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Questionable "Best Effort" Copyright Enforcement
pmdubs writes "Princeton University Professor Michael Freedman, creator of CoralCDN, discusses how he received around 100 pre-settlement letters in one month from various copyright agencies after invalid BitTorrent tracker requests were issued through CoralCDN's proxies. Interestingly, the participating agencies made no effort whatsoever to verify that the Coral nodes were actually running BitTorrent, which they weren't! He questions just how much effort agencies take to reduce false positives when it comes to DMCA notices. Considering the credence that network operators give to such notices (they'll often cut your service upon receipt), it would seem that the answer is 'not enough.'"
I ran a Tor exit node for a semester at Marquette University. I got DMCA takedown notices all the time, for copyrighted Britney Spears music that was apparently being downloaded through my exit node. Each time, they made me sign a letter admitting guilt to get my Internet turned back on. Fortunately, I was able to make a slightly modified letter that looked the same as the one they had sent me, but didn't actually admit anything, and they would still turn it back on.
I was following all the rules with my exit node. It was completely permitted.
Sneaking some bitTorrent traffic onto someone's network is the new, legitimized DDOS?
It would be kinda nice if they where required to get the sign off of a judge before submitting a pre-settlement offer. But thats just not how civil cases work. More's the pity, but often the defendant in a civil case needs to go to court and ask for a dismissal if the person leveling the suite has no actual grounds. Just doing so can cost a fair amount, so it boils down to "pay us or we'll sue you can it'll cost more".
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
You don't even need BitTorrent; you just register their IP address with a tracker and they get legal threats.
Bittorrent allows independent artists/authors/programmers to distribute their works at little to no cost. This is their competition. The more people find independent works (for example, creative commons music, independent video clips, Linux distributions, etc), the more business they lose.
False threats may lead to people thinking "well I better not run Bittorrent at all, to protect myself/my organization."
Not to mention that this lets sleazy lawyers "fish" for people willing to pay them off rather than prove they did nothing wrong.
From what I understand, the notices are not being sent because of traffic, but because of IP logs (which are not the same). Specifically, they look at the IP logs on the torrent tracker to identify which machines have the content. Any machine is able to register itself with the tracker and say it has any content, regardless of whether it does or not, and regardless of whether it's even running BitTorrent. That's how the guy got his printer DMCA'd - he manually registered his printer's IP address with one or more trackers.
Considering the fact that it's possible to do that, I am completely confused as to how it is possible that every single IP address that the RIAA, MPAA, Congress, or Senate uses has not been registered with as many trackers as possible. Sure, it would degrade BitTorrent performance on those trackers, but it would be worth it to have the RIAA flood the house or senate with takedown notices when no illegal activity has taken place. Then we might start to see that "under the penalty of perjury" clause get enforced.
If they aren't actually connecting to those machines and verifying that 1) they are receiving traffic and 2) they are distributing content, then they haven't exactly made a good-faith effort.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
They are effectively shifting the work of verification to the recipient of the letter. If you are guilty, they found their mark. If you haven't done what they accuse you of, and you will probably be indignant enough to go through some effort to correct their "error". Sending out the letters without verification requires almost no work from them, has no risk, and sometimes gets them money. Verification would only add more work with no payback in reduction of risk or increase in monetary return.
I am surprised more people don't see this as a shakedown racket. Also, since the RIAA gets money in return for the cost of a trained monkey running mailmerge in Microsoft Word, I don't see why they haven't purchased an electronic copy of the phone book so they can simply send out letters to everyone in the country.
guilt is assumed, it's up to to to prove your innocence.
That is why the DMCA and current copyright enforcement laws are a complete slap in the face to our most important rights.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I recall that one of the things built into the DMCA to get it to pass is some fairly harsh penalties for sending out false notices. There have been many documented false notices now, but has anyone actually been hit with a penalty for issuing a false law?
It's not a just law. It's an extortion racket. Those using it are not sticking to it themselves when the use it as a blunt instrument. It will get worse until companies get fined and people get fired for these instances of "demanding money with menaces" which would put private citizens in jail.
I think the answer is absolutely no effort at all. Here is a notorious example where a busybody associated with a professional writes' association sent out a slew of automated DMCA notices, including some totally erroneous ones that caused authors' work to be taken down after they had intentionally put it up. Actually, they appeared to the service providers to be DMCA notices, but the guy who sent them out now claims that they weren't; this is because a real DMCA notice is supposed to be sent under penalty of perjury.
I experienced one of these myself recently. I've written some books that are under CC licenses, and various people have (totally legally) posted copies of them on Scribd. I got an email from Scribd saying that they got a DMCA takedown notice from a publisher for one of my books. Turns out that some contracted in SF hired by the publisher issued the notice without checking carefully. Apparently the title was similar to one of their books. They didn't bother checking the name of the author. So they're going after me for violating the copyright on my own book. Great. I called the contractor in SF, and they said, "Oops, never mind." So theoretically they've exposed themselves to prosecution for perjury. If I called the DA in San Francisco or in my own jurisdiction and asked them to prosecute, what do you think the chances are that they'd do it? Zero, I'd guess.
I wonder if anything the EFF can do about this in the courts. It really sucks.
Find free books.
register FCC, NSA, and FBI, and various senators (sponsors of the DMCA in particular) IP addresses and see how fast the DMCA is repealed. :)
This is actually a very good idea IMHO. You might want to add a few Federal judges and maybe even a few Supreme Court judges. The LEO's and TLA's...maybe not such a good idea. They don't have a very developed sense of humor. Besides, I would think that they'd be more likely to try to keep it quiet, and public outrage by VIP's...preferably with some power to change things...was the point, no?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
It seems to me it ought to be defamation to accuse someone of a crime without making an effort to check that it's true, and run around telling his access provider.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
register FCC, NSA, and FBI, and various senators (sponsors of the DMCA in particular) IP addresses and see how the law doesn't apply to them, only to citizens like you. :)
FTFY. We all know the law is their weapon to wield as they wish, and it won't be turned against them.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
No problem. Sometimes people just need to check their assumptions.
I still think this is a flaw in the tracker protocol; if I registered through a proxy and it used the proxy's IP address, then the proxy wouldn't know how to forward incoming requests to me. Does this mean you get zero torrent uploads just be going through a proxy? Also, if no one can actually download the content the tracker is advertising you as having, then no one is really guilty of "making available" copyrighted content, and there should be no case. I agree with others that they should actually attempt a download before filing court papers. Is it a violation of copyright law to advertise copyrighted content for free when you are never actually providing it? Sounds like simple fraud to me, but since nothing of value has actually changed hands, again it doesn't appear actionable.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
...requests to BitTorrent trackers can also use CoralCDN, as these are simply HTTP GETs with a client's relevant information encoded in the tracker URL's query string, e.g., http://denis.stalker.h3q.com.6969.nyud.net/announce?info_hash=(hash)&peer_id=(name)&port=52864&uploaded=231374848&downloaded=2227372596&left=0&corrupt=0&key=E0591124&numwant=200&compact=1&no_peer_id=1. Notice that the HTTP request includes a peer's unique name (a long random string) and a port number, but notably does not include an IP address for that client. It's an optional parameter in the specification that many BitTorrent clients don't include. (In fact, even if the request includes this IP parameter, some trackers ignore it.) Instead, the tracker records the network-level IP address from where the HTTP request originated (the other end of the TCP connection), together with the supplied port, as the peer's network address.
In this case CoralCDN was effectively acting as a proxy - the IP address wasn't being falsified. Although these guys did appear to have some luck with falsified IP addresses: Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice.
Isn't this Libel?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel ...libel (for written or otherwise published words)--is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image. It is usually, ... a requirement that this claim be false... ...and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant).
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Not sure which interesecting law hits first if they give it to you in the bogus letter, but the second one to the ISP would hopefully be.
We have a decision matrix gang. If the attack wins 1.2 million and a penalty = "oops sorry" it's pretty obvious.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If you could get your printer DMCA'd for distributing Office Space, I would consider that poetry.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Actually, it's more along the lines of fraud; akin to mailing out an invoice to a company for a service (or item) that was never provided.
What the RIAA is doing is similar to a fraudster sending out invoices to everyone in the local business directory knowing that only a small number of those businesses were ever provided with his/her service.
1.) The notice is published to a third party: The ISP or content provider
2.) The third party knows the defamed: the defamed is a user/account holder with whom the third party has an existing business relationship
3.) The notice can harm the third parties reputation: the notice is falsely informing the third party that someone with whom they have a business relationship is engaging in illegal activity while using a service provided by that third party, most likely in violation of the contract (through the inclusion of an acceptable use policy or terms of service) between the third party and that user.
To me, it sounds like this meets the standard your bring.
He questions just how much effort agencies take to reduce false positives when it comes to DMCA notices.
Hasn’t he got the memo? Doesn’t he get anything at all?
I didn’t think that there still are people out there, who are so incredibly naive, to believe, that the point of those DMCA notices is, to stop you from copying the music!
No. Everybody realized for a looong time, that the whole point is solely, to make money!
I mean, if you realized it, it’s so obvious! The whole point of a business is to make money. Since when does it matter, how and by which means? At the end of the day, the most successful strategy of making money, is what will be done. That’s natural selection... kinda.
How can he call himself an expert, and not know that?? Seriously! It boggles the mind!
I’ve seen it twice: Even if you started to pay money, but stop right in the middle... you’ll never hear something from them again. It already was profitable. Now the effort would be bigger than the profit. So they won’t take any further actions.
From practical experience, I know that the best experience is, to simply tell them to get lost, that you are an expert in the area, *know* that they got shit, and will kick their ass to hell and back if they ever contact you again.
Sometimes, they will not stop at a letter from a lawyer, but try some pseudo-scary shit. Like a letter from court and such. Just send a letter back that you completely disagree with all claims. Because then they have to come up with some proof. Which they can’t. 99% of the time, that’s it. In rare cases, they come up with fake “proof”. Only in these cases, hope that your judge is not a total backwards retard.
But I don’t have to tell you that it’s better to live in a country with competent courts, do I? ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
or thieves like you could stop leeching music from everyone else who pays for it.
I'll only leach from people who haven't paid for it then. Fair?
Or Freenet.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If it is an extortion racket, should the perpetrators not be charged under RICO?
Actually, it is extortion. There is no service being offered, just a statement that says "Do as we say, or we will make your life unpleasant".