Are RapidShare downloaders in danger?
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- RapidShare is a, “German-owned one-click hosting pay- and free-service (with certain restrictions and limitations) website that operates from Switzerland and is financed by the subscriptions of paying users,” says the Wikipedia.
“Rapidshare is one of the world’s largest file-hosting sites with millions of files stored on its servers.”
And it allegedly gave a user’s IP address to a major label in Germany, p2pnet reported last week, quoting Gulli.com, which originally broke the news.
The data were handed over as per the strictures of Paragraph 101 of German copyright law.
Working with the ISP concerned, the label then used the information to uncover details about its customer, the alleged uploader, and the police were called in.
Said Jacqui Cheng on Ars Technica »»»
Critics fear that that the latest series of events is evidence that the floodgates have been opened for a more “creative” interpretation of paragraph 101. After all, if they are able to obtain IP information, record labels may begin using it to go after users on BitTorrent and other P2P networks. This is the same fear that fueled borderline levels of panic when rumors circulated about Last.fm handing over user data to the RIAA earlier this year, though both Last.fm and the RIAA vehemently denied the accusations. Last.fm later said that it takes the privacy of its users very seriously and that it would never hand over personally identifiable data like e-mails or IP addresses.
There are, however, many differences between Last.fm and RapidShare. For one, if Last.fm were to find itself in the position RapidShare is in with GEMA, it would be able to argue that the Safe Harbor provision in the DMCA protects it from liability as long as it removes infringing content after being presented with a takedown notice. In Germany (and many other countries), there is no equivalent, meaning that RapidShare has little choice but to comply with the rulings. RapidShare’s incredible popularityâGermany-based deep packet inspection (DPI) provider Ipoque recently put out a report saying that RapidShare is responsible for half of all direct download trafficâhas only made the issue more sensitive for the record labels and service providers alike.
Downloaders, too, might be targets
However, Gulli.com editor Firebird77 worried the floodgates might have been opened even wider and contacted Thomas Stadler, a specialist in IT law and intellectual property rights.
Firebird77 told p2pnet that according to Stadler, downloaders, too, might also be targets.
And in addition, “many other smaller suppliers could be drawn into this,” he said.
Whenever a cease and desist letter is sent out in Germany, “it always claims the filesharer had uploaded the file, not downloaded it,” says Firebird77, going on »»»
In the case of RapidShare (or other filehosters) only one person uploads the file, but 5 X other people may download it.
Rapidshare said in its press release that the IP addresses of their users are safe and the company will never give them out without a court order.
So far so good.
But as Stadler says, nobody should blindly trust this. According to § 101 German Copyright law, data on the users of a service (downloaders) can also be handed out. The downloaders must only have downloaded enough files to bring them within the reach of §101. Exactly how much this is is unclear, but it could happen.
Rapidshare doesn’t save what somebody downloads, only the IP address. But there are other filehosters, or “download-only services,” and if they have the filename and IP address, they could be forced to give these details to a rightsholders, if he requests it.
Meanwhile, the §101 statutue includes mention of “commercial” downloads.
That doesn’t mean the downloader needs to be receiving money from his pirated works: it means he only has to have enough pirated works in his possession to make it look as though he could. But it doesn’t say exactly how many files that would take.
This also makes things more interesting for prosecutors.
Stay tuned.
(Thanks for the help, Alter_Fritz)
p2pnet – RapidShare accused of sharing user data, April 28, 2009
Ars Technica - RapidShare hands over user info in Germany, users panic, April 27, 2009
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May 6th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Well! if you live in germany then use TOR: http://www.torproject.org/
With regular P2P application one can not for sure associate an IP address with a particular user because of IP address physing methods, wirless network hacking and because one computer does not mean one person.
With bit torrent there is a problem for the entairtenement parasites to go after the torrent users:
Each download is spread between many users. So who is sharing what is not clear.
But with TOR IP addresses are totally undetectable. You don’t know who is sharing and you dont know who is downloading. There is no clue at all.
So what are they going to do? Make internet illegal?
Even these will not work because there is already P2P applications that can work without Internet and even replace it.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Tor is great, but the problem is that it is soooo slow.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
“Tor is great, but the problem is that it is soooo slow.”
Now this is interesting.
(God, but I’m the “skunk at the party” lately!)
1. We don’t particularly like copyright because we (correctly) recognize it as a coercive monopoly granted by the State, which — like all such things, has mutated far beyond what was stated in it’s original “sales-pitch”.
2. However, we ALSO don’t like the idea that some mysterious “they” could be “watching” our Internet usage habits, to maybe extrapolate some data about us from it. (Phorm). So, it’s still “ours”, and they used it in a way we don’t like.
(Double standard? I honestly dunno.)
3. We claim to be all into innovation, and against government jackbooting like patents (which are a way for companies to prevent the competition upon which “market forces” depend), or criminalizing circumvention of DRM restrictions.
4. At the same time, at least some of us are proponents of “Net Neutrality”, and would really like the Government to enforce laws against things like packet-inspection or “throttling”.
(Double standard? I dunno.)
5. We love anonymity, and know that bullshit like the DMCA empowers cease-and-desist takedowns and stuff.
6. We ALSO love Creative-commons licenses, because they SIMULATE a “free culture”, but still allow the “rights-holders” to permit, or dissalow, certain uses (”Non-commercial”, “No derivs”, etc. etc.)
Double standard? I dunno.
7. We ALSO love speed, and complain when a perfectly usable anonymity-technology makes things “slower”.
So basically it boils down to:
We want total, unlimited, continuous, screamingly-fast access to anything and everything we might ever happen to want, under all circumstances, irrespective of the wishes of content-creators/rights-holders, or service providers.
At the same time, we don’t want “them” (whoever “they” happen to be) to see — or potentially use — “our” data, for any reason, without explicit consent from us.
Makes perfect sense to me.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:16 am
@ Henry “(God, but Iâm the âskunk at the partyâ lately!) ”
but thats ok, you make some good points and keep us thinking.
Yes you have been l8ly
As far as the article goes, and in context of the comments, if the people using rapidshare are not using tor type protection they should be for all the obvious reasons. If you are using tor then you just need to realize its going to be SLOW, got to be some trade off for your anonimity out here, like the old saying “aint no such thing as a free lunch!”
BTW, watch out for “them” cause they watch you!!
May 7th, 2009 at 1:41 am
“BTW, watch out for âthemâ cause they watch you!!”
Oh, for sure they do. But by the same token, *we* watch EACH OTHER:
Good example of this was Jon’s reaction when Ares was “scraping” content but failing to give attribution (thus, violating the CC license.)
I said, back then, that I figured he should just leave that one alone (in the same way — and for the same reasons) that WE think the RIAA labels should leave p2pers alone. That, among other things, has really gotten me thinking.
Thanks for the props, No1uno (For the longest time, I thought that was a Ham radio callsign, but now I’m suspecting maybe it’s “Number 1, Uno?”
Thinking is cool.
May 7th, 2009 at 5:30 am
@ henry
….FIrst glance I thought the same thing till I thought about vanity plates and the topic of discussion … I think it’s “No one you know” =)
May 7th, 2009 at 8:49 am
@ henry
*Oh, for sure they do. But by the same token, *we* watch EACH OTHER: Good example of this was Jonâs reaction when Ares was âscrapingâ content but failing to give attribution (thus, violating the CC license.)I said, back then, that I figured he should just leave that one alone (in the same way â and for the same reasons) that WE think the RIAA labels should leave p2pers alone. That, among other things, has really gotten me thinking.*
Newton is a hypocrite. Thanks for calling hm out Henry.
May 7th, 2009 at 9:13 am
“Rapidshare doesnât save what somebody downloads, only the IP address. But there are other filehosters, or âdownload-only services,â and if they have the filename and IP address, they could be forced to give these details to a rightsholders, if he requests it.”
Why would any of them log what free users download? Not saying that they don’t, just that it makes no sense for them to do so.
May 7th, 2009 at 11:08 am
@ Henry and Watcher:
“Good example of this was Jonâs reaction when Ares was âscrapingâ content but failing to give attribution …” [ http://www.p2pnet.net/story/18141 ]
I used to run stories about celebrities in the hope of drawing new people to the site so they’d perhaps be exposed to different ways of looking at things. But I’m still only one person and since I can only do so much, I decided to cut back on those kinds of posts.
However, I still want people to come to here to perhaps find new thoughts and ideas from a wide range of people — including from Henry.
If, though, p2pnet items on other sites aren’t attributed, readers won’t know where they come from and won’t, therefore, be able to come here where they’ll find other material.
But does that matter? Or is the message enough in and of itself?
Cheers!
May 7th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Voxleo wins the prize, I am No One You Know, glad you guys like the handle!
I stand by my first post, you gotta figure that the sites you surf (exception here on p2pnet) are logging at least something about who comes thru to visit, I dont happen to use Tor while Im here, but other places get the full treatment!! kinda like Neo, I live a double life, one path has a future, the other has a future also!!
May 7th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
“However, I still want people to come to here to perhaps find new thoughts and ideas from a wide range of people â including from Henry.”
Uhh, thanks — I think
“If, though, p2pnet items on other sites arenât attributed, readers wonât know where they come from and wonât, therefore, be able to come here where theyâll find other material.
But does that matter? Or is the message enough in and of itself?”
My point was — and remains — not so much with you, as with the underlying mentality behind the various “free-culture” type licenses which have become trendy over the last few years. What’s alway’s really struck me about them is: whatever we may claim about how “information wants to be free” or suchlike, we STILL like the idea of being able to stipulate how/by whom/for what “our” content is used.
I may be an extremist, but to my way of thinking, the only REAL difference between those who license stuff under CC or GPL, and folks like the RIAA, is one of degree. Face it: if copy”right” terms were shorter (say 11 years), and after that thinks went into the public domain — like we CLAIM to want — then, for example, Stallman wouldn’t be able to use GPL version 3 to stop “tivoization”, and you wouldn’t have been able to get Ares to stop scraping p2pnet for content, OR force them to attribute it.
Honestly, I’m really not trying to “attack” anybody over these last several posts — even if it reads like I am.
What I’m trying to do is point out inconsistencies AS I SEE THEM, in the way we deal with issues.
N01uno:
Excellent handle.
May 7th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
As an additional note, maybe that’s one of the reasons the RIAA/IFPI are being so damnably harsh — they see that millions of people (rightly) don’t give a shit about copyright terms lasting life-plus-70, and being the type of people they are, it’s hard for them to understand how people WOULD obey SHORTER copyright terms.
“Sam I Am” annoyed me because he seemed to hate the RIAA just as much as we do (claiming in one post, that they routinely “extorted” him for the use of their content), but he supported them nevertheless, because he had to protect “his” content, and the all-precious monopoly powers that went with it.
So how — if at all — do CC and GPL advocates differ from that, other than in degree?
And how would “free culture” activists really DEAL with a genuinely vibrant public domain (where their CC-licensed monopolies would expire in a timely fashion?)
Really puzzling issue, I think.
(But maybe off-topic, but I dunno.)
Bye, Y’all!
May 7th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
@ Henry
I said “including from Henry” not “even from Henry.”
For me, p2pnet is a place where I’m learning interesting stuff and finding interesting views and opinions all the time, thanks to a lot of smart people — including you, Henry — who come here.
And that’s great. Helps to keep me from turning into a vegetable.
Cheers!
May 7th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Off topic a bit………..The way I see it is like this. As individuals we each bring a unique perspective to the issues that Jon presents here, and that we see on the other sites (which I wont plug here). If we, as individuals agreed on every issue at hand there would be little use for forums such as p2pnet to present that information for comment……and that my friends would be damned boaring!!
Now on topic, the issues I hold with the data mining/logging of my habits is this
1. They dont ASK to use my data
2. I didnt put anything out on CC or other public use authorization
SO where do they have a right to use it?? That is where I get rubbed by the whole thing
May 8th, 2009 at 12:07 am
“1. They dont ASK to use my data
2. I didnt put anything out on CC or other public use authorization
SO where do they have a right to use it?? That is where I get rubbed by the whole thing”
1. The folks uploading to p2p networks “didn’t ask” permission first in most cases.
2. The labels didn’t put it out via CC licenses (and are exceedingly unlikely to ever do so, given their way of thinking.)
THiS is where I get confused — and my confusion is really only deepening:
Don’t get me wrong, folks — I’m ALL for p2p as a form of electronic civil-disobedience and counterweight to the RIAA’s continuous breaking of THEIR side of the agreement (by never letting stuff “lapse” into the public domain.) But my question is, why do we feel different about “our” content or data, than about theirs?
Is it because the RIAA originally offered the stuff publically for sale?
Jon:
“If, though, p2pnet items on other sites arenât attributed, readers wonât know where they come from and wonât, therefore, be able to come here where theyâll find other material.
But does that matter? Or is the message enough in and of itself?”
—–
That depends on what “message” you’re talking about:
1. The overt “We like p2p, and are skeptical about copyright” one we all know about
or
2. The less-obvious but still glaringly evident “message” that says “I offer “my content” under very specific terms and conditions, and if you screw with that, I’ll bring down the hammer.” THAT’S what I take away from Lessig’s statements that he’d be more than willing to prosecute those who violate Creative Commons licenses, using the DMCA, no less.
Now, I am by no means “innocent” of this particular double-standard (if it even IS a double-standard), in that I’m most likely going to release my stuff under a CC license. But this IS something to think about.
If copyright terms WERE reduced to, say, 5 years, and we DID get a vibrant public domain as a result, my question is:
WOULD people obey a shorter copyright-term?
And, what would happen to the “free culture” if culture were REALLY freed, by way of shorter copyright terms, or no copyright at all?
May 8th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Jon:
“For me, p2pnet is a place where Iâm learning interesting stuff and finding interesting views and opinions all the time, thanks to a lot of smart people â including you, Henry â who come here.
And thatâs great. Helps to keep me from turning into a vegetable”
—-
Oh for sure — good discussions here.
Great bunch of people contributing, too.