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An IP Address Does Not Point To a Person, Judge Rules
AffidavitDonda writes with this excerpt from Torrentfreak:
"A possible landmark ruling in one of the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the US may spell the end of the 'pay-up-or-else-schemes' that have targeted over 100,000 Internet users in the last year. District Court Judge Harold Baker has denied a copyright holder the right to subpoena the ISPs of alleged copyright infringers, because an IP-address does not equal a person. Among other things, Judge Baker cited a recent child porn case where the US authorities raided the wrong people, because the real offenders were piggybacking on their Wi-Fi connections. Using this example, the judge claims that several of the defendants in VPR's case may have nothing to do with the alleged offense either. ... Baker concludes by saying that his Court is not supporting a 'fishing expedition' for subscribers' details if there is no evidence that it has jurisdiction over the defendants."
Pity this'll never survive through the appellate courts, since the MafiAA bought off all the appellate judges long ago.
Obviously, this won't be settled until it reaches the Supreme Court, but it's a vital 1st step. Go Freedom!
...where Judges are applying an understanding of the technical issues, common sense, and considering the situation of ordinary citizens?
Finally a reason for people to get fixed IP addresses. IPv6 of course - preferably at least 256 per house. Most commercial interests don't want this, but if the **AA want if maybe it will actually happen :-)
THIS is the evil universe!
I agree that IP != person is a good ruling.
But this probably will close the door on the 99 cases out of 100 where an IP actually does equal a bad person who needs to be caught.
What do you propose we do to continue enforcement against these pieces of human waste? What if you can no longer get a warrant based on an IP?
Could it be a collective dream we're all sharing?
I'm not one to trumpet common sense (because it usually isn't as common as we think), but I'm here to play you all a song on my trumpet.
Now if we can eliminate speeding tickets based on license plate numbers...
In the case of a static IP address and a locked down router would that not be enough circumstantial evidence to convict? While I applaud this ruling still I think a jury or judge could be swayed by a good prosecutor pointing to those two factors. Ummthat and your 1200 titles movie collection on home burned DVD’s.
There are several reasons ISPs would rather give you dynamic addresses - DHCP is easier than keeping track of address assignments, and it lets them charge you more if you care about static. (And most ISPs are planning 256 subnets per house, not just 256 host addresses.)
But the commercial interests who do advertising or who do geolocation or other tricks to sell to advertisers would *love* to have user information tracked by static IP addresses and ideally even per-device MAC addresses that can be encoded into IPv6 addrs, because that's better consumer data.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Surely the police raided the right people, the owners of the wireless device that facilitated the downloading. How they handled them after that however is debatable, but how would the police have been expected to solve the crime with out doing that?
Car analogy! If my car is caught on a video camera running over children, shouldn't they be allowed to go to the DMV with my license details, get my address and interview me?
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Everyone knows that only Corporations are People and the users who download data (aka consumers) are more correctly described as Serfs.
or Peasants.
choose one, but the US Supreme Court says only Corporations are People.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Which by that time TSC will either refuse to hear the case or rule in favor of MAFIAA (remember the politicians that nominated and confirmed the justices are all bought and paid for) and we all be really really SCREWED.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
When the ISP I worked for used to get "Notices of Infringement" from copyright holders, I was the one tasked with finding the user who was responsible for the infringement. We would get an IP Address and a timestamp along with the name of the copyrighted material. Since we kept log files for our DHCP server, I was able to tie an IP Address to a MAC Address at the time of the infringement. I was then able to look at the arp cache of our router and tie that MAC Address to a PVC. Once I got the PVC, I tied that back to a DSLAM or SLID which in every case was tied to a specific customer. In almost every case we identified the correct user. There were a few cases where we were unable to find the infringing Mac Address in the arp cache probably because the device was no longer in use.
The only thing that is allocated to you at your home router in the IPv6 world is a PREFIX which is equivalent to a range of addresses A LOT bigger than 256. (probably would be a /56 allocation). Also, you have many options for doing the addressing internally with that prefix. Most network adapters will add the mac address to the prefix to get the IPv6 by default. But that is easily changed on your computer to instead add a random set of hex numbers to the prefix to get your address. Also, in IPv6 each physical adapter can have multiple IPv6 addresses. Windows 7 does this when you receive and IPv6 address on a public network, such as a coffee shop. This is done so as to NOT be able to track a person by mac address. So in some ways, IPv6 would obscure your computer like a needle in a much bigger haystack, much better than IPv4 does.
Can you imagine the personal information gathering and targeted advertising you could do with fixed IPs?
Imagine how much Google and Apple could compile... the targeted ads they could send you... the lists they could make available for sale to advertisers...
A ruling that makes sense from a judge that bothered to learn something about technology. These days, most basic broadband connections have dynamic IP addresses which means, hello, that they change. Any broadband subscriber could have had that address at a given time depending upon if a router or computer was rebooted.
You might like the conclusion of the order, but unfortunately the judge failed to include legal support for his arguments (citing an msnbc article does not count). He also leaves no avenue for copyright holders to get the names of the account holders--he just speculates on possible defenses for the defendants, moans about the difficulty of defending a federal lawsuit, and then denies discovery. This is not the model ruling pirates have been waiting for--there is no way this order stands up on appeal.
I dislike these 'pay-up-or-else-schemes' as much as anybody else. But in shouldn't each ISP customer be accountable for what happens on their connection? If you decide to share the connection with your family/friends/neighbours it's your job to ensure that they don't abuse it. Otherwise anyone could set up an open wifi and deny any responsibilities for what happens on the connection...
...doesnt point to a person yet... Just wait till they start coding your DNA to an IP address... (putting back on my tinfoil hat)
Joe Investor
This ruling will be appealed and overturned. Most Circuit Courts of Appeal, although not the Seventh, have recognized that there is enough of a link between an IP address and an internet subscriber to at least provide probable cause to suspect the subscriber of online activity. If the court could completely discard IP information, then there would be a complete lack of legal remedy for tortious and criminal online activity.
I recently wrote a law review article on this topic. I'd love to have the Slashdot community's reaction.
Balancing Expectations of Online Privacy: Why Internet Protocol (IP) Addresses Should be Protected as Personally Identifiable Information
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1621102
advertisers would *love* to have user information tracked by static IP addresses and ideally even per-device MAC addresses that can be encoded into IPv6 addrs
But they already do have majority of that information. When you get your "dynamic" IP address, it is not really dynamic. It is quite static to the area you live in. Secondly, MAC address have no value. Thirdly, MAC addresses are NOT required to be part of IPv6 address - Windows 7 picks a random number, AFAIK.
On the other hand, static IP addresses allow users to actually participate in the internet as a network of peers. Skype, SIP, and ability to access your data remotely are all possible if you have static IP. Dynamic IP wrecks havoc on these protocol, irrespective of the counter measures deployed.
Static network assignments, like IPv6 /64, is the antithesis of provider-consumer model. Currently we have a broken internet, and there are people that fight any improvement simply because it means "change" and transfer of power to the end user.. It's almost like the media conglomerate is trying to spread misinformation..
I just found an interesting blog post on this topic: http://www.christopher-parsons.com/blog/technology/ipv6-and-the-future-of-privacy/
To get you interested here's a snippet:
Fortunately, the good engineers that develop Internet Protocols were aware of the potentially devastating consequences that static IP addresses for each device would have on anonymity online and, as a result, privacy. The Internet Protocol next generation (IPng) working group crafted a solution that involved creating;
pseudorandom interface identifiers and temporary addresses using an algorithm The temporary address would not derive from a completely random generation process, which might result in two computers generating the same number, but instead would produce a temporary pseudo-random sequence dependent on both the globally unique serial number and a random component. The number would be globally unique because it would derive from the interface identifier and from the history of previously generated addresses, but would be difficult for an external node to reverse engineer to determine the source computer. [3]
In layman’s terms, this means that the engineers responsible for IPv6 were mindful of the surveillance capacities of the new Internet Protocol, and built privacy into a system that would otherwise lend itself to surveillance and authoritarian tendencies. The catch, however, is that is requires the parties responsible for assigning IP addresses to participate in the pseudo-anonymization process itself: it’s possible for ISPs to forcibly assign particular address to each and every device on their network.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Don't all those IP cases go through East Texas? So what's the appellate court for that?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Obvious reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Six_(The_Prisoner)#I_am_not_a_number.2C_I_am_a_free_man
So you are saying that every time police needs to follow a clue, it is perfectly acceptable to break down the door, throw everyone to the floor with guns to their head and take everything electronic inside.
For some reason, if the download point had been an open wifi at Starbucks or some other ISP, they don't follow that procedure, but if it's at someone's house, then it's ok.
They went in force and with guns and SWAT for someone not suspected of violent crimes, suspected of downloading something over the internet. I don't get that logic.
Ok I'm new here, but I hail the decision. I'm not Ok with people downloading Child porn, however don't be fooled by the conclusions and needs of law enforcement always using the most extreme use of the internet as an excuse. The IP address is not nor has ever been a person identifier and can easily be spoofed. In any event even if it was a true identifier of the end use, it does not identify who, all it serves is at most what, when and where, and if you know how your already in the wrong spot.
Further it does not matter how much security you have on the router, how much encryption, it's all easily and readily hacked. maybe that is beyond some, however it is not beyond someone with the motivation to learn how, with Google, who may be using the internet for downloading the kiddie porn.
Lazy Law Enforcement virtually right clicking and hitting properties then raiding a house should be and needs to be banned, put down the donut and do some police work for jeepers sake. Far to many people have gone to jail or been subjected to these false accusations because Law Enforcement is stupid or lazy or both.
Now for my analogy, if someone uses my newspaper to club someone to death, am I guilty of Murder, because I subscribed to the Murder weapon. Law Enforcement including Jury's would and in fact say's "yes" far to often.
I'm not giving up my right to privacy so the Police don't have to put down their donut, do some old fashioned Police work, it's not that hard.
Those circuits (both state and federal) are very popular for corporations of all sorts. The federal is the 5th Circuit.
Support SETI@home
So get like... Fifty thousand addresses and change it every day?
Surely this ruling should help convince people that keeping an open wifi connection is a good thing.
Sure, it sucks for the people who were raided, but the more failed raids there are, the less reason there will be to undertake those raids.
Several times in fact. You have to PROVE it was ME using the computer and network in question.
it's a well known fact Chief Justice Clarance Thomas received what can only be called bribes. If they can get away with bribing Supreme Court Justices what are the odds they won't do the same to a regular run of the mill judge?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Gee whiz fun fact, there are so many possible IPV6 addresses that you can just make up a new one whenever you want and throw out the old one.
In fact I believe windows does this by default.
Just you wait in a few years everyone will get his won ipv6 address on his birth certificate.
You spelt 'curcus' wrong.
FTFY
Once in a while, a glimmer of sanity appears in our court system. Then it goes away, not to be seen again for years and years.
Can you imagine the improved privacy offered when something like your FaceBook profile becomes an App running on your local wall-wart server that can only be accessed friends you choose (i.e. whitelist by IP)? How about the ability to make video phone calls directly to someones IP address without the need for any intermediary to make the connection? email server at home with no ISP storing and mining data or serving it to others? All of the real personal data becomes private. The only thing left is your surfing of public sites and downloading which can be tracked by IP. The really personal stuff gets to stay private.
Can you imagine the personal information gathering and targeted advertising you could do with fixed IPs?
Imagine how much Google and Apple could compile... the targeted ads they could send you... the lists they could make available for sale to advertisers...
This would be fantastic. I prefer ads to be targeted to my interests. I find it to be much more useful than random ads for things I do not care about.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
You spelt 'curcus' wrong.
Lucky you corrected him then!
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm not sure what you are saying. The ISP should provide the /64 subnet to you, or you should have your own /64 subnet that you carry around irrespective of ISP? If it's the latter, good luck with the routing tables.
Windows does this, but only within the same /64 subnet - the network bits (typically /56 or /48) and the subnet bits (any more bits to get to /64) stay the same. IPv6 address privacy hides which computer on the subnet you're using (and because it's hiding the MAC address, also hides what manufacturer of Ethernet chip you have), but it's still giving away a lot of information, especially if you've got different subnets for wired and wireless networks (typical.) You could get fancy and modify DD-WRT to switch off the subnets you're using a bit, but they'll still be on your house's IPv6 network number.
The big win that you get from IPv6 address privacy is with laptops that you use at different locations - otherwise you'd be trackable as you move from home to Starbucks to work to the pub to that dodgy nightclub to your friend's party. (Of course, if you keep checking in with Foursquare and tweeting geotagged pictures, there's nothing IPv6 can do to help you, but it's not their problem.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A duty of proof exists in all cases. Short cuts for the convenience of any portion of society are not reasonable. This includes proof of who downloaded an item and should even apply to things like parking tickets where it is not know exactly who parked the car or failed to feed the meter.
with ipv6 you can also have a new address at any time... a kind of global, serverless dhcp.
Assuming you're making a sarcastic comment, a better analogy is more like giving you a speeding ticket because your neighbor stole your car a couple months ago and took it for a joy ride without your permission, to which he frequently does.