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Software That Flagged HBO.com For Piracy Will Power U.S. 'Six Strikes' System
An anonymous reader writes "A copyright monitoring program called MarkMonitor mistakenly flagged HBO.com for pirating its own shows, and sent automatic DMCA takedown notices to the network. It's a funny story, until you realize that MarkMonitor is the same software that will power the U.S. Copyright Alerts System (a.k.a. "Six Strikes"), due to be rolled out by the five largest U.S. ISPs sometime in the next month."
That "Game of Thrones" show has been stealing blatantly from the "Song of Ice and Fire" book series for 2 years now.
But if you're going to flag anyone, how about you get those thieves at Fox for pirating music from Jonathan Coulton? I think a fine of $22,500 for everyone who downloaded the Glee version sounds about right.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
At least our e-voting software is safe.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
due to be rolled out by the five largest U.S. ISPs
Which ones? I'd like to know who doesn't want my money.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Well, you could always stand up and demand your leaders repeal this nonsense. Is that not one of the stipulations of the political system in the US, that one must participate? /., but I never hear about anyone actually DO anything. And no, a strongly worded facebook post is not doing something.
I see a LOT of folks complaining on
Say what you want about the French, but they have it right. Their leaders are scared shitless of the population. That is how it must be. When the leaders do the things the US politicians do each day, France burns.
So, I would say, If you don't like it, "man up" and do something.
I think it should be flagging all the ISPs to prove that all these instances of MarkMonitor are legit.
is Darl McBride involved in this business?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I'm sure even the USians will enjoy more and more copyright owners getting sued by themselves.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Enough false positives and the system will quickly fade into obscurity.
What if, in addition to the flagging software, they also had another software that answered to DMCA takedowns with a "No, it's not illegitimate".
Would it create an infinite loop of takedowns and restores?
It's puzzled me for some time that ISPs are so eager to help with these piracy measures. Can someone explain to my why they are so eager to please when there is no reasonable legal threat against them? (IIUC, the DMCA safe-harbor clauses immunize them.) The same goes for YouTube. Why is Google so eager to go above and beyond the DMCA(*)?
(*) I am aware of Viacom v. Google, but my understanding is the appellate judgment in many ways reaffirms the DMCA safe-harbor provisions.
I'm not from the US, but if you really wanted to pirate stuff, isn't just renting a proxy or doing ssh -D somewhere else outside the country enough?
Or is it one of those measures trying to prevent John Doe from using bittorrent? (and expecting he won't learn how to use a proxy)
I wish we in the US would get as upset about corporations taking away our rights (through the purchase of laws) as we do about gun laws. This would not be an issue if that were to happen.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Just as the article mentions, what if this causes sites to be excluded from Google if they just mention the copyrighted names? On a forum, a blogpost, etc. Plus you can count on it people are going to try and game this system to get competitors excluded.
KERNEL PANIC -SIGFAULT AT ADDRESS #51A54D07
,,,until one remembers that all this nonsense is backed by guns.
Imagine if all these goons were not taken seriously. Just imagine if these creepy and cranky old men had no courts, prisons, armies and police. Imagine if it were just a bunch of hysterical old grumps sitting around in a room complaining about things they didn't like. All of us in society would look at them no differently than we'd view an old bum muttering to himself.
If it is all F*#?ed up then pretty soon it will just be ignored.
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
Wouldn't that make these DMCA notices fraudulent?
They're not the copyright holder, and I thought a DMCA notice was the equivalent of a sworn affidavit that you were the owner of it -- and Righthaven already established that if you don't have legal standing, you can get smacked down.
I can't see how this automated service could have any legal standing to be issuing DMCA takedown notices.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So, when someone from one of the media companies decides to pirate a show from another media company, and does so more than six times, what kind of fines are we looking at?
I am John Hurt.
The US is the signer of a data treaty with both Canada and the EU that this violates.
As the holder of multiple copyrights in Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand, I do not accept this Six Strikes violation of my International Treaty rights, which are superior to any DCMA legislation in the US.
Period.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You probably already pay for internet service. For a little bit more money/month, you can get away with as much piracy as you want. If you don't understand all the terms/lingo I'm about to use, hit the google. Here's what you can do:
Scenario 1: switch from bit torrent to usenet. Automate the downloading of your favorite shows with sickbeard + hellanzb/sabnzbd/your-favorite-nzb-grabber-here. Download movies with CouchPotato. I have this set up, but due to abuse of DMCA, a lot of the good nzb indexing sites (newzbin, nzbmatrix) are gone. Thinking about getting rid of a usenet provider alltogether because of this unfortunate turn of events.
Scenario 2: get a VPN. I have a VPN thru my usenet provider. I run a Win7 virtual machine for bit-torrent piracy purposes (since the good nzb indexing sites have gotten taken down, i find myself resorting to bit torrent more often now). All torrent traffic goes thru the VPN. Slows it down, but not by much.
Scenario 3: get a seedbox. Seedboxes are for fast bit-torrenting. The downloading/uploading happens on a server that you rent. Get one outside of the US. Since it's not your home connection that gets slammed, you can share more upload bandwidth with the community. When the download is done, transfer your file to your machine with a ssh/sftp client. with a good media player and a good connection, you can probably start watching a video file 10-15 seconds after you start the transfer.
Scenario 4: get a VPS. Can't find many that are bit-torrent friendly. But they're basically little virtual OS instances (typically linux) that you get root on. You can roll your own VPN with a VPS (as opposed to buying a VPN service), so if you are comfortable with Linux, going the VPS route might be your best and cheapest bet (then you can do #2 for cheap). There are plenty that are hosted outside of the US.
It's too bad that hollywood and the media content creation industries in general have been so blinded by greed that they've missed the boat on this whole internet thing. They could have made WAY more money, probably ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE MORE MONEY if they'd embraced the internet as a content delivery tool OVER A DECADE AGO, instead of using political pull to secure legislation that protects their backwards and antiquated business model.
Seriously. There are METRIC FUCKLOADS of money to be made on online advertising. Google is proof positive of this.
Of course, just giving away the content "for free" (in exchange for ad revenue) is such an anathema to the greedy fucks at the top of the totem-pole in the industry that the idea was probably never seriously on the table in the first place.
Such a shame.
I keep saying that I'd pay $100/month for a service that allowed me to watch or listen to whatever movie, tv show, or song I typed into the search box. Instead we have this bullshit like hulu and netflix, with arbitrary restrictions on what you can watch on your TV vs your computer, what you can watch via the net vs get as a disk in the mail, etc. It's bullshit and there's no technological reason for how bad this situation sucks. It sucks because of corporate greed, so I've made it my moral obligation to ensure that none of these fuckwits ever get any of my money.
Go buy a VPN.
We _want_ them to use defective by design, ineffectual, costly systems that will blow up in their faces! Didn't you get the memo?
PS - The ISPs are kinda on our side here, as they'd rather not be wet nurses to trogoldytes and their business models.
Anyone know how this monitoring software works and if any workarounds exist?
I'd guess that they grab tracker information and then gather IP addresses of those sharing but I have never heard of this company or their "product" until today.
Thanks
Were I Anonymous (and I am most certainly not), I would see this as a great opportunity to engage our fine Congress into taking up action. Since I am NOT Anonymous thus clearly lacking the knowledge I am not sure this could even be done....yet....
Would it not be thoughtful if something could be set up such that all sorts of protected files were downloaded and shared from a congressman's identifiable computer? Were it possible to acquire and spoof the MAC address, the IP address and set up a nice little honey pot for this wondrous program to sense and respond too. Six strikes you say, should happen quick and then we have our dear congress person getting dropped...oh wait you say, they are on the white list, but then Anonymous still does the job for now it can show the preferential treatment which certainly is news unto its self. Or, just bluw skying you know, take the old adage garbage in garbage out and just confuse the poor program. Help it to see everyone as a violator thus rendering its conclusions moot.
Hacking websites is one thing, sticky congress people into a situation where they have to try and explain that (1) it was not them and (2) why they feel this is good for the country would make for more interesting news coverage. Vigilantes that use their power to shine a light on a wrong do more power then just acting out in anger (hacking websites). I don't have the power or the knowledge or the influence to effectively change the mind of greedy SOB in Congress, but maybe there are those that do,,,,I wonder.
Funny, I posted AC because i started to ponder, what if when I get home I find some gentlemen in dark suits waiting for me, just to ask a few questions...Please, come with us.
A network torrent where all files are renamed to "metalica - (Insert bad song name here).mp3" and transferred unencrypted? Count me in. It needs to be run by a group of lawyers so they can sue the pants off big content providers who claim DMCA takedowns.
Things like this keep happening becase we (by which I mean "YOU") allow this to happen.
The media industry is getting very little push-back against their egregious affronts to personal liberty. Because we aren't pushing back.
Every one of you sits there reading this news and posting about how terrible it is and doing nothing at all about it.
Nobody else will fight your battles for you. So long as you remain on your ass, this will just keep getting worse.
This is your fault.
$22,500 is insufficient. Rupert Murdoch should be required to drop his pants on Main Street and everyone take a whack at his morals.
How can they know if you pirate or not? Monitor your bandwidth? Isn't that the thing we wanted to prevent when we voted against SOPA in the first place?
Was this mandated by some law I've not heard was passed...or, are these companies all signing onto this one service voluntarily? If so...why, what is in the bargain for them, they have immunity anyway over what their users do on the networks...why even bother with this?
Collusion is illegal in the United States (and most other places). How come the five largest ISPs in the country all deciding to implement the same tracking system and enforcing the same restrictions on millions of subscribers who have no other alternative to their services is not being investigated by the DOJ?
When the railroads did things like this, the DOJ was quick to step in. When the Unions did things like this the DOJ was quick to step in. Today when big businesses do things like this, the DOJ is nowhere to be found. The DOJ is supposed to protect the 100% of the people, not just 1%. But, that is the price we pay to have the best plutocracy on the planet.
My optimistic side hopes this will eventually lead to a resurgence of independent ISPs.
If Netflix ever allow for downloading I will gladly stop pirating to use it.
If we could just organize an anti-sopa-like campaign but make it a boycott of internet service - as in "I'm turning off my service on the day this is implemented".
I'd really be impressed if such a thing could be organized but who am I kidding, living without Internet is like holding your breath.
I am just wondering why we are calling a company software. MarkMonitor is not a piece of software it is a company specializing in brand protection.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Every ISP who signed on is also a cable company. They vend content from Big Content. Big Content surely says "if you want to keep our content, you have to help us protect it". So they sign on in order to keep the ability to offer cable.
ISPs who are not cable providers like sonic.net have no incentive to sign on. They'll just annoy their customers to no advantage.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Hmmm... I meant electrical power, that's a fundamental cost at a datacenter :)
The one thing I have to say to your post though is: remember corporations are made of people, so are countries, and unrelated to the previous statements: chaotic economies tend to be driven by consumer fear (still people). If you want somebody to blame for society's problems, make your way to the nearest mirror and take a look inside.
Or just use a private torrent site and be done with it. They're not watching private torrent sites, because that would require that someone gave them an account, which would be pretty monumentally stupid.
Seriously; what are they going to do? After six strikes they take away my internet access? And? I have Verizon FIOS. I live in an area where Comcast sends me junk mail every damn day to switch over to them instead.
So, I get six strikes from Verizon... Oopps. So I cancel my account and then Comcast gets my money. Then I get six strikes from Comcast, and I cancel my account and by this time Verizon will be happy to take me back, in fact, I'll probably get a lower rate than I originally had.
Or if not, there's other competing ISPs I can find. If you live in a big enough market, there's internet all over the place. "Six Strikes" isn't going to stop anyone unless you're talking about users in dial-up-ville Arkansas.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Has anyone considered the possibility that FOX is paying him for the song, and he just doesn't know it?
There's this fun little thing called "compulsory licensing" which applies to performances of a song, whether it is 'performed' by playing a recording, or by actually performing the song. It's why radio stations don't have to get approval to play songs, and why performers can play any song they like on their albums (as long as they aren't creating a derivative work, but instead, simply performing the song as it was originally written). They just play whatever they want, pay Sound Exchange the royalties, and Sound Exchange pays the original authors of the music.
With Jonathan Coulton's version of the song, he made a lot of changes, which means it isn't a "cover" but is actually a derivative work. Because of this, he had to get permission from Sir Mix-a-Lot (and pay whatever he had to in order to get that permission) before releasing the song, as compulsory licensing doesn't apply.
However, with FOX's version of Jonathan Coulton's song, it is beyond any doubt a "cover" because the only thing they changed was that they didn't perform the whole song. Therefore it isn't necessary that FOX get his permission for the performance, only that they pay the relevant compulsory licensing fees to Sound Exchange, which will eventually (assuming he registers with them) pay those fees to Jonathan Coulton.
This also explains why FOX would make no changes whatsoever to the song, even obvious ones like using Sir Mix-a-Lot's lyrics, or speeding up the tempo so that it isn't so mind-numbingly slow and so that they wouldn't have to cut out the last verse. Obviously FOX must have told the musicians working for them that they weren't allowed to change it because they're not in the business of allowing artists to demand large sums of money or refuse to allow the use of their music at all, and instead prefer to go the route of compulsory licensing and simply pay what the law requires. As for why they didn't even inform him that they were using it, why should they? So he can potentially bring a lawsuit and halt production of the show? If they're following the law, and the law doesn't require that they inform him of anything, then doing so is at best harmless and at worst causes problems.
it's possible, but the technologies interact badly, so it runs especially slow or something. also, it seems like bad etiquette to clog up Tor nodes by torrenting garden-varity media instead of leaving Tor capacity available for important users like say whistleblowers.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
You forget that, in the USA, corporations _are_ people. Therefore they aren't made up of people, because they are their own living and thinking entity.
Just feed every IP into the six strike system six times.
I'm not sure what that would do but the system is dumb enough to let you do it.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
You forget that, in the USA, corporations _are_ people. Therefore they aren't made up of people, because they are their own living and thinking entity.
Very true. Not to go off-topic, but think about the corporate entity and the personal entity. They both do the same thing - have times (or units) inside that break their own rules.
Some people are religious but break the rules on a daily basis.
I'd like to see the count of people that work for the music and movie corporations that don't copy media. If they don't, it's only because their own entity gives them free copies as a bonus for working there (read: discouragement).
Here's what I saw when looking at the code as delivered to my browser:
<p>
1. a part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call only in emergency
<br></br>
1. a body of citizens organized for military service
<br></br>
3. the whole body of able-bodied male citizens declared by law as being subject to call to military service.
</p>
If you put ordered list tags into the comment box then slashcode must have stripped them and replaced them (poorly). I'm not interested in slogging through slashcode, but I'm up for a quick test. I'll post a simple list and see if it gets munched.
Raw HTML as entered:
<p>
<ol>
<li>item 1</li>
<li>item 2</li>
<li>item 3</li>
</ol>
</p>
slashcode output:
Lots of extra space, but numbered properly. List tags appear intact. Can't reproduce, works for me. I'm sorry, that's the worst response to hear on a bug report, but I don't think I can help you.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin