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

Freddie59

watty wrote:

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.

I back all my files (iTunes, photos, documents, e-mails, etc) onto an external hard drive who's only purpose is for backup and is only connected to the machine when performing a backup.:)

Peanut

watty wrote:

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.

Straying off topic a bit, but even if you do that you still have the gaping hole that is IE!!

Slighty-more-on-topic..

watty wrote:

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

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

The rights protect the originators in so far as their contract with their record company will let them. In many cases the artists wouldn't have a huge problem with certain forms of 'piracy' (and a number have said so in the past), however their record companies would not be too happy about this I imagine.

Linoge

axer wrote:

Plus how could they catch the downloaders red handed

AFAIK it would go something like this:

Joey is taking a shower, wearing walkman headphones,
singing along with the music. Joey finishes, turns off
the shower, still singing. He draws open the shower
curtain to find two secret service agents with shotguns
pointed at him.


SS AGENT
FREEZE!

JOEY
What? What? What did I do? What?

The agents drag Joey, still naked and wet, out of the
shower and into the living room. His mother is
hysterical..

JOEY'S MOM
Joey!

AGENT
Get in there! Sit down!

ANOTHER AGENT
Stay down there. Don't move.

Joey is pushed into a sofa. He sees his computer, "Lucy",
being carried away.

JOEY
Lucy!

Joey dives onto the agent carrying Lucy away, losing his
towel. His mother, seeing his exposed buttocks, is
shocked.

JOEY'S MOM
JOEY!!!

jank

IDMUD wrote:

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

Very Nice...Its somethins ill look into.

ricey

P2P Networks like in all fairness who needs them anymore
P2P is a thing of the past and if u want to take a risk and
use things like a P2P network thats your call & there is a
good chance you are been watched, There are a lot better
ways of getting any files you need on the net then P2P.

Gegerty

ricey wrote:

P2P Networks like in all fairness who needs them anymore
P2P is a thing of the past and if u want to take a risk and
use things like a P2P network thats your call & there is a
good chance you are been watched, There are a lot better
ways of getting any files you need on the net then P2P.

Agreed. You just have to stay one step ahead.

As for encrypting your harddrive, I don't think there is anything that cannot be cracked. The only way to be sure is backup your legal stuff and feck the harddrive in the sea.

hobie

as an aside ...... where can I download a legal copy of 'Treaty' by 'Yothu Yindi' ..... I don't want to buy a xxxx album, just the one song "Treaty" ....

I down loaded the new Legal Napster and then Napster told me to XXX off ...we don't cover Ireland they said ...... thank you I said .... wish you had told me b/4 I spent a xxx hour getting your xxxx system down loaded
(via dial-up) ....

I now have BB so distance is no object ...

Freddie59

hobie wrote:

as an aside ...... where can I download a legal copy of 'Treaty' by 'Yothu Yindi' ..... I don't want to buy a xxxx album, just the one song "Treaty" ....

I down loaded the new Legal Napster and then Napster told me to XXX off ...we don't cover Ireland they said ...... thank you I said .... wish you had told me b/4 I spent a xxx hour getting your xxxx system down loaded
(via dial-up) ....

I now have BB so distance is no object ...

iTunes?

Fighting Irish

I already download 30gb this month

ricey

Is that all

watty

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4724584.stm

I have no sympathy.

Red Alert

any why not exactly?

i don't do P2p simply because i don't trust those pricks in Irish Broadband. I bet they'll openly give customer information to IRMA and other such mercenary and litigious organisations. i would happily buy music tracks if they did not have DRM on them.

watty

None of my legimately purchased CDs have DRM. I have no sympathy with people that encourage theft of Intellectual Property and get Caught.

I'm totally against most of the DRM rubbish as it DOES NOT stop piracy and creates problems for legitimate use. It is of course a reaction to the piracy.

So the more some people have a disregard for other peoples rights, the more Goverment and Corporations will claim to have justification for eroding everyones rights.

ronbyrne2005

any updates on the irish cases? i thought a dutch court had found the methods used by mediasentry(Same as used in ireland) were illegal under EU data protection laws and dutch ISP's didnt have to release details.

axer

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

any updates on the irish cases? i thought a dutch court had found the methods used by mediasentry(Same as used in ireland) were illegal under EU data protection laws and dutch ISP's didnt have to release details.

What methods do they use - I have been searching the web to find out but could not.

Adey2002

HelterSkelter wrote:

But I heard IRMA themselves being interviewed on radio and saying they are not concerned with downloaders, they are only going after the big uploaders.

[Theory]I beleive this is because they can't actually see who is downloading the music as it's peer to peer. They can only see who is offering the music by using the peer to peer program themseles and doing the "see other files offered by this user", they're giong after those people who are offering hundreds/thousands of tracks. They then pull the ip address of said person and that is what they are using to get the info from the isp's, (ip addy and date/timestamp).[/Theory].

Phone.Book

What about downloading music of Allofmp3?

I download my music from there as it's based in Russia and very cheap!

axer

Adey2002 wrote:

[Theory]I beleive this is because they can't actually see who is downloading the music as it's peer to peer. They can only see who is offering the music by using the peer to peer program themseles and doing the "see other files offered by this user", they're giong after those people who are offering hundreds/thousands of tracks. They then pull the ip address of said person and that is what they are using to get the info from the isp's, (ip addy and date/timestamp).[/Theory].

I would think that is all they could do as well. That is not proof on their behalf. I very very very much doubt it would hold up in court as proof.

JanneG

As far as I know it's the sharing and not the downloading which is the illegal act?

axer

JanneG wrote:

As far as I know it's the sharing and not the downloading which is the illegal act?

Ya, but sharing what? filenames? nobody can say what is in each of those files unless each are downloaded but that does not even prove who they are downloaded from - the ISP logs could not prove this either - I actually cannot think of a way of proving the downloaded file is the exact same file as the person who shared it unless the uploaders harddrive is seized and the files that were downloaded compared to the files on the sharers hdd.

grizi

As far as I know the case is a civil one and the burdon of proof is a lot less - "balance of probabilities" rather that beyond reasonable doubt.

Also, the IP address is being paid for by someone and I believe they can prosecute that person because he/she is responsible for that address.

Were the Dutch cases civil or criminal btw?

jor el

JanneG wrote:

As far as I know it's the sharing and not the downloading which is the illegal act?

This is how I believe it works.

Downloading any copyrighted material that you have not paid for is illegal. Even downloading a song that you already have bought, on a CD for example, is in a bit of a bit of a grey area.

Downloaders are not being prosecuted though as it's very difficult to see who is downloading what on a P2P network, unless they share files themselves and monitor who downloads them. It's a lot easier to see what files are being shared by particular users (as Adey2002 explained previously), get a list of these files and then go after them. The more files you're sharing out the more likely it is you'll be targeted.

The way the file sharers are being described by IRMA & Co would suggest that they were sharing thousands of songs to millions of users every day. Given the very poor upload speeds that most Irish people have to contend with, this is simply impossible. However, they did have a list of available files, which could read in the thousands, and this is what they're being caught on.

E&OE

LFCFan

What about Torrents? Is there any way they could go after Torrent users as ALL torrent users will be uploading at some stage.

nadir

turbot wrote:

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?

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.

Amen, I hear you, also my brother studied in Imperial at that time XD.

watty wrote:

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.

I think you miss the point.!. some of us dont agree with the concept of Intellectual property. Clearly it's stealing if you think you can own numbers, but many of us believe in true freedom of information. People should have the right to live and persue their dreams, but no one should have the right to an idea, ideas are for all of us to interpret. Just like GPL, it's good to sell ideas, my ideas, your ideas, anyones, If we can provide a service for other people with those ideas, all the better. This is our Philosophy.
At the moment the courts just catch the people who have been careless , or are ignorant of technology, they don't even know what they are doing. The TOR project at least tries to balance the playing field, although I guess even that is too complex for many people. This punishment of people over 'copyright infringement' only accelerates the development of anonymous filesharing mechanisms. In the past two years alone we have seen a massive gain in such technology, waste, winny, share, etc. are all increasing in capacity, Id imagine in the next year or two, such applications will become more mainstream, this will allow people to share all sorts of content with virtually no risk of being caught. You have only yourselves to blame.

Personally I dont download/upload american movies or music, I have little interest in it, so it doesnt affect me, even though I was on an IBB line. I find it a disgrace though that the courts demand the release of this information, when they clearly have so little knowledge of the issue, just pushed by greedy corporations. This makes me want to increase my own privacy, from now on Im using encrypted filesystems, and tunneling all my connections over ssh/vpn's or such. I guess it's time to adapt to the current situation Question is, are the RIAA/IRMA ready to adapt to people who do fileshare and also increase their privacy? How do they plan to deal with countries who allow filesharing? or are they just blowing off steam making examples of a few unfortunate people.

jor el

LFCFan wrote:

What about Torrents? Is there any way they could go after Torrent users as ALL torrent users will be uploading at some stage.

I'm not sure, but I don't think so. There doesn't seem to be any way to find out what other torrents a particular user has running when you're downloading from them. If they get a torrent file and load it up then they'll see who's currently uploading that particular file. But there's no way to know what other files that user may have to share, so it'd be fairly worthless.

I think the current prosecutions mainly stem from Kazaa, gnutella and edonkey networks, though I could be wrong on that.

axer

grizi wrote:

As far as I know the case is a civil one and the burdon of proof is a lot less - "balance of probabilities" rather that beyond reasonable doubt.

Also, the IP address is being paid for by someone and I believe they can prosecute that person because he/she is responsible for that address.

Were the Dutch cases civil or criminal btw?

I think it has to be civil cases. I know I have downloaded things before that were called one thing but in fact turned out to be something else. I know there is a "balance of probabilities" as you said but because IT is so complex I don't think people can look at probabilities as there are never clear probabilities. I honestly cannot see someone loosing a case if they allowed it to go to court. I thought the Dutch case was about making KAZAA illegal - the judge ruled KAZAA was not illegal.

ambro25

nadir wrote:

I think you miss the point.!. some of us dont agree with the concept of Intellectual property. Clearly it's stealing if you think you can own numbers, but many of us believe in true freedom of information. People should have the right to live and persue their dreams, but no one should have the right to an idea, ideas are for all of us to interpret. Just like GPL, it's good to sell ideas, my ideas, your ideas, anyones, If we can provide a service for other people with those ideas, all the better. This is our Philosophy. (etc)

I believe that you are missing the point.

There is nothing to "agree or disagree with the concept of Intellectual property". Intellectual Property only exists because of the Statutes (the "Law") which say that it does, under its various forms.

Those Statutes apply to you like anyone else, like it or not - just like speed limits or the interdiction to kill another fellow human being are ensconsed in Statutes, so are the rights of the creators/owners of Intellectual Property (which could be you): as a matter of fact, you yourself, nadir, own the copyright in any idea that you express (this last bit is important: there's no IP in 'ideas' (as in: in your head), there's only IP once they've left your head and are recorded in some form or another).

So think about the last letter, essay, doodle, drawing, code, etc, etc. which you wrote/typed/drew: you own that Intellectual Property, and whether you agree with the rights that the Law gives you about those or not, and whether you choose to enforce them or not, is irrelevant.

nadir wrote:

I find it a disgrace though that the courts demand the release of this information, when they clearly have so little knowledge of the issue, just pushed by greedy corporations.

I wouldn't be so categorical. I believe Justices are tech-savvy enough when the time calls for it, and fully aware of the ins-and-outs. The matter of import is more how to read the relevant Statutes onto the tech, and claims based on same, and then apply the law. Where disclosing BB customers' details is concerned, I don't think IP law has anything to do with the matter, and Contract Law or Privacy Law is more relevant, tbh.

ghost26ie

jor el wrote:

I'm not sure, but I don't think so. There doesn't seem to be any way to find out what other torrents a particular user has running when you're downloading from them. If they get a torrent file and load it up then they'll see who's currently uploading that particular file. But there's no way to know what other files that user may have to share, so it'd be fairly worthless.

I think the current prosecutions mainly stem from Kazaa, gnutella and edonkey networks, though I could be wrong on that.

i think with limewire you are able to see what other files a person is sharing.

grizi

axer wrote:

I think it has to be civil cases. I know I have downloaded things before that were called one thing but in fact turned out to be something else. I know there is a "balance of probabilities" as you said but because IT is so complex I don't think people can look at probabilities as there are never clear probabilities. I honestly cannot see someone loosing a case if they allowed it to go to court. I thought the Dutch case was about making KAZAA illegal - the judge ruled KAZAA was not illegal.

Oh yeah, Kazaa could be taken to court for facilitating illegal sharing and be refused. But users sharing files would still be open to prosecution.

IT is very complex under intense srutiny - hell one could go down to the packet level and wonder about all the places it was temporarily stored on the way to you legally or illegally. However the same could be said for people who use the Internet for other more serious crimes like fraud, phishing and paedophilia. There are definitely convictions in these cases and rightly so I think. "clear probabilities" is almost a contradiction in terms and I don't know if it has to be "clear"

Dud files do exist but it's not a common defense in the RIAA cases and unless all the files are not copyright protected then it's still illegal.

Fighting Irish

Just do what i do and don't upload ,

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