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"Anonymous" File-Sharing Darknet Ruled Illegal By German Court

Posted by timothy on from the your-virtual-papers-please dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A court in Hamburg, Germany, has granted an injunction against a user of the anonymous and encrypted file-sharing network RetroShare. RetroShare users exchange data through encrypted transfers and the network setup ensures that the true sender of the file is always obfuscated. The court, however, has now ruled that RetroShare users who act as an exit node are liable for the encrypted traffic that's sent by others."

15 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. Exit node malware coming soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who thinks it will take long for the hackers to create malware that sets OTHERS up as unwitting exit nodes?

    1. Re:Exit node malware coming soon by Squiddie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      About two days ago.

    2. Re:Exit node malware coming soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Someone should hack the Judge's computer and use as an exit node....

    3. Re:Exit node malware coming soon by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yes, it is. In the older times, moderation was a two-step process: First you chose the moderation, then you pressed a button to submit it. That way, when you mis-clicked (and honestly, it happens to everyone from time to time), you could correct your mistake before submitting the moderation. Now moderation goes into effect immediately when you click. No chance to fix mistakes.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    4. Re:Exit node malware coming soon by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Wait - who said that you get to define "darknet"?

      Seemingly, the most accepted definition of a darknet would be, "I'm actually anonymous, there are no lights shining on me, I can be who and what I want to be, and no worries about the law, or the church, or my kin, or mobs chasing me down!"

      For the most part, the people on the darkwebs I have navigated don't give a damn who sees their material. Their primary concern is that an oppressive government doesn't come kicking their doors down. Their secondary concern is to avoid embarrassment for the stuff being traced back to them. MOST people want other to read, or view, their original material. Whether that material be political in nature, or religious, or even CP, the people who produce it are indeed distributing the stuff as widely as they dare.

      The public can download I2P or any other darknet software, install it, and browse the material published there. The government can do the same. Darknetizens WANT their voices to be heard.

      --
      "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
  2. I don't understand German law but... by garcia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is ridiculous. All common carriers then should be held liable for the network traffic that passes around.

    1. Re:I don't understand German law but... by fredprado · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Anything can be arbitrarily deemed as "legitimate" or not. Google is not more or less legitimate than Piratebay it just have a much larger legal budget. Similarly no darknet is designed to do what you imply they where, they were designed to allow for people to freely transfer data (whatever type of data they see fit) without the fear of being persecuted by governments be it China, North Korea or US. The former will persecute you if do anything against the interests of the party, and the latter will persecute you if you do anything against the interests of corporations.

    2. Re:I don't understand German law but... by ifiwereasculptor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Technology shouldn't be deemed illegal because of the intents for which it was originally conceived. Or should we regulate microwave ovens like we regulate fighter jets?

  3. That's what I always thought about Tor by tftp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is not whether it is "legally" "legal." You cannot afford a lawyer that can argue that part. If the traffic came from your computer you are guilty, and that's it - this is how most judges will interpret the act. There is no way to prove otherwise - your incoming traffic is encrypted. Even if the judge understands the technology he may slap you with being an accessory to the crime.

    Some mention public telecommunications services. I'm sure those services have an entirely different legal environment - starting with their corporate charter that is signed by the Secretary of their State. A peasant in his hovel does not have even a shred of paper to point at; he is not a corporation, nobody with the government had a chance to audit his intentions... not that it should be required, but as things are it is required.

  4. Liability, the law, and you by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's be honest: If you're doing something that someone with significantly more money than you is upset by, you will be punished. Most of what you were taught as a kid was a lie; The law isn't here to protect you, but control you. Every law advantages one group by disadvantaging another. And the idea of morality, ethics, punishment proportional to the harm, any judicial concept you care to toss out I can show numerous and significant examples where it has been thrown out because of the money issue I mention at the start of this.

    Money isn't power per-se, but in this society, the value of a person is the balance in their accounts. If you're a valuable person, you get special treatment -- police will investigate crimes for you more readily, favors are easier to get, and everybody wants to be your friend. But if you don't have money, then the only real power you have is that people like you greatly outnumber people like them. But unless that potential is actualized, forget it.

    Laws like this will continue to punish file sharers because file sharers are poor. You're being punished, not because what you're doing is unethical or immoral, but because you make less money than the people who say it should be illegal. Whether it's the german courts, the european courts, the american courts... it doesn't really matter. All countries are the same: With enough gold, anything is possible. And when you have enough gold, the first thing you do is punish and inflict harm on anyone who has less than you do... or else. Or else they could some day have enough gold too.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:Liability, the law, and you by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

      One might easily imagine a scenario where these encrypted darknets, perhaps aided by those whose machines were hacked and turned unknowingly into exit nodes, remain so difficult to penetrate that the effort will only be expended as part of larger military conflict between nations and not for what amounts to a relatively minor economic matter like copyright.

      One might imagine that instead of imagining, one simply looks to history: When PGP 2.6.2 was released, it opened the possibilities of encrypted and secured data exchange between private citizens that the government could not easily crack. Citizens now had access to technology only the military had, and it proliferated rapidly. It led to the rapid expansion of the internet, secured business transactions; It made quite a few people very wealthy, and changed the entire landscape of society. Our society now relies on something that was, not even all that long ago, considered to have no practical application beyond military conflict.

      And now, private citizens are building their own technologies and tools to withstand the sustained efforts of a coalition of the world's largest governments to spy on them. It's being used to help people organize politically and socially in oppressive regimes, bring medicine and information about the outside world to those who otherwise could not. It's also helping terrorists, pedophiles, and murderers. There is good, and there is bad, but encrypted "darknets" are increasingly a part of our lives, and looking at the history, it's only a matter of time before outlawing them will not only be impossible and foolhearty, but also not in the best interests of national security.

      When I hear about this endless bullshit with the RIAA, copyright law, filesharing... I realize that they're helping to create a digital underground not unlike what happened during the prohibition. Thanks to them, identity thieves have convenient and covert forums to ply their trade, and a lot of that money winds up in the hands of terrorists and political extremists both foreign and domestic. Because they've targetted such a wide swath of the general population and forced them to develop effective defenses against snooping, they've made it easier for those truly damaging to our interests to hide in the noise. It speeds the development of ever-stronger crypto and secret communication channels.

      Would we really need cryptography if the governments, corporations, and wealthy private interests, were not so aggressive in turning everyone into a criminal? No. Which means crypto communications would be easily spotted, and it would be easier to monitor and track the truly dangerous. It is a direct consequence of heavy-handed tactics like this that has created a significant and well-connected network of "cyber" criminals; In the beginning we had Napster. Now we have bittorrent and P2P software. You know who else has those? Bot herders. Identity thieves. Non-criminals developed the technology to protect themselves from over-zealous enforcement agents, and as a consequence hundreds of millions of computers right now are engaged in acts of terrorism, vandalism, sabotage, and theft, on a scale that is hard to even comprehend. The size of these criminal enterprises dwarfs that of the entire entertainment industry, globally.

      By the time the governments of the world wake up and realize what they've done, we'll be looking at a global criminal infrastructure mated to our communication networks, with a robust distribution network thanks to the drug trade, that not even a coalition of every first world government will have a snowball's chance in hell of dismantling. All because they listened to a few people out to make a buck, and conveniently forgot the law of unintended consequences.

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  5. Remedy probably forthcoming shortly :P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can see it happening already, someone will donate to the judge a cheap and crap computer (Raspberry Pi fits the bill perfectly) and run up a Tor exit node on it. Much hilarity ensues. :-)

    It's academic anyway, because this is a ruling that will get overturned in the EU for being in conflict with basic freedom of speech. Encryption of communications is not illegal in EU.

    What's more, Europeans tend to be strongly opposed to the excesses of the copyright lobby, and strongly supportive of freedom of file sharing. The politicians even listen to them on this subject, as the official political representation shows. So, that judge is out on a rather lonely limb, and a stupid limb if he'd thought about the implications for two seconds before running off to the golf club. It's unlikely to stand.

  6. Re:I doubt the ruling matters... by westlake · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's because an IP address is not a human being when it comes to matters of law.

    The decisions of a US district court can't be expected to carry much weight in Germany.

    On 12 May 2010, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) granted an injunction to a music rights marketing company against the private operator of a WLAN under contributory negligence rules.

    The BGH agreed that the plaintiff had no civil law entitlement to damages for breach of copyright by the defendant, either as perpetrator or participant, since it had not been proved that the defendant had shared the music himself or deliberately helped a third party to do so. There was every reason to assume that the person to whom an IP address had been allocated would be responsible for an infringement committed from that address. However, in this case, this assumption had been credibly refuted by the defendant's claim that he had been on holiday when the offence was committed. Neither had he intentionally participated in an infringement by a third party.

    However, under contributory negligence rules, the BGH found the WLAN owner liable for failing to prevent a protected work from being made available to the public (Art. 19a of the Urheberrechtsgesetz - Copyright Act). By operating a WLAN that was not sufficiently secure, the defendant had wilfully and, with sufficient causality, contributed to this infringement and failed to meet his duty of due diligence in this respect. Even private individuals - if only in their own interest to protect their data - could be expected to verify whether their WLAN was sufficiently secure to prevent its misuse by third parties standing outside.

    BGH Finds WLAN Operator Liable

    [2010]

    TorrentFreak, to, to its credit, posted this link as an Update to its original story.

  7. Re:Stop stealing you fucking faggots by chilvence · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have to laugh at the copyright fundamentalist viewpoint, having seen with my own eyes that outside of western Europe and north America, it is taken about as seriously as a Lada full of Clowns trying to qualify for a formula one race... In some places even the idea that you could have 60 quid to waste on a computer game to begin with! But carry on living in your bubble, it is obviously our god given duty to ensure that imaginary property remains obscenely over valued, so that we can continue to produce the Bill Gates'es and Kanye Wests we all so heavily depend upon in society. It must be fun to imagine how much richer you would be if everyone just played fair...

  8. The Internet interprets censorship ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ARM boards are so cheap and light on power that I bet people will be installing them out of sight wherever a trickle of current won't be detected.

    The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

    We expected this to happen in some 3rd world countries, not in our own, but it seems that we were wrong.