The RIAA and IP BS
p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- Repeated mainstream media stories that the Big 4 organised music gang has been able to persuade American ISPs to act as corporate cops, enabling Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music to stop suing their own customers themselves, must be erroneous.
“Users of P2P networks who distribute files over a network can be identified by using Internet Protocol (’IP’) addresses because the unique IP address of the computer offering the files for distribution can be captured by another user during a search or a file transfer,” says an official RIAA court document, categorically.
No wonder all those file sharers get caught all the time.
Actually, they don’t. Hundreds of millions of people around the world share music with each other online every second of every minute of every day and the chances of any one of them becoming a victim of the RIAA, or any of the other Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music ‘trade’ units, is virtually zero.
But the Big 4 labels like people to believe subpoenas are successfully prosecuted court cases lodged for the non-existent crime of illegal filesharing.
The statement at the beginning comes from one of the RIAA’s latest efforts, filed in Omaha, Nebraska, on March 4 – Recordings v Adams.
And this means reports of the RIAA having ceased bringing new lawsuits were ‘exaggerated’ (just like the number of court victories, which so far number Zero) suggests Recording Industry vs The People Ray Beckerman dryly.
But back to IP addresses, “Plaintiffs [read the Big 4, or their components] have identified each defendant by the unique Internet Protocol (’IP’) address assigned to that defendant on the date and time of their alleged infringing activity,” said another official court document, this time taking back to 2007.
Oh really?
Here’s what University of Chicago professor Mike O`Donnell (right) had to say in reference to another case in which IP addresses were offered as “identities” »»»
1. IP addresses are never assigned to persons. They are assigned to network interfaces on particular hosts or virtual hosts. A virtual host is pretty much any computational abstraction we like.
2. IP addresses are not assigned by any authority with the mission to identify the persons responsible for the network interfaces to which they are assigned. In most cases, the assigner has no competence to make such an identification.
3. Most IP addresses are in fact assigned by an immediate neighbor on a local area network. Furthermore, that neighboring router is the only agent that deals with the assignment in any way. Incoming traffic to a given IP address reaches the assigned interface through the information stored only at that neighboring router.
4. Network protocols provide no way whatsoever to determine whether incoming traffic to a particular IP address has been solicited by some action at that address, or is gratuitous. (It is not at all crazy to worry that some offending traffic is generated by RIAA action in its attempts to identify offenders, and probably not even as a conscious attempt to frame the recipient).
5. The IP number given as return address in a packet is provided initially by the actual sender, which may (and in the case of an attacker often does) provide an address used by another interface not at all involved in the production of the packet. So the return IP address in a packet received by an RIAA detection effort does not indicate even the IP address of the actual sender in any reliable way.
I am one of at least thousands of people who could easily provide expert testimony on the points above.
Tracing of identities through IP numbers can definitely have value in law enforcement, but by itself an IP number on a packet has only suggestive value and is not reliable evidence at all.
The association of packets bearing a particular IP number with the actions of a particular person depend on assumptions about the behavior of that person and all other persons who take actions causing packets to be transmitted (since any IP number can be entered by any network software anywhere, with no necessary connection to the network interface assigned that number).
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
March, 2009
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March 6th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
It’s a good summary. If it were me, I would have also noted that it’s possible to change your own IP at will (all you’d have to do is make sure you get the IP’s of routers and DNS servers right), route through proxies or use Tor, and in the case of such services as HTTP, you might be tracing to the next downstream proxy server instead of to the server originating the request (example: if you’ve ever been to a Wifi “hotspot”, which charges by the hour, you’ll notice that you are first redirected to a payment page. You are clearly behind a proxy, but you also clearly didn’t intend that to be the case).
IPs are also easily masked by NAT — network address translation — which is what wireless routers use. An open wireless router will make 10 different computers seem to be the one single address assigned to the uplink port on the router. It doesn’t go the other way: there is no one-to-one mapping to find any one computer behind a NAT. You can, of course, set such a mapping up yourself on a port-by-port basis (it’s often called port forwarding or NAT Pinholes, depending who made your router). But that doesn’t help the RIAA: reset the router, and any evidence that this was ever done is suddenly gone.
Of course, assuming for a moment that ISP’s have programmed a DHCP server that can track what port made the request, link that to a customer, and assign an IP based on that (which, while not technically impossible, seems ridiculous to me), they would still need to request that information from the ISP to link the person to the IP. Even then, when you include NAT, onion routing, etc., you’ve only found the person registered on the account of the IP you found — not necessarily the person who originated the packet you stripped the IP from.
Last, but certainly not least, is that IPs are re-used. The DHCP server (an *automatic* service to assign IPs within network segments, which can only identify MAC addresses, and aside from the fact that those, too, can be changed, they aren’t valid outside of the local segment) will re-use any old IPs it is allowed to assign, usually after a (short) waiting period after the expiration of the last lease. It’s frequently possible that your IP changes without you being even aware of it (especially between reboots). This means, of course, that even if the IP-to-person correlation was correct at one time, it won’t necessarily stay that way. They could easily take long enough to identify the person associated with an IP that they get the wrong guy!
In short, this is a good summary of some key points, but it’s not even the whole story!
(This is all stuff I learned in my Network+ certification course. That is an *introductory* networking certification.)
March 7th, 2009 at 9:32 am
your computer might be creating a Reverse DNS name that is uniquely identifyable. i checked mine; it’s just my IP address — which is a DHCP address. Bear in mind that your ISP may be keeping a log of when are signed on and this will allow the computer name to be associated with your computer by simply associating the date/time on the traffic with your IP or reverse DNS
a word about private, non-commercial use: If I have some copyrighted data, — most anything — I can generally enjoy private, non-commercial use. I can print a news story and then read it in the Saloon. I can burn me a CD and play music in my truck. That is private, non-commercial use. But if I upload the data to my web-site it is no longer PRIVATE and I have committed a copyright violation and I am liable for damages under civil law.
uploading to a torrent is just a different technology but is not different in kind from burning a CD or uploading to a web page. the trouble with uploading a public copy is the owner can no longer control distribution: the thief does.
at some point copyright holders will figure this out and approach the issue properly
March 7th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Rate Structures — something to think about
I am seeing news clips here and there dealing with rate structures based on transmission volume.
Other clips deal with Homeland Security and wire-taps.
I think it is a mistake to assume that your ISP does not know what you are sending and receiving. A simple traffic analysis would quickly pin-point computers that need detail log audits…
March 7th, 2009 at 11:51 am
” But if I upload the data to my web-site it is no longer PRIVATE and I have committed a copyright violation and I am liable for damages under civil law. ”
You might be right except that noone has uploaded the data to the Pirate Bay.
The Pirate Bay does not host ANY content.
It’s an aggregate of Torrent files.
The same Torrent files can be found using a google search and specifying the filetype as TORRENT.
Every single Torrent on the Pirate Bay is ALSO available using a Google search.
” the trouble with uploading a public copy is the owner can no longer control distribution: the thief does. ”
Since a Torrent contains no copyrighted data whatsoever, there is no thief.
Believing everything you hear on the news isn’t always good for you.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Dredneck: you didn’t read what I wrote. Noplace did I say anything about The Pirate Bay in my post.
Next, you state: “Since a Torrent contains no copyrighted data whatsoever, there is no thief.” Torrents hold thousands of illegal copies of material.
Remember what a torrent is: it is a download derived from multiple sources concurrently. TPB is not a torrent: it is an index to torrents.
Users are definitely acquiring copyright material ILLEGALLY via torrents and when that happens there are two thieves: (1) the uploading party and (2) the downloader, and when an index, such as TPB is used you have COLLABORATIVE copyright violation also. Uploading copyright material to a torrent is a new technology but is not different in kind from uploading to a website: in uploading to a publicly accessible area you can no longer claim PRIVATE non-comercial use. The copyright holder can no longer control the production and distribution of copies of his property and as such under copyright law has a cause of action against you. So far though copyright holders have had trouble getting the evidence they need to prosecute their case. But that is simply because they don’t know what they’re doing.
what I am warning people about here is this: although RIAA and MPA have so far been very clumsy in pursuing their issue do not expect that to continue. All this chitter-chatter about rate structures based on volume and the need for NSA wire-tapping should tell you — ISPs are going to be keeping better records regarding the usage habits of their customers.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:32 am
please get it thru your sycophantic RIAA ass kissing mind. there is nothing ILLEGAL about file sharing. It is a civil infringement of copyright, not a violation of law.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Surfer: Copyright Infringement can result in some serious fines because it is ILLEGAL. Filesharing is fine: share files that belong to you or that you have written authorization to share.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:11 am
I go out of my way to share everything that IS copyrighted, @ 250gb/mo.
stw
March 9th, 2009 at 11:16 am
@ Mike:
In the scheme of things, any one person stands as much chance of ending up on the wrong end of an RIAA lawsuit as s/he does of winning the lottery.
For a fine to be levied, a case has to be heard and a judge has to find someone guilty of something.
Thousands of people have been subpoenaed and some of them have âsettledâ because they couldnât afford to go to court, but thatâs an entirely different thing.
At the moment, the RIAA is about to start a re-boot of its one and only copyright infringement court case with a judge and jury against single mum Jammie Thomas.
Cheers!
March 9th, 2009 at 11:26 am
and 30,000 lawsuits vs 9 million file sharers is about .03%, and of that .03%, only 1 went before a judge, so thats around .009% of all file sharing. I have to say that MAFIAA is doing a bang up job deterring the INFRACTION of sharing copyrighted material. (and they LOST the only infringement case heard by the courts.)
odds of me being ‘fined’ … zero.
stw
March 9th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
“Dredneck: you didnât read what I wrote. Noplace did I say anything about The Pirate Bay in my post. ”
@Mike B. Licker
ummmm, ok…
No torret site has any illegal data of any kind on it.
Feel better now ?
” Remember what a torrent is: it is a download derived from multiple sources concurrently. ”
No.
This file contains metadata about the files to be shared and about the tracker, it contains none of the
copyrighted material whatsoever … none, nada, zippo.
There is nothing illeagal about a Torrent,regardless of how you want it to be that way.
It’s just not true. Sorry.
” Users are definitely acquiring copyright material ILLEGALLY via torrents and when that happens there are two thieves: (1) the uploading party and (2) the downloader, ”
While SOME users may be obtaining copyrighted material, many others aren’t.
And here we go with the ‘Thief’ lie .. again.
No one has been deprived of the use of any property, and no property has changed hands.
Copyright infringement MAY have taken place,but not by ANY torrent aggregator.
You said it yourself, if infringement is taking place the UPLOADING party (the one that ACTUALLY HAS THE DATA )
would be guilty ( possibly ) of infringement.
Don’t forget, users are also getting stuff LEGALLY using the same technology.
Significant legal use is happening here, remember the VCR wars ?
” such as TPB is used you have COLLABORATIVE copyright violation also. ”
I love lawyer wannabe’s.
Since Google can provide a link, easily, to every one of those same torrent files, than Google should pay
you piper as well.
Better start the paperwork.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I get so tired of propaganda and misinformation, and the shills that perpetuate it all…
1) “Torrents hold thousands of illegal copies of material…
Remember what a torrent is: it is a download derived from multiple sources concurrently.”
A torrent file is a small metadata file that contains no copyrighted material.
Tracking, or even hosting such files cannot possibly constitute copyright infringement.
2) “…a word about private, non-commercial use: If I have some copyrighted data, â most anything â I can generally enjoy private, non-commercial use. I can print a news story and then read it in the Saloon. I can burn me a CD and play music in my truck.”
Yet, according to the publishing, movie and recording industries, all of this is “illegal”.
The above is actually TRUE, but is only stated when spinning propaganda about filesharing, etc. somehow being “illegal”.
3) “Users are definitely acquiring copyright material ILLEGALLY via torrents and when that happens there are two thieves: (1) the uploading party and (2) the downloader, and when an index, such as TPB is used you have COLLABORATIVE copyright violation also.”
- Downloading ANYTHING is NOT ILLEGAL!
- Uploading certain materials may INFRINGE COPYRIGHT, but the action is still not “illegal”.
- File sharing is NOT ILLEGAL!
- There is no such thing as “collaborative copyright violation”!
(”collaborative imagination”, however, certainly seems to exist.)
- Tracking and indexing torrent files is NOT ILLEGAL!
4) “ISPs are going to be keeping better records regarding the usage habits of their customers.”
This is just a DREAM shared by the *AAs and the opportunistic, parasitical marketing leaches of the world.
It will never come true, as long as the free-thinking world has anything to do with it!
For now, the idea just serves as another empty threat in the effort to discredit file sharing.
Big Content would love to see ISPs spend their own time and money being the appointed “Copyright Police”, but I don’t see that proposal being received with open arms by the providers. Even some of the most clue-resistant ISPs won’t be making the same mistake as the MAFIAA has made – sabotage their own customer base!
So, Mike, got any more MAFIAA-inspired BS you want to “educate us” with?!
March 9th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
u wanna slap this guy around as well Henry?
stw
March 9th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I think it was a shill ‘drive by’.
I don’t expect a return visit.
At the very least, if he DOES come back it won’t be with anything
logical or intelligible.
Just more corporate goop.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Poor MAFIAA-tard: so hopelessly deluded by corporate cartel propaganda
that he is unable to distinguish between copying and stealing.
I’ll bet he also believes that filters work (they don’t), that three strikes laws
are accurate and effective (neither is true), that DRM stops piracy (far from it,
it actually increases it by making paying customers into former paying customers),
or that a download equals a lost sale (this is perhaps the biggest of all MAFIAA lies.)