New spyware FACT farce
p2pnet.net News:- FACT is short for Farcical Approaches to Copyright Transgressions.
In our humble opinion, that’s what it should be, anyway. But officially, it’s Federation Against Copyright Theft, a so-called ‘trade’ unit p2pnet has previously described as, “yet another wholly owned entertainment cartel thingy designed to frighten people into buying over-priced corporate movie studio and record label ‘product’ they wouldn’t normally touch with a barge-pole”.
Now, ” Powerful, intrusive new technology is about to be used to spy on New Zealanders online,” says The New Zealand Herald.
And behind it is NZ FACT, the New Zealand Federation against Copyright Theft which claims to have developed a spyware application able to, “hunt movie pirates” and “track internet searches,” says the story.
Moreover, “It can trace Google searches and other download attempts back to the computer they came from. New Zealand anti-piracy investigators used the program in a recent trial, discovering 1153 attempts to illegally download hit children’s movie Chicken Little.”
Right.
So how does this amazing application work?
It’ll, “identify pirates by their IP address – a computer’s unique identity,” says TheNew Zealand Herald. “It could track the IP address to the internet company which holds the user’s details. The internet company could then agree – or be compelled – to give those details to NZfact.”
Oh. The old IP con.
“Federation executive director Tony Eaton said action against pirates could begin with a ‘cease and desist’ letter,” the story continues. “In more serious cases, Mr Eaton said, the police could be informed, a search warrant executed, the computer seized and the user prosecuted under the Copyright Act. It is believed that nobody has yet been prosecuted here for downloading movies or music off the internet, although it has happened overseas.”
But no worries because it’s just, “a search engine that searches the search engines”, not spyware or a virus, or anything, Eaton is quoted as saying,
The story adds that he’s, “appointed a internet investigator whose first job will be to try to get the co-operation of internet companies in giving the details behind the IP addresses”
Meanwhile, “It is understood the software was developed under the command of Chad Tilbury, the MPA’s [read MPAA] director of worldwide internet enforcement.”
Over in the UK, in a scandalous misuse of taxpayer’s money at a time when police resources are stretched to the limit, an official British Metropolitan Police squad with one detective sergeant and four detective constables has been “partnered” with FACT and, “dedicated to combating movie piracy and those responsible for the manufacture and distribution of pirated films,” as the BBC put it at the time.
Also See:
previously described – FACT is a farce, July 15, 2006
The New Zealand Herald – Online spy plan raises fears over privacy, August 26, 2006
put it – UK’s new anti-pirate police, February 23, 2006
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