Movie Studios Want Automated BitTorrent Warnings

daria42 writes "The lawsuit filed by movie and TV studios against Australian Internet service provider iiNet appears to have taken a new twist, with the studios using early judgments in the case to attempt to push other ISPs towards what it has described as a 'standardized automated processing system' for BitTorrent copyright infringement notices that would integrate with the ISPs' networks and automatically forward messages to customers when they were sent by the studios."

Comments

"We want to spam all your customers at will..."

[Chris Mattern]

"...but it's too much trouble to do it ourselves. You do it for us."

Re:"We want to spam all your customers at will..."

[causality]

"...but it's too much trouble to do it ourselves. You do it for us."

If they keep pushing this, the result will be predictable enough.

It will eventually result in a new distributed peer-to-peer protocol. This new protocol will have mandatory strong encryption, will be obfuscated, will likely not have central trackers of any kind (perhaps it will rely on something like DHT), and will generally make it much more difficult to identify individual users. In turn, the pirates, who already feel quite bold, will likely share even more copyrighted material as a result of the reduced risk.

If they really want to drive it even more underground, they can, but they will regret the results. Meanwhile, the more unreasonable they become the more likely it is that Joe Sixpack will start to see them as little more than greedy thugs. Right now a lot of people who don't keep up with these developments have at least some sympathy for them. There are still many who will entertain arguments claiming that infringement of copyright is exactly the same thing as theft of tangible goods (which it is not) and the like, but the copyright cartels are on a certain path towards changing that.

Unreasonable asshats with control complexes who have politicians in their back pockets are a recipe for lawlessness, both of the unprincipled type that just wants a new movie/game/mp3 and of the civil-disobedience type who promote and support what the cartels are trying to stop as an act of protest. Exactly how many thousands of examples are needed for this to become something obvious that "everybody knows" and no longer wants to try?

Re:"We want to spam all your customers at will..."

[mlts]

Exactly. If people start getting caught left and right, it wouldn't take much for people to go to a lower tech solution -- proxy servers and secure VPNs.

If ISPs want to play a cat and mouse game, they can block proxies. However, a bit on a wire is a bit on a wire and there will be always a way to get encrypted data to another site.

Re:"We want to spam all your customers at will..."

[aaaaaaargh!]

What about this: What counts is trust. You need to make a network where everybody connects directly with trustworthy friends ONLY---talking real friends, not "Facebook friends." These are connected with other trustworthy friends, but friendship is not transitive, and so you cannot connect with the friends of your friends unless they are already your friends. On top of this, add an onion-routing based mechanism to request things from friends, and their friends if they don't have it, and so on, until the requested entity is found and onion-routed back.

Assuming it's technically implemented in the right way, a node in such a network can only be compromised when a friend betrays you. As long as you add only real friends, the network is pretty safe and very hard to subvert. I wanted to implement this myself but the NAT traversal without central servers needed for this to work turned out to be a tough nut to crack. Of course, using a broadcast/flooding search the network is also not very efficient. But perhaps someone finds the idea interesting...?

Re:"We want to spam all your customers at will..."

[TheGratefulNet]

welcome back to the rise of sneakernet.

I have not been in college for decades and decades; but I *assume* that that many kids together will have drive sharing parties. no intertubes THERE to get in the way.

Re:"We want to spam all your customers at will..."

[maugle]

You just described Freenet.

Re:"We want to spam all your customers at will..."

[discord5]

What you are describing is typically called a darknet. In small groups darknets work great, but as the group grows the risk grows.

Assuming it's technically implemented in the right way, a node in such a network can only be compromised when a friend betrays you.

Let's assume 3 friends are in the relationship A -> B -> C. If A is somehow caught (due to coincidence, stupidity or simply trusting the wrong person) then that exposes B. When B is caught inevitably due to A, that exposes C. Each node that is compromised on the network reveals more and more, and basically an attacker only needs one node to get started.

Given the nature of the average user, this network will not survive many iterations of "friends of friends". It's inevitable that someone who misunderstands the concept of a darknet breaks trust. What you're describing is already implemented several times and is used by W.A.S.T.E. and if I'm not mistaken Freenet 0.7 has an implementation of a darknet.

I wanted to implement this myself but the NAT traversal without central servers needed for this to work turned out to be a tough nut to crack. Of course, using a broadcast/flooding search the network is also not very efficient. But perhaps someone finds the idea interesting...?

Kademlia does a good job of maintaining a "routing table" for your network, but doesn't solve the NAT traversal problem for you. You're stuck with STUN and NAT-PMP or UPnP for solving the NAT problem. These techniques are already in use in current bittorrent clients that use DHT. The biggest problem with Kademlia is that it builds a list of all nodes on the network for efficiency reasons, allowing it to survive network churn. A kademlia like DHT would be needed for building an index of what is on the network.

You would most likely be more interested in having each node in the network act as a relay for other nodes, so Kademlia is perhaps a bit overkill for tracking nodes. Suppose that you're interested in downloading "cop_dog.mpg". You go look in your lookup table for "cop_dog.mpg" and find that you got keys from your neighbour node B. So you know who to contact. Node B knows that Node C and D on the network have this movie, but they are only connected to node B, and you're node A. This would mean that node B can download the movie from C and D, and has to relay all that data towards your node A (if you want to make sure that you only allow direct peers to connect to eachother).

There are several problems with this setup as well:

• Node B in this scenario is pulling twice the bandwidth (one for download from C&D, and one for upload to A). Given how many ISPs are implementing data caps this becomes a bit of a problem.
• Node B is also the point where you can start doing traffic analysis. Since node B is using so much bandwidth, an ISP or totalitarian regime X could start checking the IPs node B sends traffic to/receives traffic from. It becomes apparent quickly that 1.4GB of data is being uploaded to Node A, and 700MB is downloaded from C & D.

I'm not an expert on the subject, and I'm sure the developers of Tor, I2P and Freenet have much more interesting things (and most likely more accurate) to say on the subject. There's also a lot of interesting research papers written on P2P networks, although mostly about churn. I got interested in P2P a long time ago when I was looking for a solution to a particular problem, but opted for a centralized system in the end due to not finding a decent way to "trust" nodes in the network.

Another warning proposal

[Pieroxy]

Can we also have a warning for *AA affiliates exec? It should be triggered everytime they approach a public statement, it should say "If you're about to talk about piracy, please consider the fact that you're about to make a fool of yourself. Again."

Re:Another warning proposal

[mbone]

They are paid enough that they don't care if they appear as fools.

Does it include an envelope for the fine?

[yossie]

Man, this is starting to sound more and more like the local parking enforcement and red-light camera issued tickets! Guilty without need to present evidence and little to no contesting rights. Next thing you know, the studios will have enforcement troops.

Rent it and Rip it

[realityimpaired]

Seriously.... between tools like MakeMKV and Handbrake, it is trivial to rip a DVD these days. And on the crappy connections that they want to sell us (I'm on a 5mbit DSL with torrent traffic shaping turned on so I'm lucky to pull more than 100kbit), it's faster to simply rip the DVD to your local hard drive. Since I've already paid for the privilege, where's the incentive to actually go out and buy a DVD, now?

These people do realize that pirates are actually their best customers, right? The whole try before you buy thing? Yes, some folks will do it simply because they can, but I simply won't buy a DVD unless I've seen the movie, because I want to make sure I'm not paying for a crappy movie. That either means I download the movie, or I've seen it in theatre. If they don't want my business, that's their call; I'll just give the money to the local rental store, instead.

Re:Rent it and Rip it

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

So you are saying you're willing to pay some scratch for it (rental).

This is it's worth to you, crappy movie or not.

The fact you indulge in pirate downloading actually validates some of their arguments (you acknowledge it has _some_ worth, but take the convenience route).

The best thing that can happen to the open source / free software movement is that enforceable / unbreakable DRM exists - so idiots like you who think convenience justifies pirating content can't play your pirated games or movies any more. (This also goes for Office, Windows etc)

If you had to pay the real price for the things you pirate - you wouldn't - so it clearly isn't worth that much to you, right?

O wait, I forgot, we have a few generations now who believe they should get stuff for free. Sure you should, but only the things people have decided they want to give you for free.

Re:Rent it and Rip it

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

O I see it, I just don't see the current approach (piracy) as changing the status quo in any way.

All you are doing is encouraging the **IA to enforce harsher penalties and stricter control.

Not funding or pirating the content at all would be the way to change it. But people _need_ their pirated games and movies, right?

Re:Rent it and Rip it

[macemoneta]

Don't forget that you don't even need to rip it - many libraries now carry popular DVDs. I live near a county branch, and the DVD selection is excellent (about 5,000 titles). They also have popular CDs, periodicals, and ebooks ('checkout' from their website). They are all free and legal. Check out your local resources.

Re:Rent it and Rip it

[ScrewMaster]

The best thing that can happen to the open source / free software movement is that enforceable / unbreakable DRM exists - so idiots like you who think convenience justifies pirating content can't play your pirated games or movies any more. (This also goes for Office, Windows etc)

Of course, there are still idiots like you that continue to use incorrect terminology. That dilutes whatever message you may think you have (especially here on Slashdot) and, if anything, makes you appear like a media company shill. That's the facts, jack. If you're an American (and I accept that you may not be) you should read up on what our law considers the definition of "piracy" to be. Hint: it's not the GP grabbing a couple of torrents. Using the attempted re-definition of legal language that the media companies are using to promote their twisted definition of copyright does not help matters at all, no matter what side of the fence you're sitting upon. Outright lies, fabrications and untruths (something that big media is absolutely famous for spewing forth at regular intervals) rarely improve any situation, and make any form of reasonable compromise impossible. More fact: these little pricks put themselves into the situation they're in today, by demonstrating a depth of vision flatter than a sheet of Reynold's Wrap. Luddites and modern technology rarely get along well, especially when you toss in a sprinkling of sociopathy.

What I think you fail to understand are a couple of important things. One: this is not directly about money. I think it's pretty clear at this point that copyright infringement, even on the scale afforded by the Internet, is not lowering industry profits overall, in fact, it's probably the opposite. Two: what these conglomerates want is to regain control of content distribution, like they had prior to the rise of peer-to-peer. Three: that gives them control not only of consumers (who then have little choice but to "enjoy" whatever pablum those bastards decide to dole out at any given time) but, just as importantly, control of the artists, who then have no place to go to sell their works except through "approved" channels. Why do you think the record labels hate iTunes so much? Because they effectively ceded control of their entire music distribution network to Steve Jobs, who is just as big a control freak as they are. Well, I told you they aren't particularly intelligent.

Sorry buddy, that is simply not the social contract that the Constitution granted Congress the power to make between business and the public domain. It just isn't, and when you add into the mix the insanely extended copyrights (also not exactly Constitutional) any sympathy I might have for the big copyright holders just evaporated. Time to get a reality check: you are not supporting artists with your attitude, you are not supporting the public domain, you are not supporting what is best for your own society. You are, instead, taking the side of several criminal gangs who have successfully corrupted our legal system and spent quite a bit of money conscripting the Federal government to enforce copyright. That's not how it is supposed to work: having a copyright simply means that you have the right to seek redress: it was not supposed to mean that the United States Federal Government will seek to destroy people and companies on your behalf.

I ask you: is that a good thing?

Re:Rent it and Rip it

[Slashdot Assistant]

That's not how it is supposed to work: having a copyright simply means that you have the right to seek redress: it was not supposed to mean that the United States Federal Government will seek to destroy people and companies on your behalf.

Well put, sir!

ISP response: sure, studios - here's the BILL

[Anonymous Coward]

The ideal ISP response to this would be to agree and then send the studios a bill at, say, $10000 per notification to cover "costs". Hollywood accounting works both ways...

Re:How much bittorrest traffic is pirated material

[Haedrian]

Most important question is

"How much money can we get from that percentage?"

Yep. This is not a free country.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just notify EVERYONE. They're all dirty pirates, right?

Yeah. That's how America works these days.

Treat everyone as a terrorist - search them at airports, train stations, on the road, etc - ever been for radiation therapy? Look out!

Everyone is a potential meth addict - gotta show your driver's license to get 10 pills of Sudafed!

Everyone is a drunk driver - that's why there are road blocks where they stop everyone to see if they're drunk - sucks when you're working weekend nights and you're automatically considered a drunk!

On the internet? Well, you're pirating and downloading child porn unless proven innocent!

well ...

[lennier1]

I'm surprised the IRS hasn't already caught on to this.

If media companies they pick your IP they demand over $20,000 for every shared track which can be bought for a single dollar on iTunes, no matter if it was you who downloaded the song or someone else.

So, in return make Hollywood execs personally responsible for 20,000 times the amount of money companies are hiding from taxes through Hollywood accounting.