Filehsharers on eircom, BT or Irish Broadband - Get ready for court

zuma

Big P wrote:

Of course formatting your harddrive will remove any trace of information that was on it. And no, it cannot be recovered.
I think what you might be confusing this with is a "quick format", which obviously doesnt rewrite all the 1's and 0's on the disk.

You obviously have no idea what your talking about!

Ive recovered data on "slow formatted"/corrupted and changed file system drives easily enough.

Do some more research in the future please!

axer

Yep, you would need to zero fill your drive to ensure nothing can be retrieved. I think Big P may have been referring to a low level format of a harddrive. This is no longer done on harddrives (on IDE/ATA drives anyways) but can be done on SCSI and MFM harddrives I believe. The US DOD recommededs that a zero fill be performed 7 times to ensure the information cannot be retrieved, but obviously the more you do it the less chance there is of recovery.

zuma

Zero filling and then writing with psuedo random data is the best option...but after reading:

Of course formatting your harddrive will remove any trace of information that was on it. And no, it cannot be recovered.

I had to say something strong as those ideas could get someone in serious trouble in the future!
Formatting will only rewrite the file table people...the data stays INTACT.
Dont believe me....format your hardrive and postme it....I'll learn so much about you in the space of one day it wont even be funny!!!

gsand

gabhain7 wrote:

Just a side note, calling a High Court judge "crazy" for his judgement could be considered contempt of court.

Punishment: Potentially unlimited fine and.or detention, more then likely being brought to court in handcuffs and having to make a grovelling apology.

1. Extremely doubtful

2. Hypothetically if true I'm not in a place he can enforce anything on me anyway. I couldve sworn freedom of speech was one of those core ideals no?

Anyway not worth arguing over totally away from the topic.

Big P

axer wrote:

Yep, you would need to zero fill your drive to ensure nothing can be retrieved.

That's exactly what I was talking about. There are many applications which provide a proper 100% reliable format of a disk, im not talking what you get from your windows install cd.

turbot

I know someone american students, studying in Ireland, who where here some time ago who had internet access for a whole year from one of their neighbours unsecured wireless connections, and you bet they downloaded stuff.

I think there are several issues at hand here:

Firstly, I don't think any lawyer or judge should be qualified to make a judgement unless they have indepth knowledge of the internet, it's usage and it's implications for society.

If they can't explain why online MUD's are cool, if they don't know how to find IRC channels that give lists of things you can download, if they've never used FTP, and if they only have text book knowledge of any of these areas, they are not qualified to understand the web properly or make a judgement. I think the same should apply for juries in these cases.

Studying ComSci in trinity, we had a visit from the Guarda Team who deal with computer crimes and nice though the chap was, he also seemed clueless with respect to the praticalities of the laws he was talking about.

For example; Child Porn. Do you know that if someone sends you a picture of Bart Simpson engaged in a sexual act, this constitutes child pornography? Even if someone sends it to you by e-mail?

He could not answer my questions about spam / spyware that forces you to visit websites / if your computer was hacked. He seemed to lack a reasonable conceptual understanding of what technology makes possible based on what he was talking about.


I first learnt about mp3's in 1997 when I visited a friend of mine who was studying in imperial college London, who had one of the fastest internet connections in the UK and probably some of the smartest hackers around attending. Some of those guys ended up working for the MOD. They had thousands of MP3s... and no-one knew enough to know about them.

There are a couple of issues that need to be included when making legal judgements about "illegally" downloaded music.

Firstly, it's not fair to only go after a couple of people who are qualified as major uploaders. If they are going to behave fairly, they should go after everyone.... and put the resources where their desire to control is.

Because:

1) It's beyond an epidemic. I'd say that of people under 30 using broadband, at least 60% of people have downloaded music illegally, 100% have listened to music obtained through that mechanism, and at least 30% do it all the time.

Of kids under 20 with broadband connections, I'd estimate 50% download music all the time. I'd also say that at least 50% of people with MP3 players, have some copied music, and 25% it's all copied.

2) The business models around music really need to be revisited, because the price of CD's does not accurately reflect the value added to the person by the music on them.

I've bought CD's I've only listened to once.
I've bought CD's I've listened to 200+ times and still love.

I'd prefer that the money goes to where the good music comes from. To me that makes sense. If you asked someone who was a big fan of a band to donate money, there is a reasonable chance they would.

Selling CD's as a fixed price commodity simply doesn't reflect the value added by the music.

For example:

At present, if I buy music in HMV, I'm charged by the CD.

That means as an individual, for each extra CD I purchase, the ratio of available listening time to owned music decreases.

So I have 400+ CDs... thats 7500 songs.... to listen to all of these CDs back to back would probably take 500 hours. For each extra CD I buy, my ability to enjoy the music I already have, (because I have less time) dimishes.

I've probably spent €5000 on my music collection... possibly more. Shouldn't I get an accrued discount for extra music I'm buying?

Next, the quality of CD manufacture is optimised for price. Many CD's get scratched and become useless. Yet, in theory, I still own the right to listen to that music. If I copy it from somewhere, am I breaking the law?

Next: CD sales are only one revenue channel for major artists. Many of these same artists make more by touring, through endorsements, through TV interviews. The distribution of MP3's actually adds value to these other revenue streams as it makes them better known and listened to.

(Microsoft became huge because Windows 3.11, at the time, was the most widely pirated, easily copied software in history. People got used to using it, and then started paying for future versions. You can't buy that kind of exposure.... but you can facilitate it. MP3's facilitate this.)

Some artists I became big fans of, I first heard via MP3...

Fourth, I have a little sister. While she was in school, she had definitely downloaded some music. In discussions with her, it was considered *normal* to download music. Kids have very limited spare cash. Asking her to spend €20 on a CD when this is all she might spend in a night out, and she has to work for three hours is a big request. She has bought CDs, but music is priced at a point where it is too expensive.

Fifth, if you know where to get the music, like how to buy it on Ebay, you can acquire the songs for approx 20% of the retail value. Most people don't know this... though it isn't fair.

Sixth, it's legally ok to share music within your household. This means that if I live alone, my ability to derive value from the music I own is limited to me. However, if I like in a 16 bedroomed, 7,000 square foot mansion in Dalkey, and I have lots of people who live with me, I can share my CD's and music amongst them, legally. How is this fair?

Next, music is not something you do by yourself, hopefully. It's about listening and sharing. Being able to easily provide music you buy to your friends is social, cultural and adds massive value to the music industry itself. MP3's are a very convenient way of doing this. I can share a CD with a friend, but not let them listen to a copy? This way, laws geographically discriminate against my activities because practically, it's easy to share my music collection with my neighbours, but not my friends who moved away, to be 200 miles from me.

Next, I have two pretty amazing hi-fi systems (probably better than yours). This means that I can hear more of the music played, because I've got better kit. Is it fair that you have to pay the same per CD for a lower quality listening experience, when my €4k of kit means I can hear every nuance, and you can only hear the general tune?

Next: I also know that for many people, a lot of the music that people downloaded, they simply would not buy. This is because the songs they like are often not available individiually for purchase at a reasonable price (you have to buy and album) and many of the songs are not available easily in their local shops, and/or they are not aware of where to get them.

Next: The whole music industry is marketing and hype driven anyway, and in the middle there are some good artists who do well. The marketeers use psychological tactics to behaviourally direct people to buy CDs... Some of these CDs are crap. This is unethical.

Some people are tight a***s and won't buy music anyway. These people should be illegal as they behave like leeches.

At the same time, it's the speed, utility and ease of access to music that makes people download them.

Some of the tracks I've seen downloaded are rare and impossible to find versions of MP3 songs.

The marketeers generate demand for music through shameless use of psychological principles to get kids to want music in MTV. Then they price CDs at a point where their cost is too high for all but rich kids to get the music they want. Are they surprised that 16 year olds find ways to copy and download these CDs?

I'd prefer that the best artists got paid more... that way there would be more incentives and rewards for people who create great music.

Also, the costs of producing music has become practically negligible.... In the late 1980's, a 64 track mixer cost £200,000stg +. Now you can do the same or better with £2k of computer equipment.

I'd argue that filesharing is a cultural phenomenon, facilitated by the free flow of information, and it can be hampered, though not stopped.
The music industry needs to get wise to this and stop exploiting people with ridiculous distribution markups and pricing models that don't make sense.

I don't think anyone decent minds fair value being paid for the acitivities they really enjoy, music being one of those. Music is at one level a spiritual activity, listenting to the right song with the right special someone can change your whole life.

We have the technology to make it so everyone has easy access to music, and organised correctly, the artists can live well from their contrbutions.
MP3's represent this possibility, though instead of sueing people and labelling them as pirates, when this activity is culturally normal, the music industry needs to put this energy into creating infrastructures that let people enjoy music more with the new technology, and get over greedy pricing structures combined with elite marketing that encourage piracy.

watty

Theft is wrong, no matter how you try to justify it. The only reason people don't steeal books is cost and time to copy them.

With eBooks they will steal them.

Yes the record companies charge 4 to 10 times what they should for a CD and Cinema 2 to 5 times what they should for DVDs.

But it gives users no right to steal intellectual property.

I write SW and books sometimes I get paid, sometimes I give SW away (GNU etc) sometimes I sell it with need for a code to unlock it.

It is MY choice, as owner of the intellectual property and a lot of the Internet PARASITES would have a different tune if they made their living from Intellectual Property (SW, Architect Plans, Patents, Books, Screenplays, Music scores, Music, paintings and designs).

Big companies having restrictive practices or too high prices is not a licence to users to steal.

jd

turbot wrote:

Firstly, I don't think any lawyer or judge should be qualified to make a judgement unless they have indepth knowledge of the internet, it's usage and it's implications for society.

If they can't explain why online MUD's are cool, if they don't know how to find IRC channels that give lists of things you can download, if they've never used FTP, and if they only have text book knowledge of any of these areas, they are not qualified to understand the web properly or make a judgement. I think the same should apply for juries in these cases.
.

That is absolute bull****. There are plenty of cases of an extremely technical nature where expert witnesses may present evidence for the prosecution/plaintiff/petitioner and the defendant/respondent.

jd

watty

Other aspects of File Sharing Parasites:

* They use a disproportionate amount of the contended bandwidth, slowing the local BB a lot for other users and the whole internet slightly.

* Often their P2P sw is complete with spyware and trojans, often the Licence agreement you are signing away CPU time and bandwidth.

* Eager filesharers are a source of Zombie computers, see point above, plus security holes in the SW. The bandwidth used by bittorrant when the user thinks they are nieither sharing or downloading is interesting.

One friend's 2.4GHZ PC with 512M RAM was going like treacle. Perfect when all the background bits of filesharing were removed. He didn't even NEED it as the things he was getting are available legitimatly by normal download.

* Running torrants is selfish reducing speed for other users, but then you need to be selfish and greedy to steal music and videos rather than have what you can afford.

watty

If I steal Sky Pay TV, the judge & Jury do not need the technical details of how I did it, but have I subscription for the TV channels.

Same with music. HOW it is done is not especially relevent. Only evidence that you have been distributing copyright material or have copyright material without any evidence of having bought it or a licence.

The Judges & Garda and Jury do not need to be techincally expert. In my experience many music and film thieves have no or little technical expertise either. I frequently get paid by their parents to clean up the worm/trojan/spyware mess they have made of the Family PC.

turbot

Everyone always flies a flag saying

"Theft is wrong"

In this case, I don't think it is a simple as this, because:

In so many cases, monetary value is not directed to the source from where the value is added. This is especially true of the music industry. I should know... my father worked in it for 30 years.

I've heard lots of stories of management who extensively profitted from the musicians and artists and engineers, who were often too niave to get a fair deal themselves. My father would be a multimillionare many times over otheriwse... but thats not how it works.

Business people make money... the top artists get some... much of the pricing is absorbed in distribution chains the internet makes redundant.

Watty,

The second thing here is cultural context. You're a programmer now. You're good enough to be a pro.

Can you honestly say, in your entire history of using computers, you've never copied any software, nor used any software which was copied?

I really doubt it. In fact I'd bet 50 euros to say in your life, you've used at least several bits of pirated software.

If I'm wrong, then you are an outlier.

If not, then I suspect if you are honest, you will also admit that your ability to add value now, *partially* stems from things you learned using pirated software / games / material. Is this not so?

I'd say there is a very low % of college students who own all the software they use while at college.

I'd even go as far as saying that in practice, it's almost impossible to compete in college if you don't have access to the right software, which is often to expensive to acquire and cumbersome. Unless rules are enforced uniformly, which they are never, it's unfair to go after a minority.

The same is true for people who do some pro computer work, part time, like web design at college. Many simply cannot afford the high prices, that are geographically determined (20-50% higher than in the states for example)

I'd also say that 80% of pro web developers have used some pirated software while they were learning... and this afforded them the opportunity to get good as they learned. Many of the best 3d graphics artists, who work in big gaming companies now, used pirated versions of 3d Studio Max, while they were learning, because purchasing it was prohibitively expensive.
Many of these people, now they are pro, own all their software. I think this is reasonable.. and I've seen it happen.

So, take a 15 year old who wants to get good at webdesign. Is he going to be able to afford €1200 for the latest adobe / macromedia / microsoft software? I doubt it. The speed of upgrades and pricing structure also means his savings might be badly spent if he bought all of it, but he only has 8 hours a week to learn because he's also at school.

When you have kids who grew up with pirated software being the norm (in my school, from the age of 10 and upwards, it was considered normal to own some games and copy some games...).

Now you can wave a stick and say "stealing is wrong".

But I challenge this.

Piracy is a cultural norm and part of a distribution mechanism and has a useful function.

You can't honestly say that all the 12 year olds out there with copied Ps2 games are all parasites? Many of the people I know who have some copied games, and own some others, don't have the extra money they'd need to buy them. Some of these kids families can't afford to pay the rent, and the quality of marketing and it's power over kids is a refined art. You can't say that all kids who copy games are parasites when the marketeers do everything in their power to encourage them to get them?

The big businesses aim is not to add the most value to the most peoples lives; it's to optimise their profits. If the entire distribution chain was filled with upstanding and ethical individuals, then copying their workproduct could be described as unethical in many circumstances. In practice, this isn't the case at all....

Of differnet people I know who have home studios, I'd say 60% use pirated software and/or samples to make music. Some of these same people then go big time...

I don't condone all piracy. I recognise it has a function and it's not as clear cut as all piracy is wrong. It's also in practice not as clear cut as all piracy costs the music industry money. I think going after small numbers of people who are either niave enough to share a large number of files inadvertently, or have grown up where they haven't been taught any better, is misdirected.

In order for this to be fair, anyone here who has also a copied CD or tape in their music collection.... should also be prosecuted. What do you think Watty?

turbot

jd wrote:

That is absolute bull****. There are plenty of cases of an extremely technical nature where expert witnesses may present evidence for the prosecution/plaintiff/petitioner and the defendant/respondent.

jd

JD,

I totally disagree.

I think many of these lawmakers lack a basic conceptual grounding that enables them to make wise decisions about things Internet.

Expert witnesses can give specific information pertaining to details, though thats not the same as an indepth education. Some of these people have barely used the Internet, let alone understand it.

I recently developed a "state of the art" website for a leading firm of solicitors. To them, having a page of content they could modify easily, to speed up the distribution of information amongst different solicitors, was considered to be the leading edge. To me, this is something that could have been done just as well 10 years ago. They are often nice people, but thats not the same as having wise, expert understandings required to make fair judgements.

I think the way the Internet changes culture is much bigger than that.

I doubt such expert witnesses can appropriately brief the judge and jury to develop a refined understanding such that they really get or understand what is going on... beyond a textbook understanding.

In some cases, their ignorance is astounding. The grandchildren of many of these judges are better suited to making judgements than some of the judges... because they see the world as it is now, where many of the lawmakers to some extent, understand the world based upon how it was when they grew up. For this reason, they are undereducated and underqualified to make wise decisions.

turbot

watty wrote:

Other aspects of File Sharing Parasites:

* They use a disproportionate amount of the contended bandwidth, slowing the local BB a lot for other users and the whole internet slightly.

* Often their P2P sw is complete with spyware and trojans, often the Licence agreement you are signing away CPU time and bandwidth.

* Eager filesharers are a source of Zombie computers, see point above, plus security holes in the SW. The bandwidth used by bittorrant when the user thinks they are nieither sharing or downloading is interesting.

One friend's 2.4GHZ PC with 512M RAM was going like treacle. Perfect when all the background bits of filesharing were removed. He didn't even NEED it as the things he was getting are available legitimatly by normal download.

* Running torrants is selfish reducing speed for other users, but then you need to be selfish and greedy to steal music and videos rather than have what you can afford.

OK Watty. Are you really saying that in your entire life you have never:

- Listened to any copied music whatsoever?
- Watched anything that has been copied, for example, even a copied vhs cassette?
- Used any software beyond it's trial period? Used any kind of pirated / hacked software?

- Listened to any music that was derived from copied sources/questionable plagarism?
- Watched anything that was copied / inspired from another source?
- Written software, aspects of which were closely modelled on other software?

At the very basis of computing and software development, there is a huge amount of big business plagarism and strategies to monopolise, in the development of many kinds of popular software, to algorithms incorporated inside chipsets.

These forms of plagarism and monopolies serve big businesses. You should be able to explain this as well as anyone if you're any good as a programmer.

Filesharing is a crude derivation of this same human nature.

And it's not going to go away until it's replaced with better distribution mechanisms, and it's forcing industry to consider these. Of course pirated software and p2p apps can be riddiled with spyware...

BUT it's human nature to *share* information, including ideas, gossip, jokes... Until those in power find reasonable infrastructures to use these new distribution mechanisms to add value to people, it's not going to go away.

Symantec & McAffee make a fortune because of the development processes that leave gaping vulnerabilities in many operating systems. Conspiracy? I wonder.

Many big businesses are up in arms because they could generate extortionate profits from a monopoly on information... and now they are losing money.

Gaming uses up a lot of bandwidth too you know!

More than this, the inelegant programming that causes tons of computer faults is true of legitimate software as well as pirated software.

jd

turbot wrote:

JD,

I totally disagree.

I think many of these lawmakers lack a basic conceptual grounding that enables them to make wise decisions about things Internet.

Expert witnesses can give specific information pertaining to details, though thats not the same as an indepth education. Some of these people have barely used the Internet, let alone understand it.

I recently developed a "state of the art" website for a leading firm of solicitors. To them, having a page of content they could modify easily, to speed up the distribution of information amongst different solicitors, was considered to be the leading edge. To me, this is something that could have been done just as well 10 years ago. They are often nice people, but thats not the same as having wise, expert understandings required to make fair judgements.

I think the way the Internet changes culture is much bigger than that.

I doubt such expert witnesses can appropriately brief the judge and jury to develop a refined understanding such that they really get or understand what is going on... beyond a textbook understanding.

In some cases, their ignorance is astounding. The grandchildren of many of these judges are better suited to making judgements than some of the judges... because they see the world as it is now, where many of the lawmakers to some extent, understand the world based upon how it was when they grew up. For this reason, they are undereducated and underqualified to make wise decisions.

Tripe. The world is always changing and has always changed. And in the states, you would probably be asked if you have ever shared files on the internet if you were clled for jury service. And if you had, you probably would not be selected. I think your problem is you are confusing technical knowlege of details with the capacity to make judgement on the brader issue.
jd

Freddie59

jd wrote:

Tripe. The world is always changing and has always changed. And in the states, you would probably be asked if you have ever shared files on the internet if you were clled for jury service. And if you had, you probably would not be selected. I think your problem is you are confusing technical knowlege of details with the capacity to make judgement on the brader issue.
jd

Just one question: is downloading music illegal? I buy from iTunes, which is legit, but what about sites like www.mp3search.ru and www.allofmp3.com? These charge - but only a fraction of the cost. Are these legal or illegal? The whole thing's a bloody minefield! I wouldn't touch them with a bragepole - but they themselves claim they are legal.

jd

Freddie59 wrote:

Just one question: is downloading music illegal? I buy from iTunes, which is legit, but what about sites like www.mp3search.ru and www.allofmp3.com? These charge - but only a fraction of the cost. Are these legal or illegal? The whole thing's a bloody minefield! I wouldn't touch them with a bragepole - but they themselves claim they are legal.

I'd leave that question (regarding the last web site) to a legal expert, not a techie like me. But I can't see how downloading music per se vcan be illegal

halenger

They're illegal - outside of Russia at least and only legal in Russia through a loophole.

Big P wrote:

That's exactly what I was talking about. There are many applications which provide a proper 100% reliable format of a disk, im not talking what you get from your windows install cd.

Writing 0s to a drive is not a sure fire way of deleting the data/making it unrecoverable. There is only one way. Physical distruction of the hardware - complete physical destruction I mean.

Data can still be recovered from hard drives that have been wiped dozens of times/that have been corrupted/that have been damaged even.

watty

turbot wrote:

OK Watty. Are you really saying that in your entire life you have never:

- Listened to any copied music whatsoever?
- Watched anything that has been copied, for example, even a copied vhs cassette?
- Used any software beyond it's trial period? Used any kind of pirated / hacked software?

- Listened to any music that was derived from copied sources/questionable plagarism?
- Watched anything that was copied / inspired from another source?
- Written software, aspects of which were closely modelled on other software?

All irrelevent to to the issue.

If I say yes, then at worst I am a hypocryte. If I say no, I'm wierd or a liar.

In either case what I say would still be true. I made no personally directed attack. I wrote in generalities.

Those who know me, know the answers. Even some of the Garda. You can take that anyway you like. It IS IRRELEVENT.

There is a difference between exploited bugs in Sw and deliberate spyware/trojans which is often the case on filesharing services (Did you READ the licence agreement offered by Kazza?).

Yes big buisness is exploitive. But the "rights" do protect the originators too.

To be clichéd, two wrongs don't make a right.

watty

Freddie59 wrote:

Just one question: is downloading music illegal? I buy from iTunes, which is legit, but what about sites like www.mp3search.ru and www.allofmp3.com? These charge - but only a fraction of the cost. Are these legal or illegal? The whole thing's a bloody minefield! I wouldn't touch them with a bragepole - but they themselves claim they are legal.

a) I wouldn't buy anything from iTunes. In terms of not losing all the value of the music, I prefer to buy real CDs. I had a PC in for repair. The PSU had toasted ALL the drives (DVD, 2 x HD, Floppy) and other parts. Chips blown to pieces on the HDD controller PCBs.

I happended to have a faulty drive with same controller. I was able to recover ALL the HHD files (XP NTFS) and write them to several DVDs.

This included over 300 Euro worth of unbacked up iTunes. Which were a pig to install on his new PC. He had moved and no Internet. So he had to get BB to re-authorise his iTunes. He did not take much convinicing to have a DVD writer on his new PC, though DVD and CD are an unreliable backup medium.

b) Cheap or Free Films, Cars, Music, SW etc. If it seems to good too be true it probabily is.

ronbyrne2005

how can IRMA know for certain you have downloaded copyrighted material? i mean(as someone else asked earlier) how do they know that the download music file is actually the correct music file? i have downloaded music on morpheus that isnt what it says on the tin.legally i would have thought they would have to seize your harddrive and show you had copyrighted material,how can they know for sure that records of p2p networks show the actual files uploaded rather than a non copyrighted one labelled as a copyrighted one?

watty

Don't they eventually sieze the hard drive?

IDMUD

Use truecrypt if you're worried that your computer might be seized. It has realtime encryption of the file system so if someone unplugs it they'll need a password to access the data. This way (if done right) no one but you will be able to decrypt it.

Drag00n79

I have a couple of questions on this:
Some posters have said IRMA is more concerned with uplpoaders than downloaders. If this is true, then surely using allofmp3 etc must be safer as there is no uploading?

And secondly, what is the story with movies? Who is the movie equivalent of IRMA and do they plan anything similar?

watty

IDMUD wrote:

Use truecrypt if you're worried that your computer might be seized. It has realtime encryption of the file system so if someone unplugs it they'll need a password to access the data. This way (if done right) no one but you will be able to decrypt it.

You mean no-one inept or no-one in a hurry.

If you're worried, don't do anything illegal.

Only a one time XOR random key the same length as the data can't be cracked if you have access to the Hardware and brute force supercomputing power.

IDMUD

watty wrote:

You mean no-one inept or no-one in a hurry.

If you're worried, don't do anything illegal.

Only a one time XOR random key the same length as the data can't be cracked if you have access to the Hardware and brute force supercomputing power.

It would take even a super computer several hundred years, if not more to crack the encryption. Do you see the gov completely dropping all other activity to focus on your pirated hard drive?

All encryption can be cracked, but you have to be realistic.

dermot_sheehan

All that they would have to do is get a court order ordering you to provide the password, if you fail to comply, contempt of court.

IDMUD

gabhain7 wrote:

All that they would have to do is get a court order ordering you to provide the password, if you fail to comply, contempt of court.

Page 24 http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/TrueCrypt%20User%20Guide.pdf

Peanut

Shamrok wrote:

I have a couple of questions on this:
Some posters have said IRMA is more concerned with uplpoaders than downloaders. If this is true, then surely using allofmp3 etc must be safer as there is no uploading?

Yes

Shamrok wrote:

And secondly, what is the story with movies? Who is the movie equivalent of IRMA and do they plan anything similar?

mpaa in the states, not sure about Ireland, probably will be some action about it eventually but due to technology awareness -lag they will not get worked up about it for a year or two.

Peanut

watty wrote:

Other aspects of File Sharing Parasites:
...
* Often their P2P sw is complete with spyware and trojans, often the Licence agreement you are signing away CPU time and bandwidth.

* Eager filesharers are a source of Zombie computers, see point above, plus security holes in the SW. The bandwidth used by bittorrant when the user thinks they are nieither sharing or downloading is interesting.

tbh Windows and IE vulnerabilities comprise the huge volume of spyware risk.

watty

Most vulnerabilities don't exist if:
You turn off Telnet, Web server file & print sharing.
Disable ALL microsoft bindings on the Network interface to the Wide Area network.