Slashdot Mirror
Sony, Universal and Fox Caught Pirating Through BitTorrent
New submitter Bad_Feeling sends in a followup to the story we discussed on Monday about a new site that scanned a few popular torrent trackers and linked torrents to IP addresses. The folks at TorrentFreak decided to check IP addresses belonging to major companies in the entertainment industry and published lists of pirated files from several, including Fox, Sony, and NBC Universal. Of course, they used the information to make a slightly different point than the industry usually does:
"By highlighting the above our intention is not to get anyone into trouble, and for that reason we masked out the end of the IP addresses to avoid a witch hunt. An IP address is not a person, IP addresses can be shared among many people, and anyone can be behind a keyboard at any given time."
So their point is if IPs change, and it is hard to figure out who broke the law, law enforcement might as well just give up?
I'm all for sharing of information and media freely. Hell! I pirate the shit out of everything, but this is the worst argument for it I have ever heard.
The argument is equivalent to: A murderer used many cars during his escape, since it is hard to pinpoint which one is his we should give up.
Then obviously we should ban cars.
It still doesn't make it legal to redistribute it...
peerblock + bluetack list (p2p) + any torrenting app = you won't/can't be tracked by any industry in any legal fashion. It literally is that simple these days.
confirms that even of the thousands of torrents I've downloaded over the years, my IP address comes up with zero records.
Hoax? No, they had certainly scanned TPB for recent torrents - they listed me accurately, that's not a coincidence. That doesn't mean their lists are complete, accurate or anything like that, I'm sure it's easy to poison a tracker into giving out IPs that aren't actually torrenting. Maybe the trackers add some random IPs too for plausible deniability? Whatever the case, the legal value is hogwash. Why should it be a joke anyway? Grab a torrent, connect to the tracker, voila you get a list of IPs to stuff in a database. That and being illegal too, at least in my country so in any it'd be thrown out on that basis alone. But it's not like they did something magic.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Torrents work by establishing connections either peer to peer or peer to seed. Peers request blocks of the file over those connections, download them and then check their hashes against those in the torrent file.
Peers may perform some form of tit-for-tat to punish those who download without uploading but seeds aren't trying to download anything so can't perform tit-for-tat. So it's perfectly possible to download from a torrent while refusing to upload anything.
Oh and the stats collected by the tracker are completely dependent on the honesty of the clients that report them.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I don't know why this article at torrentfreak doesn't just list the IP address, it only took me all of 3 minutes to figure what the real IPs were.
... 80p DTS AC3 dxva-LoNeWolf (12.19 GB) Nov, 2011 ... port.480p.WEB-DL.x264-mSD (75.64 MB) Nov, 2011 ... rls.S01E08.HDTV.XviD-P0W4 (183.19 MB) Nov, 2011
... 20p.HDTV.x264-IMMERSE.mkv (1013.61 MB) Nov, 2011
... ac vice (HDScene Release) (3.70 GB)
For the world to see now:
208.84.225.10
United States (US), California, Culver City
Downloaded files
Conan the Barbarian 2011
The Black Keys - Lonely Boy (7.50 MB) Nov, 2011
VA - Dubstep Meditations - 2010 [FLAC] (336.47 MB) Nov, 2011
{www.scenetime.com}Beavis
[ www.TorrentDay.com ] -
208.73.113.6
United States (US), Florida, Fort Lauderdale
Downloaded files
Beatport Halloween Trance 2011 {aSBo} (389.74 MB) Dec, 2011
Cowboys and Aliens [2010] dvd rip nlx (1.28 GB) Dec, 2011
Game of Thrones Season 1 Complete 720p (14.53 GB) Nov, 2011
2.Broke.Girls.S01E08.HDTV.XviD-P0W4.avi (174.89 MB) Nov, 2011
How.to.Make.It.in.America
216.205.224.10
United States (US), California, Valley Village
Downloaded files
Super 8 2011 1080p BRRip
Most civil actions are "Preponderance of the Evidence", which means more likely than not.
Some civil issues require "Clear and Convincing" evidence, which is a higher burden, this is often used for counter claims that involve having legal fees covered (for example, I sue the insurance company, claiming they need to pay, they counter sue, saying I acted fraudulently in getting the policy, I would generally only need Preponderance, they would likely need Clear and Convincing, but if they one the counter suit, I would owe them for all of their legal fees).
I've actually never heard the words "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" in a civil case, except for during jury instruction where the judge tries to explain that it is a lower burden than a criminal case.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg