New Round of P2P Lawsuits from Hollywood 442
An anonymous reader writes "There is a new story on ZDNet about more lawsuits against P2P file sharers. The catch is that Hollywood is using the log files off Bit Torrent sites like Suprnova and LokiTorrent."
Oh goody. (Score:4, Interesting)
*face desk*
Re:Oh goody. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh goody. (Score:5, Interesting)
Did I mention that the last three computer books I have purchased, I read a chunk of them online before hand? Or that I buy cds based on what i have listened to off the web? Or that the movies I go to in the cinema are influenced by the recomendations of my friends, some of whom are downloaders?
Moron.
I have such a friend... and he'll probably be sued (Score:5, Insightful)
I on the other hand saw the movie once, really liked it, but won't fork over any more money to see it again. I'll wait for someone to loan me their DVD to watch.
Now, who should the studios more likely sue, him or me? What's ironic though is that if I'm correct, I'll be the one 100% legal. He'll be the one committing a crime, even if Hollywood benefitted much more from him. It's people like my friend that they are in business at all.
Give them a dollar, and they'll suck you dry. I'm almost scared to use anything but cash at the theater for fear of what other craziness they may come up with next if they had my name on a reciept.
Re:I have such a friend... and he'll probably be s (Score:3, Informative)
Ever since they made it a federal crime to video tape in theaters, how long before the MPAA starts pushin
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Interesting)
The only moron is the one calling others who make perfectly good remarks of their own opinions a moron. Only a moron would call others names just because you don't like their ideas or opinions. Even if the written letter and spirit of the law is on their side.
The fact is that you can steal something and then pay it back later - you still stole and still would be found guilty in every single possible court in the world.
Re:Oh goody. (Score:5, Insightful)
But, if you had your perfect world, where i couldn't get access to the pirate firefly content, you know what would have happened? I would have gotten addicted to something else. A web comic series, say...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh goody. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh goody. (Score:5, Interesting)
Your morals don't HAVE to coinside identically with what society deems is right via Law. If you decide to do something that you believe is right and it happens to be illegal then the only thing you need to understand it the consequences for your actions (possible imprisonment).
There are some Laws that I disagree with, but am definitely not going to risk imprisonment. There are other laws that I might think of violating because I don't believe in their moral correctness AND decide to actually commit because the risk seems low (like say...purchasing something after pirating it)
[disclamer] Of course my morals are in complete agreement with ALL the laws in my country and I would NEVER think of breaking ANY of them.
Re:Oh goody. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people, given the choice, want to pay a reasonable price for a legit copy of something. However, currently the pirated material is often "better" than the legit version (for some values of "better").
For example, the distribution mechanism for illegal movies is better:
- You don't have to drive to get to see the movie
- You don't have rediculously overpriced food pushed at you
- You don't have to put up with 30 minutes of adverts before watching the show you paid an overpriced fee to see (goes back to the "reasonable price" thing above)
- Not so much an issue these days but it used to be that a lot of movies were released here in the UK long after they hit the US - I can't see how they can complain too much about people getting impatient to see something they've hyped up (still applies to TV though).
- You don't get accused of being a copyright infringer when you're infringing copyright, whereas you do if you go to the cinema or buy a DVD.
And yes, I fully agree with you about music - almost all the CDs I buy these days have been (partly at least) downloaded first so I could hear if what I was buying was worth it - the only people who lose out from that are the crap acts who aren't worth buying.
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Insightful)
As for sample chapters and promo mp3's, I'm not sure if that was what the grandparent was referring to, it could well be that they infact downloaded various ebooks/mp3's illegaly, but their content encouraged him to go out and purchase legitimate versions.
It shouldn't be a hard idea to grasp, it's something I
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh goody. (Score:2)
Well with theater profits plummiting, the movie industry has few methods other than movie sales to generate a profit; and just because it is easy to do something illegally does not> mean that it is legitmate to do so, or that it is in some way unacceptable to defend yourself against these illegal actions. And just so you know, customer generally implies people who paid. These people did not.
Well, there's a problems here. How is a person supposed to know that a file is copyrighted before he downloads it?
Re:Oh goody. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the problem, though, isn't it? I'm going to totally ignore any ethical questions and look at this from a technological standpoint: torrent site log files are not proof of infringement.
The MPAA has a bunch of IPs that they identified via the log files as downloading the torrent files. The problem is that the torrent files are just metadata, they don't have any copyright content in them. Downloading such a file doesn't mean a user committed copyright infringement, only that they might have. Certainly users may have downloaded a torrent file but never did anything with it. That is, just left it sitting around or deleted it.
Normally in a court case this might not be a problem. But the MPAA isn't sueing people, they're sueing john does. They have the IP addresses, and they are sueing the people behind those IP addresses. The MPAA needs to prove to the court that these IP addresses commited copyright infringement in order to get the names of the people out of the ISPs via a court order. But since the only information they have is that the IPs downloaded torrent files, they have no direct proof.
IIRC, in Canada it was ruled that such things were NOT enough to force the ISPs to give up customer/IP matches. I wouldn't be surprised if the courts in the US denied the MPAA's requests to get these IPs turned into names either.
Am I saying it's impossible? Well, no, the US courts have a tendency to not rule logically when it comes to such issues, as the cases often go before judges that really have no idea what is going on. Why is this the case? I don't know, it could be any number of reasons, but my bet is that either the US court system is overburdened and these types of cases can't get assigned to the proper judges because there aren't enough judges, or that the MPAA chooses their judges carefully.
Re:Server logs... (Score:4, Insightful)
bnbt_access_log_dir =
bnbt_error_log_dir =
BNBT is very fast and does not store any non-needed information about anything. It logs how many people have totally completed the file but does not waste the oh so valuable storage space available to store who happened to transfer what ages ago. This tracker is easy to install and uses virtually no resources.
Suprnova used a completely different tracker and perhaps it logged a lot of useless information. That would have been very stupid and unwise, specially because they had no control what so ever over the content available there (at least, that is the general attitude all the now closed sites hid behind).
Detailed logs over the tracker usage would not be need or required or desired so it sounds highly unlikely that any logs would contain anything useful to anyone or even exist. Detailed logs over tracker usage would generate a huge amount of data useful for no practical purpose what so ever, so it is highly unlikely such logs were ever created.
Logs over the website usage are useless for any legal purpose because whatever the hash of a torrent and it's purpose when used with a bittorrent client, it still remains a simple torrent file with some hash code in it - perfectly legal to download by anyone. This is probably just some big pr-stunt to try to make people think bittorrent is bad. BitTorrent it not bad, it is excellent and you should try it today.
Re:Server logs... (Score:3, Insightful)
Webserver logs wouldn't record the information you refer to, because the trackers usually run their own web server; you're not going to have it as part of your standard Apache log.
Furthermore, even if you did have webserver logs from the tracker, it is still not direct proof. I can send requests to the tracker that say whatever I wa
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why can they not make huge piles of money using BitTorrent when the adult entertainment industry embraces and utilizes the supreme BitTorrent technology in order to generate sustainable, legal returns?
Could it be that the movie industry simply have failed to accept the new technological area we are in, and therefore also fail to understand that it is oh so incredibly wise to give away some content in ord
Re:Oh goody. (Score:2, Insightful)
Then arrest them, and allow hollywood to sue them for actual damages done (not theoretical damages over people who may have theoretically bought a movie). How much money/physical goods did Hollywood have, that was then taken away by the filesharers? Allow them to be reimbursed for that.
If it's against the l
Re:Oh goody. (Score:2, Informative)
Penalties for copyright infringement differ in civil and criminal cases. Civil remedies are generally available for any act of infringement without regard to the intention or knowledge of the defendant, or harm to the copyright owner. Criminal penalties are available for i
Re:Oh goody. (Score:2, Interesting)
Do I get replacement cost? If so then hell yes! If a burglar gave me $400 for the home theater system I bought 4 years ago then I can buy a much better system now. The current system is fine, but hey free upgrades are great.
Stealing content online feels anonymous and somehow ~okay~. But it's not. It isn't civil disobedience. It
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you suppose that might be because when something is stolen, a single owner is deprived of the thing, whereas when something is illegally copied, the original owner loses out on selling multiple copies of the thing??
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember the "Gold Rule"? Who has gold, makes the rules. If the laws were for people, there would be no DMCA and probably very limited copyright. Certainly most of the people believe that it's OK to download and share stuff - why isn't law following the public view? But laws are against people and for corporations. Shows clearly who's country is this (and it applies to most countries - in US it's just more obvious).
Re:Oh goody. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Insightful)
The sense of entitlement on this site is astonishing. Now apparently it's immoral to have copyrights. The film industry should just let everyone into the cinemas for free because people have the moral right to take things for free rather than paying.
Jesus the shit that gets modded up on here... Was Slashdot always this bad? When did the freeloading
How did you get modded up? (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone copies something I did, it in no way diminishes what I have done.
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Insightful)
You have a MORAL right to do whatever you want to do, unless that action causes greater harm than good.
The question is.... does an owner of intellectual property have a MORAL right to monopolize that IP to the point of dictating what other people may do with their own physical property?
Saying they do, don't make it true.
Making it law, doesn't make it true either.
"The film industry should just let everyone into the cinemas for free becau
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh goody. (Score:2)
If you are going to astro turf, at least come up with a new line. That line was old the first time i heard it over decade ago.
It saddens me that you guys are fighting a pointless rear guard action here, instead of coming to the community and asking how we can work together on building new business models.
Hint: Long Tail.
Hint: Filtering.
Hint: Time poor internet professionals.
Hint: Your movies suck. We have gotten used to the indu
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Funny)
Well, that's certainly a valid reason for spending a hour or so downloading them off a torrent and then a couple of hours watching one. I mean, time poor internet professionals really need to waste MORE of their time, right?
And just out of curiosity, what new business model (paid content) works when people think that they're entitled to it for free?
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not willing to pay $16.99 for a CD in a store.
I'm not willing to pay $99/track via iTunes.
I'm willing to pay ~$1.00/CD for tracks from mp3search.ru
What does this say? Well, I (and many other people) are not willing to pay what the RIAA or Apple say music is worth, but I'm willing to pay something - even though it seems an insigificant amount - rather than wasting my time downloading off of p2p.
An artist could charge $1/album if they released them online and that
Re:Oh goody. (Score:4, Insightful)
Assumption 2: you do this in one off hits.
Both of these assumptions are based in the manufacturing reality, where spools of film had to be manufactured, transported, and then shown in specially built cinemas. Both of these assumptions are now completely bogus.
In fact I prefer listening to podcasts, which have a budget in the order of $50 an hour, to watching the latest block buster crap, with it's $50 million an hour budget.
Why? Because the podcasts are closer to my interests, they treat me as an intelligent, thinking, emotional human being, not a pair of eyes to be dazzled with tits and explosions.
Story telling. It's an amazing tradition. Something I'm hoping Hollywood rediscovers sooner, rather than later.
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Insightful)
A movie, OTOH, and to use your analogy, is a commercial shrinkwrapped product. Of one piece. Like a book, it has a start, middle, and "the end". There may be sequels, but they too, are self-contained.
What holds true for one model and process may not neccessarily hold true for the other.
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Insightful)
Apart from the two to ten person teams rolling out software on OS X, I don't know of any.
Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Interesting)
Which means that complete and unrestricted sharing is still out. (Anderson even agrees in the Tail article.) So we still need something "loose" like FairPlay (Apple's iTunes DRM) for movies so that content can be produced and paid for. Especially as we move to completely electronic distribution.
Second, not everything can be a Serenity. Some movies will still suck, no matter what. Bu
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:2)
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:2)
They need some kind of DRMed bit torrent client to kill bandwidth issues - and serious download penetration into the living room for there to be money in it now.
Imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please explain how the logs you cite prove I downloaded your movie. The logs show a 28k ".torrent" file. I was unaware that your movies could be compressed to such a degree! I would now like to direct you to my large DVD collection.
Fuck You,
Your Customer.
Re:Imagine... (Score:2, Insightful)
The httpd-access.log can only prove that your computer had download the torrent. It may serve as a supplementary information on where you got the torrent for that illegal download. Only the dumbest jury will find it persuasive to prove an illegal movie download / copyright infringement.
Re:Imagine... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I would love to buy things on DVD like Deadwood, but when I went out and priced Season 1, they wanted $100 for it. Since I already payed HBO to watch their channel for the whole season, I couldn't justify spending $100 to watch it again. I ended up missing the last few episodes of seson 2 and they expired on On Demand, so I was left with two choices: Wait 6 months and pay $200 for both seasons or download them all for free. It wasn't a really tough decision for me, especially considering how much more I could use the $200 for better things. I could see if it were to be like $40-50, but come on. They would probably sell a whole lot more if they dropped the price too. I mean that works out to a little less than $10 an hour for entertainment. That's more expensive than a movie ticket, nearly twice as much.
Great series though! I can't wait to see if they do a season 3 and I really hope they pick of the pieces of Carnivale because the season 2 finale was a really cheap way of ensuring there will be a season 3. All that buildup to the most anti-climatic ending of a series I've seen in a long time.
I hate to say this about IP lawsuits... (Score:5, Interesting)
BitTorrent is all but DESIGNED to be traceable. Maybe this will make people finally notice. That would (hopefully) do a lot to legitimize it.
Re:I hate to say this about IP lawsuits... (Score:3, Interesting)
So it is sort of like waving to the camera while robbing a bank. Don't be surprised if you get caught. I doubt these were slashdot posters of computer people, likely frat boys and jocks that didn't know any better....
My favorite stories, which happen a lot up here (Ohio)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Usenet? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Usenet? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Legal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Legal? (Score:2)
the article says that they got the LokiTorrent server logs via a court order. Though, this case does not involve the use of these logs...they may/will use them in the future. Since the courts gave them the logs, I doubt they would find it to be illegal to use the logs.
Re:Legal? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I make a list of random IP addresses and add random movie titles, can I be subpoenaed and those logs used to sue people?
It's not like the police came to someone's house and found a movie on their computer - an internet lowlife had that person's IP address on their server. Was it created by a bot?
Where's the proof? Does there need to be any? I understand that civil cases have a lower standard of guilt, but does anyone know for sure?
m
Re:Legal? (Score:4, Informative)
Without getting into the details of what hearsay is and isn't, I'd say that your typical everyday logs will likely fall within the business records exception to the hearsay rule, and be admissible for the truth of their contents. Depends on the circumstances surrounding their making, of course.
If you're in a situation to make logs of this sort of activity, however, you might want to reconsider whether or not you want to do so.
Where's the proof? Does there need to be any? I understand that civil cases have a lower standard of guilt, but does anyone know for sure?
Well, evidentiary issues (such as whether the logs are inadmissible hearsay) deal with whether the jury ever gets to know the logs exist, and gets to know what they say. If they're inadmissible, the jury doesn't get to know about them, and can't make a decision based on them.
If they are admitted, however, the jury gets to decide for themselves whether or not they trust them. They can always disbelieve them.
However, the burden of persuasion in civil cases (i.e. any case brought by RIAA, MPAA, etc.) is one of a preponderance of the evidence. If it is at all more likely that something is true than it is false (a 51% rule) then it's considered to be true.
Re:Legal? (Score:3, Informative)
Fed. R. Evid. 801(a)
"A 'statement' is (1) an oral or written assertion or (2) nonverbal conduct of a person, if it is intended by the person as an assertion."
Fed. R. Evid. 801(b)
"A declarant is a person who makes a st
Re:Legal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Its a huge problem with "digital evidence" that judges, juries, and lawyers just don't completely understand. But we, as techies, understand all too well how an exploit can compromise a machine, be used to plant something, and then every trace cleaned up. Su
Re:Legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to advocate copyright infringement, but if you do it, then you at least shouldn't do it in a blatantly amateurish way...
Re:Legal? (Score:2)
distributed (Score:2)
-M
A few points (Score:5, Interesting)
From TFA: Hollywood lawyers are hoping that the fear of exposure will dissuade more people from trying to download movies for free online. "Internet movie thieves be warned: You have no friends in the online community when you are engaging in copyright theft,"
I love how the MPAA resorts to terrorism to get it's point across.
Terrorism - n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
As with previous lawsuits filed by the MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America, this round of cases is aimed at anonymous "John Does" identified only by their Internet addresses. The defendants' true identities will be sought through a later court process.
Translation: We really have no proof of who downloaded the material but we're gonna goto court anyways
Re:A few points (Score:3, Interesting)
I love how the MPAA resorts to terrorism to get it's point across.
Terrorism - n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidat
Downloading Torrent Links against the law? (Score:2, Insightful)
Solution: Offshore all Torrent sites to Asia (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Solution: Offshore all Torrent sites to Asia (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Solution: Offshore all Torrent sites to Asia (Score:3, Informative)
Or Sweden.
The Pirate Bay [thepiratebay.org]
Rather Amusing legal threats page - including responces [thepiratebay.org]
Re:Solution: Offshore all Torrent sites to Asia (Score:2)
...they can even be hosted in backwards African countries such as Chad, Niger, Congo, etc.
Define that 'offshore' situation.
The physical location of the hosting server?
The mailing address of the corporation?
The legal presence of the corporation?
The owners legal place of residence?
The owners physical presence?
Unless you're talking about ALL of those...somebody is gonna get screwed.
Are YOU ready to move t
Oy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oy! (Score:2)
Log files? (Score:2, Insightful)
Or is there a log file, somewhere, like the tracker, that keeps track of who's connecting and what they're getting? What if you don't succeed in downloading the entire movie? Are you still infringeing, even if the data that
Maximum age for logfiles 24h ? (Score:4, Interesting)
and how old were they ? 24h, 2d or what.
Dear former admins of supr.nova or else who got raided,
please publish your policy how you dealt with the logs, and even if they really exist,
so that your former users can start saving money for a good lawyer or spend the money for a glass of champagne.
From TFA (Score:4, Informative)
OP didn't RTFA in the first place.
This is stupid. (Score:4, Funny)
RTFReviews.
Lawsuits (Score:4, Interesting)
Guns kill people, we sue the gun maker
The coffee is too hot, we sue McDonalds
We eat at fast food and we sue the fast food chains for making us fat.
We record music off the radio onto a cassette tape, it is ok to listen to in the car.
We download it off the internet, we get sued.
We watch a movie off a DVD and resell the DVD a place that sells used DVD's we get our money back from buying it and the Motion picture people don't get a second dime.
We download it and we get sued
So, does that mean that the ISP's connection we used should get sued too since we used that ISP's connection to get to the internet to Download what someone else put up there?
Does that mean we should sue Microsoft for making a majority of the operating systems used to DL the files we get sued for?
Does it ever end or have we just turned into a lawsuit happy world?
Re:Lawsuits (Score:2, Offtopic)
There is a lot of hype about the McDonalds' scalding coffee case. No
one is in favor of frivolous cases of outlandish results; however, it is
important to understand some points that were not reported in most of
the stories about the case. McDonalds coffee was not only hot, it was
scalding -- capable of almost instantaneous destruction of skin, flesh
and muscle. Here's the whole story.
Stella Liebeck of Albuquerque,
Re:Holy analogy, Batman! (Score:2)
Um, no. While the final terms were sealed, the latest public ruling was over $500K paid to her. It's safe to assume that the sealed settlement was at least most of that. Even if her lawyer took most (unlikely, I think 40% is fairly standard if the case was pro bono) she still made out quite nicely finanically.
(And all this ignores the fact that she at least originally only wanted medical expenses, and only refused because M
A way out? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A way out? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:A way out? (Score:3, Informative)
Walk softly and carry a big lawyer (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if someone could counter-sue them for defamation of character or whatever if they were mistakenly sued by the RIAA...
I bet they'd think twice if they started losing money on suing people. I think if they do goof up they should have to award the person 100 times as much as the person would have had to pay them. You'd see them get real careful about who they sued real fast.
They don't really have anything to worry about except making money anymore, the government is doing all the dirty work running around strong-arming other countries into cracking down on piracy (Don't crack down.. we won't trade with you...)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright theft (Score:5, Funny)
Don't give in... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the previous cases they hired people who connected to p2p filesharers and observed what exactly was being shared.
Not a single one of their previous cases has gone to trial. It's not cost effective for them to go to trial even when they can win!
The formula is simple...
1. Send threatening lawyer letters to people you believe to have violated your copyright...
2. Wait for a response...
3. Look for an admission of guilt...
4. Profit!
Oh Man... (Score:2, Interesting)
Let me be the first to say... (Score:2, Funny)
and /. is next (Score:3, Funny)
enjoy your freedom of thought while it lasts!
knowledge is power (Score:5, Interesting)
caveat emptor: this recipe assumes you are in a jurisdiction and dealing with content that is only illegal to UPLOAD (music files, for example, in the usa)
1. use emule, great program
2. load it up with porn, gigs of it. you don't even have to look at it. the point is to have something, anything, lots of it, that other people want to download and that you won't get in trouble for sharing (heh, sorry porn makers)
3. share the porn all the time. you'll have hundreds downloading from you in no time and be greatly appreciated
4. now, you've suddenly found a strange desire to download hillary duff (!?), so go ahead, search for it (assume you're getting it from someone in sweden and not hurting whoever is making it available)
4. find the the hillary duff file with the most sources (for quick download)
5. stop all of your other downloads
6. suck down hillary duff in a minute or two (heh)
7. get it out of your shared file immediately
why does this work?
the file you are snarfing is so fleeting, and you've crowded it out with a long queue of people waiting to download jenna jameson gone wild volume 2 and other such sleaze, that you're simply never going to wind up being the source for anything on the mpaa/ riaa's radar. it's a drop in a sea of masking porn
knowledge is power, use it wisely
Re:knowledge is power (Score:2)
Re:knowledge is power (Score:2)
Hate to break it to you, but that porn is just as copyrighted as the music. I don't think I've ever heard of someone suing over sharing porn, but nevertheless you should be aware that from a purely legal standpoint, what you're doing is no more right than if you were sharing the late
Re:knowledge is power (Score:3, Funny)
Re:knowledge is power (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, they're already working on the "Open Sauce" porn series. Eric Raymond is up first, with some transexuals and hermaphrodites. The title is the "The Bazaar and the Bizarre".
Unsecured WAP (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely some of these WAPs are located in buildings where the neighbors are leeching free broadband using granny's DHCP server and downloading all sorts of copyrighted torrents.
I wonder how many of these innocent granny types are going to be getting nice subpoenas from the MPAA. If they are senile and ignore them they might get default judgements when the case goes to court. Is the MPAA going to take away their money/home/valuables when they win by default?
Hell, my own home WAP was temporarily wide-open and unsecured for a while when I first set it up. Do I deserve to get potentially sued for being temporarily clueless?
Waiting for this to happen ... but - (Score:2)
Due to the nature of bittorrent - where everyone uploads a little here and a little there - are they going to name everyone (by IP address)in one massive slap suit?
Unless they can nail (and prove) who the initial seeder is, they would have to go after EVERYONE who participated in the torrent - no?
Of course, lawyers are total pond scum and can come up with something for sure - but I dont get how they can nail me for uploading segment 3415, 1298 and 8129 out of 8902 of any
What will the logs actually contain? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The IP addresses of people hosting bittorrents
and
2) The IP addresses of people being redirected to download from the above people
In both cases I fail to see how there can be any effective legal case. Unless the MPAA actually went to the sites in question and downloaded the files, they can't prove that "Matrix.avi" was actually the movie Matrix. And they certainly can't prove that the downloaders ever actually completed their downloads, regardless.
I call "bullshit". No way any guilty verdicts can ever be reached here.
UNFORTUNATELY, however, with the FUCKED UP legal system in the U.S., some people might not have the resources to actually hire a lawyer to point this out, even though doing so would guarantee an innocent verdict. So expect a few po' folk to negotiate settlements...
I have a list... (Score:2, Interesting)
err...I mean a list of seemingly random numbers grouped in four sets of one to three numbers separated by periods and I have no way of proving the authenticity and/or credibility of the list or tell you anything about it and only vaguely explain how it was made and I got it. But I will say that you're on it but I won't let you look at the list to verify that you're accually on the list.
Sure, that will work. Yes, I'm sure e
If they are stupid enough to keep logs... (Score:2)
Keep your own log (Score:3, Interesting)
Betrayal (Score:5, Interesting)
why do they need to get logs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Only thing I can figure is they are technically inept and can't figure out the protocol so they have to rely on logs? Or there is some information or coalation/summary in the logs they are interested in?
I call BS on the "suprnova logs" claim with reason (Score:3, Interesting)
Any questions or comments?
it may be unpopular but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Too many of us have bought into the "my way, right away" mentality, in which if we can't find what we want in less than five minutes, someone's done us wrong. To many, this is a way of life, and they have stopped caring (to the point at which they routinely risk the longterm health of themselves and their society) who provides them a service or product just as long as it is provided right away. Now, i appreciate the immediacy of (some) file-sharing utilites as well as the broad range of content available on their networks, but is the risk really worth it? Why would anyone in their right mind risk a heavy fine for downloading dukes of hazard or the latest jason mraz album? Anyone who uses any of the top five file-sharing protocols takes that risk each time they download something that someone in california happens to care about.
If you really want the "phat loot," make sure you know who's providing it to you, or at least make sure they can never find out who you are. I've found that the best way to get anything free is to personally know someone who has direct access/control over it. Next chance you get, go visit the helpdesk or IT department or whoever's responsible for installing software onto the machines where you work/go to school. If you don't have a job or go to school (get a job, hippy!) then go visit the local community college during the next open house (and then visit the IT dept). Those people are (or will shortly be) your friends. Chat it up with them, talk about your favorite video game/author/movie/pet - you will have something in common with them (it's inevitable, Mr. Anderson). Any place with a respectable IT department has either site licenses or several extra licenses for just about anything you could ever need/want. Guess what... if you need a software package - and your newfound friend has a few extra on hand - he will share with you (unless he's a total tightwad).
As for movies and music... be honest with yourself. The tripe that has come out within the past few years (White Chicks? You got Served?? Catwoman???) is far below you, and you don't need to watch the whole movie (or listen to the whole cd) to figure that out. Invariably, any movie or music worth experiencing is also worth at least a rental if not an outright purchase - otherwise, don't waste your time. Indie movie makers and musicians probably don't care (and might even like it) if you download their stuff, so go wild on that one.
Trust is good. Patience is good. We could all use a little more.
So what's up with the Tor network? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Another ZDnet Story? (Score:4, Insightful)