Slashdot Mirror
Australian ISPs Must Hand Over Pirates' Info
wabrandsma sends this report from the BBC:
An Australian court has ordered internet service providers to hand over details of customers accused of illegally downloading a U.S. movie. In a landmark move, the Federal Court told six firms to divulge names and addresses of those who downloaded The Dallas Buyers Club. ... The court said the data could only be used to secure "compensation for the infringements" of copyright. In the case, which was heard in February, the applicants said they had identified 4,726 unique IP addresses from which their film was shared online using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing network. They said this had been done without their permission. Once they received the names of account holders, the company would then have to prove copyright infringement had taken place.
Since it's bittorrent, they aren't "merely downloading" because it is automatically sharing the (partial) download with others at the same time -- meaning that they're uploading as well. Since the average user doesn't have the right to (re)distribute the movie in question, they are violating the copyright of the owners.
You can't use BitTorrent with Tor. The protocol itself leaks information. The safest thing to do is have a seedbox in another country..and if you're super paranoid; pay for it with bitcoin.
I'm so glad to be living in Australia at this time.
Last week we get news that the government is forcing all ISP's to retain metadata information for all usage by all subscribers 'coz of terrorists'. Now we get news that the current data ISP's have, which is only supposed to be used for billing issues, is being used to identify and sue subscribers who had their IP in a torrent tracker 2 years ago!.
I analysed the bill several weeks ago. I wrote to *all* the senators and tried to stop it and I tried to raise awareness, I was on a public forum answering questions and worked pretty much to 3am every night for 2 weeks trying to stop it from passing. I even tried submitting a slashdot story that it was about to pass. It was quite clear to see that it was going after downloaders otherwise why would the ACMA be referenced in the bill.
But it is worse than that, there is little doubt that these systems will be a blackhat's wet dream because the data will be in one place, IMHO a free for all for online fraud. I suspect that most Australians will be furious when they realise that they are being told to pay extra internet fees for a system, that will create new classes of fraud crime against them, is of limited use to police, by businesses who don't want them there to complicate infrastructure who will seek taxpayer assistance to fund and install them.
I tried pretty hard. I won't post the whole letter here, as it is four pages of analysis of an 80 page bill that is deeply flawed and now law. This extract is core to the problems with the bill:
As for the Bill, the criticisms I derive from part one follow:
The 'Implementation Plan' IP under the act is too loosely defined in terms of data encryption and access requirements. The government should implement MANDATORY public key encryption standards for business that promotes business and consumer confidence. The act should also refer to data access standards that produce an audit trail for the Privacy Commission PC so abuses can be tracked and prosecuted, if required.
Encrypted access for law enforcement with revocable keys controlled by the Privacy Commission (P.C) and also accessible by the member of the public who produced the data. Either the Telecommunications Ombudsman (T.O) or the P.C should have the power to review the audit trail of accesses to the data and revoke access based on their findings and satisfactory resolution of a complaint. A person's access to their own data should not be audit-able and a complaint mechanism should exist through both the P.C and the T.O who receive increased powers to prosecute abuses, which would serve to stimulate business and consumer confidence because of the protections offered.
No definition of what the "plan" (under the Bill) requires for access under a Communications Access Controller's CAC - implementing the technology requires 'requirements' and standardisation however the Bill offers none. The public should be able to access the data collected about themselves and have assurances that it has an expiry date.
Clarification and revision based of the Bills inevitable and chilling effects mean consumer and business confidence will be affected for years, policing will receive questionable, if any, benefit. The Bill however is good for centralising data collection techniques for foreign organised crime whose work will be greatly reduced subsequent to the passage of this Bill.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Why all the stories I hear about mass-lawsuits over piracy seem to be for crappy films like Dallas Buyers Club and that Hurt Locker thing.
Why hasn't Warner Bros filed a mass-lawsuit over piracy of the new Hobbit film? Or what about a lawsuit from Universal over the latest Fast & Furious film.
I am sure there are films out there that have been pirated a LOT more than Dallas Buyers Club (a film I hadn't even heard of before the lawsuit showed up) so why aren't we seeing these kinds of mass lawsuits on those films? (or if those lawsuits do happen, how come they dont get as much attention as the ones we hear about like this Dallas Buyers Club film?)
We fought them instead, using law, years ago, so we don't need to hide anymore in Denmark.
The danish pirate organisation fought the anti-pirate organisation, by organizing together, donating funds, and creating enough funding for us to hire a full-time lawyer, which incidentally also was an activist within the specific area of law. The additional funds was used to pay pirates fines, such that we could counter the economical devastation they sought to bring. Also education in law etc., such that all pirates could legally counter them, in all possible ways, recording, filming etc., for gathering proof against them. (Should they touch the keyboard without judges approval etc., that would immediately win our cases for example, because that is a breach of privacy)
In the end, the anti-pirate organisation went bankrupt. They did not achieve legislation, as the IT unions made 10.000+ people demonstrations against them. They did not get a footing at all.
We continued to make statistics, and we can see that the media business are making more money now than ever, even though we have unrestricted privacy now. As we said in the beginning :-)