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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."
So surely the companies are distributing the movies to everyone. As they are the rights holder, it should be legal to download it?
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.
...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.
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Oh sorry that was me. I've been living in your roof for 3 years now.
How's Sally doing in school?
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.
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.
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.
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I did a search on some IP addresses assigned to overseas US military facilities. Let's just say it turns out US soldiers like transsexuals and big girls. And possibly big transsexual girls.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Quick pass PROTECTIP or SOPA and then we can catch these companies pirating content then shut them down for a felony pirating offense since Company=Person=IP address.
Have you considered just using www.youporn.com?
"His name was James Damore."
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.
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
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
Banning cars would make more sense.
Unlike bittorrent, cars actually kill people and are a huge environmental problem.