Slashdot Mirror
IP Addresses Not Enough To ID Users
phaedrus5001, with his first accepted story, points out an article at Ars Technica from which he's excerpted a chunk relevant to nearly anyone with an internet connection: "A file-sharing lawyer admitted this week that IP addresses don't by themselves identify someone accused of sharing copyrighted material online. To figure out who actually shared the pornographic movie at the center of the case, lawyer Brett Gibbs of Steele Hansmeier LLC told the judge (PDF) he would need to search every computer in the subscriber's household."
Does it really matter? Do we need to know every time it's someone's first accepted story? I know I get a good feeling deep down in my heart to know that phaedrus5001 has finally found acceptance...
So what if they search all the computers in the house hold it doesn't prove who was sitting at the computer when the actual sharing was done. Most house holds have at least one computer that everyone uses at some point.
Or, we can hope, sanity will prevail and it will more or less come down to "you don't have enough information to tell us who to look for, and you can't just go on a fishing expedition to look for computers that might be the one you think it is".
This is mostly about someone using information which the rest of us have always known was insufficient, using that to get far enough to identify someone, and then deciding they need to look at any computer within a 5 mile radius just in case it was them.
Their "evidence" gets weaker every time they try to say "we need to look at more because the last one wasn't enough". They're also at the discovery phase, which basically means they don't have enough evidence to know if they should be proceeding.
And, unless someone makes it illegal to have an open wifi, you can't go around saying that there is any contributory negligence or anything like that.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This, although I don't particularly mind seeing it in the submission. What I do mind, though, is that /.ers whine about it and point it out like a sore thumb. "Bawwww, the article is from a first poster, we must bring attention to this and ridicule him/her!"
The more you know, the more you have to say and the more you should listen.
They always find something. It only takes six lines written by the most honest man to find something on which to hang him.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Nope, it's completely about who the jury likes.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Just because the computer in question shared a file doesn't mean anyone in the house did it or was even aware of it. For that matter, there are trojans and viruses more than capable of establishing a personal computer as a file-sharing node without the knowledge of the owner / operator. The person at fault is the person that intentionally caused the content to be shared, not the computer owner or operator(s).
It could be argued that you are a bit responsible for what your computer does
Except that computers connected to the Internet are sometimes taken over by malware that causes the computers to do things outside of the control of their owners. There was a case a while back where a guy was accused of downloading child pornography, and it was discovered that it was actually malware that did the downloading. Is it really that far-fetched to think that some hacker who wants to download music without getting sued would use a botnet to hide his activities?
Palm trees and 8
and that means that within the contractual arrangement with the ISP, they are able to hold me responsible for things that happen on my connection. They can ask me to pay when there are costs as a result. They can disconnect the connection at my expense if nefarious things happen over it.
But that contract has nothing to do with my legal liability with a 3rd party. If the 3rd party sues the ISP, and the ISP, through my contractual relationship, holds me responsible, that's one thing. But that's not what they are doing. If they're going to try to prove that I'm legally liable for what they think went on, for damages they think I did to them, they're going to have to show enough proof of that.
Although this is won't work with DSL because of PPOE login, with a cable modem your IP address is not proof of anything.
Why? DHCP is not the only game in town. On many networks, you can take a DHCP-assigned address and determine the appropriate subnet mask, default route, and DNS server. But nothing really stops you from manually overriding the IP address, as long as you choose one in the same subnet that happens to be unused at the moment. The ISP can make this a little more difficult by remembering the MAC address associated with each address, but there are workarounds for that too.
I became aware of this when my cable modem stopped working and the support technician discovered that my IP address was in use from someplace other than my house. In those days, all addressing was static. Some other customer had inadvertently (or deliberately) assumed my IP address. The tech gave me a new address assignment and everything worked. So whoever hijacked my IP address left the audit trail pointing to ME. The hijacker was (from an IP address perspective) invisible.
Weeeellll...considering the fact it has been slashvertisement city here as of late frankly we ought to be damned happy that it isn't some more Infoworld or that other site (you know, the one that had the brass balls to put a FIFTY ONE PAGE TFA under "Best FOSS software!" like a giant douche?) so personally I say welcome aboard dude.
As for TFA, yeah that is ALL we need, considering their "detection software" said a fricking laser printer was file sharing, is to give these douches an excuse for a fishing expedition on EVERY PC IN THE HOUSE. Be honest guys, how many of you have receipts for every bit of media, software, movies, etc, that you have? I know I'm moved 4 times in the past 5 years and have NO clue as to where half of my damned discs are. That was kinda the whole point of backing everything up onto a HDD as it is a hell of a lot easier to keep up with a USB HDD that holds thousands of discs worth of stuff than it is to keep up with thousands of discs.
I know some got crunched and tossed when my amp fell over on the box (boy that was a mess!) some are in storage, some I lent to my mom (whom I'm sure has promptly lost them or her damned goat of a dog had them for lunch), some I lent to friends (yeah good luck seeing THOSE again, hell I don't even remember who has what), some are in storage and some lord only knows where I put those boxes.
Personally as much as I hated Wesley Crusher I saw a video of Wil Wheaton at some convention and he nailed it "Make it simple for people to have the files legally" because as Gabe at Valve pointed out the pirates are offering a better value. I should be able to buy a disc ONCE, register it, and that's it, I'm done. i should from then on be able to put it in any damned format I like, toss the disc, whatever, I paid and I'm done. The IP bullshit is the only damned thing I can think where they say it is property AND/OR a license, apparently on the whim of the IP asshole. If I have the disc I only have a license, but then I lose the disc I only had the media and need to replace, WTF?
If I would have kept up with every single disc I swear i wouldn't be able to even walk in my damned apt, and if scum sucking lawyers like in TFA start using that excuse to make fishing expeditions frankly we're all fucked.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
and if scum sucking lawyers like in TFA start using that excuse to make fishing expeditions frankly we're all fucked.
There have already been Constitutionality questions raised about many aspects of the RIAA lawsuit mill. In fact, we're already beyond the merely ridiculous, in both the outrageous claims these lawyers make, the "evidence" they present, what courts have been accepting from overpaid Armani suits.
The thing is, there's some precedent for these kinds of fishing expeditions, and it doesn't even take a schlock outfit like the RIAA to start one. The first of which I was aware was the infamous Steve Jackson Games case, where the Secret Service took the word of a phone company (a phone company!) that wrongdoing had been committed, and caused quite a bit of damage. When it got to court they lost, and received a reprimand from the judge for their sloppy investigative practices.
Law enforcement always tends to take the side of large corporate legal departments over individuals: the tragedy there is that the corporation can afford to pay for its mistakes, while the average citizen cannot and can easily be bankrupted.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.