IFPI Turning To Lawsuits 85
Sherman's doppleganger writes "The IFPI (the "European RIAA") has made a lot of noise about filtering this year, but it looks as though 2008 is instead becoming the year of the lawsuit. The IFPI has now sued an Irish ISP in an attempt to keep copyrighted content off of its network. 'The lawsuit accuses Eircom of abetting illegal downloading by allowing copyrighted material to traverse its network unimpeded. The IFPI... wants the ISP to start filtering traffic to scrub all illicitly uploaded and downloaded copyrighted material on its network.' The lawsuit comes less than a week after an Israeli court forced the nation's three biggest ISPs to block access to HttpShare.com."
common carrier? (Score:5, Interesting)
Legal filesharing should be kept legal (Score:5, Interesting)
But direct HTTP downloads can bankrupt a struggling musician if their music suddenly becomes a hit. To allow mass distribution at modest expense, I offer Bit Torrent downloads [geometricvisions.com] of my music.
I can't really see how an ISP could filter out copyright infringement without also filtering out files that are non-infringing.
Bit Torrent distribution is also crucial to Free and Open Source software projects, whose installers are sometimes hundreds of megabytes or even gigabytes in size.
In the debate about file sharing, please speak up for the legal uses of it.
And yes, I know I can host my work on free sites like MySpace, but then it would be MySpace's website and not my own that would benefit from links placed by fans. For business reasons, it's much better for a musician to have their own website if they possibly can.
Re:httpshare.com? (Score:4, Interesting)
Makes you wonder why rapidshare didn't implement this, oh wait - that would prove that most of the traffic is infringing copyright. Plus it would make it easier to sue those uploading. *AA must love httpshare.
On a more serious note I'm still surprised by the concept of keeping piracy down by going after those distributing it on the internet. Maybe that's the only way to go if you can't win in the long run. I'm still waiting for the hdd offering enough capacity to store all music ever produced. After that the one storing all movies is just a matter of time. Just calculate the current size of the ITMS and compare it to the growth rate of hard disks - makes it kinda silly to talk about this issue anymore...
Re:Legal filesharing should be kept legal (Score:1, Interesting)
I guess what I'm asking is whether the technology is available to make it possible for the ISP to do what they're being asked without also placing restrictions on legal traffic?
HTTPShare (Score:1, Interesting)
Censorship and P2P (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder if we're going to see a change in the role of P2P. It used to be about evading responsibility due to the mistaken idea that P2P was anonymous.
Somewhere along the way, people wised up to that nonsense, and it started to be about performance (though at the cost of efficiency, which really pisses off the ISPs).
Lately, it seems we're seeing a lot of censorship of websites, either by forcing ISPs to block, or forcing DNS registrars to remove the name. I guess the websites were a jumping-off point to "illicit" P2P, by providing metadata. But metadata can be shared via P2P as well. P2P could make a comeback (not in the popularity sense, but in the making-sense sense) as a way around censorship. Don't want me to be able to look up the address of a website that exposes money launderers? Don't want me to get metadata about a copyright-infringing torrent? Tough shit, there's no centralized entity for you to point your gun at.
Re:Comply! (Score:1, Interesting)
IANAL but this could cause problems.
If the block is small enough it isn't covered by copyright (the same way Jive Bunny couldn't get sued for copyright infringement).
Sending one block does not prove the user is sharing the whole file. Just because their bittorrent software says it has the whole file doesn't make it true. I'll admit the odds say they are but it is no way a certainty.
(I wonder if that defence still works if your Bittorrent client is listening for incoming connections...)
A number of bittorrent clients support UPnP. If someone has an unsecured wifi router there is a chance they haven't even changed the default password.
httpshare.com... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So all traffic should be banned (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:These people need to crawl in a hole somwhere. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:These people need to crawl in a hole somwhere. (Score:2, Interesting)
(Oh, and on a side note, is it okay to ask questions like this in
Re:These people need to crawl in a hole somwhere. (Score:3, Interesting)
some pirates download and burn movies, and sell them for $3 each on street corners (see Asia)
It is my opinion that selling somebody elses work without their permission is both legally and morally wrong.
but the **AA and lawmakers lump people who just share music with their friends in with these pirates.
I see nothing wrong with sharing.
It's what they told me to do back in kindergarden.
Re:Comply! (Score:3, Interesting)
really, how much harm can they do to your computer by using your wifi?
Your argument reminds me of a 3com sales guy who told me encryption isn't important for home connections since no one wants to break into your computer anyways. The problem is that it's not your computer they want; it's your internet connection.
They could start spamming and get your account disabled. There was also the time I got called in to find out why the office internet was so slow only to discover that one of the neighbouring offices that shared our internet connection had an open wifi and someone was using it to launch a DoS attack.
Then theres the guy they caught driving the wrong way down a one way street with his pants down in Ontario Canada. Turns out he was using someone's wifi connection to browse child porn. Imagine having that traced to your ip. Given the current guilty until proven innocent attitude when it comes to crimes against children your likely to lose your house and job before they even bother (if they bother) to find out you were innocent in the first place.
Re:These people need to crawl in a hole somwhere. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:common carrier? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well put. If ISPs should be held liable for what passes through their networks, it stands to reason that telephone companies should be liable for what passes through theirs (which I'm pretty sure is protected by common carrier laws in the US). The police don't try to stop people from discussing illegal activities over the phone, they just listen in when they get a warrant for a wiretap and catch the criminals in the act.
I suppose it's understandable that the RIAA is unhappy about how things are set up, since there are no criminal penalties (and therefore no police protection) related to copyright offenses, because it means private entities need to take charge of protecting themselves. Courts do not issue warrants to anybody but police, so they cannot wiretap the ISPs.
Suing the ISPs to make them block infringing traffic is definitely not the right answer, though, since there is no way of knowing whether any single packet contains copyrighted material, and whether that material has been licensed for transmission to the receiving party. Their best plan of action would probably be to make it legal to copy the music, but provide extras with purchased music that makes the purchase worthwhile. For example, NiN's special collector's album, which includes vinyl a photo album.
Re:common carrier? (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting... If that exact law applied to the US, ComCast could be in bigger trouble than they are now:
(a) initiate the transmission;
(b) select the recipient of the transmission; or
(c) select or modify the information contained in the transmission."