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TorrentSpy Must Preserve Data In RAM For MPAA
Transient writes "Reaffirming a magistrate's earlier decision, a federal judge has ordered TorrentSpy to begin keeping server logs as it defends itself against an MPAA lawsuit. In her opinion, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper interpreted federal discovery rules broadly. ' Judge Cooper took issue with TorrentSpy's argument that data in RAM is not "stored." She noted RAM's function as primary storage and that the storage of data in RAM — even if not permanently archived — makes it electronically stored information governed by federal discovery rules.' Given that TorrentSpy has limited access for users in the US, the ruling may be moot. But it does set a precedent for other, similar cases. 'Under this interpretation, any data stored in RAM could be subject to a subpoena, as at a basic level it is a "medium from which information can be obtained" just like a hard drive. '"
"Funny, the data was in there before I pulled it out of the server."
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
...as the data that is put into RAM is read and erased, can they (Torrentspy) be charged with destruction of evidence?
Living With a Nerd
Sorry, but the server power supply blew! Here's the box, g'luck! ;)
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
So can they convict me for destroying evidence because I turned off my computer?
'Under this interpretation, any data stored in RAM could be subject to a subpoena, as at a basic level it is a "medium from which information can be obtained" just like a hard drive. '
Okay, no problem. I'll just shut the server down and pull the hard drive and memory DIMMs out for you. Go ahead and "obtain" whatever information you like.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
I can't wait for the ruling on l2 cache and registers. Seriously, can we not pay some money to have some people who understand technology available to the court?
Wouldn't that apply to streams also? They're also stored in RAM, after all..
From the PHP manual: "Also note that it is your responsibility to die() if necessary."
Does this mean that turning a computer off could be considered destruction of, or tampering with, evidence ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Does this mean they can subpoena the contents of the white board in conference nine at 7:23 AM on June the 13, 2005?
Why can't the court grasp the transient nature of the content of RAM?
-Peter
Sort of like the uncertainty principle. In order to "store" RAM to a permanent medium, RAM will change to write itself to the medium. This reminds me of when I testified and tried to explain that from a programs perspective, VM looks just like RAM, just slower. I never managed to convince the prosecutor. Clearly the legal system hasn't a clue about tech.
is what the Judge actually did to learn what RAM does and the suitable means to archive it. Was it the responsibility of the plantiff or TorrentSpy to educate her on what RAM actually does? Or was she left to her own devices as to how she sees RAM fitting into information storage, namely the sheer amount of data a single stick can hold?
import system.cool.Sig;
Sure, you can have all the data in my RAM, let me just power off the server and bring it to court.
I'll let you copy the memory to your thumb drive. HA!
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
Doesn't Vista encrypt some of it's data in RAM (DRMd media etc)? If Apache was modified to set the memory used for logs to be DRMd, would this make the data inaccessible?
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
This is what happens when people in power don't understand technology
tail -f /dev/mem > memlogs.txt
I say have fun with that one.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
... I'd just format my RAM a few times.
If RAM can be subject to subpoenas, and it's illegal to destroy information that may later be subpoenaed, which is my understanding is true thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley, that means that all computers used by all companies must keep a permanent record of the contents of computer RAM at any given time.
I guess it's time to buy stock in storage companies. I wonder if this also applies to cache RAM? There could be an infinite loop in there somewhere...
> Judge Cooper also noted the language of the discovery rule governing electronically stored information, which states that the rule is "expansive" and includes "any type of information that is stored electronically."
Seeing as level 1 cache, level 2 cache, and registers also fit this rule, do we also need to start saving those values as well?
So... you have to be able to log everything that is in ram as well now
so we need faster processors and bigger hard drives to handle the extra load.
A normal log may not be that big, but when you get to a few months full of RAM logs for a busy server... I think this precedent will get overturned when they find out just what they are asking for.
I want to to write down every single thought you have for the next 10 weeks...
I am surprised that the costs issue was not addressed. Generally, and if I recall, that if there are costs on on electronic discovery, that cost can be shifted on to the requesting party.
For this the costs would be expensive.
There are two ways to archive this:
1. By snapshotting the ram.
2. By rewriting the server code.
By snapshotting the ram, it would require a program with root access to snap this and lots of data to be archive.
By rewriting the server code, it would take months to rewrite it properly and test it. Then they would to license the IP2location database to perform lookups on the IP address filter out US addresses. I suspect that this filtering would require one or two more computers to perform this.
Fight Spammers!
Which makes sense. Imagine that I do all my shady accounting on some Post-Its, then turn their contents into a bunch of spreadsheets and a ledger that look legit. If my accounting documentation is subpoenaed and I don't produce those Post-Its, and the court finds out about their existence, I am in deep shit for destruction of evidence and/or failure to keep required records. I certainly wouldn't get far with a claim that the Post-Its were a "temporary storage medium" or something.
I believe the fact that TorrentSpy is being compelled to keep server logs by the MPAA is fucked up on a few levels. I just wanted to point out that the last part of the summary is not as profound or earth-shaking as it might seem.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
This is the problem with people who don't understand technology ruling on it. I'm sure this judge probably had some kind of "lesson" given to her, but that's ridiculous. If you don't have a degree in electronic / computer engineering, you shouldn't be ruling as to whether or not data in RAM is stored or not. This is just insane. Is it even technically possible to constantly store a record of a computers RAM? Does this Judge even understand what RAM is, or what function it plays, or how it works? I doubt her understanding is anything but cursory. This is bullshit. It makes me furious! This is like ruling that gravity doesn't exist, and then saying that needs to be enforced. I know that doesn't make sense, that's the point! This Judge is an idiot.
What the judge is saying is that just because you keep a file in RAM and not on on disk, you can't claim you aren't "storing" that data.
malloc command: can only be called with copyright permission from a mafiaa member
free command: illegal under the dmcaa
memory leaks: standard operating procedure
dangling pointers: stool pigeons
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The magistrate judge didn't buy that argument, and in her opinion reaffirming the magistrate's order, neither did Judge Florence-Marie Cooper. Judge Cooper took issue with TorrentSpy's argument that data in RAM is not "stored." She noted RAM's function as primary storage and that the storage of data in RAM--even if not permanently archived--makes it electronically stored information governed by federal discovery rules. TorrentSpy: "We could log that information, but we choose not to."
Judge: "Choose to do so from this point on."
RAM isn't exactly relevant. This isn't some kind of temporary storage situation. This is a deliberate decision on the part of the software author. Now if you want to claim rights are being trodden upon, be my guest. But claiming that all RAM is now state's evidence is a stretch.
As I (A.C.) Noted LAST TIME this issue was discussed:
Every router, bridge, modem, and NIC card contains RAM. If a judge can legitimately order that the contents of a computer's RAM must be archived for later perusal, they may legitimately order that the contents of the networking equipment's RAM be archived for later perusal. All your wireline are belong to us. All your packets are belong to us. Good luck footing the bill for the disk storage that can keep up with the changes in RAM, much less the bus probe, much less the subsequent analysis of a RAM trace on a modern multithreaded re-entrant multicore multicached computer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...is that many judges have been born and raised in households without a single integrated circuit, and as such are prone to the very same ignorance as many from their generation (before PC's and the like were for more than just the hobbyist crowd). We can only hope that rulings such as these become less and less frequent as the baton is passed to the current, much more technically savvy, generation. But then again, we can only hope.
... the contents of the RAM and send it to them COD. I wonder, how much a few thousand tons of paper costs to ship? That should keep them busy for a few hundred years.
How often does ram change? How long will be the log? Is there any operating system that can implement this?
Just think about it. Let's suppose you have to take RAM snapshots every 30 minutes. For a single day you have to keep around, 4gigs * 2 * 24 = 96 gigs per day. It's an enormous amount of data to store in a hard drive. And now they have to put in lots of money JUST to comply with a stupid law?
Give me a break.
So by power off my machine, I've already tampered with evidence.
Does this mean that you now have to keep a permanent record of everything that goes into or out of your RAM? Does this mean that every write to RAM has to be accompanied by a write to disk? Even if it is buffered and then written in larger chunks, I wonder what kind of performance hit this would cause
The commentary on this article is extremely misleading. The judge in this case has ruled that because Torrentspy can log the IP's of requests to the server it must do so and hand them over to the court. This is absolutely not about the judge misunderstanding the nature of RAM and ordering them to hand over a bunch of DIMM's, yes judges can be technically ignorant but the courts are not stupid either you know. The judge is saying that because this data can be stored it must be. This actual ruling is of course far, far more disturbing than any technical ignorance could be, as it requires torrentspy to effectively spy on their users on behalf of the MPAA, something which should surely be illegal in itself, nevermind mandated by a court of law.
My HD-DVD player accessed a file over the network that I suspect is a copyright violation. I need access to the player's RAM for my discovery proceedings. Especially the bit when it does the decryption keys.
Think it'll fly?
(Or is this RIAA, not MPAA?)
This happened to an E-Gold broker recently, which the government robbed of several heavy 6-7 figure accounts. If memory serves me well, the account holders were not guilty of anything merely "suspected" and were not convicted of anything, but their "assets" were seized and liquidated.
The reason? The broker in question is one of the few who has not yet fled to the free market of international waters. They kept their servers in the US. Lesson 1. Globalism is not just for the big boys. In fact its friendlier for little players. You, me, mom and pop downtown, we're all the ones who should incorporate abroad if we do it at all.
Lesson 2. Torrentspy should work actively with friends from abroad, preferably from some nordic country or some place not friendly to the gestapo tactics of the EU, and US, China, etc. Right now, for the time being, South America seems allright, as would a drilling platform in the middle of the ocean (or close to shore, your preference). If you choose such a path and have money, hire good security, if you don't then you'd best be a good shot, and a great swimmer, you may need to defend such a place, especially if you declare it a separate independent nation or sovereign territory. After that, with a policy of neutrality and free trade with ALL who come to you, there is a fairly good chance you may even draw some of the Linux "community" to you, especially those who seek a place to host that is not "restricted" by either the East or the West.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
All I can say is:
LOL!!1!eleventy!
This is the most retarded thing I've heard in a week.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It's time to call the guy who hooked up the frogger run on barrette power with out having the power to the ram cut to do the same with my pc he can just send the bill to the RIAA / MPAA.
I seem to remember from a similar article a few months back that an astute slashdotter pointed to case law that basically said that a defendant cannot be compelled to produce evidence that does not normally exist. In other words, if there is not currently a method that exists (e.g. commercial program) for logging all RAM contents the court cannot force the defendant to create and then implement such a program/procedure just to create the evidence the prosecution seeks.
Does anyone know what I'm referring to or can provide links to such case law? Or am I totally off base with this?
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
It is my understanding that in discovery, the party providing the discovery is not required to process the data in any fashion to make it more easily readable. Surely, providing logs form the server would constitute processing the discovery materials? Thus, Torrentspy should be able to provide dumps of the RAM contents taken at regular intervals. If the plaintiffs find that diffucult to use: tough -- the rules of evidence don't require TorrentSpy to do any more?
At least, that is my non-lawyer's opinion.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Cache is just a form of memory, just really fast memory. This ruling seems to imply that anything stored in L0 or L1 cache, or heck even in registers is evidence that must be maintained.
Does this mean that I have to log every bit ever stored in RAM, just in case a court wants some information I didn't think to log?
I hope it only means they can require me to start logging things, not that I can be guilty of destruction of evidence or some such crap for neglecting to log something they consider important.
Let's also consider that just because something is in RAM doesn't mean it's reasonable to read. Every bit of DRM'd media is, at some point, stored unencrypted in RAM. That doesn't mean it's easy to get at. Suppose Torrentspy was using a webserver that didn't support logging? Suppose they never logged to physical media anyway -- suppose the entire webserver was run off a livecd?
I realize none of the above is relevant to the current case. I'm just trying to figure out exactly what implications this ruling has in a broader sense.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"Judge: "Choose to do so from this point on.""
Uhh, Torrentspy hasn't been convicted of anything. AFAIK they haven't even been charged with anything, criminal or civil. And the judge has the power to compel their servers to testify against them? This is exactly like the government ordering a business to spy on its customers (and a business in another country at that). Completely bogus.
"Your honor, we plead the 5th amendment ["nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"] on behalf of our servers." Shame they aren't American citizens.
Folks, From TFA, we see the following, "[Torrentspy] argued that the log data wasn't available, since it existed only in RAM, and as such, was never stored". The judge, being nobodies dummy, accurately noted that this isn't an impediment to logging that data in the future and has ordered them to do so. Funny jokes about handing over DIMMs aside this is a totally reasonable concept. How many of you all think it's actually impossible to log a number that is in RAM? Are all you /. l33t programmers incapable of writing a variable out to a file?
RAM works in a way similar to Alberto Gonzales. If you ask it what it was doing at any moment in time, it will simply reply 'I don't recall.'
The only difference is that the RAM is actually telling the truth.
Its always so refreshing when people when people who know little or nothing about technology can produce rulings like this.
I guess a broad interpretation of this ruling would be that anything that was ever in RAM must be 'discoverable'.
Hmmm. I guess I'd better start saving the results of each iteration of loops in my code which calculate things. Who knows, it could someday be supoena'd.
No wonder Lenovo wants to buy Seagate.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
People that don't know anything about a certain subject are making rules and precedents about it.
"It's en dem ma-sheeens! We git da masheeen, then we git who was a-stealin our movies! We will git us sum cypherers to figger out dis and weee'l put 'em all in jail!"
Ok, they don't all talk like that I'm sure. But you get my point. This is ridiculous and this judge and others that put this little gem of a ruling together should be openly ridiculed at every opportunity.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Oh, I'm sure, many of you are going off on this whole RAM thing as if that was the point. What you are missing is that this ruling was meant not really believing that RAM is the key, but the fact of the matter that, for torrentspy transactions, they do not, for just the exact reason this lawsuit began, log connection information, even though that information does pass through the RAM of the system. They focused on RAM as it is, in this case, the only memory device that is realistically capturing any connection information. That connection information is what the prosecution wants. Ergo, this order is, for all intents and purposes, forcing torrentspy to adjust their software to capture the connection information. That's really all it is. The courts, I'm sure, are aware of the transitory nature of RAM, and, through this order, are only addressing that the memory in RAM be captured. The reason they bring this up is because torrentspy, all along, claimed they have no logs that capture connection information, so potential downtheroad supoena's of torrentspy users cannot occur, plsu an audit trail of abuses cannot be captured. This ruling basically says 'Nice try guys, but you now need to close up that loophole'. Seriously, you all go off on the nature of RAM and stupidity of non-technites, but you fail to grasp what this ruling is really about, enforced logging of details that should be captured but the fact that it isn't is 100% an attempt to cover up any illegal activity going on with their servers/services abd leaving no trail to trace. If this was read for what it really means 'Court orders torrentspy to modify software to capture all connection info', which would be more outside the realm of the court to order, it wouldn't even raise an eyebrow save for the tinfoil hat privacy types. But that is outside the mandate of the court, so they just said what they need and now it's up to Torrentspy to figure out how to do it.
The stupidity becomes obvious when you put it in common terms away from technology. Bank robbers are always making their getaways on public roads. So, in order to protect against said robbers, every car that travels on every road must be recorded. Does the government see this as a reasonable request for their resources? Should the government be held responsible for the illegal use of its roads?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
making the IP info truly worthless, make sure that the internal network IPs are recorded verbatim, not their speculative source address on the internet. so you will have 100,000 requests coming from IP address 10.0.0.1
Hmm that guy must really like downloading movies.
...an actual explanation of what the judges order actually is and actually means. I only had to scroll through most of the comments before I found it.
People this is what the judge is actually ordering. That since they at some point know the IP of the machine that made a request to the server, they have to log that IP. END of Story, there actually is no story here!
TorrentSPY is no longer accepting requests from US IPs because they knew this was coming.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
The ruling is that TorrentSpy must, in future, maintain records of IP information. How is that meant to help prove or disprove the case that the MPAA are trying to prosecute, which must, by definition, have already occurred? This is not discovery - but an imposition on the way the software is to be re-written. Or can the MPAA say that they think that TorrentSpy will commit an offence sometime in the future and they now want to have the means to prove it?
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
The technical explanation of RAM always has data having substance (one's, zero's, bits, and bytes).
Just educate the techs to speak legalese.
Speaking tech to lawyers and judges did not work!
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
Your dead on with your comment, but actually stating the real meaning leaves no room for anyone to pick on the Court. I agree with you. The court said, fine you have not been logging the IPs of systems connecting to your servers. Well now you have too! Please make these changes to your policies ASAP! We know its technically feasible to log the IPs of each connection attempt and once connected what the asked for while connected, so start doing it.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I fear that the above scenario is not that far off.
Suppose that some individual finds a key, or perhaps some en/decrypting scheme that cracks AACS in its entirety. If that individual then encrypted these logs in that manner before storing them, and then turned them over to the court, wouldn't they also have to turn over the key or scheme? Wouldn't the key or scheme then become a matter of public record, and the MPAA/RIAA unable to squelch its distribution?
*idea inspired by Zenon Panoussis v. Scientology
Have you ever needed to remember something like a serial number for a short time and you can't or don't want to write it down, so you keep reading it aloud to yourself to remember it? Like "76A354T, 76A354T, 76A354T..." As long as I keep repeating it to myself, I can continue to remember it. That's what a computer's RAM is, with a helluva lot more the computer can keep repeating to itself. So to continue the analogy, the judge wants to be able to subpoena what I'm saying out loud to myself to remember. To do that there needs to be a tape recorder running at all times.
As far as I can tell, when it comes to precedent this is what the judge is mandating. A constant stream of recording so it can be subpoenaed. After all, when I'm repeating seven characters over and over again out loud, that is data storage. Sounds like a pretty worthless precedent to me. Maybe it's a creative way for this specific case to request logging to be turned on, but that's it.
"But your honor, I never said that."
"Everything you say is being stored in the sound waves created by your voice, if only temporarily. Therefore, it is governed by federal discovery laws."
You Americans have way too powerful judiciary system. With the ability to make law-on-the fly, all kind of stupidity could pass outside the proper legislatory path. How even it could be possible for incompetent persons to judge in cases outside their field of expertise? The law system in my country is far from being perfect, but we never had so stupid judgements as it is commonly heard in USA.
The summary of this article sucks, most of the comments here are nothing more than ravings based on a bad summary.
The judge wants them to start logging IP addresses. But a judge can't just order anyone to do anything they feel like, there has to be some precedent or law saying they can. This judge said in legal terms, stuff in RAM is stored data. Then he applied rules based on law that covers stored data.
It's like if a company has a policy to burn documents every night, but the judge orders them not to burn documents until the end of the case. There's no expectation that burnt documents can magically be unburnt.
Judge: "Is the offending IP address present?"
Defendant: "Maybe...maybe not!"
-S
How about giving them a complete memory dump of RAM, letting them sort out what the data is that interests them? Can the judge require them to preserve it in pretty formats?
This whole order is such an overreach by this judge, and the US Judicial system, that an immediate halt should be put to it this very instant.
And just suppose, btw for the sake of argument, that the country were TS is located prohibits export of personal data due to privacy laws? Then who wins?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Log everything the server does to a ramdisk.
Although no US IP addresses should be available since TS is blocking US IP addresses now, I don't recall that this order was limited to US IP addresses. The judge could force TS to turn over all IP addresses from anywhere in the world, and the MPAA could then pass this information along to their incestuous sister organizations in other countries.
Why doesn't someone create TorrentSpy Proxy, whose sole job is to connect any other user to the TS server? This way, all TS will see is the IP address of TSP, and TSP isn't involved in any way in serving up torrents, hence the MPAA has little available grounds for suing them?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That people in Law Enforcement are extremely stupid and full of sh*t.
They also have to save the contents of /dev/random and record anything written to /dev/null.
Yes, I am kidding. The judge is not that stupid. Oh wait, yes he is...
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
TorrentSpy has announced that to comply with the MPAA Puppet^W^W impartial judge orders, all of its servers' RAM cards will be replaced by WOM cards. WOM, or Write Only Memory, is the latest cutting edge technology designed to ease the learning curve of geek challenged courts and remain compliant with discovery demands. All digital access information to their website will be safely stored in the WOM cards, readily surrendered to the courts. TorrentSpy has also announced implementation of the Fair Use Circumvention Kit at a later date but has declined to provide further details, despite curious snickering under their breaths.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
What next, will the TorrentSpy sysadmins be required to *remember* everything thing single thing they do, every second of every day, from this point forward? Even if they were required remember every single detail of each day as pertains to anything done to TorrentSpy servers, this ruling would be equally as ridiculous, if not well intentioned.
Sounds like a judge who would like to understand technology, but doesn't quite grab enough fundamentals. Can they enforce such a ruling, given the programming/overhead it would take to "save" everything in RAM... is that even possible (or remotely practical, if someone *wanted* to log data which passed thru RAM)?!?
Your honor, a tiny portion RAM log of the time in question
...
2007.08.28 15:40 set bit 1243434
2007.08.28 15:40 set bit 1243435
2007.08.28 15:40 cleared bit 1243436
2007.08.28 15:40 set bit 1243437
Obviously guilty!
OK, so it is now required that they log the contents of the RAM for future analysis. That means the data must be read from RAM and stored somewhere.
Now, the odd thing here is that, apart from being impractical, the logging company may run into legal issues if they aren't careful of exactly *what* data they're pulling out of the RAM and storing. What if they pull out the wrong section of memory, end up with an AACS decryption key, and get sued for circumvention of a copy-protection mechanism under the DMCA? They were just ordered to by the court, sure, but it's got to complicate matters. After all, the MPAA and co. are already looking at anyone who visits the website; do you really think they'd overlook the opening that would give them?
Does this mean they can subpoena the contents of the white board in conference nine at 7:23 AM on June the 13, 2005?
YES, if the court gives you notice that you must preserve everything that is written on the whiteboards in all conference rooms, then they will expect you to have it preserved, and produce it when ordered.
Take a picture, log the contents, don't erase it - whatever you need to do to preserve the information. Saying "But I erased it!" isn't going to fly when you are subject to a prior order to NOT erase it.
Why can't the court grasp the transient nature of the content of RAM?
It sounds like the company was saying "But I really don't have it, it's just in RAM". That doesn't mean you don't have the information.
Note that this is a prospective discovery order - YOU WILL HAVE THE INFORMATION IN YOUR POSSESION, I REALIZE IT'S TRANSITORY AND YOU NORMALLY DON"T PRESERVE IT, BUT YOU CAN PRESERVE IT, AND I'M ORDERING YOU TO PRESERVE IT.
What's so hard about that?
Do they too fall under this ruling? After all, they do "store" information, for a while, and then it gets wiped. Do you think that companies should preserve ALL whiteboard writings.
What about errors, if I write something and make a spelling error, I erase it and retype it. Should that too be recorded?
What about the information of time. A whiteboard is changed over time as you add new data to it, this timeline could be important, WHEN was the information on the whiteboard added, the time the line "Make sure the brakes work" is added to a car design discussion is important if it turns out the brakes failed on the production version.
So to truly and fully comply with discovery rules EVERY tiny bit of data, now matter how fleeting, has to be recorded, that means video cameras everywhere. Not exactly practical is it?
Torrentspy doesn't log IP's for a reason, there are too many and it just doesn't need them. So their entire setup just uses the IP information as temperory data, like a scrawl on a whiteboard or even a mental note, and discards it when it doesn't need them.
In theory they could offcourse log it, but because something is possible in theory, doesn't mean it is possible in practice.
Lets turn it around, the MPAA is a business and therefore all its business discussions should be recorded, but who is to say they do not talk business at home with their spouses? I say the only way to be sure is to video-tape them 24/7, just to be sure EVERY business related data is recorded as required by law.
Your Post-Its would be closer to a tmp file.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Do you want to rank this judge's performance in a public manner? Visit The Robing Room and let your thoughts be heard. Just be sure to get her name and state correct. Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, Federal Judge, California.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Requiring RAM info to be logged and surrendered is analogous to requiring a company to use video to record all work conversations/activities and to turn the tapes over to a litigious competitor. Recording all such conversations would place a huge operational burden on a company, and what might the competitors do with that information? Would it be a crime to have a conversation, or move a chair, if the recorder weren't turned on? The judge does not understand computer technology or the practicalities of enforcing media IP rights. Despite massive litigation by the MPAA, ultimately the judicial system had to allow VCR recording for personal use, because, among other reasons, it is unregulatable. And when a judicial system overreaches, it loses credibility in all domains.
Birth is the leading cause of death.
Doesn't the act of writing a log file of the contents of RAM utilise RAM in itself?
That's an infinite loop right there!
America, Home of the Brave.
I, George W. Bush, being of sound mind and body, despite my defective pedigree; college binge-drinking; and cocaine use, do hereby
suspend the authority of the judicial branch of the federal government until further notice or until I suspend presidential elections in the
United States of America.
Criminally as alway,
George W. Bush
Just file a motion with the court proclaiming that the judge is a moron and doesn't know her /dev/null from a hole in the ground.
It would be "obstruction of justice" which is a felony.
a server thought-crime?
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
What if there's a blackout? Do I have to run an industrial strength UPS at home to ensure my computers keep their data for a few hours? And if, how long? An hour? A day? 'til the end of the world or the end of the MPAA, whichever comes first?
... well, do the math)?
What if my server hangs? The system or the program, doesn't matter, in either case the data in Ram has a pretty good chance to be destroyed (in case of a system blow) or get swiped and reused in the next garbage collection. Am I liable for faults done by someone else, i.e. the programmer of a tool?
What if I run out of ram? If I'm supposed to log everything, sooner or later there's an end to my Ram. Am I now required to stuff my box with at least 32GB of ram (provided the mainboard and the system can handle it), to make sure I can at least log a day or so (because doing a full backup of ram in ram is kinda
This is yet again a ruling that simply and plainly makes no sense. The only thing the Judge made evident is that he is unfit to make such a decision, lacking the information about the matter he tries to judge. It is kinda scary if inapt people get to make legally binding decisions.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Another ruling in the UK, during the Poll Tax fiasco, also showed surprising resistance to technologically suspicious arguments. A prosecutor produced in court various printouts - e-mails, database entries, and so on. The judge threw out the evidence on the grounds that it was impossible to know if the printouts came from a legitimate source, if the data had been tampered with, and whether the bills sent were indeed the bills recorded on the printout. In other words, if it couldn't be authenticated and was subject to being trivially refuted, it was inadmissible as evidence.
Now, these standards are no longer really held to anywhere, but they do form the backbone that should exist for all computer-based evidence - that you are dealing with a highly mutable, impermanent environment (Buddhists should make excellent programmers) and that the standards required for admissibility should be that much higher. If RAM is to be admissible in court, then RAM makers should be required to embed the Tiger hashing function in hardware and hash every 4K of memory space, in order to provide some method of verifying that what is claimed of the RAM contents has any basis in reality.
Personally, I think the whole thing is as much a farce as the UK Government's attempt to have all ISPs log the contents of all packets and retain them for 7 years.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
How is it even legal to go to the movies and watch a movie (because the movie is being reprojected upsidedown, twice, into everyone's eyes)?
The Admin and the Engineer
No one ever thought of this to give to the judge?
1 0101010101"
"Your honor, here is the aforementioned RAM output you subpoenaed in perfect duplication.
1000111101101010101011100110010 1001011100101001001010011001010100101010100110
10011010100101001 1001010010100101010100000111100101011100101111000
ect......
(and no I'm not about to make something intelligent out of the bit code above lol it was random for sake of time)
`cat /dev/mem` of course. They might even still be around, depending upon your OS.
What's really fucked up is how this U.S. court magistrate, and now Federal Judge Cooper, think they can order new evidence to be created after-the-fact. Not to mention how fucked up it is that a U.S. court thinks it can give any order outside their jurisdiction to TorrentSpy located in the Netherlands. And how further fucked up they must think TorrentSpy must be to violate European privacy laws which prevent them from keeping such logs against their published policy, which carry much harsher penalties than some token U.S. ruling.
Truly you are correct, the most fucked up thing about this whole case is how one company (MPAA) can force a change in I.T. policy on someone else (TorrentSpy) all the way in another country!
{ - Generic Guy - }
Do you now have to save a snapshot of your ram anytime any (i.e. even 1 bit) of its contents changes?
The other 97% of deforestation is due to the locals and the Brazilian government. ~60% cattle ranches, ~30-33% agriculture (~30% subsistence, ~1-3% commercial), and ~3% urbanization. (I found a pretty good link here, which has a nice pie graph, which is where I'm pulling these numbers since I'm not at my home computer with all my bookmarks: http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html)
So anyway, stop blindly believing hippie FUD from the the 60s and do a few minutes' worth of research on Google. Shit, I just looked at the wikipedia article and even they have a pretty good section on Amazon deforestation. So yeah, go ahead and use all the paper you want, it's actually GOOD for the environment and has been for the better part of a century. (Oh, and totally unrelated, but if you're still believing the hippie FUD about nuclear power, you'll want to do research on that too.
Good to see a judge who knows enough about technology to know that torrentspy is full of it.
Judge Orders TorrentSpy to Turn Over RAM June 14t, 2007 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/14/18 0222
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
This ruling is going to fuck Tor once and for all. Tor has been using the "as long as Tor operators don't keep logs there's no way an operator can be held liable for the network I/O going through their box" excuse since the concept was idealised.
That's all out the window now. It's just a matter of time before this precedent is used as defence in an anti-Tor case. So basically, if anything, this proves that you'll probably do *less* damage to yourself (assuming you're innocent) if you do keep logs.
Turn your computer off. Nuff said, yes?
Does this mean retail stores need to have everyone that enters sign a register saying they were there?
No sig for you!!
If I'm running a business, must I log the home address and date/time of everyone who comes through my doors? Can the courts compel me to do so? Just because I -could- log that data doesn't mean I have to does it?
http://www.cacd.uscourts.gov/CACD/Guestbook.nsf/Co mment?OpenForm
= 0
This is the only web-based contact method I could find- I wanted to email the judge directly. Perhaps I'll have to send a registered letter?
http://pview.findlaw.com/view/2365671_1?noconfirm
In spite of all of the ramblings to the contrary, it isn't technically difficult to add a logging feature to a piece of s/w to collect and store IP addresses, or other sorts of data currently only held in RAM. This assumes that the operators of the service can either modify that s/w themselves, or contract the vendor of said s/w to add this logging feature. In the case of proprietary s/w, with licensing provisions prohibiting reverse-engineering or modification, the latter may be the only recourse.
Now, lets suppose the operators of TorrentSpy contact the vendor, request that logging be added per the court's request and the vendor replies, "No".
Have gnu, will travel.
Now that there is precedent, torrent spy can send in logs in binary format interlaced with lots of other information, and all of the people defending themselves against the RIAA can demand the ram of the computer used to look at the allegedly shared files during the entire investigation. Then the RIAA will get the ruling in favor of the MPAA overturned. Now that is justice at work.
When TorrentSPY says "but it's only in RAM" they're the ones making a trivial excuse with a misunderstanding of how the law works. The judge is telling them they're destroying evidence if they turn off they're computer, the judge isn't asking them for the contents of their RAM, or they're cache. She's asking them for user login information. TorrentSpy is saying it only exists in RAM. The judge is REMINDING them that bullshit to them, it's in their RAM, they access it, they can log it, and now must log it because those contents fall under the rules of discovery. TorrentSpy is using "RAM" as a red herring instead of admitting to the reality of "but, we always throw that information out." It's similar to the judge ordering a mail order company to keep all the envelopes they open. The argument there of course being "but, your honor our policy is not to keep envelopes."
New! Device Legs: These legs will help your poor OEM installed product escape any hamfistedness it may encounter. Ava
>>The cost of paper may build up to something considerable after the first couple seconds...
;-P
that depends entirely on the font and the size of the font being used
this makes Microsoft, Apple, et al de facto in flagrant defiance of the DMCA.
however, they were there BEFORE the DMCA was.
therefore, the law is defective and cannot be enforced in this manner.
somebody, please, get one of these case lawyers a teenager to tell them how computers work.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It will sure be nice when all these dusty old government officials that have no idea what computers are, what they are for and most importantly how to write sensible laws for them are dead and gone. NONE of them seem to have any idea how to handle technology. Its 2007 and they are fumbling around in the dark. I wish a techno-savy political party would come to be, we sure could use it.
That this would bring the system to it knees may be part of the plan anyway. A nice side effect for the R/MPAA.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
....give it to them:
/dev/mem | mail -s "Enjoy!" lawyers@mpaa.org
cat
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
All jokes about RAM aside, this is the root of what's being said here - the addresses are in RAM, therefore it can be logged (and should be under the directions of the court in this case). They aren't telling them to record all data in RAM all the name, nor are they telling them RAM is a persistent medium.
holy.... someone else knows what a merkin is! don't ask why i know.... for those that don't, wikipedia..
At one point in time, computer memory WAS persistent, but that was back when it was called core memory.
[Insert pithy quote here]
If they want the RAM just give it to them its not like there will be anything on it.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Walk over and pull the plug!
Now see what's stored!
Stupid Judges and their ignorance.
Data is no more "stored" in RAM than light is "stored" in a bulb.
Science tells us that data currently in RAM is ultra-temporary and in a lot of cases prone to error.
They're using their grammar skills there.
EOM
So, for the duration of the lawsuit, a party was told that they had to log information that was easily written to logs, they just don't for policy reasons. Basically, they were told "yeah, so it's in RAM, smart-ass, it's still information you've got to fork over." And it's for the duration of the case going forward. The court obviously realizes it can't ask for the earlier contents of RAM. This is the same situation where if (as a company) you're being sued, you'd better start archiving the sent and received email of named / involved parties for the duration of the suit.
Wrong answer on many counts. If you encrypt the entire data stream, you would have to decrypt the data to use it. Then they would ask for the decryption code. Where would the data be returned to, if the data is encrypted?
If you redesigned the system to have a routing server talk to the index, then you could do this, but then the Court will issue an order for both and also not be happy that you redesigned the system to avoid the Court's order.
Fight Spammers!
The judge is saying you can copy IPs easily, so do so. Maybe the MPAA will even have to pay a reasonable amount for your doing so (no tail -f /dev/mem >memlog.txt as someone humorously suggested). This has no precedential meaning for any case other than this one, since it is not an appellate court, and even if it did, the precedent would not stand for the general principle that anything ever at any time in RAM is "stored" and discoverable. The judge's rulings do not go beyond the facts of the case.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
MPAA: All your RAM are belong to us.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
After the necessary software changes have been made, one could show that this will have a direct and immediate impact on server throughput whilst escalating storage costs. The service is based on the fact that large amounts of storage are not required for it to operate, so this would have an immediate financial impact.
Due to the reduction in server availability due to increased disk writes for the storage of the requested information, less people will be able to connect simultaneously to the service, many of them likely to switch to competing services. This will have an immediate impact on revenue from click-through advertisements at the very least.
So, with increased expenses and decreased revenue, this will debilitate and possibly even prevent the service from operating, ergo destroying the ability for status quo to preserved.
From the comments and summary, and some other angry posts, it appears that the Judge finds in favour of the MPAA and mandates immediate remedy by requiring activities that will cause the service to be shut down or crippled (which is definitely what they want).
Not sticking up for either party here, but this seems to be a very short-sighted directive from the judge with some unfortunately-hurried responses from the defendant.
jJ
Rulings such as this could create some frightening situations in the future if left unchecked. If someone were phobic enough to encrypt their system's memory on the fly (sort of like how Connectix's RAMDoubler did its compression in the 90's), could they somehow invoke the DMCA, citing it as a "copy prevention mechanism" in itself?
8==8 Bones 8==8
On the other hand, if I wanted someone else's IP address to show in its logs, if it kept logs, I could send TorrentSpy a packet with that person's IP address.
By snapshotting the ram, it would require a program with root access to snap this and lots of data to be archive.
/dev/mem and writes it to disk will obliterate the file cache and modify other areas in RAM (due to kernel processes and hardware interrupts).
Even this wouldn't work completely.
Main memory RAM is used for several things: program storage, operating system stack, file cache, and other buffers (for video,sound,etc), and other things.
A program that reads
This may be avoided if the program bypasses all kernel calls and directly writes a raw stream of data by directly accessing I/O ports of the EIDE controller. This would be terribly slow, especailly without DMA. It would probably have to run as part of the kernel (not root) to do things like disable interrupts, manipulate the scheduler, etc, etc.
And even if this were accomplished, it could only take snapshots. It cannot guarantee that data will not be written and then overwritten before being snapshotted. [It would be somewhat feasible for an evil program to clear the juicy parts of its memory space and/or move things around to avoid being snapshotted).
And even if you find a genie in a bottle and he grants you a wish to capture all data arising from the RAM.. There is still several layers of CPU cache! Data may never even hit the real RAM, it could just read and written in the cache.
No act of government, teenagers, or even God Himself is going to be able to access and generate a complete record of all data that passes through a CPU cache over any reasonable timeframe (hours,days,etc).
And even if you do that, wait there's more!
Don't forget to log the activity of the CPU registers!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! ROTFL! LMAO!
No matter how thin you slice it, it is still baloney.
Copyright will never expire quickly enough to keep the geek out of jail.
How many of the movies - how much of the music, the warez - that makes its way to the net is less than five years old? Less than one year old? Less than six weeks old?
Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section: Press Releases
Later the cops say "give us the SSL keys for that exchange".
If the cops ask this question, fully realizing that SSL keys are not metal keys that can be put in your pocket, then things will have greatly improved from today.
But yes, I agree that government-mandated logging of SSL keys would be disasterous... And probably for government officials too... Someone just might see what they are up to!
This is interesting from a legal perspective. IIRC, in discovery the courts aren't supposed to require one of the litigants to start creating records that they wouldn't ordinarily have kept just to be able to produce them. We haven't heard the last of this case. It's going to circuit court.
soooo.... as we slowly understand the human brain more and more, wouldn't our own memory slowly start to fall under this law?...
If that is the case, then the argument that they are only in RAM is probably valid. They're probably only held for the duration of the session.
Is she expecting them to be able to produce historical records from RAM storage?
Actually I don't have to do anything to be confusing, it just does that by design
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
on the amount of RAM used ... 256k (262144 bytes) will be less paper than 32gb (38654705664 bytes)...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Do you cache your data in RAM?
Yes, Your Honour.
You'll need to save this data.
But saving it means I have to access my disk.
Yes, that's what I said.
But it's in RAM to speed it up, that's what a cache does.
That's fine, just record that information
Groan..
Data in ram is stored as zeros and ones.
Log the zeroes and ones. Thanks and no I wont sue you for the patent rights.
..all levels of cache discoverable?
What about registers? They can be "read from, just like a hard disk"..
... as it had implemented a RAD drive, a kind of RAM drive which stays there and was able to boot after a soft restart.
... legal folks have recently decided that it's not legal for you to delete certain things from your computer and now it's not legal for you to even turn off your computer. Will the MPAA now be liable for paying for the electrical bills for us? Computer operation ain't free you know.
On the bright side:
On the dark side:
will be seen by the MPAA, and probably some judge somewhere, as deliberate spoliation of the evidence contained in RAM.
Of course if you upgrade from Windows to a more stable operating system, you'll have to install the darned generator as well.
Do the courts ever consider that their decisions have costs?
The above is/was intended to be tongue-in-cheek but part of me says that I'd bet my next paycheck that some prosecutor, somewhere, is thinking of adding a charge that that evidence was destroyed because the defendant turned off their computer.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Actually from a technical standpoint, the judge is almost there. RAM is storage even if it's volatile. The judge isn't requiring a log of all updates to RAM, just the server logs for the processes providing connection information. From a legal standpoint, she seems to be doing OK. The information is available (in RAM) to Torrentspy at a point in time after discovery has commenced, and the judge has rightly decided that the information is relevant to the case. During the litigation, Torrentspy has a legal obligation to preserve the information, and the effort required to collect the information (turning on the server logs) is not onerous to Torrentspy.
The technical issue here is where does it stop? If a court requires more complete logging of RAM changes, or includes even more volatile storage such as cache or CPU registers, then the burden of logging becomes extremely onerous, and the information value is low, because the only way to log such information is as a hex dump. I kind of wish the court had ordered Torrentspy to document all data in RAM. Then the logs would have to be in a format similar to (timestamp) (memory location) (old value in hex) (new value in hex), which would take years for the plaintiffs to sort through. The fact that they didn't indicates that the court DOES have some technical understanding.
We are the 198 proof..
Lets get torrent spy to log the ip addresses, however due to privacy laws the data needs to be protected.
:)
So lets MD5 all the ip addresses that get logged. That way they are both logged and protected at the same time.
Problems solved.... next!
What do you think would happen if, for real business reasons, like the fact that they might lose this case, TorrentSpy suspended development for the duration of the lawsuit and pending its outcome? Seems like a reasonable move to me. But it would preclude rolling out any new builds, logging or otherwise.
If the Judge orders it one way then it can go the other also
I want to see the RAM dumps of all of MPAA's PC's, Servers, Firewalls, and Routers
I want it in hard copy, sorted by user, by day, by hour, and by subject
I also want to see a copy of all files referenced or loaded into the RAM
I want to see this for the last 5 years
ohh, don't forget the cell phones and PDA's
And fine the CEO for letting his phone battery die last friday.
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
This is not a whole lot different than a judge ruling that auto manufacturers need to install and log GPS locations of cars so that if one is used in a felony then they can trace where it was.
I somehow doubt the judge has authority to make this happen.
Now the thing is... consider Canada. We have a law that cars need to have their headlights on in the daytime. Go figure eh? I happen to be in favour of this law but I sure don't want to have to retrofit my oldest vehical.
What power does a judge in the USA have over foreigners?
In the case of a car, the government can prevent the importation of the car. In the case of software the judge can attempt to prevent the importation and use of the software, but that is about it and the attempt will probably fail. Who is going to enforce it?
One thing that is becomming perfectly clear is that all internet communications need to be encrypted and in addition it is probably a very good idea to encrypt the port as well. This would prevent non-net neutrality as well which is probably something we all want.
Once the packet has been received it can then be decrypted and the port will be known and can be handed to the proper service. IMHO the sooner we do this the better.
All your electrons are belong to us!
Here is the order; http://www.techfirm.com/logorder.pdf
.torrent files, along with the date and time. While we understand that you didn't log them before, you can log them, so log them."
Now I am not a lawyer, but what it seems to me like they are saying is this;
"We don't care that you don't log IP addresses. You can log them because they are in RAM. We want you to record the IP address of people requesting
They're not asking for an entire memory dump every time that memory changes. They aren't asking for the physical memory. The article makes me believe they actually have a good comprehension of what is going on.
At least, that's what I read when I RTFA.
TorrentSpy should put a NAT in front of their servers that obfuscate all of the IP addresses sent to their servers.
:)
:-)
The discovery order (to my understanding) is limited to the Torrent Servers and hasn't been made applicable to any new hardware.
Then TorrentSpy could hand over a log full of network 10 addresses with impunity
Oh, and the placement of the NAT would need to be kept quiet (lest the nasty blighters ask for discovery on that too!) and of course not keep any log information on disk by default
To be honest I'm not that concerned about it. Obviously, they're still at a point where they're gathering information, or the case is actually still pending. I'm certainly not assuming that a judge doesn't know how to apply the law properly. I certainly can assume that if TorrentSpy had better reasons by which to block to the ruling they would of used them. However, they're response appears to be the statement about RAM. She's not expecting them to be able to produce historical records from RAM. The article states nothing of the the sort. She did say, that RAM is a storage medium, and that information in RAM can be stored. This of course being a simplified statement saying that if your computer is processing the information, you can save it as well. If you want to think that RAM is mysteriously cryptic 1's and 0's I'm hoping you're not writing any software that I'll be using some day.
New! Device Legs: These legs will help your poor OEM installed product escape any hamfistedness it may encounter. Ava
The U.N. has claimed a lot of power, but it only has actual power where it can back it up. It is arguable that the U.N. only has ethical and lawful power over its member nations. If you are not a member nation, ignore it... unless and until some member nation feels it has the right to invade in order to back up U.N. resoultions. I hardly think any Western nation would invade over a few downloads.
The judge is ordering Torrentspy to perform surveillance on its users that it normally does not do. In other words, the judge ordered them to do law enforcement's job for them.
If I owned a restaurant, and some of my customers occasionally stole cars, could the Court order me to get and record the names of every customer, every time they ate at my establishment, so that the court could charge them later?
I don't think so. If they want to bust people, hire cops to do it. It's not my job.
And if it were me, I would use every reasonable means at my disposal to ensure that meaningul IPs were buried in a huge pile of other IPs. There are lots of ways to do that.
This is NOT like recording on "self-destrucing paper". It is, rather, more like recording on a reusable roll of paper. Once the paper rolls around once, it gets re-written. Requiring them to make copies is changing the game. They are being required to make a permanent copy of something that is inherently transitory. Kind of like recording everything that comes through on your TV... it is not something you would normally do, and the time and expense could be prohibitive.
Finally, someone (R2.0) comes up with a decent non-technical analog for this situation that can show why it's an unreasonable request. A lot of other posts I've seen seem to be focusing on the extreme volatility/amount of the data, without explaining why they shouldn't have to collect it.
:P
I know, I normally don't like "mod parent up" posts, either. Sorry.
This law ONLY applies to "member nations" and those acknowledging the UN as a governing body. Those nations that still recognize their OWN sovereignty over themselves cannot possibly recognize the UN as doing so gives jurisdiction over to the UN, thus allowing the UN to become "owner" or "master" of said nations.
Currently the UN suckers free nations into doing its bidding through A... cash, B... food, C... Armed force.
Nuclear weapons, therefore are a MAJOR source of deterrence when negociating with "peacekeepers". If a nation plans to remain free, it must have a strong enough nuclear or better arsenal, in order to be able to guarantee "glass crater" deterrence to big nations and the UN.
Given the abuses the UN has undertaken in the name of "human rights", I would say they're something to be wary of, not proud of.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler