Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: P2P Liability On a Shared Connection?
An anonymous reader writes "I have a roommate that insists on using BitTorrent without taking any kind of precautions. He has an affinity for downloading material that is extremely popular and high-risk. He's received a warning from a well-known media giant in the past about his file sharing, but hasn't been sued. We've recently begun living in an apartment together (with one other person) and share our Internet connection and IP address. If his p2p activity leads to someone attempting to take legal action, could I be held liable? How would our accusers differentiate between our computers if we all share the same IP address? Would they just sue the lot of us?" Some lawyers would certainly like to get a look at everything on the other side of the connection. Has anyone out there faced legal problems as a result of someone else's use of your connection?
Presumably they would just try and sue whoever they can. Chuck a couple of letters out to whoever lives there and see who caves or settles first.
If you are renting would the landlord be targetted?
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
Since you cant share ownership of an internet account, someone has to have their name on the paper work. If its you, then its your account and you are liable but also in a position to dictate change. If its him, then its his problem.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
this is not legal advice and i may be a lawyer in your state but am not your lawyer and do not represent you.
1. If they take legal action you could be sued and held liable. the burden of proof is 1% - i.e. if you are found even 1% liable you could be held liable, even if it was for a trifling amount. its preponderance of the evidence in a civil matter i.e if they show it is more than 51% likely that you were responsible for the 1% liability you are liable.
2. your accusers would ask for discovery and depending on the judge and state you would have to give up your computers for them to poke around or use a 3rd party lab to poke around for signs of infringement.
3. Yes they would likely sue everyone in the household who owned a computer.
Even if you assume you are 100% legally in the clear, they can still sue you, get your ISP to cut you off, and make your life generally miserable. Sadly being in the right doesn't mean someone else can't accuse you of being in the legal wrong and thus forcing you to prove otherwise.
We are all guilty on their internets.
Thank you for that confession on behalf of all Anonymous Cowards. I'll use your confession in my own defense against every kind of accusation, should it ever become necessary:
Me: "Your honor, that AC already admitted his guilt, so there is no case for me to answer..."
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Right !
And make sure you have a full hard disk encryption ! -> http://www.truecrypt.org/
And make sure you have your tier1 data some where else and also encrypted (SDHC 32GB or 1,8" SSD sounds good or ?).
I prefer saving my data encrypted on a datasette .. ;)
If his illegal activity draws any heat, they will seize every computer in the house while they try to figure out whodunnit. Do you have anything on your computer that could incriminate you in any way? Are you sure? If not, and you do manage to avoid federal prosecution, you still might not ever get your stuff back.
that if you receive any letters from any lawyers you will answer them truthfully. So if you get accused of illegal downloads, you would truthfully reply that you didn't do it, but your roommate.
It seems your roommate insists, against your objections, to do things that are illegal, and bound to get you into expensive trouble, without taking any precautions. If the shit hits the fan, you have no obligation at all to support him in any way; your only responsibility is to get out of trouble yourself as cheaply as possible.
Put the connection in his name, the warning goes to him - the law suit goes to him...
Run a Tor exit node and open up a guest wireless connection that anyone can use.
giggity
A few years ago (circa MS Flight Sim X) my unprotected wireless was used to download and share the aforementioned software through a torrent. MS contacted my ISP (Cox) and I got a letter from MS's IP dept. I had to go through quite a bit of paperwork and finally talk to someone at MS. I explained that I didn't realize my neighbors had access to my wireless (honestly didn't think it would reach). Basically I was told this was my one and only chance, don't let it happen again and secure my router.
I remember when MOD was an audio format, and DOS wasn't a network attack....
Granted it's a lot of logs - but if you put in a linux+iptables or bsd+pf box as your router, you could log every connection to file - at least text zips well. store them for 6 months, only log connections which become fully established (since if you log half-open connections you'll likely be logging orders of magnitude more). It probably wouldn't take up a huge volume of space if you compress them, and you could also probably not log outgoing connections terminating on port 80 or 443 (though undoubtedly peer clients try and use those from time to time, it'd help you shave your logs if you hedge your bets that someone looking to sue your roomate isn't using 80/443 for their endpoint).
This in addition to truthfully answering lawyers' questions should cover your ass plenty sufficiently.
Let's rephrase the question.
The answer is, "Get a new roommate. Your current one is not respecting you, as evidenced by his disregard for your wishes and the way he's exposing you to potentially massive legal fees. You need to be able to trust your roommate, and you apparently can't trust your current one. Finding a new roommate might be hard, but it's necessary. Good luck!"
With respect to the legal question you've raised, the only answer here is "talk to a real lawyer." Trusting Slashdot to give you legal counsel is, TBH, just flat-out crazy.
Technical: Block the standard ports for bittorrent at your router and tell him it's your ISP doing it. Change the password to the router and say the ISP did that remotely because of new T&Cs too. If he's such a low-watt bulb that he doesn't know to download and use PeerBlock or Blocklist Manager, it'd be a stretch to think he'd be able to unravel that cunningly crafted web of deceit.
Manly: Cut him loose. He couldn't give two shits about how his behaviour affects you. You could be a pussy about it and hope you find a conveniently non-confrontational legal loophole so you never have to take any form of stand against his irresponsibility. Or you could relocate your balls and tell him to take a hike because you're not going to be liable for his douchebaggery.
Your choice.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
What good would full hard disk encryption do against a copyright lawsuit? The judge would order you to decrypt the data, and you'd be obligated to oblige or be found in contempt of court and put in jail (the right to not incriminate yourself is only for criminal cases and this would be a civil case.)
Really, is the risk of getting the attention of the copyright/lawsuit industry significantly higher than the risk of, say, him going crazy and murdering you in your sleep or you getting hit by lightning while crossing the street? How many other people are sharing those same extremely popular files as your mate, and how many of them are getting caught?
In short, is it worth worrying about at all?
He has an affinity for downloading material that is extremely popular and high-risk.
Who owns the primary Internet account? Who holds the lease on the apartment? Who is the head of household? The responsible adult here?
If the answer to any of those questions is you, you have a problem, but you also - quite literally - hold the key to the solution. You can tell your roomate to stop and you can make it stick.
"High risk" suggests many possibilities. If your roomate is trading in hard core porn over your shared connection, a raid by the ICE or FBI is not out of the question.
You do not want to be caught up in anything like that, even as the presumptively innocent bystander.
... and block P2P traffic.
My roommate blew up when I did that.
Then he noticed that our uselessly slow Internet connection was actually amazingly fast when it wasn't being hammered by improperly configured P2P clients.
Then peace returned.
The main problem I see is that you know about the illegal activity. You could might have gotten off legally if you didn't know even if the ISP account was in your name. But that doesn't stop the *AA from suing you and you spending a lot of money to clear yourself. Remember they have sued people for years before that had no knowledge that their ISP accounts were being used to download copyrighted software. This unfortunately is losing situation for you. If you get sued by the *AA then you are at risk of getting your computer seized even if (1) the ISP account is in his name or (2) you get separate ISP accounts. Normally the *AA will go after everyone in the household, search and seize first, and ask questions later. Either he stops what he's doing or you find a new roommate.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Well a psychologist will tell you that we remember things better when familiar cues are present. Our memory also fails under stress.
I have no problem remembering my long and complex encryption key by heart when I'm at my desk, relaxed, and typing it casually like I always do when I turn on my computer.
If I had to give that key anywhere else but at my desk, at home, or with people around me, or under any form of threat, I would most likely have trouble remembering the key. And any psychologist will testify that yes, I am most likely telling the truth when I say my memory is failing me due to stress or due to not having my familiar cues present when I attempt to recall the key - I even know people who can't remember an 8 character password made only of letters and numbers unless they're typing it on whatever website they're used to entering it (happens to me too actually).
And I'm not saying I will lie should I be asked to give my key. I'm just using my knowledge of psychology to make a (fairly obvious) prediction about events beyond my control.
I have this really bad habit of forgetting my passwords.....
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
The judge would order you to decrypt the data, and you'd be obligated to oblige or be found in contempt of court and put in jail (the right to not incriminate yourself is only for criminal cases and this would be a civil case.)
According to what country's laws? Nowhere in the summary it says they're talking about US.
That kind of attitude is EXACTLY what lets them get away with this intimidation and harassment bullshit. If you don't want to stand up for your own rights, at least get the hell out of the way and let other people do it.
Absolutely. Take your name off the ISP contract/account and let the copyright infringer put their name on the ISP contract/account. That is what you are advocating isn't it?
Hope you enjoy being the girlfriend of the inmate with the most cigarettes!
This is not a technical or legal question. It is a question about relationships. I'll take a stab, but, seriously, it does not belong on Slashdot. It belongs on some advice column.
As I understand it, you have a roommate who partakes in risky behavior that you have requested he stop. He does not agree to your request. It seems therefore that you need a new roommate since you do not wish to expose yourself to any potential risk and -- this is the important part -- you and he do not have sufficiently compatible lifestyles. You need a new living situation, whether that be by leaving and finding a new apartment on your own, or kicking this fellow out.
Any other discussions about relative liability or that include technological solutions, while potentially fascinating, are completely and utterly missing the point. This is not a technical or legal problem: it is a problem about relationships.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
You glaringly left out: authorized use.
Given that the owner of the account is aware of the copyright infringement and not doing anything to stop it there probably is a legal argument that he is authorizing that conduct in some de facto sense.
I don't know what agreements you have in place, but if the Internet connection is in your name, then I would not allow anyone else to connect that you cannot trust.
If the Internet connection is in your troublesome roommate's name, I would get your own Internet connection. This may be difficult, but most places have at least 2-3 ISP options (DSL, Cable, Clear, etc.). It's too bad you probably can't get two public IPs for your connection and each have your own router for your devices behind it.
I think paying for your own Internet (or not having your roommate chip in or having to give them a discount for their share of the Internet you are not going to share) is more than worth it.
When (not if, it will happen eventually unless the laws are changed) your roommate ends up in court and should you somehow get named, your defense will be easy. You never connected to his Internet and have your own. Produce your bills as proof, and that's the end of the story for you.
I think the advice that someone else gave about keeping logs of where the connection went is a good idea at first thought - and I'm not lawyer - but that sounds kinda shady - you kept logs to prove it wasn't you? How do you prove there wasn't any editing or that you only ever used that one IP? Just sounds like you could have audit problems proving things since you would have access to the logging system. To have it be bulletproof, you need to have some third-party setting up that system without you having access to it.
a lot of people are taking the view that "hey it's his problem".
have you considered the possibility that when the shit hits the fan, this roommate will turn around and say it is YOU who did it? can you prove it isn't you? because i guarantee you the other side won't care - as long as they get their pound of flesh. and even if you CAN prove it, it's gonna be a lot of pain and hassle. you'd better start documenting how/what/why it is that it's NOT you who's downloading it now, because you're gonna get caught in the trawler and trawling is damn well what the other side is doing, it's not precision strikes.
Most service providers I've had over the years will give you a second IP address on your connection. Put a switch behind your Cable/DSL Modem and give him his own IP. If they come looking for the offender, you might be able to say that IP was for his system.
Show me packet captures and log entires, or it never happened.
"What good would full hard disk encryption do against a copyright lawsuit? The judge would order you to decrypt the data... "
No. The judge would not, because he has no legal power to do so. They can only do that when they ALREADY KNOW, beyond reasonable doubt, that there is illegal material in the encrypted data. They cannot force you to give up passwords or decrypt data for a mere fishing expedition or discovery.
Standard disclaimer: IANAL. But I do know something about this particular legal topic.
The only exception I am aware of so far in the US is one of a man who was going through customs while coming back into the United States. Note that customs inspections at the border are an exception to most search laws: they can do things they could not normally do to a citizen just going about his business elsewhere.
So, this man's computer was turned on but in a sleep condition. His encryption software was running, making an encrypted part of his disk accessible. When a customs agent checked the computer, he woke it up, looked at some files in the encrypted directory (which he is legally authorized to do... it was right there in the open), and found some child pornography. He showed his partner.
The man somehow gained physical control of the computer and turned it off, which of course also shut down the encryption software. When the computer was restarted, the encrypted area was not accessible without a password.
In this case -- and ONLY this case -- the judge ruled that the man had to turn over his password, because they already knew, beyond reasonable doubt, that there was illegal material in his encrypted data.
This parallels a situation in which, say, you have things in a strong, secure safe at home. Let's say, hypothetically, you are suspected of trading guns illegally with drug dealers in Mexico. The police come in with a warrant authorizing them to look for illegal guns. They find the safe and suspect that you have money, profits from your illegal gun trade, in that safe. But the safe is far too small to hold the kind of guns you are accused of dealing in.
The police do not have legal authority to force you to open that safe, nor does a judge have the legal authority to force you to give them the combination. It might, I suppose, be legal for them to guess the combination or to non-destructively open the safe some other way, but they cannot force you to give up the combination because that is a violation of the 5th Amendment, which states that you cannot be compelled to testify against yourself. And that is the difference.
You see, in the first case, the man could not be said to be incriminating himself for committing a crime... he had ALREADY been incriminated. In the second case, the man would be incriminating himself by giving up the combination to the safe... which the 5th Amendment says he cannot be compelled to do.
So, to summarize: unless they already have proof that you have illegal material in your encrypted data, even the courts cannot force you to decrypt it, or surrender your password.
I agree with the parent completely. There are a lot of things you can do which MIGHT help you in a court of law, but I don't see anyone being certain. If you are genuinely concerned that this is going to turn into a problem (The fact he's gotten warning letters is a good sign) then get your own Internet Account, or make him get his own. Yeah, it'll cost you like 50 bucks a month or something like that, but that's not really a very large amount compared to dealing with a law suit.
"... the right to not incriminate yourself is only for criminal cases and this would be a civil case..."
Actually, this is not true (see the Wikipedia entry on 5th Amendment).
You still have the absolute right to remain silent, and to not implicate yourself. HOWEVER, there are 2 important things to remember about this: (1) some civil cases are treated like criminal cases in regard to the 5th Amendment, and (2) in those that don't while you can still plead the 5th, it can be considered to be evidence against you.
On the other hand, presumed evidence is generally not as strong as actual physical evidence, so if you are guilty, you are probably still better off pleading the 5th.
Show him how to use I2P and Postman. Slower downloads but way more secure. For those who don't know I2P is a end to end encrypted onion routing darknet. Search for the terms if you need to know more
In Denmark & Sweden you'd get busted as this has happened before, and they've set an example in order to get people to really secure their WiFi routers in their homes.
Say, you have an open network, the old excuse...but...It wasn't me - officer, simply won't hold up in court, you're liable for anything that goes trough your router, your cable, your network.
What's even worse, is that some politicians in Denmark are these days discussing to forbid anonymous surfing.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
You are only responsible for his activities if it's criminal liability and you somehow aided and abetted in his actions, either through lending actual assistance, covering him up, or failing to report if you have a duty to do so.
The bar for civil liability is even higher since often you don't have a duty to police your connection from misuse by others.
That said, however, the TOS from your service provider might have a joint and several liability clause that you are forced to agree to in the event that one of the users of your connection does something that gets your provider sued, and such a TOS may also permit your access to be terminated at the sole and final discretion of the provider, including but not limited to cases where a guest, authorized or otherwise, uses your connection in a way that violates the TOS.
So...you probably won't go to jail, you almost certaionly won't get sued, but you probably stand a good chance of kissing your internet goodbye.
The best thing your room mate can do (besides not torrenting at all) would be to get a seedbox in another country and use private trackers exclusively. This way, your IP address is never exposed to the swarm. You can download all the files from your seedbox to your house computer using encrypted FTP. You can rent a seedbox, which is just a rented virtual server that is already setup for torrenting, using prepaid credit cards and false personal information. You can get seedboxes in countries with more lax IP laws such as The Netherlands. It's still best to avoid public trackers as an extra layer of protection. I know several people that have used this route for years and they haven't had any trouble.
I think you are absolutely right. In a Civil case negative inferences can be drawn from the fact that you refuse to decrypt the partition. Still, it's probably a good idea in any case. a) You may have a chance to negotiate the access to data on your computer so that it protects your privacy other than for the case in court; if the data is unencrypted that will probably happen too late. b) If your computer is swept up during searching for your friend's data but you aren't included in the case then you may not have to answer about what is there.
The encryption is unlikely to help you if you are included as a defendant in a copyright case (though if you have done something else that might be "misunderstood" then you might still decide that losing such a case is better than showing what's on your hard disk) but there are many other situations where it may help.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Consider this scenario. Your friend illegally downloads copyrighted material--and you have full knowledge. Your friend is sued.
You are subpoenaed.
Are you going to lie for his ass?
Are you going to tell the truth and burn your friendship?
Add a complicator: You are sued also (but you are innocent).
Ask the two questions again. Further ask yourself: How are you going to defend yourself without fucking your friend over?
Present this scenario to your friend. Maybe it will wake his selfish sorry ass up.
In many cases, it's there is only one physical line to a location, so having all users get their own service isn't an option. Cellular isn't a good alternative due to high costs and data caps. An ISP is a shared utility for everyone living under the same roof. Perhaps the answer is to pay extra for multiple static IP addresses so that all the roommate's usage is logged to his own IP address, but I don't know if that will save you in court.
They are first in line to be sued.
Also, the actions of your roommate could bring down the man on ALL of you, and you get all your stuff confiscated and have to defend yourself in court.
Not much different if he had drugs mailed to the house, you are all in trouble when the postal service finds out..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If I had to give that key anywhere else but at my desk, at home, or with people around me, or under any form of threat, I would most likely have trouble remembering the key.
Hence the 'Anonymous Coward' posting on Slashdot.
There's no place like
The responses to this are a whole lot of hot air and legal advice from non-lawyers. The issue is far, far simpler if we just strip it right back to basics.
Q/ My roommate pulls shit is going to cause both of us hassle someday. I've asked him to stop, but he's a being a dick about it. What should I do?
A/ Get a new roommate.
Doesn't work that way.
You are NEVER obliged to self incriminate, during any trial civil or criminal. They can interpret your silence however they want, but they cannot force you to speak up. You can ALWAYS plead the 5th, and if you do so, any testimony you give can't be used against you in a criminal trial. The issue is whether what you say can be used against you criminally.
As for the hard drive, it's not a 5th amendment issue anyway because self incrimination only applies to your person, not to property.
It's a 4th amendment issue where they need to get a warrant for your hard drive by showing probable cause, after which if you fail to cough up the keys you can be held for obstruction.
The standard for searches of property for criminal cases is found in the 4th amendment and is based upon probable cause.
Beyond a reasonable doubt is for conviction. Warrants have a lesser standard.
Have detailed firewall logs showing who's downloading what.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
since you are roommates, your computer will most likely get searched too to make sure none of the downloads were ever on your computer. So if he downloaded and you watched from your computer, then you are in trouble too.
If you are going to go that route you may as well try to block all egress traffic you don't need.
From my experience torrents can't automatically work of just TPC 80. Unfortuatly they still get though to http:///anounce but generally all other connections are blocked. If he is unwilling to use some form of anonymity he probably cant be bothered getting torrents working when the outbound 30000:59999 are blocked.
YMMV for blocking something other than rtorrent.
make sure you computer is 100% clean, no cracked soft etc.
IANAL, but really, this is one of those basic principles of law: if you know someone is committing a crime, and you don't report them, then you are guilty. Maybe not of precisely the same crime they are committing (it depends where you live, what they're doing, etc.), but you are almost certainly guilty of something.
My advice: get out of there. You really don't want to be connected to this person.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
If I recall correctly from other Slashdot stories, UK law does think this way about encryption
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
You do realize that it wouldn't happen like on TV, right?
(as a side note, I am ignoring the differences between criminal and civil here. Most of it applies to both sides.)
If they've seized your computer, there will be a subpoena compelling you to provide the correct password. It's not like you'll be held in an interrogation with a cop saying "give me the password or else [blah, blah, blah]". It'll be a long, drawn out process. You'll learn the wonderful world of the legal process. Subpoenas, depositions, countless hearings, motions, and eventually you'll actually end up in the court room to testify about stuff.
"I'm stressed, I can't remember it" might (but probably) won't work on day one. By the time you end up in front of a judge, claiming that you can't remember the same password that you had to type every day to unlock your computer, he'll laugh at you, and then you can learn about "contempt of court".
The only thing you should say is "I have nothing to say without my attorney present". When asked questions that are irrelevant or argumentative, your attorney will say so and advise you not to answer. All in all, the more you say is bad. Refusing to do something, like give a password, is bad. Saying "I can't remember" is bad. Asking your attorney "should I answer?" is good. You have legal counsel, because you are not an attorney. Even if you are, you are directly and emotionally involved. Your attorney doesn't really care, except he/she is paid to protect your interests.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Look up the court cases. There was another one just recently.
You cannot be forced to give up a password, or combination, or decrypt encrypted information in order for the authorities to conduct a search. Doing so would be forcing you to testify against yourself. The courts have upheld this principle again, and again, and again. There is ample precedent and the rulings have been very consistent.
Searches, in general, are covered by the 4th amendment and probable cause. But a court still cannot force someone to violate the 5th amendment, in order to allow them to conduct a search. And that is the situation I was describing.
The guy at customs was the rare case in which a judge ordered someone to give up their password. But that was not even really an exception to the rule. Because they already knew that it contained illegal material, he could not be said to be incriminating himself.
By the way: you can look up some of the court cases on the EFF website, because they have followed a number of those cases.
Kind of like all the remote access software, IT security audit tools, and hacker tools that one may have on his/her computer.
Them: "He has hacker tools!"
Me: [after check with my legal counsel if I should respond] "Yes, I do network security work."
Sometimes it's advantageous to STFU. They may not find out until discovery that you do work in network security, so anything that they have on you is completely worthless.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Let me try to clarify, in order to avoid confusion over my use of "beyond reasonable doubt".
The 5th Amendment proscription against forcing people to testify against themselves applies even if the authorities have probable cause to search. Because probable cause might be grounds to search, but you need more than mere probably cause to override someone's clear Constitutional right protecting them from self-incrimination.
Therefore, a more stringent standard must be applied than mere probable cause. Very strong, actual evidence, such as the testimony of those two customs agents -- not just probable cause -- is required in those cases. (And in a case like this, unlike lots of other situations, their testimony can be called strong evidence because once the archive was opened up it was trivially easy to verify whether the agents were telling the truth.)
How is a safe combination different than a key? You can be compelled to unlock the door to your house if the police have a search warrant, can't you?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Hello from New Zealand. As of a recent law change here, the account holder is the person fully responsable for all traffic on the connection. My girlfriend's name is on the telco accout here and she would be fined a substantial amount of money and risk going to jail (eventually) if I or any of the other flatmates were to download from P2P. I run a pfsense firewall / router and have blocked all P2P traffic, we all use downloadnow (multi access to rapidshare, hotfile, megashares etc...) which you cannot be fined for using and is much harder to track you unless you are already been monitored. This may not be the case elseware, but I'd say it's not worth the risk.
Okay, first off your "friend" (note, we know it's not a friend, it's you or your butt/cunt buddy) needs to learn the interwebs better.
It's easy to avoid detection of "high risk" downloads. It's just not cool because it makes you a leech.
When you finish the "popular" movie/music/gay porn, then you need to stop seeding it right away.
Unless the laws changed, they can get you for seeding a fully down torrent after 24 hours.
I used to have comcast and i used to get noticed every now and then, and I kept telling them, show me the proof, which they never did.
I also switch to DSL, and i've never had a problem with DSL. Sure, my download speed is lower then comcast, but my ISP isn't owned by a big ass Media corporation either. So thus, my ISP doesn't need to bother with checking what i'm doing, because it's a waste of their money.
Here's some options, sure, they cost a little extra, but your buying piece of mind, right?
USENET
encrypted connection, boom, faster then P2P, doesn't have to worry about sharing, gets stuff fast.
Proxy server.
have all your P2P go thru a proxy server, so it's not your IP number on the torrents.
Or switch your ISP to one that isn't owned, or sleeping with a Media Corporation.
Be seeing you...
Since I have a little anal experience myself, I knew the sudden discomfort of having something in your ass after you've orgasmed.
Perhaps the only nugget of truth in the entire post.
Best solution: if you care and he won't comply, stop being roommates
Realistically, have him use a VPN. They aren't expensive (under $40/year), and there are a few good reasons to use them. For you, the VPN would be in his name and your ISP is none the wiser (aside from bandwidth usage) so you can sleep easy. For him, there's a layer of protection (NOT ABSOLUTE), and the compression tends to help your download speed a bit and upload speed quite a bit. (For me on JPEGs: 20 Mbs down / 1.5 Mbs up to 25 / 4 at the cost of +40 ms worst case latency.)
Trouble convincing him? Use a packet sniffer and start teasing him about his interests in porn or something. Probably a better idea (albeit less comical) is to block bittorrent and his favorite websites at the router, thus forcing him to use your suggestion, and granting you a massive credibility boost if he does get sued.
Right, blocking is a whole 'nother thing as compared to logging. In this case I don't think it'd go over so well with his roommate if he tried to block the torrent traffic, since the question was about protecting himself legally, not preventing the roommate from torrenting.
So do I and the contents of my inbox prove it. (filled with password reset emails)
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
How is a safe combination different than a key? You can be compelled to unlock the door to your house if the police have a search warrant, can't you?
No, but the police can force entry if you don't.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
By the time you end up in front of a judge, claiming that you can't remember the same password that you had to type every day to unlock your computer, he'll laugh at you, and then you can learn about "contempt of court".
Everyday?
I only type mine when the computer needs to be booted.
It only needs to be booted after a power failure such as being unplugged for seizure.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
IANAL, etc.
I do not believe in most states that you are required to cooperate with the police during execution of a search warrant. In fact I know in some cases they will refuse to allow you to cooperate in them in case they are looking for something they feel you could otherwise interfere with the search.
That being said however, if you do not cooperate in the execution to whatever extent might be reasonable (say unlocking the door), they would be allowed to break the door, lock, door frame, whatever it takes to execute the warrant and you may be better off cooperating in that case just because of the damage they would be allowed to perform.
Anybody could keep a log of their downloads and then simply delete the infringing files from the log before presenting it into evidence. This does not prove or even give credence to your defense, but the fact that you kept such meticulous logs shows that you had a reasonable suspicion that you might be brought into court for something...which makes you look even more guilty than before.
It would encourage the roommate to use a proxy/server and make everyone happy.
If you note the above comments he can still be liable if he is found to be 1 percent responsible. Knowing that he would torrent and logging it yet still providing a connection would potentially involve himself in the copy write impingement. The logs are not rock solid proof that it was all the roommates fault.
I haven't explored TrueCrypt fully - but as I understand it, you can have multiple hidden volumes on it, right? So - you decrypt the least incriminating volume. If the judge doesn't know about the three additional volumes, he can't even try to compel you to decrypt them.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You're right. And he's demonstrated that he *can* remember the password, as he uses it every time there is a power loss.
Your mention of legal representation is absolutely correct. I tell people to watch this video, so they will understand why saying anything is a bad thing, until your legal counsel is there to assist you.
Even a question as simple as this is dangerous to answer.
Them: [pointing to a computer on a table] "Is that your computer?"
You: [looking at the computer and realizing it looks like yours] "yes".
My computer is pretty unique. It has a stylized case, a better heatsink visible through the side, etc. Is that *my* computer? I can't answer that. It could be my computer. It could be my computer that someone replaced the hard drive in. It could be another computer that looks just like it picked up while busting a pedophile and child pornographer, and accidentally swapped in the evidence locker. I'm not going to prison for what someone else did, based on the evidence that I affirmed it to be my computer. In another room of my house, I have enough pieces to build an almost identical computer. I also have hard drives from various sources. One company was throwing out a box full of drives. I took them, tested them, and half were still working. Those particular drives were then formatted, and the working ones sold on eBay. There are others floating around my house, from computers I upgraded for people. Do I believe the people who I've upgraded their equipment wouldn't do bad things? Probably. Do I know 100% positively? No. Could they have assumed I dismantled a computer I was doing bad things with, so they "reassembled" it, and found the bad things? Possibly.
The burden of proof is on the state (police, states attorney, etc). Is it my computer? Prove that it is or isn't. Prove that the data on the drive is mine. Prove that it hasn't been tampered with since I last had control over it. Prove that I put whatever they found on it, and that *I* had knowledge of it. Maybe anything they found was placed by malware. Demanding that proof isn't my responsibility. My attorney will use those and more to prove my innocence. Providing them with *any* evidence can ruin you, regardless if you are innocent or guilty. You can be compelled to provide evidence. Your attorney will advise you when to open your mouth.
If the cops raided your house, and you had 10 kilos of heroin on the table in front of you, the right answer is still "I have nothing to say without my attorney present.", and when he's there, he will tell you to STFU. It's the difference between "We found 10 kilos of heroin in his residence" and "he confessed to possessing 10 kilos of heroin". ... and for those wondering, no I don't have illegal drugs, data, or anything else that would make me an interesting target for a raid. The only thing interesting are my phone calls, and it's only because most of my phone conversations end up sounding like a strange mix of George Carlin, Jon Stewart, and Penn Jillette.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
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Seems to me that the jury is still out on how liable you would be found as the law is still somewhat murky.
Either way though they will come and confiscate every piece of computing equipment in the place if they decide your IP/residence is of interest. So you will definitely want to keep an offsite backup of your data. That way if they take everything you can get another computer and get back to work right away.
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus
You do realize that it wouldn't happen like on TV, right?
(as a side note, I am ignoring the differences between criminal and civil here. Most of it applies to both sides.)
If they've seized your computer, there will be a subpoena compelling you to provide the correct password. It's not like you'll be held in an interrogation with a cop saying "give me the password or else [blah, blah, blah]". It'll be a long, drawn out process. You'll learn the wonderful world of the legal process. Subpoenas, depositions, countless hearings, motions, and eventually you'll actually end up in the court room to testify about stuff.
"I'm stressed, I can't remember it" might (but probably) won't work on day one. By the time you end up in front of a judge, claiming that you can't remember the same password that you had to type every day to unlock your computer, he'll laugh at you, and then you can learn about "contempt of court".
I have been in a situation where I then would have to be found in contempt of court. I had the same password for a year, typing it many times per day. After I stopped using it for a couple of months, I was unable to remember it when I went back to get data out of that computer (with the important ones being miscellaneous changes to FreeBSD that I'd not submitted yet).
If I'd been accused of having pirated something, I'd have been just as incapable of remembering the password as I was when I just tried to get open source software I'd written out of the computer.
And if anybody should need me to testify to that, I'm perfectly willing to.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
And he's demonstrated that he *can* remember the password, as he uses it every time there is a power loss.
So once every 15-20 yes I might be forced to reboot?
I have two computers here that have been running non-stop since setup, they haven't needed to be rebooted. In the event that the house needs electrical works there is always the UPS. Seriously this is the 21st century power loss doesn't just happen anymore (at least not regularly) , unless someone physically unplugs the system.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
If you really think that line of defense is going to work (regardless of how true it may be) when you're up against a bunch of high-paid corporate lawyers who want to make an example out of you, and who are also golf buddies with the Judge (or perhaps the Judge is good buddies with the CEO of the corporation suing you, or perhaps he got some nice gifts from them), you have another thing coming.
Well you're lucky you weren't being required to divulge your password then. The truthfulness of your statement that you really forgot the password is irrelevant. If the judge thinks you should know it, then you better cough it up, or else he can put you in jail indefinitely, until you do.
If you're thinking this resembles the Medieval days when the authorities "knew" that some guy had done something, and used torture to extract a confession (even if he really was innocent), and sometimes the accused even died from the torture without being convicted of the crime, confessing, or having any corroborating evidence, then you're right. Our justice system really isn't very far advanced from what it was 500 years ago when anyone the King didn't like was tortured and made to confess to all sorts of ridiculous charges.
So, you have battery backups, automatic backup generator, and an unlimited fuel supply? Gosh, it must be nice in your world. Well, that and perfect hardware that never has a fault, and never a need to move anything.
But when that day comes, you've used such an obscure password that you won't remember it when you do have to shutdown or reboot. That is brilliant disaster planning. Set the password once, and have no way to recover from something as simple as a reboot.
In the last year, I had a motherboard fault, which induced multiple reboots until I changed it. I upgraded the video card twice, memory once, CPU once, and three times needed to clean the CPU, power supply, and exhaust fans.
But in your ideal world, reboots don't happen, right? You don't upgrade. You don't make changes. And you never have disaster planning provisions. That's brilliant. I wish you and your data the best, as you will loose it all soon enough.
I already know your answer. "But I have backups". And for some reason you think a subpoena or warrant won't demand that? Nah, you're the smartest guy in the world, and you don't keep backups. That's fine though, even if your secrets are never given up, and there is probable cause to believe you have done something bad, you'll be on vacation in prison for a while. Lets not forget, it's rather hard to keep a job if you're in jail. By the time you come out, you won't have a house, a job, or a life. Welcome yourself back to the real world, starting back in the real world for nothing.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
There is attorney client privilege. Attorneys are also officers of the court. And by putting your attorney into this position, he may no longer be your attorney, he may be a witness for the prosecution.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
How is a safe combination different than a key? You can be compelled to unlock the door to your house if the police have a search warrant, can't you?
They can't force you to open the door. But they CAN force the door open.
Doesn't work that way.
You are NEVER obliged to self incriminate, during any trial civil or criminal. They can interpret your silence however they want, but they cannot force you to speak up. You can ALWAYS plead the 5th, and if you do so, any testimony you give can't be used against you in a criminal trial. The issue is whether what you say can be used against you criminally.
As for the hard drive, it's not a 5th amendment issue anyway because self incrimination only applies to your person, not to property.
It's a 4th amendment issue where they need to get a warrant for your hard drive by showing probable cause, after which if you fail to cough up the keys you can be held for obstruction.
Partially right. They can't interpret your silence however they want. If you have the legal right to remain silent, then silence cannot be used as evidence of anything.
You cannot give a testimony and then plead the Fifth to undo it. "Pleading the Fifth" isn't even really a thing... it's simply the refusal to make a testimony that could incriminate yourself... anything you say before refusing to say anything can be used against you.
The hard drive IS a Fifth Amendment issue because to provide such access to your property would incriminate your person. Under the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement needs a warrant to search your hard drive, but you are protected by the Fifth Amendment from being forced to hand over passwords.
I'm sure no one has ever tried that as a defece before.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Most people don't leave their computers running 24/7, especially if they're laptops. We're talking about some blokes sharing a flat, not someone running a server centre.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If I recall correctly from other Slashdot stories, UK law does think this way about encryption
Yes, if you are going to encrypt a disk here, you'd better have a good way of remembering or reconstructing the password. "I forgot" will get you a prison sentence.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So, to summarize: unless they already have proof that you have illegal material in your encrypted data, even the courts cannot force you to decrypt it, or surrender your password.
Wouldn't the MAFIAA say that ISP records of copyrighted materials going to your IP address was sufficien proof that you had illegally downloaded material on your (encrupted) disk drive?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
How is a safe combination different than a key? You can be compelled to unlock the door to your house if the police have a search warrant, can't you?
They can't force you to open the door. But they CAN force the door open.
So why can't they force your safe open?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you have the legal right to remain silent, then silence cannot be used as evidence of anything.
If I was on a jury and someone refused to testify on their own behalf (unless it was clearly done as some sort of poliical protest), I would think it very odd and almost certainly indicative of guilt. This is a psychological, not a legal opinion..
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I haven't explored TrueCrypt fully - but as I understand it, you can have multiple hidden volumes on it, right? So - you decrypt the least incriminating volume. If the judge doesn't know about the three additional volumes, he can't even try to compel you to decrypt them.
Duh, what they do is weigh the hard drive and realise there are parts of it hidden because the amount you admit to doesn't equal the weight of the whole disk. I'd have thought the so-called "techies" on here would find this obvious.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I guess you don't live in Houston. I'm astounded how often we loose power here. I get a small power interruption at least once per week, but those are handled by my UPS. Maybe once a month they go longer than my UPS's can supply power. I think its time I just invested in my own power plant in my back yard...
The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand. - Frank Herbert
That's why there's a jury selection process. Also, jurors can't declare someone guilty just because they refused to talk... There would have to be substantial evidence besides that, and perhaps the refusal to talk would be the proverbial icing on the giant guilty murder cake.
Put the ISP account in his name, that way any infringement notices will go to him. Or get your own ISP that you pay for and share with no one and let the others work it out amongst themselves. That way you don't have to worry about it.
...is that folks still continue to download illegal stuff using connections in their name even after being told what can happen to them. Most folks that don't read slashdot or other tech blogs (read: 95% of the population) don't believe that this could ever happen to them. I've been down this path before, but it wasn't with a roommate, it was with a partner in a small business. He would download crap from our office which was in the company's name, and he and I were the two officers of the company, so we would probably both be screwed. In the end, I realized there was nothing I could really do since he wasn't interested in stopping, and I couldn't force him to stop. I just came to grips with the fact that if they ever came knocking, I could let them sift through my PC which had various code and other uninteresting and totally legal stuff on it, and then point them to his (personally owned) PC which was full of illegal crap and let them decide who did the downloading.
I think that was his implication. He has his UPS. Since none of us can afford an infinitely sized UPS (unless you happpen to have a ZPM), then he'd have N+1 whole-house generators with sufficiently sized fuel tank so you could always get refueled regardless of what happens.
I did some work at a datacenter with a beautiful setup. It didn't look like they could ever go down for power related reasons. DC room, N+1 generators, huge fuel supply. They were telling me about an incident a few years before. A nasty blizzard came through. No fuel was brought in to anywhere in the area for weeks. Gas stations weren't supplied, but that didn't matter much since no one could drive anywhere. Their 100,000 gallon fuel supply was almost depleted, so they contracted with a company a few hundred miles away to truck it in, and keep it coming in every 5 days until the utility power was restored. I believe that left them with a 2-3 day window in case there was a problem with a truck. I don't think most of us have the resources for that.
Even the best systems can be defeated by human stupidity. A friend of mine lost power because the power company disconnected her home for nonpayment. The thing was, she had paid. They were suppose to disconnect the neighbors house. They ran her around in circles for about an hour, and finally realized their mistake. So 12 hours without power. After 2 hours, she decided they weren't bringing the power back up any time soon. 10 hours on generator power. She had to refuel the generator once (it's a standard 5kw generator, 5 hr nominal runtime).
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It seems the argument he is making would be more akin to being forced to unlock your toolbox so that authorities could double check you aren't hiding those six missing people inside.