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BitTorrent Cases Filed By Malibu Media Will Proceed, Rules Judge
Long-time Slashdot reader NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: In the federal court for the Eastern District of New York, where all Malibu Media cases have been stayed for the past year, the Court has lifted the stay and denied the motion to quash in the lead case, thus permitting all 84 cases to move forward.
In his 28-page decision (PDF), Magistrate Judge Steven I. Locke accepted the representations of Malibu's expert, one Michael Patzer from a company called Excipio, that in detecting BitTorrent infringement he relies on "direct detection" rather than "indirect detection", and that it is "not possible" for there to be misidentification.
In his 28-page decision (PDF), Magistrate Judge Steven I. Locke accepted the representations of Malibu's expert, one Michael Patzer from a company called Excipio, that in detecting BitTorrent infringement he relies on "direct detection" rather than "indirect detection", and that it is "not possible" for there to be misidentification.
Other courts have said that an IP address is not a person.
This is why a lot of other cases haven't advanced. Blindly suing people that might not even exist angers courts (Prenda).
>84 john does
"you're making too much work for the court with nonsense" is what's going to happen.
>reasonable doubt
In civil cases, it's preponderance of the evidence a lesser standard.
--
BMO
it is "not possible" for there to be misidentification
Oh really. I'm sure Mr. Patzer wouldn't mind telling us his IP address, then? Because in 5 minutes I'd have it look like he was swarming, downloading, and sharing the filthiest copyrighted scat porn videos the internet has to offer.
It's 192.168.1.11.
WTF does "direct detection" even fucking mean?
Having read most of the ruling, it apparently means, "We connected directly to the IP address and received our copyrighted material from them", as opposed to, "We took it on faith that any IP address listed by the BitTorrent tracker is serving up our copyrighted material." The terminology comes from a 2008 University of Washington paper that discussed the fact that indirect identification (i.e. relying on the tracker), which was what was primarily in use at the time, was woefully insufficient.
From what I can gather, the ruling basically says that the case can move forward. It doesn't assign guilt, it doesn't say that an IP address = a particular person, and it doesn't deny the possibility that there are ways to spoof IP addresses. It simply says that Verizon has provided enough evidence for the case to move forward with further discovery that would help them to uncover those facts, should any of them be at play.
IANAL, so I may be misreading things, but that's roughly what I got out of what I read.
That's amazing. I've got the same combination on my luggage.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The summary gloms together several parts of a fairly complex story to make a soundbite that sounds outrageous on the surface but really isn't.
TL;DR: John Doe pointed to an academic paper saying that most BitTorrent user identification used a less reliable method rather than a more reliable method; Malibu's expert said he used the more reliable method and made it even more reliable by actually receiving bits of Malibu's content from John Doe's IP address; judge said, "nice try, John Doe, but since Malibu isn't using the method you presented the paper to cast doubt on, you've cast doubt on nothing."
1. John Doe argues that Malibu shouldn't be allowed to subpoena Verizon at all because the fact that his IP address was part of a torrent swarm isn't proof that John Doe was actually sharing Malibu's content.
2. John Doe presents as evidence a University of Washington paper that discusses two methods, one which the authors say is unreliable and allows spoofing of IP addresses (just connecting to the tracker and pulling the list of IP addresses associated with the torrent) and one which they say is more conclusive (directly connecting to a given IP address and exchanging data with its BitTorrent client).
3. Malibu's expert testified that he used the method the author of the papers said was more conclusive, and that directly connecting to John Doe's IP address and receiving pieces of one of Malibu's films proved that John Doe's IP address wasn't being spoofed [this was where he used the "not possible" language].
4. The judge said: "Because Excipio employs the exact method that the University of Washington Paper recommends to identify copyright infringers, Defendant’s argument that “the common approach for identifying infringing users in the popular BitTorrent file sharing network is inconclusive” lacks merit."
Malware is completely unnecessary here. "Direct detection" is a term defined on page 2 of Challenges and Directions for Monitoring P2P File Sharing Networks – or – Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice to be:
"involves connecting to a peer reported by the tracker and then exchanging data with that peer" As opposed to:
"Indirect Detection of infringing users relies on the set of peers returned by the coordinating tracker only, treating this list as authoritative as to whether or not IPs are actually exchanging data within the swarm."
The indirect detection method only shows that a specified IP address was connected to the torrent swarm for the file in questions but it does not prove that particular IP address was sending any bits to the other peers.
The real story is that defendant didn't have his own expert to counter Patzer's BS
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
No one in the U.S. wants to leave no matter how bad it gets there because they don't want to become victims of its foreign policies.