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US Court of Appeals: An IP Address Isn't Enough To Identify a Pirate (techspot.com)
A judge has ruled that copyright trolls need more than just an IP address if they want to go after copyright infringement. An IP is not enough proof to tie a person to a crime. From a report: In a win for privacy advocates and pirates, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an IP address alone is not enough to go after someone for alleged copyright infringement. They ruled that being the registered subscriber of an infringing IP address does not create a reasonable inference that the subscriber is also the infringer. The case began back in 2016 and has been playing out in the legal system ever since. The creators of the film "The Cobbler" alleged that Thomas Gonzales had illegally downloaded their movie and sued him for it. Gonzales was a Comcast subscriber and had set up his network with an open Wi-Fi access point. At some point, someone had used his network to download the movie and the film creators captured Gonzales's IP address. The judge stated that in order for a proper case, the copyright owners would need more than just an IP address.
n/t
That's how I give myself plausable deniability too
Someone should tell lawyers what MAC addresses are.
No, wait. Don't.
... who ever did download and watch it has already been punished enough.
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Because of the open WiFi.
But what about a regular household with many different users including minors and a WPA2 protected network? Who are they going to sue?
Is it really reasonable to sue the account owner in such a case? Should the account owner have to keep internal logs in order to identify which kid did the copyright violation?
An IP isn't enough to identify a pirate?
An "I" Patch?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I had a (stupid) friend who ran an open wifi that got raided for the police for child porn because they tied it to his IP address. Never found any evidence on his PCs (after they sent drive copies to the FBI) or hidden stashes in his house, never arrested and the case was quietly dropped a year later.
As an IT admin you'd think he'd have known better -
I expect the various copyright groups will now begin lobbying for a law requiring ISPs to use the device cameras to take a photo of whoever is at the terminal before allowing any sizeable file to be downloaded. Or perhaps just continuous video surveillance while you're connected to the ISP. As we've seen many times, anything that provides plausible deniability to copyright infringement becomes a major target of legislation by the major content providers.
The MPAA / RIAA already know this and they know litigation ( especially beyond this ruling ) is likely going to cost them more than they're going to bring in.
Thus, my guess as to why they want to shift the burden onto the ISP's to play Copyright Cop.
Why waste your money and time when you can waste someone else's money and time instead ?
Having said that, however, are the ISP's going to follow the same rules about an IP address != a subscriber before throttling or disconnecting your service completely when they " detect " copyright infringement ?
Going slightly offtopic:
As an afterthought, ( especially if the Automation Doomsayers are right ) I wonder if the Fat Cat types who run these companies selling $services or $goods realize that as folks have less and less disposable income, the fewer goods and services they're going to sell. The demand will certainly be there, just not the means to pay for it. Guess where that leads ? ( Insert your best "Yarrr Matey" voice here )
So, the way I see it, it would be in Big Corps best interests to start trying to reduce that income inequality gap if they plan on having enough folks with money to sell their goods to in the future. Or, they can continue to waste their time trying to figure out how to solve the problem through litigation against folks who don't have any money to begin with.
No lie. And that's really kind of sad. Courts should be objective, but you can literally predict every judgement coming from the Ninth Circuit based on the political narrative involved in the case.
Actually, no. The overturned verdict rates are below:
6th Circuit - 87 percent;
11th Circuit - 85 percent;
9th Circuit - 79 percent;
3rd Circuit - 78 percent;
2nd Circuit and Federal Circuit - 68 percent;
8th Circuit - 67 percent;
5th Circuit - 66 percent;
7th Circuit - 48 percent;
DC Circuit - 45 percent;
1st Circuit and 4th Circuit - 43 percent;
10th Circuit - 42 percent.
Yeah that's what I though.
This was a common sense ruling beings nat routers and wifi are common many users share the same IP address.
Actually, it isn't That distinction goes to the 6th and 11th. Read the article for a more detailed analysis, based on the different ways these rates are calculated.
6th Circuit - 87 percent;
11th Circuit - 85 percent;
9th Circuit - 79 percent;
3rd Circuit - 78 percent;
2nd Circuit and Federal Circuit - 68 percent;
8th Circuit - 67 percent;
5th Circuit - 66 percent;
7th Circuit - 48 percent;
DC Circuit - 45 percent;
1st Circuit and 4th Circuit - 43 percent;
10th Circuit - 42 percent.
Oh, that's MUCH better. They're the third most overturned appeals court. Well, at least they have something to shoot for.
I expect the various copyright groups will now begin lobbying for a law requiring ISPs to use the device cameras to take a photo of whoever is at the terminal before allowing any sizeable file to be downloaded. Or perhaps just continuous video surveillance while you're connected to the ISP. As we've seen many times, anything that provides plausible deniability to copyright infringement becomes a major target of legislation by the major content providers.
No, easier - expect the ISPs (many of whom are also cable providers and copyright holders) to start inserting a line in the ToS that the subscriber accepts all liability for any acts of infringement on their internal network, regardless of whether it's a third party using their open WiFi.
Anything over 50% is completely unacceptable. We're splitting hairs if we're talking about the 9th vs. the 6th.
I don't care if they guy did download the film, he's suffered enough. Hell, he should sue _them_.
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criminal liability does not work that way and the ISP will need to prove that it's logs are good and based on there cap meters that are off that can be used in court to say that there logs are not usable in court.
This is similar to just because you were at a store when it was robbed, doesn't mean you robbed it. Also, given the metaphor it you wouldn't expect the store to go after you to recoup some of the loss because you were there and might have been involved.
Now if you want to make the case that I was complicit because I didn't stop it; well then why didn't the ISP stop it, why didn't the backbone providers stop it, why didn't the other guy(s) ISP stop it.
No, the real problem is that content holders have the expectation that their product should cost a certain sum of money; now the consumer of that product doesn't see the same value and is unwilling to pay that. They then look for alternatives and if they are persistent will eventual find it for free, at which point the content holder cries foul that they didn't their cost point.
There is a saying in the housing market, if you house doesn't sell in 30 days, it's over priced.
The device camera? Well, I worked it loose from the laptop frame and pointed it at the TV - framing random people . . .
Or another perspective, you leave a gun sitting out on your front porch, and someone takes it and shoots someone.
Bad measurement. The Supreme Court doesn't take cases that they are really likely to uphold without another good reason for taking them.
criminal liability does not work that way and the ISP will need to prove that it's logs are good and based on there cap meters that are off that can be used in court to say that there logs are not usable in court.
I never mentioned criminal liability, and this case was not about criminal liability, but civil liability for copyright infringement. Civil liability most certainly can work that way.
And yes, the ISP will need to prove that its logs are good that this subscriber had that IP address at said time, but that's not hard at all - in fact, it's a necessary function of being a service provider: you can't receive packets if the ISP has the wrong address for you. It's like the phone company sending calls to a different phone number than yours - your calls simply won't go through. Cap metering is an entirely different issue.
No, they didn't get it right.
This is about the pleading stage, not the evidence, not the verdict, not the judgement. It's a civil case at that, where defendants are entitled to fewer protections and presumptions than in a criminal trial. Now ask yourself, if the cops said my car ran someone over, would any criminal judge or appeals panel in their right minds believe that "the bare allegation that defendant owns the car is insufficient to support criminal charges"? No, it'd go to trial, and a jury would decide whether I was driving.
Awarding Gonzalez his attorney fees was appropriate, though.
Actually, it isn't That distinction goes to the 6th and 11th. Read the article for a more detailed analysis, based on the different ways these rates are calculated.
6th Circuit - 87 percent;
11th Circuit - 85 percent;
9th Circuit - 79 percent;
3rd Circuit - 78 percent;
2nd Circuit and Federal Circuit - 68 percent;
8th Circuit - 67 percent;
5th Circuit - 66 percent;
7th Circuit - 48 percent;
DC Circuit - 45 percent;
1st Circuit and 4th Circuit - 43 percent;
10th Circuit - 42 percent.
Remember this is saying 79% of the 9th Circuit's cases that are applied up are overturned. Not that 79% of the 9th Circuit's decided cases are overturned.
These are ridiculously high overturn rates. What's wrong with your court system?
Please define the denominator. It could be either # of verdicts appealed or # of verdicts made. Either could be called a overturned verdict rate but high in one leads to a different conclusion than high in the other.
captcha = Clarify
Was this the case of torrenting or streaming?
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As a really helpful AC stated, the Supreme Court doesn't take all cases, so 79% overturned is not 79% of all cases, but 79% of cases that make it to the Supreme Court. The ones that don't make it to the Supreme Court are implictly confirmed.
idiot Russia Hacked Narrative...
This is a good ruling, but don't rely on that alone to protect your privacy. Use TOR and/or a VPN.
Well poor logs of Cap metering is an reasonable doubt issue more so in an criminal setting.
These are percentage of cases overturned by the Supreme Court. There are only a very small portion of verdicts that are appealed and heard by the Supreme Court. This means that overall, only about 1% of total cases heard by these circuit courts are overturned.
These are not the overall rates, but the rates of cases that get SCOTUS review. Cases only get a full blown review if 4 Justices vote for review (i.e. the arguments are eventually presented and ruled on). The Justices being pretty clever folk, the typical case that the SCOTUS hears arguments for are ones where both (1) 4 Justices are dissatisfied with the result from an Appellate Court, and (2) those 4 Justices believe they have a good chance of convincing a 5th Justice to go their way.
There are exceptions to the above. Sometimes two Appellate Courts have made perfectly reasonable rulings that happen to be in such conflict with each other that the SCOTUS feels obliged to get involved -- that federal law might be interpreted very differently state to state is a problem the SCOTUS was created to fix. Sometimes a case is sufficiently important that the SCOTUS feels obliged to rule in order to settle the matter with finality (e.g. Gore vs. Bush).
position it strategically so that it covers any gaps that you may have a use for, set it open, rate limit it.
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One AC already posted part of the answer. The Supreme Court is the only court than can overturn the federal circuit courts. They get to decide which cases they hear, which are pretty limited in number. So they usually only choose to take cases that are likely to be overturned, are particularly controversial, or are of questionable Constitutionality. If it's fairly clear that they'll agree with the lower court, they refuse to hear the appeal and the lower ruling stands (and therefore doesn't bring down the overturn rate). They can also ask the lower court to reconsider a case, possibly in light of some other ruling, before deciding to hear it.
TL;DR version: the Supreme Court generally only hears cases with a reasonable chance of being overturned, the overturn rate is high.
Because of the way cases flow through the system, it's hard to do an exact number- you can't exactly say X appeals court cases led to Y Supreme Court petitions as the stats are available as calendar years, as court 'fiscal reporting years,' or as court terms, and a 2017 case isn't necessarily petitioned in 2017.
I would argue the proper denominator is the number of appeals court cases heard. This is usually around 60,000. Of these, around 8,000 are the subject of petitions for writs of certiorari. Of these, around 80 are accepted by the Supreme Court.
So, first, note that around 87% of appeals court decisions do not face requests for further review by the Supreme Court. (Although en banc rehearings do change some results, I think we can safely call that the particular circuit fixing itself.) Of those remaining 13%, then, approximately 1% are taken up. Let's go with that specious "6th Circuit - 87 percent" number to assume that those remaining 1% of 13% are overturned 87% of the time. So overall, our circuit courts appear to get things right about 99.884% of the time.
Whether the 9th Circuit is at 99.80% and the Federal Circuit is at 99.92% doesn't really seem to be that big a deal. And I wouldn't listen to a 9th-Circuit-basing conservaturd about "oh but you should have the same law everywhere" when the Republicans' Merrick Garland shenanigans led to exactly that predictable result in all of the 4-4 cases that should have handled circuit splits that term.
The Supreme Court typically hears less than half a percent of the cases appealed from Circuit courts. That they're overturning 0.3% of total cases isn't too shocking.
These are ridiculously high overturn rates. What's wrong with your court system?
Judges think they are above the law!
This is by percentage though, not by number of cases all-together.
A court could have a 90% turnover rate and only have heard 10 cases where another court could have a 75% turnover rate but has heard 100 cases. So percentages are one thing. It's the number of cases that you want overall that determines who has overturned the most number of cases.
You are the only one talking about the Supreme Court.
You should be held responsible for that as well.
You as a gun owner should know to properly secure a gun.
Just like if you accidentally leave your gun out and a 5 year old kid picks it up and shoots you with it. You should share the blame.
he's in your network now!
Headline says "need more than just an IP address"
Obviously, like the Bible says, they need two or three. So in addition to the one they have, they can provide, 192.168.1.1 and 127.0.0.1
Taking control of the webcam whilst the ones and zeroes are being downloaded?
Requiem for the American Dream
The Supreme Court is the only court than can overturn the federal circuit courts.
The circuit appellate courts can do this also. SCOTUS doesn't usually hear cases that haven't already gone through them.
Well poor logs of Cap metering is an reasonable doubt issue more so in an criminal setting.
In civil litigation, the standard is "more likely than not", not "beyond a reasonable doubt."
And ISPs can certainly show that your modem had a certain IP and received packets to that IP. Otherwise, they wouldn't be ISPs.