching it at all! Cause clearly the PeerGuardian lists are only using the published RIAA / MPAA IP blocks and haven't thought of this already. But hey, do what you want. I haven't received any BSA notices since installing SafePeer (not that I'm necessarily saying I downloaded anything ;^) but if you want to be targeted instead, go right ahead.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't received any BSA notices since installing SafePeer

I have a rock that keeps tigers away.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha, oh wow. You're serious. Seriously stupid, that is.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[ratsnapple tea]

If you're stupid enough to believe the investigators are using IPs from the PeerGuardian lists to bust people—those lists are public, after all—instead of just working from home and busting people from behind ordinary broadband connections... well, son, you deserve what you're gonna get.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you missed the phrase "forensic quality evidence".

"Yes your honour, I collected this information on my home PC and brought the information in on a burned DVD... here ya go... we'd like them to get 20 years please."

You idiot.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[ratsnapple tea]

These are civil cases, not criminal, though attempting to convince the judge that reasonable doubt is enough to absolve you of responsibility for a "preponderance of evidence" charge is likely to land you in the slammer for criminal idiocy (or contempt of court, you decide). Who's the idiot now?

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[Kreigaffe]

It would be akin to me taking you to court for slander or libel, and when evidence is requested I bring in a comic strip with speech balloons that I drew at home to illustrate what happened.

Anything electronic can be falsified. Easily. Especially if the source that generates the.. whatever.. is private, and stands to gain from thigns.

If you get busted by a PI bringing in evidence from a home PC, you probably should've argued harder. I'd say get a new lawyer, and that may not be a bad idea, but not everyone may realize how easy it is to make outright false information.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[ratsnapple tea]

Look, it's staggeringly naïve to expect that antipiracy investigations will only ever originate from well-known IPs. That's a foolhardiness that can only result from willful ignorance, to be charitable (I'm trying very hard now not to call it sheer stupidity).

Whether the evidence holds up in court is another matter, but as for that, I have a hard time understanding why you think a court would consider the RIAA or MPAA—disinterested parties concerning the identities of specific defendants—likely to fabricate evidence in an antipiracy suit. You're correct about electronic documents being easy to fake, but think about this for longer than two seconds: all parties furnishing the incriminating evidence (including your ISP, remember) have basically no motive to forge documents. Unless you can demonstrate that the litigants have some sort of grudge against you, you're only going to fuck yourself harder by choosing to waste the court's time with your peabrained protests.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[Kreigaffe]

That's just it -- they don't need a reason to have some sort of grudge against you, personally.

They've demonstrated that they just don't care -- they want people to either settle for large sums of money, or go to court and lose so they get even more money. Who cares who it is? Obviously the IP would match your IP -- they can get that from your ISP. The question is -- was that your IP that they saw sharing files illegally, or did they manipulate that evidence to PLACE your IP there, and then later use that to approach your ISP to match the falsified IP to you personally?

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I haven't received any BSA notices since installing SafePeer (not that I'm necessarily saying I downloaded anything ;^) but if you want to be targeted instead, go right ahead.

How many did you get before you installed it, or are you saying it had zero impact on your BSA notice quota and is thus an irrelevant data point?

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[TheSpoom]

See, I'm going on the following thinking: There are thousands of other pirates out there that aren't using something like SafePeer. Why would the RIAA et al try to work around the lists when they already have such a large block of easily accessible PCs to scan?

Could they be doing all this stuff you're saying? Sure. Personally, I'd rather have some protection installed (it's free, after all) than none at all, even it it just makes me a slightly less lucrative target.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[ratsnapple tea]

Uh, why would they bother falsifying evidence to finger an innocent individual? Sure, they can be wrongheaded and evil, but why would they go out of their way to be evil? It's not as if they're lacking real filesharers to finger. The court would ask the same thing.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[ratsnapple tea]

If I were a copyright holder trying to track down pirates, I'd make damn sure to use IPs not in PeerGuardian's list. In fact, I might even go to the extra trouble of specifically targeting people using PeerGuardian. Why? Because the value of antipiracy initiatives comes ultimately from making examples of people, and I'd want to send a clear message that pirates will be identified and punished regardless of evasive measures.

Also consider that since you're blocking off such a fucking huge percentage of your peers on the internet—isn't it something like 35% using SafePeer (which derives from PeerGuardian)?—you're taking significantly longer to download your music and DVDs, exposing you for that much longer to snoops.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[Anonymous Coward]

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[Kreigaffe]

Good question.

Why ARE they taking innocent people to court?

'cause.. I believe there's a few high-profile cases right now that the judges haven't let them quietly drop.

Throw all that together, I don't know, if I was the one making the call I'd certainly not feel that there was a preponderance of evidence.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[Rakarra]

Apparently you missed the phrase "forensic quality evidence".

"Yes your honour, I collected this information on my home PC and brought the information in on a burned DVD... here ya go... we'd like them to get 20 years please."

I remember working at a web services company which bought a number of desktop machines, then routed a few dialup phone lines and DSL connections (Earthlink, AOL, some others) into the building for QA purposes to see how the site performed from some standard user desktops with standard net connections. I don't see why the RIAA & MPAA couldn't set up the same type lab to run P2P snoopers. Granted it was a dotcom that was throwing money around (they spent several million dollars hiring an outside agency to ... come up with a new name for the company) but this type of lab was hardly all that pricey.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's the idiot now?

You are... you can't separate the valid point from a joke. FORENSIC quality... fucking moron.

Re:Good thing you can't block them

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, I can't believe this is moderated 4, Informative. Slashdot's not what it used to be; even the moderators are stupid now.

Why isn't this a DMCA Violation?

[pacalis]

Section 1201 makes it illegal to (1) "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work" Seriously, couldn't a modification of Shareza effectively be construded as a DMCA violation? In this case, they are associating additional information with the work, which is an effective change in access to the work.

Re:Why isn't this a DMCA Violation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why this isn't a DMCA violation?

Well, for starters, because it's all taking place in Europe.

Re:Why isn't this a DMCA Violation?

[sznupi]

You should finish what you started to say by adding:

US law doesn't apply in Europe.

Re:Why isn't this a DMCA Violation?

[vliktor]

If in case you didn't know, Shareaza is licensed under the GPL, so no DMCA violation.

http://www.shareaza.com/

Are the RIAA/MPIAA proper litigants?

[geoff lane]

Just occurred to me.. Are the RIAA/MPIAA proper litigants? It's not their copyright material and although they are contracted to carry out the investigation surely it should be the copyright owner who instigates the legal case.

Re:Are the RIAA/MPIAA proper litigants?

[Falladir]

They represent the copyright holder. In the lawsuit the name of the plaintiff is always the record label: Capitol, BMG, Sony.

Re:Are the RIAA/MPIAA proper litigants?

[dbIII]

I seem to recall an article where they sent a guy a take down notice for his own work. They are obnoxious incompetants.

It's been said before,

[Dash Hash]

and I'll say it again now: One of these days, the Mafiaas are going to piss off the wrong person, and their corrupt leaders are going to end up with a bullet in the head. They go throwing their weight around like they were the only dogs in the yard that mattered, and they eventually piss off a smaller, quieter but far more vicious dog, and get torn apart. People won't take their BS forever, and something tells me, the Mafiaa won't be able to see where the line of "too far" is. I would feel pity for the leaders, but considering the billions of dollars their forced DRM infections have cost people, I can't in good faith care for them enough to feel pity. And yes, for any of the rats who troll this place for their Mafiaa masters, I am saying that I feel some lives aren't "priceless." When a group starts making life Hell for everyone else, their lives become without worth, and sooner or later, somebody is going to "cash in" on the worthless filth and improve not only their own lives, but the lives of everyone around them.

Re:It's been said before,

[Dogtanian]

Jesus... you are aware that you come across like an angry, bedroom-dwelling, wish-fulfilment fantasising nerd, right?

Re:It's been said before,

[gsslay]

When a group starts making life Hell for everyone else, their lives become without worth
Thanks for putting the issue in perspective. If only more people would speak out on the living Hell being created here. We'll look back on you as a visionary after the dust has settled on the great DRM wars of the 21st century. Millions may die, and billions left in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but as long as we can share our emo MP3s without fear there will be hope for humanity!

If each P2P app was also a proxy...

[dave420]

... then there could be no claim to the owner of the IP actually being the one downloading, regardless of whether the P2P app was actually proxying at the time or not. If all client->proxy communication was encrypted, then even the ISP couldn't sniff it and know what's going on, should they be subpoenaed for such information. Then the only thing the user would be guilty of is running an open proxy on the ISP's network, as opposed to being sued for millions. And if the ISP doesn't give a rat's ass, then there is no problem. Just a formal "tut tut" letter from the ISP. Or am I being naive?

Re:If each P2P app was also a proxy...

[ButcherCH]

That's the principle of apps like freenet. http://freenetproject.org/

Re:If each P2P app was also a proxy...

[walt-sjc]

That is basically the premise behind freenet, where each node is a cache / proxy, and all the content is encrypted so that not even YOU can see what's in your node's cache.

Re:If each P2P app was also a proxy...

[dave420]

Yeah, I know about freenet, but I was suggesting applying it to downloading large binaries on current P2P networks. If this concept of allowing someone to proxy through your box was applied to an eDonkey or BitTorrent client, then we could try to stem the flow of litigation we're currently seeing. Using freenet is no alternative, even if the software makes it a great distribution platform. The technology should follow the releases for a quick-fix, as the other way round would take ages to happen, even if these benefits were possible. In short: people ain't going to swap BitTorrent or eDonkey for freenet :)

Someone tag this "duh"...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

How else would they do it? CCTV in the homes?

Poor Mr.Aner

[eddy]

It's improperly "redacted", probably why it was pulled. But of course, the cat is out of the bag anyhow so...

Marketing

[chord.wav]

This is obviously propaganda for the game.
Whoever has a copy of a pinball game in its HD deserves punishment, true. But that is another story...

Fool Proof

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA:
The claim is that the "File Sharing Monitor" is totally foolproof and that it can provide forensic-quality information to a court in order that file-sharers be punished. The question remains whether an IP-address is sufficient evidence to sue a person for downloading copyrighted material. Recent cases suggest that the RIAA and the MPAA will need more evidence than that.

When you think you have something "fool proof"; nature makes a bigger and better fool. Based on their criteria.

1. The client connects to the P2P network, searches for sources of the infringing file, and collects the IP addresses that were gathered through the search.
2. The client requests to download (a piece of) the file from the host that was found through the search.
3. The filename, file size, IP-address, P2P protocol, P2P application, time, and the username are automatically inserted into a database, if the host permits the download.
4. This is the "best" part. The application does a WHOIS search for the ISP information and automatically sends an infringement letter to the ISP if needed.

Ok file name, size and IP address doesn't constitute piracy. I can create a text file with a bunch of 1's and 0's and rename to to "Dream Pinball 3D.exe". That doesn't make the person a pirate; they just downloaded a text file. Perhaps there should be a checksum; though checksums are not 100% "fool proof".

Seems like there is a little flaw in their product.

possesion of stolen content question????

[dsterbd]

What I do not understand about settlement offers, being accused and prosecuted for illegally acquiring copyright protected content online is that it would seem that you would actually have to have gotten the content. It seems that many people are being prosecuted as if they actually did get the content. Just because your IP address shows on a log kept by an ISP as connecting to P2P networks for particular files does not mean you actually ever got the content even if you admitted that it was you trying. Seems like there should be a difference, just like there is a difference between "attempted murder" and "murder", "attempted robbery" and actual "robbery", etc. With all of the corrupted files, downloads that were never complete for whatever reason, etc. It seems like they would have to prove that you actually obtained usable content illegally to be prosecuted for stealing songs, movies, etc. Otherwise you are just getting in trouble for downloading chunks of unusable data. Or am I mistaken, and all of these fines and court cases are about just "attempting" to get the content and not actually getting it? Is that why I don't ever really see this issue being brought up?

Re:possesion of stolen content question????

[cdrguru]

Sure, there is a difference between getting it and just trying. But remember, people go away for life in prison for attempted murder, just like a completely successful murder. Sometimes, in odd circumstances people get less time but not always.

Clearly the mission of the copyright holder (and the legal system) is not to proportionaly punish people for copyright infringement. It is to (a) make an example of them and (b) make sure they never, ever even think about copyright infringement again as long as they live. So it is highly unlikely there would be a difference between between "attempted infringement" and "successful infringement."

Pieces of Eight

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: What does a pirate record his movies onto?

A: DVD-ARRRRRRRRRRRR!

Pirates be damned !!

[HW_Hack]

While I don't approve of these methods (nor do I support current DRM methods/programs) pirating of software or music/videos is WRONG. In the end you are not ripping off the wealthy CEO or rich mega-band - you're ripping off all the average Joe's who work at company xyz and whose comensation and jobs are impacted by loss of sales of products. But go ahead and keep telling yourself you're sticking it to the "big man".

I used to pirate as well - I then got a real engineering job and became aware of the true number of people it takes to crank out a product - from middle managers - engineers - techs - secretaries - all the way down to the guys / gals in shipping. Every product that you subvert by pirating is money that does not go to the company coffers to cover wages / healthcare of these average folks. That was the end of my pirate days (but I still like to talk like a pirate).

Technology and market pressures will force the RIAA to change eventually as well as software companies forced to price their products more realistically.

Some could argue that pirating adds pressure to make companies change - but thats just another arguement to mask the fact that you are sticking it to average folks. Besides there's enough pirating going on in Asia / China to perform that function - I don't need to get my hands dirty.

Go ahead and flame on - I've got a firewall

Re:Pirates be damned !!

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely agree. For years and years I pirated anything and everything I wanted. Then I graduated and got a real job as a software developer. Even at the big places like Microsoft and IBM there is no faceless "the man" that you're sticking it to. I understand if you want to test drive the application before buying it; all of our products run without limitation for a 30 day evaluation. But if you use something regularly and find it helpful then you should be fair about it.

Re:Pirates be damned !!

[Shadowlore]

pirating of software or music/videos is WRONG

Well if you are talking about a ship of "privateers" boarding a ship and taking the CDs, thus preventing them from being sold to paying customers then yes. If not, you are wrong. What you describe is called copyright infringement - sometimes.

you're ripping off all the average Joe's who work at company xyz and whose comensation and jobs are impacted by loss of sales of products

Not really. Most copying of such material in my experience and that of a great many is that those who do so either would not purchase the product anyway (can't afford it or just wont), or purchase it after sampling it by downloading and trying it out.

You can't claim someone who had nothing taken from them is getting ripped off. There is "loss of sales" in every industry. I could argue that by checking a book out of the library, or by borrowing it from a friend YOU would be ripping off "all the average Joe's who work at company xyz and whose comensation(sic) and jobs are impacted by loss of sales of products".

Indeed I could argue that The Record Labels ripped off all those people by killing off the "single". Here is how.

People purchased singles. Why? They liked *that* song. They got a bonus song on "the B side" usually - a sampler if you will. The record companies found that when they put out albums with only one good song on it they stopped putting the songs they figured would be hits on singles. They were under the mistaken notion that people would instead buy the entire album for 7 times as much money. So they had crap songs from the album on the singles which naturally led to a drop in sales. Then they had "justification" for dropping the single sales. Now people were left with the choice of spending significantly more money on a gamble that they would like more than one or two songs. Well, no suprise, people cut down on buying the more expensive albums. Rather than take 2-3 bucks and entice the consumer to spend another 15 or so, they dropped the 2-3 dollar sales. Net result: unhappy consumers and a drop in sales. for all those ordinary Joes you believed yourself to be championing

Every industry experiences loss of sales at some time, and any large industry will find it happening when a "disruptive technology" comes along. There is no doubt that the Internet is one such technology, especially when combined with broadband.

I used to pirate as well - I then got a real engineering job and became aware of the true number of people it takes to crank out a product - from middle managers - engineers - techs - secretaries - all the way down to the guys / gals in shipping.

You mean you joined the corporate world and got out of school. Have you "done the right thing" and purchased all that stuff you downloaded without purchasing?

I've seen what it takes to put out damned good product. I've seen a solid staff of fewer than 5 put out computer games that are as good and sometimes better than the big corporations do. One could argue that the cadre of "support staff" that big corporations use are "pirating" the resources thus preventing those who do the creative and constructive work from getting the pay they are entitled to. "but they aren't stealing anything!" you cry? True, but neither is someone who downloads copyrighted material not in accordance with the copyright licensing. Just because the morality of it may be in question (again a great many download, enjoy, and purchase what they enjoy), that does not make it "piracy" or "stealing". Real pirates kill crew that resist.

Your entire argument hinges on the idea that those who download material such as games, videos, or music actually represents a lost sale. The real world does not support that claim. Not in the slightest. Someone who will not purchase an album they haven't heard and decided is worth the price is not a "sale lost to copyright infringement via download", nor is someone who simply can not afford it (or frankly is underage and can not purchase i

Re:Pirates be damned !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and flame on - I've got a firewall You got a "real" engineering degree...?

If you're in such a "big" company, have you ever realized how many managers/programmers/etc. are completely worthless for the amount of PRODUCTION they've made in a week?

This "big" company still manages to survive with all these incompetent fools screwing around with things. Perhaps if the company is getting less money, then perhaps the company should get rid of these people and change its business model?

Re:Pirates be damned !!

[Yeti7226]

Aaarrr matey!

You used to be a pirate? How many ships did you plunder? Or perhaps you mean you infringed on someone's copyright and the actual plundering boats on the high sead was not involved? So let's call ik what is is. By downloading content or software I may or may not break the law, depending on the nature of the content and my location at that time (Sweden and the Netherlands have very different legal systems compared to the US). Completely seperate from this the lawbreaking may or may not be immoral. If you do not believe there may be a big difference between illegal and immoral you nee to study the history of civil disobiedience (or just watch Schindlers list or something).

The RIAA are downloading material from me!

[WombatDeath]

No, really. I modified Shareaza to log all incoming requests to a database. I can show you a table containing audit records with any arbitrary IP address and file name you like.

The RIAA would most likely deny any such thing and claim that I just typed any old shit into my database table. Which is fine, and accurate, but they'd better not then turn around and say that their own 'evidence' holds any more weight than mine. Same goes for any other industry body or publisher out there.

Shareaza is under GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly this means that they don't even have to disclose the source code of their modifications as long as they don't give the binaries to others.

OMG, they track people by IP address?

[humankind]

This is news?

More interesting news would be details on Google and other companies' IP databases. You know groups out there are cataloging content and log information by IP address.

Have you ever gotten some virus e-mailed to you and all you had was an IP address of the host? Wouldn't it be nice to look up that IP and call the guy and tell him his stupid computer is infected? Someone, somewhere has a database like this... I'm sure Google at the least.

Re:OMG, they track people by IP address?

[cdrguru]

How about being able to take an IP address from your logs where someone is trying a brute-force password attack? You'd like them to stop, right? Fat chance!

The IP address is easily traceable to an ISP. The ISP knows who is doing this to you, but will not tell you because that information is "private". You can suggest that you send the logs to the ISP and would they contact their private, anonymous user and tell them to stop, but no ISP that I have ever encountered will do anything to help you.

Basically, you are screwed. Hope you change passwords often because brute force attacks will succeed ... eventually.

It is illegal to break into computers, but no local law enforcement agency will ever go after someone without "real" damages, probably thousands of dollars. The FBI will go after people, but only after $25,000 in provable damages. It is highly unlikely someone brute-forcing your password file is going to cause you $25,000 in damages. The FBI has a lot more manpower than local agencies for computer crimes, so you can pretty much figure that you have to account for $25,000 in damages before anything is going to happen.

Most ISPs are going to ignore crap like this from an infringed copyright holder because there is no way they can cause the ISP any trouble and sifting through logs costs time and money. The ones that do something are pretty much going to just send their customer a letter about a letter they got and that is the end of it.

You can be intimidated by this if you want, but the truth is you are pretty much anonymous with your privacy secured by your ISP. If your ISP gives you up, you are the account holder and it would seem this doesn't mean much - the account holder does not seem to be responsible for actions on the account. This means you can just say "wasn't me" and there isn't much they can do about it. If they want your computer for analysis, just have your lawyer say "no" before they take it. They really don't have any grounds for action because there is no evidence that you personally committed any of the deeds they are trying to sue over.

Just remember...

[Organic Brain Damage]

This century is buy no music century. When we all stop buying music, the RIAA will be unable to afford to sue us.

Re:Just remember...

[Rakarra]

That's when they ask for government assistance with the claim that the losses are due to piracy, not lack of interest.

Yeah how do you change that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the /etc file you edit?

Re:Yeah how do you change that?

[numbski]

rm /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow (or /etc/master.passwd if you're on FreeBSD). That ought to fix it right up.

Not quite.

[galenoftheshadows]

Well, as another article today points out, apparently, you can.

You're a real l33+ d00d, aren't ya? Must've passed the Web License with flying colors, right?

brainstorming

[Anonymous Coward]

If sending a letter to someone threatening a lawsuit counts as bringing a legal action, then the original idea would fit the definition of barratry (if defined as "bringing repeated legal actions only to harass"). Not being a lawyer I don't know about the legal definition of course.

But there is the germ of a interesting idea idea here that might have been really good for making a lot of money and not getting in much trouble. Unfortunately recent court activity puts the usefulness of this idea into question.

The place to look at for the relevant precedent would be the recent sex scandal in Washington D.C. In that case, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, a D.C. call-girl madam, decided to put her entire client phone number list up for auction. And the list started to pull in big money bids, from parties desperate either to suppress or to publish it. Anyone who has ever sold anything on Ebay might easily imagine the possibilities here. And eventually the winning bid came from one who would rather publish. Anyone who knows anything about politics might easily see the possibilities in that. This thing could have turned national politics on its head in an explosion of money with which she planned to cover her legal costs for her racketeering defense.

So this is what you do: just run a sw33t torrent server for a few months and let your logs swell with originating IPs and search requests. Then abruptly one day redirect to an auction site where your Apache logs for the past year are for sale. Use the money from the auction to cover your legal costs for extortion and the DMCA violation.

Unfortunately it seems a judge issued an injunction blocking the sale or transfer of her phone numbers, so if your auction gets shut down you're screwed. And if you try to do something cute like show people their all their searches and downloads, you'd better be careful with cookies and cryptography or the RIAA will just pound your server with forged headers and reconstruct the list itself for free by spidering your threat message.

Fixed by AMD

[FutureDomain]

Nor does a screenshot from Kazaa showing a list of IP addresses count as strong evidence. Haha! They won't be able to take screenshots when AMD implements it's new framebuffer DRM.

Obligatory Spaceballs

[Gazzonyx]

The combination is 1...2...3...4...5...6...

123456? What kind of idiot would use that as a combination?

123456, that's the same as the combination to my briefcase!

Re:Obligatory Spaceballs

[jptechnical]

Oligatory SpaceBalls Comment CORRECTION: It is luggage, not briefcase.

Re:Obligatory Spaceballs

[Gazzonyx]

Arg! Got me. I stand corrected. *bows head in shame*

Re:Obligatory Spaceballs

[thinksInCode]

Also, the combination was 1-2-3-4-5, not 1-2-3-4-5-6. The Druidian Air Shield must only support 5 digit passwords. :)

Re:Obligatory Spaceballs

[Gazzonyx]

Ummmm...I knew that...Yeah...
You see, I was under the assumption that the 1 was a parity bit and the password was actually 5 digits. Yeah, that's it.

*I'm googling my obligatories from now on!*

OPEN SOURCE COPY RIGHT INFRINGEMENT

[crashelite]

is it just me or since bit torrent is open source but for non profit only, this would mean that the creator would get money from this company dew to that it is violating the open source code agreement...

Anonymous proxies?

[RKBA]

I wonder what my anonymous proxy provider does with letters like these?

CPIP

[Disharmony2012]

They'll never catch my damn piegons!

Re:CPIP

[mink]

Be careful, they might have employed Dastardly and Muttley.

Eventually the RIAA will sue a Judge

[flyingfsck]

That would be a fun case to watch.

Wow - where is the torent?

[STDK]

This makes me want to download Dream Pinball 3D to see what all the craze is about. Normally I would only download decent games or movies, but this is just to tempting... Viral marketing? S

Don't torrent software illegally.

[BlueParrot]

Do it legally... by using software where the license agreement not only permits it, but recognises it as your RIGHT to to do so. There is no need to violate copyright law, just use software written with the users in mind. You can start with: http://www.ubuntu.com/

Is this software in breach of the GPL licence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems this anti-piracy software is a modification of the open source Shareaza client. Does this mean that the company who made it (Logistep) has violated the GPL licence by not revealing the source code? Does this mean that this (patented!!!) software is actually illegal?

Please help, people fighting this need every angle they can!

Product logo

[phorm]

As far as the products of the companies in question go, I think that This would be a fairly appropriate logo.

See O.J.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

It can't be simply, "Oh, we think he/she did it." They've got to show that you actually did,

Yeah. They show up with the ISP records showing it came from your address. That is evidience. You would need to dispute the evidence in court and convinve the judge and/or jury that evidence can be explained by some other means. You are innocent, until proven guilty, but you do have to actually show up in court to say you are innocent.

People dl our software who would never buy it....

[MMInterface]

As you can imagine there are plenty of people here who work for software companies. I'm one of them. The products I work on are pirated heavily. If I made the argument that I am loosing out because of that I would deserve to be smacked repeatedly. I get paid well and guess what? We are hiring. The only people complaining here are the big shareholders and president which is understandable to a point. It would be laughable to think that if all the people who pirate our software would have been customers. The truth is if they didn't have the option they would use free software. I am greatfull to pirate bay. Most people who pirate our more expensive products can't afford them and they don't need them. For us there will always be part of the market who has to pay for our products but piracy assures that even people who don't still get hooked on them. When they do spend money on software or go to work their experience will favor our products. You really think some kid who downloads 3dsMax is costing that company money? How about some teenager who pirates SQL Server Enterprise? I know tons of people with 3dsMax on their machines but I have met very few who actually use it. With Photoshop, I know many people who pirate it and actually use it, but if they couldn't get it free most of them would not buy it. Instead they would actually pay attention to something like Gimp or Paint.NET. I'm not saying they are saints, but I am saying its not money lost. At the end of the day everyone thinks they have to have Photoshop which is free advertising(ching ching). So yeah it would be a massive exxageration to say that every product pirated costs the company money.