P2P Hoo-Haa

[CyberGlyph]

I've been seeing alot of posts about people getting into lawsuits from spam to downloading off of p2ps. I just got done talking with a friend I havn't talked to for a while and he said the mpaa got him twice. He made up excuses basically saying it wasn't him and was someone else on the computer that had access often. He said they didn't do anything to him either time.

With all the talk about lawsuits, what is the % chance that you will get caught doing anything on a P2P network? I can't imagine how many of the people im networked to even being inside the us. From past experience with authorities, if you get caught doing something and you really havn't done any damage to anything/anyone you usually don't really get much recoil if anything.

Just my .02.

[nihil]

Hey CyberGlyph please be careful old chap!

There is a difference between a civil action and a criminal one. The RIAA/MPAA are basically pursuing civil actions against individuals.

Compared to Europe there seems to be a lot of fuzziness in US legislation regarding what is criminal and what is civil?

Please tell your friend that he is on his "third strike".................he has had two warnings, if it happens again the excuse won't work.............if he is responsible for the computer he is liable for its use.

[CyberGlyph]

I generally just mind my own business and do what i need. Seems to be working so far anyways.. Since his 2nd strike, all he really does is mess with websites and what not.. But there does seem to be alot of commotion going on.

[Negative]

People don't "get caught twice by the MPAA" and get away with it... You really think the MPAA would go through the trouble of finding out who you are (afaik, they have to subpoena the ISP to do that), and then let you get away with the same lame excuse that everybody else uses??

The RIAA sued a 12-year old girl who had a similar excuse (luckily, they let her settle out of court - if they would have wanted to, they could have sued her for $150,000 per song; she had 2,000 or so of them), as did it sue a 70-year old grandpa whose grandson was doing some file-sharing.

Conclusion: your friend is full of it

[CyberGlyph]

You might be right, I havn't personally seem him in a few years. If you knew, he just looks like someone who would get caught for doing anything. I don't really know how long ago it was even. I was just noticing the increase in talk about it.

Fear is created by media......

[nihil]

Hmmm,

I have spoken to a friend who is into this sort of thing. He suggests that:

If you e-mail or attach to a P2P message, there is no way the RIAA/MPAA would know.

If you post on a website, the webmaster may remove it or be required to remove it. This would depend on the laws of the country in which the website is hosted. Once again there is probably no way the RIAA/MPAA could legally find out who downloaded it, particularly if you use a proxy.

If you fileshare with friends, that would also be virtually undetectable within the authority of the RIAA/MPAA

The people who seem to be getting caught are those who are making stuff publicly available Because this is generally in large quantities it attracts the attention of the regulators. If surfers can find you, so can the RIAA/MPAA

In other words, it seems that they are going after people who upload rather than those who download. A sort of "get the pusher not the addict" philosophy? A much easier task, as the uploader is effectively in plain view.

He did mention that there are several "newsgroups" where people post copyright material quite openly, and the regulators don't seem to have done anything about this yet.

At the moment the targets seem to be traditional pirates and public sharers. However, just because you are not being targetted does not make what you are doing legal

"When they have eaten the meat, they will mop up the gravy"

Supposing they were to offer a $1 per song bounty on people successfully prosecuted?

[nihil]

Hi Phish~

I have heard about the P2P music sites. Apparently it is the RIAA who are distributing these dud files?

As for Bittorrent, this is fom a UK e-zine, a bit dated I know, but certainly a declaration of intent? Once again it seems to be the "hosts" who are being targetted.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12...vs_bittorrent/

Cheers

[cacosapo]

How can they sue you for "uploading" on bittorrent? You're only uploading bits, not the whole thing.

err, you are wrong. They CAN sue you for sharing a file. Although networks such as Ed2K, BT or Kad can spread the share of a single file among hundred of users, they still can find who is the uploader and who is the eventual downloader. They just plug into the share network, see what is going on and after some time (inst days, its mor like weeks or even months) they caught you as a big uploader.

Those companies are really targeting the rippers; but they are really hard to find.
Rippers use to use private links to seed the sharing initially (or even sat networks). Its hard to track and caught them.

So RIAA, MPAA and others are trying to identify the second level seeders; those that receive files from rippers and "spread" them on p2p networks.
Why? because thru secondary seeders they can find (eventually) the rippers.

Also, from time to time, they use to spread terror among downloaders, sueing some ppl (that may be 3rd, 4th or more level uploader) to send a message "We know what everybody is doing".

I can give you an example now (since isnt a secret anymore ):

Some of "those companies" inserted some fake ed2k servers named "razorback" (and others) on Emule network just to index file hash and see what everyone has in sharing. THose servers use to have "fake" high number of users and files connected, using that as a honeypot to newbie p2p users. After sometime, using hashes (that p2p uses anyway) they can prove that you have (or had) an specific movie (or music, or software) for more than 3 months on file share. So, you get in trouble...

[CyberGlyph]

So are you saying that RazorBack is/was a fake server? RazorBack2 on ed2k is probably the most populated server there is on there.

As for bittorrent, i can see how you would get introuble for having bits of a file even, still means that you are sharing. But what if you don't even have the full file, what if you only have a few little peices. You still are not sharing much of anything if its not complete.

[cacosapo]

So are you saying that RazorBack is/was a fake server? RazorBack2 on ed2k is probably the most populated server there is on there.

No, i dont. I was saying there is just 2 razorback servers (2.0 and 2.1)... Others, including those that should be in Europe ip range but are in USA ip range are fake. e.g. you can see a razorback 2.2 on ed2k network --- fake

from razorback2 web server:

De faux serveurs portant le nom de Razorback circulent sur le réseau eDonkey2000. Attention Ã* ne pas vous y connecter.
Il n'existe que DEUX serveurs Razorback avec ces ip :
(cliquez sur le lien pour les ajouter)
Razorback2.0 : IP: 195.245.244.243 port: 4661
Razorback2.1 : IP: 195.245.244.244 port: 3000

Tous les autres sont des FAUX, qui, apparement, servent Ã* mémoriser la liste des fichiers partagés par les utilisateurs qui se connectent dessus.

4 faux serveurs

Razorback 2.2
64.34.162.138:5661

Razorback 2.3
64.34.162.148:5661

Razorback 2.4
64.34.161.177:5661

Razorback 2.5
64.34.161.178:5661

Apparement ces serveurs seraient localisés au Texas.