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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.
... 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
Someone should tell lawyers what MAC addresses are.
Right, because it is impossible to change your MAC address /s
An open guest wifi restricted to nothing internal and rate limit it to say 64kbps up/64kbps down. Enough to have deniability, poor enough access that no one will use it. Obviously you have to have the right wifi equipment to restrict access to your main network as well as the rate limiting - like pfSense or Ubiquiti UniFi wifi for example, etc.
You figure that a MAC address is going to help ID the perp? Cute.
Also, how about the fact that MAC addresses are not usually part of the Layer 3 conversation? Just one layer 3 device and poof, the MAC address is something different. MAC doesn't survive past Layer 2.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If you ever buy a Khadas VIM or other Chinese-originated device (which are often set up as “torrent media centers”) they all share the same MAC address. Why: because the chipmakers didn’t want to shell out for a block of MAC addresses.
MAC addresses are only supposed to be unique on a single network. It’s not unheard of that smaller companies re-use MAC addresses in switches and other networking devices and simply make sure they don’t get sent out to the same customer or area of the country/world.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
A little knowledge is a dangeous thing. You could have dozens of devices on a subnet all talking to each other (with Layer 3 information) ans they're all going to know each other's MAC and it wilk "survive". I think what you mean is: once a computer needs to talk outside of the subnet and sends packets to a router, the router will only preserve the IP and not the MAC of the sender. A router ties together subnets, but the MAC from everything relayed will be it's own.
MAC addresses do NOT survive a Layer 3 translation. MAC is strictly a Layer 2 thing. So the first router that network packet hits will change the MAC address. They are even less useful to trace a packet to a person than IP's are as they are not used above Layer 2.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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'm sure they've left "eyes" in his home network to keep a look out after they dropped the case. If he ever does anything illegal online I'm sure he'll quickly be called for it.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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.
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.
These are ridiculously high overturn rates. What's wrong with your court system?
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"?.
Perhaps if you actually owned an IP address. Most people don't though.
Your analogy would be more apt if the person committing the crime was using a stolen rental car.
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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.
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).
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"?
Yes, they would. Rather, the police and district attorney's office would never end an investigation at finding out who owns the car. Being the owner of the car is certainly enough for the investigators to interview you, but if you tell the police (and they verify) that you were on vacation that week, they would be crazy to file criminal charges at that point.
I don't think they have the capability of torrenting.
Android definitely does. uTorrent is right there in the Play Store, you don't even have to side load.