Downloading case in the High Court

slave1

lads lads lads, by taking away P2P the ISP's would be losing a considerable portion of their customer base, take BT's current 8mg line speel from their site
"Find and download the latest shows or movies before your friends and watch them just like on TV" er em, hello

Marlow

watty wrote: »

A non-unique public IP is only about penny-pinching. Simply not buying enough public IPs. Not about security, tracking or liabilities.

IP's do not cost. They are assigned for free, any ISP that is allocated IP's only pays a yearly fee to his RIR for membership. Also ISP's are not ment to charge for IP allocations, only for the time it takes to process the allocation, they can restrict, what they assign with what product though (ie. residential with dynamic ip only).

So it's not about penny pinching, but just about being unprofessional.

watty wrote: »

With a shared public IP, the ISP firewall/NAT/Proxy router log can still show which customer downloaded what, just as easily.

They'd have to, because it would be their responsibility. This is exactly the issue. It'll take a lot of space for storing the logfiles, manpower to analyze them etc, which is why most of the ISPs that choose to go down this path simply block P2P and a few other things.

/Martin

Joanamo

Boggles wrote: »

I'd like to see the music industry tackle the real problem of a decline in music sales. Lack of any decent music!!

Oh dear

http://www.rte.ie/2fm/charts/albums.html

The defence rests!

Objection! The Definitive Dubliners are on the list.

J

Sevenie

Anyone know when Eircom are back in court?

jayteecork

Rapidshare are getting done for this as well in the German courts.
Apparently the music bosses over there are trying to ensure that Rapidshare doesn't host illegally uploaded music.
Of course Rapidshare are stating that it's the customer's responsibility, and not theirs, for ensuring that there are no illegal files uploaded.
I'd have to take Rapidshare's side here.
All they offer is space to host files.
It's the uploader who decides what to upload.

I think they actually lost the case too.

Nick_oliveri

Three pages so far on piracy and talk on how Eircom might throttle P2P apps.
I am truly dissapointed.

We are in the stages of adoping EU legislation that will monitor our use of the internet, save all our chat logs and other privacy infringing scutter. What makes you think that Eircom, bless'ed as they are, will not give in to the greedy? Capitilism > privacy and presumption of innocence. Nonce-sense.

vibe666

Nick_oliveri wrote: »

We are in the stages of adoping EU legislation that will monitor our use of the internet, save all our chat logs and other privacy infringing scutter. What makes you think that Eircom, bless'ed as they are, will not give in to the greedy? Capitilism > privacy and presumption of innocence. Nonce-sense.

there's another thing, and possibly the most important thing over all in the long term.

with big brother watching what you're doing all the time who decides what they can and can't watch?

JC 2K3

Nick_oliveri wrote: »

Capitilism > privacy and presumption of innocence.

I thought that was Communism, or maybe I read 1984 wrong...

watty

1984: Orwell's disillusionment with Communism.
1999: Greatorex's story of a future Conservative Gov. gone bad.
Both turn out to be Descriptions of the Philosophy on New Labour. Still Bush & Blair not at all in the same league as the Gulags.

Peanut

Nick_oliveri wrote: »

..What makes you think that Eircom, bless'ed as they are, will not give in to the greedy? Capitilism > privacy and presumption of innocence. Nonce-sense.

I think they would prefer not to have the huge costs and hassle of trying to (ineffectively) filter and log all of their customer traffic if it's at all possible..

CptSternn

Did everyone miss this article a few weeks ago?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/29/technology/share.php

EU ruling deals setback to copyright holders

BRUSSELS: Record labels and film studios cannot demand that telecommunications companies hand over the names and addresses of people suspected of breaking European copyright rules by swapping illegal downloads, the European Union's top court ruled Tuesday.

But EU nations could - if they wished - introduce rules to oblige companies to hand over personal data in similar cases, the European Court of Justice said.

The court upheld the right of the Spanish company Telefónica to refuse to hand over information that would identify people who had used a peer-to-peer file-sharing tool, Kazaa, to distribute copyrighted material owned by Promusicae, a Spanish nonprofit group of film and music producers.

EU law does not require governments to protect copyright by forcing companies to disclose personal data in civil litigation, the court, which is based in Luxembourg, ruled.

Governments could draft national rules to change this but they would then have to balance the right to privacy against property rights, a court statement said. Any such change "cannot however affect the requirements of the protection of personal data," it added.

The ruling "raises the question of the need to reconcile the requirements of the protection of different fundamental rights, namely the right to respect for private life on the one hand and the rights to protection of property and to an effective remedy on the other," the court said.

A Spanish court had asked the European court for guidance on the case after Promusicae complained of Telefónica's refusal to hand over data that would identify the users of computer addresses linked to illegal downloads.

Telefónica argued that Spanish law allowed the disclosure of personal data only for criminal prosecutions or matters of public security and national defense.

The European branch of the Motion Picture Association, which represents American film studios, including Universal, Walt Disney, and Paramount, said it welcomed the ruling as balanced, because the court had upheld copyright as a fundamental right alongside the right to privacy.

Millions of people use file-sharing sites to download both legal and illegal copies of albums, films, TV episodes, computer programs and books.

The music industry has largely shunned file sharing, preferring to use digital tools that restrict the ways songs can be copied and played.

The court's decision "is not bad news for telecom companies, it's bad news for rights holders," said Quentin Archer, a partner at Lovells, a law firm in London, who specializes in intellectual property and privacy law. "It makes it clear that there's no harmonization of community law in this field and that the relative community directives are vague in how they treat rights of privacy and rights of property."


The EU High Court ruled groups like the RIAA can't get ISP user info and therefore can't sue people who pirate music. How exactly can an ISP block downloads if it doesn't identify who is downloading them? Also, since they can't enforce legislation against people who are supposedly violating the law, they can't ask ISP's to do it either. If Eircom blocks Joe Soaps download then that means they have singled him out. He can then sue and say he is being made an improper target and his rights have been violated.

Then there is the bigger issue - bandwidth. You know how much extra bandwidth it will take to setup server appliances to monitor/stop illegal downloading? Ireland already has severe shortages when it comes to bandwidth. That would make the networks which already are running below promised speeds even slower. I don't see Eircom or any other ISP shelling out more cash to upgrade their entire operation just to accommodate a few groups of lawyers in another country (the RIAA is merely a collection of attorneys).

Finally, there is the issue of copyright. The law behind this is quite murky to begin with when it comes to international borders. Sweden had no copyright laws until recently. Many other nations out there like China still have no copyright laws. Are they going to ban all traffic from countries where they can't stop downloading? Even if they convince Irish courts to restrict downloading users will merely relocate servers or route traffic through VPNs or other proxies to take advantage of connections in copyright free parts of the world thereby getting around the issue again.

Trying to ban any type of downloading is like trying to empty out the ocean with a tea spoon. I mean, I have worked at companies that have bit torrent and all major download sites and apps blocked - and still users are able to get right through the barriers and download with relative ease. You can't block port 80, 25, 103, 110, etc. - so if you tunnel everything through common ports they can't stop you. They also can't go sniffing your packets because of the data protection act.

Sure they might be able to stop the common user from downloading, much like serial numbers stop people the average user from copying software, but seriously - any mediocre user will be able to continue downloading without missing a beat no matter what they try.

This is merely a stunt to get media attention. They can take Eircom to court all they want - this isn't America where big business can trump the rights of the consumer and large groups of lawyers can strong arm the average Joe Soap. Even if they are successful in their suit (they won't be), the logistics behind the issue are untenable at best.

democrates

watty wrote: »

A non-unique public IP is only about penny-pinching. Simply not buying enough public IPs. Not about security, tracking or liabilities.

With a per user Public IP, the ISP records show which customer had it and when. With a shared public IP, the ISP firewall/NAT/Proxy router log can still show which customer downloaded what, just as easily.

So an IP via DHCP from the ISP's NAT etc is not on the QT, but can ID any A/C using P2P such as BT to violate IPR?

watty

The ISP knows just as much about what users do no matter if they give a public IP or route via NAT to a private IP.

On a home/office NAT/Firewall you need logging enabled to know which computer is is doing what. But since even fairly cheap home/office setups can log every destination IP, packets, start & stop time, ports used etc... In some ways with a transparent proxy and single public IP it's easier to log everything!

CptSternn

democrates wrote: »

So an IP via DHCP from the ISP's NAT etc is not on the QT, but can ID any A/C using P2P such as BT to violate IPR?

The minute you start talking DHCP you can forget about liabilty. It is so easy to spoof IP's these days its not funny.

Even more important - the Eircom wireless router hack. For those who havent heard ALL Eircom routers have a default password scheme thats easily hackable. There are a few websites with the algorithm in place so you just pop in the eight digit ide (i.e. the part after eircom - like eircom3426 6879) and it shoots out the wireless encryption key.

I have tried this a few dozen times in a half dozen counties and found pretty much everywhere is wide open and I can access from my car anyones home network if they have Eircom broadband. If they go after users for sharing you can bet they will have to fix that first since everyone can simply use their neighbors connection as it is right now.

watty

On DSL, eircom knows how the IP belonged to via the phone number. The line & IP are related at DSLAM.

On some other systems the WAN IP / connection can only be provisioned by the operator. There is less mileage in IP spoofing than you think. Unless it is unused and in the right subnet it won't route even if you do figure how to spoof it.

Sevenie

D'oh.

Thor

look at it from this point of view.


if a person walks into a shop buys a cd say '2008 best hits' pays for it, keeps the receipt and then brings it home rips the music for his own use and then brings it back and either gets his money back or gets a different cd and does the same.

in that way he did not break any laws by doing so and has the music without paying for it.

there is lots of ways to get music without paying for it, downloading is just the easiest way. nothing will stop people from trying to get things for free.

stop one way they will find another.