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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."
...that if a property is doing sluggishly the PR arms of the studios put it out on the 'net to try to raise buzz. The irony is that then the legal arms of these same companies go after those very people the other side of their company want to resuscitate their ailing properties by word-of-mouth.
It's cynical, hypocritical and just downright fucked up.
By highlighting the above our intention is not to get anyone into trouble . . .
This quote is not from Hollywood studios but the author of the article on torrentfreak. This is somewhat of a non-story. It is possible that an employee of a studio is downloading via torrents without permission. After all, how many people do you know use their work networks to download pirated content. Their companies most likely do not approve of such actions. This is only a story if a high-ranking employee is pirating. If the downloading was authorized, what was the purpose? If someone from the legal/copyright department is doing so to verify that their content is on the internet, that's well within the scope of their jobs.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Not only that, but if they are indeed sharing, you could argue that all the stuff you have downloaded were from their IPs, so really the rightsholders were giving it out for free.
FTA:
"In a response Buma/Stemra issued a press release stating that their IP-addresses were spoofed. A very unlikely scenario, but one that will be welcomed by BitTorrent pirates worldwide. In fact, they’d encourage Sony, Universal and Fox to say something similar. After all, if it’s so easy to spoof an IP-address, then accused file-sharers can use this same defense against copyright holders."
This is quite a smart move. Getting these big organisations to explain this away will only add credence to the valid reasons that the public should be able to use to protect themselves. It doesn't matter what your personal opinion is on the morals of the situation the plain fact is an IP is not a person and the clearer this is made to the judges the better. Of course there is a the chance that the IPs were added manually by the guys who set the project up, they already admitted that there is still test data in there (do a check for 192.168.*.*) so it's far from perfect.
If they are downloading them, they are sharing them as well.
That's simply not true. They could have turned off uploading.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
It seems to me it's not so much about giving up enforcement than pointing out that ip isn't a good way to identify law breakers.
It more like, a murderer used a stolen cars ( Or the murderer give/sell the car away) and the police arrest the owner of the car...
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Actually it's pretty much a story if it's low-level employees doing it.
Come on! the MPAA and RIAA are always trying to get ISPs to police their customers and make sure nobody is using their connection to pirate stuff.
But then they can't even block their own freaking employees from going to torrents and pirating copyrighted works?
I mean, it should be easier to control employees than customers, no? So this makes the point of the ISPs that have long said that they can't monitor their customers and make sure they don't pirate.
It's not about being totally hidden. It's about being more hidden than the spaz next door.
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I download torrents all the time without uploading anything. There are many ways of preventing outbound traffic...
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Good grief, are you really that dumb? Presumption of innocence means you are not guilty until proven otherwise (ie at trial). It does NOT refer to what the police do or who they consider guilty (a suspect). The stuff that happens BEFORE the trial is based on 'probable cause'. If your car is seen fleeing a crime scene, there is good reason (probable cause) to think you were involved. No, you have not been PROVEN to be involved yet, that would occur at trial. Same thing with an IP address. No, it does not mean the owner of the address is the guilty party, but there is probable cause to think he is, and that probable cause opens the door to the collection of further evidence and legal action. Nobody has been convicted or successfully sued based solely on an IP address.
I am going to go out on a limb and say that your corporate environment does not give every workstation their own public IP address.
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