BSA spying on BitTorrent
p2pnet.net News:- BitTorrent traffic is being monitored. But not by the RIAA, says Nick Haywood on Hexus.
“We know that this isn’t new to some of our USA readers,” he says, going on, “The difference here is that we have had a report that a user of UK ISP Pipex has been contacted over downloading ‘unlicensed copies of copyrighted computer programs’. Hmmm.
ISPs are not, however, the culprits. Doing the dirty is the BSA (Business Software Alliance) which, “watches all traffic and it sees what IPs are contributing or downloading from various sites,” says the story.
“It will then do a look-up and follow a route of action, starting with an email to the ISP who have a legal obligation to pass on the email associated with the the IP connection. If, however, the ISPs don’t contact the customer then they will be held liable for contributory infringement.”
Now, “it’s clear that the BSA are getting serious and will be clamping down on folks who continue to download in volume from flagged peer-to-peer networks,” warns Haywood, going on that an email from the BSA to includes the IP, the Protocol, the Asset being downloaded, the EXACT file name and the DNS address of the connection (and date/time stamp, too).
He quotes the Pipex ‘rectify within seven days or else’ missive to its customer:
We have received a complaint regarding an allegation of Copyright Infringement.
We were supplied an IP address of the system that was sharing the alleged copyrighted material, which we traced to your PIPEX ADSL account.
As I am sure you are aware, this breaches our Acceptable Use Policy, (http://www.pipex.net/legal/aup/ ) and many copyright laws, namely the Berne Convention.
“Will we see the RIAA-style snoop attack flowing forward?” – wonders Hexus.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
Hexus – It’s the future… it’s true…, January 23, 2007
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January 25th, 2007 at 12:31 am
Did I hear ya right? Did I hear ya sayin’
That you’re gonna make a copy of a game without payin’?
Come on, guys!
I thought you knew better! Don’t copy that floppy!
January 25th, 2007 at 1:37 am
If the BSA’s member companies are indeed losing as much money as they say that they are, then they can’t afford to abdicate their responsibility to maintain their software for the sake of legal users and go after these illegal users. This is money that could be better spent on product improvement and innovation instead of hunting down pirates. Using this tactic might actually hurt everybody who uses software, legally or otherwise, from the BSA’s member companies, because the money that the companies DO have isn’t going where it is needed. Just look at Microsoft. They reportedly spent billions on their anti-piracy campaigns and measures, when that money could very well have been spent on Vista and Office 12 development.
Unlike the RIAA and MPAA, who can afford to run themselves and their companies’ remaining money into the ground with destructive litigations against numerous infringers without affecting the non-infringing public very much, society very much depends on adequate software. If a BSA member company doesn’t end this litigation and step up to the plate by writing good software for the masses, you can be sure that someone else will.
January 25th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Now how does the BSA know that I am not going to pay for the software that I download? I recently bought (as in paid hard earned cash) for a product that I found useful after downloading it from a bit-torrent site.
Oh, I get it, they don’t want my money. I won’t buy any software anymore that I can’t fully try unimpeded for the length of time that I need to evaluate it.
January 25th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
bittorrent are just pirates like those before them, not even their self serving statements are different to earlier pirate operations so it can only be a matter of time before they get sued out of existence
January 25th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
This is complete baloney. They “watch all traffic?” Please! Even if you could get your hands on “all traffic” (whatever that’s supposed to mean), You couldn’t handle the volume.
More importantly, unless you are the ISP, or are running a central P2P server (oops, contributory liability, see Universal v. Grokster, U.S. Supreme Court 2005) you can’t just watch other people’s traffic. That is unless you hack in which is also illegal.
In conclusion, I call bulls**t
January 26th, 2007 at 6:06 am
Nah, not bullshit.
Do you know what they do?
They download the torrent file and then connect to the tracker. The tracker tells them who they can connect to get parts of the file. They don’t have to hack anything. So they themselves are downloading files from P2P networks. Ironic, isn’t it?