IFPI Turning To Lawsuits

Sherman's doppleganger writes "The IFPI (the "European RIAA") has made a lot of noise about filtering this year, but it looks as though 2008 is instead becoming the year of the lawsuit. The IFPI has now sued an Irish ISP in an attempt to keep copyrighted content off of its network. 'The lawsuit accuses Eircom of abetting illegal downloading by allowing copyrighted material to traverse its network unimpeded. The IFPI... wants the ISP to start filtering traffic to scrub all illicitly uploaded and downloaded copyrighted material on its network.' The lawsuit comes less than a week after an Israeli court forced the nation's three biggest ISPs to block access to HttpShare.com."

Comments

"Turning" to Lawsuits? Come Now

[eldavojohn]

IFPI Turning To Lawsuits To say the IFPI is turning to lawsuits is like saying Bob Dylan is turning to drugs. It's an organization of lawyers! What else do they do?!

I recall them dishing out 2100 lawsuits at once in 2005 and 8000 lawsuits at once in 2006! And evidence that it's been going on since 2004.

You might be able to convince me that the IFPI is getting smarter (or stupider, depending on your views) at stopping file sharing by targeting ISPs with lawsuits but to say they're only now with litigating to stop these losses is ignorant.

httpshare.com?

[WK2]

I never heard of httpshare.com. After reading the summary, I went to the website, to see what it was. I still don't know what it is, because it is in Hebrew. However, in plain English, they mention that they upgraded their servers, and they thank IFPI for the free advertising.

Re:httpshare.com?

[nbert]

I must admit that my Hebrew is not what it used to be ;), but it seems to be similar to rapidshare with the added benefit of searching the content.

Makes you wonder why rapidshare didn't implement this, oh wait - that would prove that most of the traffic is infringing copyright. Plus it would make it easier to sue those uploading. *AA must love httpshare.

On a more serious note I'm still surprised by the concept of keeping piracy down by going after those distributing it on the internet. Maybe that's the only way to go if you can't win in the long run. I'm still waiting for the hdd offering enough capacity to store all music ever produced. After that the one storing all movies is just a matter of time. Just calculate the current size of the ITMS and compare it to the growth rate of hard disks - makes it kinda silly to talk about this issue anymore...

common carrier?

[blackcoot]

does ireland have a legal concept similar to common carrier in the u.s.? i'm not a lawyer, much less an expert on the irish legal system, but it would seem to me that this case could only work in a country where common carrier laws are either non-existent or very weak. if ireland does have something like common carrier that would cover eircom then a win appears to essentially invalidate common carriers and make any isp that sends traffic through ireland potentially liable, even if both ends of the infringing connection are outside of irish jurisdiction.

Re:common carrier?

[Atario]

It seems to me a basic concept of Western law. For example:

Should a toll road's owner be fined if someone transports illegal goods on it? Or required to search all cars that pass?

Should Disneyland be fined if someone manages to smuggle in 'shrooms and consume them waiting in line for Pirates Of The Carribean? Or conduct drug searches and tests on all patrons?

Should a taxi driver be fined if a passenger sneaks trash out the window? Or required to maintain all windows and doors to be sealed at all times?

Re:common carrier?

[judas6000]

Ireland, as a member of the EU is granted "mere conduit" status by the EU.

COUNCIL OF EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES (2007). Council directive of 21st June 2007 on Electronic Commerce (Terrorism Act 2006). (07/1550/EEC). Section 5 Paragraphs 1 & 2 read,

"(1) A service provider is not capable of being guilty of a relevant offence in respect of anything done in the course of providing so much of an information society service as consists in--
(a) the provision of access to a communication network; or
(b) the transmission in a communication network of information provided by a recipient of the service,
if the transmission condition is satisfied.

(2) The transmission condition is that the service provider does not--
(a) initiate the transmission;
(b) select the recipient of the transmission; or
(c) select or modify the information contained in the transmission."

Therefore as long as the ISPs stick to their guns and do not filter content on their networks then they will be ok, as they are protected by law as far as terrorism goes. However it would seem that this could be deemed to apply to other offences too, or at least thats my understanding of it, I should add that IANAL, so I may have misread what the EEC were getting at when they wrote that law.

In the COUNCIL OF EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES (2000). Council directive of 9th June 2005 Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) (2005/1529/EEC) Part IV Art 18. Paragrahs 2 & 3 read,

(2) A person acts as a mere conduit for a communication if--
(a) he communicates it in the course of an activity carried on by him, the principal purpose of which is transmitting or receiving material provided to him by others;
(b) the content of the communication is wholly devised by another person; and
(c) the nature of the service provided by him in relation to the communication is such that he does not select, modify or otherwise exercise control over its content prior to its transmission or receipt.

(3) For the purposes of paragraph (2)(c) a person does not select, modify or otherwise exercise control over the content of a communication merely by removing or having the power to remove material--
(a) which is, or is alleged to be, illegal, defamatory or in breach of copyright;
(b) in response to a request to a body which is empowered by or under any enactment to make such a request; or
(c) when otherwise required to do so by law.

This again would seem set out in law the fact that just because someone can alter the content of a communication doesn't mean they have to, and that even if they do remove content they don't have to exercise control over the content. This would pretty well seem to protect ISPs from whatever lawsuit may be brought against them by the IFPI.

Legal filesharing should be kept legal

[MichaelCrawford]

File sharing is crucial to the success of musicians such as myself who offer free downloads of their music. We do this to promote our work, and to gain fans.

But direct HTTP downloads can bankrupt a struggling musician if their music suddenly becomes a hit. To allow mass distribution at modest expense, I offer Bit Torrent downloads of my music.

I can't really see how an ISP could filter out copyright infringement without also filtering out files that are non-infringing.

Bit Torrent distribution is also crucial to Free and Open Source software projects, whose installers are sometimes hundreds of megabytes or even gigabytes in size.

In the debate about file sharing, please speak up for the legal uses of it.

And yes, I know I can host my work on free sites like MySpace, but then it would be MySpace's website and not my own that would benefit from links placed by fans. For business reasons, it's much better for a musician to have their own website if they possibly can.

Re:Legal filesharing should be kept legal

[Beer_Smurf]

"File sharing is crucial to the success of musicians such as myself who offer free downloads of their music. We do this to promote our work, and to gain fans."
And that is one of the reasons it must be stopped.
You are the real enemy.

Re:Good

[Bryansix]

That's not what this is about. It's not about ISPs hosting copyrighted works that the person hosting doesn't own. It's about the ISP's customers downloading copyrighted works that they may or might not be authorized to.

These people need to crawl in a hole somwhere.

[Zombie Ryushu]

These people are ripping apart the infrastructure of one of Human kind's greatest achivements over their petty squabble. I'm really sick of it, and it would be easier if these people just got the hell off our planet. Fuck thesse people. Fuck the DMCA, Fuck the IFPI, fuck the EUCD, fuck it. I'm sick of these monsters that want to drag us down into the dark ages with their greed. Its just sick.

Re:These people need to crawl in a hole somwhere.

[Zombie Ryushu]

The Pirates didn't pass laws that robbed us of fair use. The Pirates didn't hide rootkits on CDs. The Pirates didn't create this massive DRM laden Windows Vista, Music Renting. The Pirates aren't the one putting bandwidth caps, retarding the Internet's progress and putting levies on blank media. There are a number of other things. But what the *AA and IFPI have done has been far worse than any Pirate.

Re:These people need to crawl in a hole somwhere.

[theheadlessrabbit]

The former means that a relatively limited number of people share something between them...So the copyright owners are losing maybe ten potential sales so, laws will be written to regulate friendship? will we be faced with popularity caps to prevent trading of mix tapes to an excessive number of friends.

So how about radio? if a song is broadcast on the radio, and people can hear it for free, then record lables are losing hundreds of thousands of sales each time a song is played. you would think they would have regulated that, made the radio companies pay millions in royalties. Instead, the law adapted to fit new technology.

Today, the law has failed to adapt to new technology (p2p) and instead, its forcing new technology to adapt to fit the law. this is not a healthy situation, or a battle than can be won through laws as they are today.

Aren't they basically saying "yeah, we're doing something illegal, but we don't think it should be illegal I want you to look up 2 things:

1. how many people are involved in filesharing. (US only)
2. how many people voted for the current administration

If more people support the activity, why is it illegal?

please note: I am not trying to ridicule your position, I strongly oppose organized piracy and distribution of illegal goods.

But I see a big distinction between commercial distribution, and non-comercial distribution.

I'm an artist myself. When someone takes a picture of my work and gives it to a friend, i'm flattered and pleased that they are distributing my material. but if they were to sell that image, then I would have a problem with that. they are directly profitting off of my labour.

I Still Don't Understand

[Soloact]

I really don't understand how the RIAA can do what they've been doing, what with the legal actions, blocking, etc, "for the artists". The "artists", which are the songwriters, song publishers and song performers, are represented by ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and the sort, for the payments and receipts of royalties, in addition to the Library of Congress and copyrights (including International agreements). IMHO, the RIAA, and their sort, are nothing but mobsters, trying to rough-up people via the legal system instead of street "hits".

Re:So all traffic should be banned

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Read your own quote again. They said "all illicitly uploaded and downloaded copyrighted material", not "all copyrighted material". That argument was a petty nitpick at terminology in the first place, but here, it's even more useless.

Thats IFPI, Not IRAa

[SlashWombat]

So, they didn't call it the RIAa, in Europe ... It was too close to IRA?

Seriously, the technology to filter gigabytes per second traffic looking for specific music signatures does not exist at a reasonable price point. And, as others have pointed out, simply Zipping the file would be enough to bypass any packet inspection anyway. (In fact, it would need to inspect the entire stream, because packet inspection would be insufficient!) (Let alone the variety of compression formats that currently exist.)

I would not be at all surprised that if you encode analog audio files to MP3 that each version would produce different digital streams. For digital files, the addition of several random bytes just before the stream to be encoded would produce the same result. (That is, totally different looking digital data streams.) At the very worst, the added few bytes might produce a click. (even that could be kept inaudible!)
Alternatively, multiply the data by some small factor during encoding. (EG:Data * 0.995 would be inaudible, but the resultant MP3 stream would definitely not match any SIMPLE filtering stream.

IF the RIAA were to provide the filtering hardware to each and every ISP, that might get them to install it, given that filtering does not slow down the ISPs traffic.
If the filter isn't 100% effective, and falsely terminates legitimate streams, then the RIAA [IFPI] would be liable, not the ISP. Lets see how long the RIAA would last after that!

I would say that the RIAA needs to demonstrate to the courts that 100.00000000% accurate AUTOMATED detection (especially at the data rates an ISP might have!)is possible before they can even begin to suggest the ISP is involved. I will lay money down that they cannot even demonstrate 10% reliable detection rates. (Indeed, I personally think the ISP does not have the authority or the responsibility to inspect/filter any traffic.)

Re:So all traffic should be banned

[LiquidCoooled]

Ok then clever clogs.
How do you know what is illicit and what is allowed?

Is the content of the website you are downloaded owned by (for instance) perfect 10?
Have I given permission to YOU to download a css stylesheet I designed for use on my website?

Is the Code in the software update you are getting copyrighted to the person you are getting it from?

Did the original rights owner give you permission to distribute that mp3 file to your IM friend?

the list is endless.
Without knowledge of what is illicit and what is allowed you might as well block the whole lot.

"common carrier" vs. "common carrier"

[tepples]

ISPs and the ISP divisions of telcos in the US are not common carriers. There's a difference between "common carrier" in the strict legal sense and "common carrier" in a broader practical sense. In the United States, ISPs have legal protections analogous to those of common carriers, called "OCILLA safe harbor". See 17 USC 512. Popular use of "common carrier" to refer to the OCILLA safe harbor is little different from popular use of the term "fair use" as a blanket term for limitations on exclusive rights in a copyrighted work under 17 USC 107 through 123 and 1008, when only section 107 uses are strict "fair uses".

Unclear on the concept

[CustomDesigned]

File sharing is crucial to the success of musicians such as myself who offer free downloads of their music. We do this to promote our work, and to gain fans.

People here are unclear on what the RIAA and their European cousins are trying to do. They are not dummies, and they know perfectly well that personal sharing ("piracy") actually helps their sales. They also know perfectly well that these lawsuits will not stop real piracy ("Psssst. Honorable Sir! Look here! 5 CDs for one dollar!"). They are willing to forgo those lost sales in pursuit of their real purpose. The purpose of the lawsuits is to create a climate of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) surrounding *legal* downloads. That is because what they *really* hate is not "piracy", but independent musicians. By stifling music sharing, they stifle independents, and keep the music distribution monopoly to themselves. They don't especially hate FOSS, but they don't feel especially guilty about innocent bystanders getting nailed either.

Re:So all traffic should be banned

[Kjella]

Unfortunately the distinction between permitted and not permitted is meaningless, as is the distinction between copyrighted and public domain. The ISPs see bits and bytes, but these are not properties of bits and bytes. The exact same transfer that's illegal today will be legal in life+70 (barring more Mickey Mouse acts), bit by bit. That means the only possible way for ISPs to tell an illegal download from a legal download is to keep a database over all possible illegal downloads, which works for a plain unencrypted transfer. However, as anyone that's worked with SSL knows it negotiates a random session key so there's an arbitrarily large number of streams of bits and bytes that transfer the same data. Once we arrive at this stage the ISP is basicly checkmated, there's nothing it can do.

What they are trying to do is to use the non-authenticated, plaintext nature of the negotiation phase as it is today to determine whether it's illegal or not. Creating an HTTPS version of torrents/trackers that doesn't leak anything to the ISP would be fairly trivial, so would adding authentication if the ISP tried its own SSL connection. At that point, the ISP is quite frankly guessing. They know you connected to TPB, but not what you searched for, what torrent you're getting and if it happens to be a legal download (many torrent aggregators just pick up everything) and you talk SSL to all your peers. There's no possible theoretical or practical way they can tell the difference between you downloading Ubuntu 7.10 (700MB) or a illegal DVD rip (700MB) over a torrent, the traffic patterns would be exactly the same.

To take a practical example where this is already all encrypted, I can connect via NNTPS to my news server. How the hell is my ISP supposed to know what I'm doing? They haven't got the faintest possibility to know anything at all. Of course in this case there's a server at the other end they could go after instead, but in a P2P network it's simply impossible. P.S. For anyone trying to make the lame pun about "The first rule about Usenet..." it's near 30 years old, and everyone that cares to know already knows about it. The only possible way an ISP could prevent copyrighted works from going over their networks is to turn off the lights.