Slashdot Mirror
ISP Sued By Irish RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "An ISP in Ireland has been sued by the Big Four record labels because its subscribers have engaged in P2P sharing of the record companies' song files. The record companies claim the ISP should be buying Audible Magic's CopySense, the software being peddled by the RIAA's expert witness, which supposedly would filter out copyright infringement. Of course, not everyone agrees."
Shouldn't the title read: Irish ISP sued by RIAA ??
The ISP has no obligation and the *AA can't seem to "educate" themselves out of their problem.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
People are using books that they didn't even pay for there. I think this is causing a big impact on book sales. More authors would make books if it wasn't for the Library. It is in the public's best interest to burn their libraries.
God spoke to me.
That's messed up.
So I'm suing my town and state because their roads were used to transport the stolen items away. That could have been easily avoided had they employed a security guard from my company at each of the intersections...
It seems to me that a good way to fight the RIAA is to turn their whole numbers game on its head. Hit them with so many lawsuits that their legal strategy collapses.
Would it be possible for law schools in various countries to assemble "how to" kits that would allow average people to harass the big labels, individually or collectively, in this way? I'm not sure what grounds would be best to surpass the "nuisance" threshold and protect the litigants from charges of malicious prosecution (or whatever it might be called), but something must surely exist.
Can you imagine the drain on their financial and manpower resources if the RIAA suddenly found itself on the receiving end of 15,000 suits in 20 countries?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Throttling SSL traffic is not going to make businesses happy. "I'm sorry sir, you'll have to sync your extranet databases insecurely, or it'll take about 3 weeks."
... but something like %30-50 of traffic on the internet is bittorrent, and a big chunk of bittorrent traffic is regarded as illegal activity (in most jurisdictions) by a good many folks. If there was a highway where %30-50 of the vehicles were widely known to be transporting something illegal, would you be surprised if the local authorities took an increased interest in that particular road and began to watch things a bit more closely?Using the logic at hand if the road was a toll road the government would be filing charges against the operator of the toll road for not making sure that all of the traffic on the road was in fact not transporting anything illegal.
Clearly in that particular case the onus would be on some level of government to ensure that the illegal transportation of goods was stopped not the operator of the toll road.
Since copyright is something granted to the copyright owner it should be up to the owner to enforce their copyrights.
Perhaps it would be less onerous for the ISPs if the copyright owners had to install their own appliances on specific networks. They would need to pay for the software, hardware, software and hardware support, traffic costs, and rack space (including power, aircon, etc) assocated with it. There would have to be limits on how many and where but the cost of enforcing copyrights should lay with the copyright owners as I have a feeling that they definitely want the enforcement costs to be paid for by anyone else but them.
The slashdot summary does. TFA says that they are being sued for allowing file sharing on their infrastructure. The fact that they don't use filtering products such as (but not limited to) CopySense is evidence that they are complicit with file sharers.
I'm not saying they're not a pack of F**king idiots who are sure to lose in any justice system where the 'just' part of justice is meaningful, just pointing out that this is not exactly extortion.
I don't therefore I'm not.
I think that about sums it up. It is after all not in the network operator's interest to do this, nor is it a legal obligation for them to monitor their network. I can't think of any reason for a network operator to willingly install this software - it goes against the interests of the users, and does not give any advantage to the operator. Not even a legal immunity against subpoenas from the RIAA. It gives them nothing, it only costs money and inconveniences their users.
By the way, does anyone know what happened to "common carrier" status for ISPs? I do recall they were fighting for that. Installing this kind of sniffer systems completely goes against such a possible status.
This technology is not foolproof, but it does require filesharers to jump through additional hoops to distribute files. Hardcore filesharers will no doubt toil obsessively to workaround the issue, but some casual downloaders may conclude that the hassle and risks associated with filesharing is becoming greater than the costs of paying $0.89 to get the song from Amazon, etc.
Garbage. Historically what happens is that a tool is created to automate getting past the file sharing restrictions which requires no more knowledge to use than any user oriented piece of software. Copyright extortionists then respond with more software, some of which cripples legitimate use. The process repeats and escalates.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
However, BitTorrent and P2P in general do have some quite specific traits. Since they all rely on connecting to other peers to download, you can easily guess that someone's using bittorrent because they have ~40 open connections, most of which aren't doing much. Encryption does nothing to help this.
I wish to remain anomalous
As long as they do their 'common carrier' thing where they are simply providing a service and not trying to moderate that service they can't be held liable.
As soon as they start trying they open them selves up to potential liability, if they do this for the RIAA, soccer moms will go 'so why is there still kiddy porn on the net?' and then somebody will jump in and sue the ISP for not filtering the kiddy porn out, after all they can get the music right? Or remember the parents who sued myspace because their daughter met somebody dangerous through the site? What happens when everybody who suffers identity theft starts suing the ISP's because the ISP didn't filter out the spoofed page? Or the spam flooding their inbox. And best off all, botnets.
Of course the internet is fucking huge, and even the best software (and the RIAA's sure ain't it) will never catch everything. Any ISP cooperating with the RIAA on this will be committing suicide. By admitting they CAN, somebody will force them to DO, and once they start taking an active hand they become responsible for what they miss.
If my memory serves me correctly Germany already made "hacking tools" like nmap illegal.Corporate hacking victims sue computer manufacturers for providing hackers tools to break into their systems.
It's much like banning hammers because someone decides to beat a person to death with it.
How about we eliminate hard objects altogether, then nobody can steal cars!
IANAL, but I thought threatening legal action (and engaging in it for not conforming) into parting with funds for a particular purpose was Demanding Money with Menace.
Extorsion, maybe?
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Eircom used to be a semi-state company.
What does that mean? Well, if a normal business needs to handle a business crisis they will create new products, modify their business model, reduce their costs etc etc.
When Eircom was a semi-state the solution was: write a cheque for the amount you need, put in the post (also a semi-state body) to the respective minister. Minister signs cheque, problem solved.
This mentality didn't necessarily wash when the company was privatized, but it certainly prevailed for a long time. And I'm quite sure that attitude is hanging around their offices like a bad smell. For example, Eircom has the highest broadband prices, even though they control the infrastructure.
IMRO, the snivelling little toerags that they are (it wouldn't surprise me if the RIAA learned their tactics from these shites), have gone after the easy target in the hope that it will draw a mark in the sand. Thing is though, in order to survive against a pseudo-monopoly like Eircom for so long, the competition are not so "roll-over tickle-my-belly".
(And if you think that sounds like hell, you should see our semi-state bus service!)
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
The real deal on this story is that Eircom (Irelands national carrier) said they wouldn't install the software suggested by RIAA on its systems. RIAA have tried a number of bullying tactics against Eircom and taking Eircom to court is just the latest of these. If RIAA have its way they will have the software installed and then this is meant to only filter copyright material from Eircom's subscribers. However this could also prevent legitimate P2P use by limiting the bandwidth avaiable, as well as blocking any number of sites that they see fit. Correct me if I am wrong here but wasn't the goal of the internet to be a free and easy exchange of information on a global network? Having these self proclaimed internet police trying to stop actions on a global scale should not and must not work. The internet should be self regulating and a FREE exchange of information. Record companies and movie companies to a lesser extent have been pushing junk onto the consumer for far to long and the internet has simply allowed the consumer to identify the difference between junk and gold. If the record and movie industries are so worried about this "Piracy" (doubtful as sales have gone up whilst production costs have gone down = more profit for record companies), then they should consider working with the consumer rather than against it. Here is a suggestion that I don't seem to have read anywhere yet... but why don't the record companies put the deleted items up on a site for purchase or whatever... then your consumers wouldn't have to "Pirate" material that is not readily available. As a closing note... if you deal with the "Piracy" problem at source and regulate it properly with good attention to delivery methods etc. then everyone wins. Up to now there have been a number of Knee jerks resulting in bad press, mainly emenating from RIAA. These guys are just looking for back handers from the record companies and winning dubious cases in courts for publicity and shock factor. If you push the exchanging of media files underground by the use of RIAA and excessive pricing you can expect that dodgy organisations and "Pirates" will ultimately win. (Take a look at the drug situation across the world... if governments regulate (not ban) then it is manageable and the underworld is put out of business. If you push it underground it flourishes and the wrong people benefit. No one says it is right but we must be grown up about how we manage these things)
Now combine a few and you'll easily max out 40. You can't possible base yourself on the amount of connections.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Encryption doesn't need to do anything. Having 40 connections open isn't nearly the giveaway people claim it is. Yes, it's uncommon for a single program to open 40 connections like that. Now tell me how the ISP can tell which connections correspond to which programs. Having 40 connections open on one modem is *not* uncommon -- 5 IM sessions means 5 mostly idle long standing connections to the people I'm talking to + 1 for the login server, video games likewise generally open one connection to each of the other players, etc. And you can multiply that number by some arbitrary number of computers when you throw in a NAT router and put an entire family worth of computers behind one modem.
I'd rather people use the various encryption schemes built into bit torrent clients already, rather than letting the bad people win, and forcing me to download torrent where I can't tell what the actual content is and need to get the whole thing before I can check the quality.
Seriously man, screw that.