Sony, Universal and Fox Caught Pirating Through BitTorrent 284
New submitter Bad_Feeling sends in a followup to the story we discussed on Monday about a new site that scanned a few popular torrent trackers and linked torrents to IP addresses. The folks at TorrentFreak decided to check IP addresses belonging to major companies in the entertainment industry and published lists of pirated files from several, including Fox, Sony, and NBC Universal. Of course, they used the information to make a slightly different point than the industry usually does:
"By highlighting the above our intention is not to get anyone into trouble, and for that reason we masked out the end of the IP addresses to avoid a witch hunt. An IP address is not a person, IP addresses can be shared among many people, and anyone can be behind a keyboard at any given time."
So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Interesting)
So surely the companies are distributing the movies to everyone. As they are the rights holder, it should be legal to download it?
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they are downloading them, they are sharing them as well.
That's simply not true. They could have turned off uploading.
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This is not how torrents work.
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:4, Informative)
It is with hacked clients.
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:4, Informative)
We have methods of detecting hacked clients and banning them from the seed cloud.
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Informative)
Torrents work by establishing connections either peer to peer or peer to seed. Peers request blocks of the file over those connections, download them and then check their hashes against those in the torrent file.
Peers may perform some form of tit-for-tat to punish those who download without uploading but seeds aren't trying to download anything so can't perform tit-for-tat. So it's perfectly possible to download from a torrent while refusing to upload anything.
Oh and the stats collected by the tracker are completely dependent on the honesty of the clients that report them.
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Funny)
You live and learn. I go away for a few weeks and suddenly you can torrent without seeding and the speed of light is no longer a limit. Bloody technology, in my day .... blah blah blah .... lawns etc
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If I wanted to get high tech about it, I could just tell my firewall to refuse any outgoing requests for the torrent port. Incoming would be untouched as it's already initiated.
-1 nerd point
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-2nerd points,
i see how sync packets fail to leave your router/firewall, crying to the holy god of the internetz and their prayers are not heart, butthurt all around, and no confirmation of outgoing packets is possible, practically fucking up tcp/udp connection, unless communication is somehow is done over UPD, BUT IT HAS TO BE MIRACLE!!!!! So no...
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Funny)
For shame, you, you... pirate!
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well it depends who pay who first. I'd gladly go first.
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Informative)
It still doesn't make it legal to redistribute it...
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That's not how it works. Copyright law itself imposes the constraints.
Re:They have the right to distribute the works (Score:4, Insightful)
They offered their "property" up in a fashion that assumes that other people will continue to redistribute it on their behalf. No pro-corporate legal interpretation of the Copyright Act will really change that.
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They first downloaded the movie and then were seeding it. The purpose of doing this is to log the IPs of other peers in the swarm. Call peer block lists ineffective but it hasn't harmed my activity, and I block the bogon ranges, and government and corporate ranges.
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Informative)
peerblock + bluetack list (p2p) + any torrenting app = you won't/can't be tracked by any industry in any legal fashion. It literally is that simple these days.
confirms that even of the thousands of torrents I've downloaded over the years, my IP address comes up with zero records.
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Bluetack appears to have been taken off the air.
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:4, Informative)
peerblock + bluetack list (p2p) + any torrenting app = you won't/can't be tracked by any industry in any legal fashion. It literally is that simple these days.
No it's not.
ALL of the URLs that bluetack points to have been "suspended" by Vectrohost.com, and bluetack's own page is now just a plea for contributions.
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True. But point is that media companies can trivially know the IP and time it was used to download/upload.
And yes most peoples upload, 'cause its too slow otherwise.
Then you are one subpoena away from being IDed.
Yes, I know that currently not much was done against torrent users since there are just too much of them, but that slowly changes.
Besides as a Linux user that also doesn't like much ether music nor movies, I don't have any reason to pirate anything.
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Interesting)
Tell that to the lawyers who are suing people. I received a letter from a law firm claiming to represent a movie studio. They stated that they had "proof" that my IP address was being used to download a movie called Split - I had never even heard of the movie prior to the letter. I took it to a lawyer and they are handling it.. it's been almost 18 months now... they challenged the idiots who are trying to sue me, and it turns out they blitzed out 10,000 letters in the city I live in... all claiming infringement on the same movie based on the IP addresses collected via torrent clients they were monitoring.
Proof? How do you prove it wasn't you? They say it was, and they have an IP address that may or may not have been yours at the time... they say that the IP address was at the time, involved in downloading said copyrighted material. Where's your defense? How do you prove it wasn't me (or anyone else) that was downloading the file. I can't prove it. All I can do is say.. I didn't do it, and if it goes to court... it's my word against theirs, and they have ISP records that appear to "prove" that I did download the movie.
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Correct. "Balance of probabilities" is the term used, where only 50.1% likelihood that something did happen over it didn't happen is required for a finding that it did happen.
"My computer wasn't working" is not a swing to "didn't". "I don't own a computer" is a slight swing in favour of "didn't". If you use a TiVo (most of which now have ethernet connections for programmes on demand these days) then that is a point in favour of a finding of fact of "did" - even if you don't own a PC.
If they want to talk abo
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Informative)
For the world to see now:
208.84.225.10
United States (US), California, Culver City
Downloaded files
Conan the Barbarian 2011
The Black Keys - Lonely Boy (7.50 MB) Nov, 2011
VA - Dubstep Meditations - 2010 [FLAC] (336.47 MB) Nov, 2011
{www.scenetime.com}Beavis
[ www.TorrentDay.com ] -
208.73.113.6
United States (US), Florida, Fort Lauderdale
Downloaded files
Beatport Halloween Trance 2011 {aSBo} (389.74 MB) Dec, 2011
Cowboys and Aliens [2010] dvd rip nlx (1.28 GB) Dec, 2011
Game of Thrones Season 1 Complete 720p (14.53 GB) Nov, 2011
2.Broke.Girls.S01E08.HDTV.XviD-P0W4.avi (174.89 MB) Nov, 2011
How.to.Make.It.in.America
216.205.224.10
United States (US), California, Valley Village
Downloaded files
Super 8 2011 1080p BRRip
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:4, Insightful)
If only we could get them to sue each other... (Score:3, Interesting)
...out of existence!!!
Wasn't that site a hoax? (Score:4, Informative)
Didn't we discuss to death that the site www.youhavedownloaded.com was a hoax? I mean we're talking about a site that says "Don't take it seriously" at the bottom of every page. Also apparently I've downloaded a single episode of some series I've never heard of (mid-season mind you), and my IP has been static for about 8 years now.
Re:Wasn't that site a hoax? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh sorry that was me. I've been living in your roof for 3 years now.
How's Sally doing in school?
Re:Wasn't that site a hoax? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wasn't that site a hoax? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wasn't that site a hoax? (Score:5, Informative)
Hoax? No, they had certainly scanned TPB for recent torrents - they listed me accurately, that's not a coincidence. That doesn't mean their lists are complete, accurate or anything like that, I'm sure it's easy to poison a tracker into giving out IPs that aren't actually torrenting. Maybe the trackers add some random IPs too for plausible deniability? Whatever the case, the legal value is hogwash. Why should it be a joke anyway? Grab a torrent, connect to the tracker, voila you get a list of IPs to stuff in a database. That and being illegal too, at least in my country so in any it'd be thrown out on that basis alone. But it's not like they did something magic.
Re:Wasn't that site a hoax? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure it's easy to poison a tracker into giving out IPs that aren't actually torrenting.
The protocol is dead simple, actually. HTTP GET's and decoder for bencoded [theory.org] formats, and you're halfway to making a database already. Add some web crawling for torrents, and you're set.
Tracker protocol:
http://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrent_Tracker_Protocol [theory.org]
GET announce example from there:
hxxp://some.tracker.com:999/announce
?info_hash=12345678901234567890
&peer_id=ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST
&ip=255.255.255.255
&port=6881
&downloaded=1234
&left=98765
&event=stopped
And it will answer with a list of active peers (with IP) it already have on that info_hash, in bencoded format.
Bencoded format example:
d4:spaml1:a1:bee represents the dictionary { "spam" => [ "a", "b" ] }
This is more or less a weekend project, if even that.
Re:Wasn't that site a hoax? (Score:4, Interesting)
I entered the IP of one of my seedboxes which is also a Tor exit node (did the lookup through Tor, using HTTPS to the site, using a secure and anonymous browser). That exit node has Bittorrent blocked and it's on a dynamic IP that changes often. 4 out of the 8 torrents displayed were ones that I'd downloaded, 1 was recent and the other 3 had been on there for a long time. The seedbox has around 500 torrents on it.
It also showed results for the German exit node I was viewing it through.
It's been a common theory for some time... (Score:4, Insightful)
...that if a property is doing sluggishly the PR arms of the studios put it out on the 'net to try to raise buzz. The irony is that then the legal arms of these same companies go after those very people the other side of their company want to resuscitate their ailing properties by word-of-mouth.
It's cynical, hypocritical and just downright fucked up.
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Not really... As the rights holder they can distribute it for free to as many people as they want. They can also say that those people do NOT have the right to distribute it to others. It's not the fault of the PR arm if the people they give a work to proceed to do something illegal with it.
I *so* want to be on the jury of a trial testing that bit of legal theory.
Re:It's been a common theory for some time... (Score:5, Interesting)
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No, definitively not. Bittorrent algorithms don't replace the law. Copyright law says you can't distribute it unless you have a license that gives you that right, so all torrent downloaders are committing copyright infringement if their torrent client uploads what they've already downloaded. They don't need to claim anything or have an agreement.
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all torrent downloaders are committing copyright infringement if their torrent client uploads what they've already downloaded
Yeah? I'm torrenting Mandriva, Kubuntu, Mint, and my own book right now. Oh, and two MP3s of music I wrote that my daughter performed. No copyright is being violated. But your "all torrent downloaders are committing copyright infringement" is just what the media conglomerates want you to think. So please stop it. There is FAR more legal content on BT than illigitimate material.
This story is somewhat confused or editing was bad (Score:5, Insightful)
By highlighting the above our intention is not to get anyone into trouble . . .
This quote is not from Hollywood studios but the author of the article on torrentfreak. This is somewhat of a non-story. It is possible that an employee of a studio is downloading via torrents without permission. After all, how many people do you know use their work networks to download pirated content. Their companies most likely do not approve of such actions. This is only a story if a high-ranking employee is pirating. If the downloading was authorized, what was the purpose? If someone from the legal/copyright department is doing so to verify that their content is on the internet, that's well within the scope of their jobs.
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how many people do you know use their work networks to download pirated content
None, actually. That's a really stupid thing to do... The only thing worse than being slapped with a 100k fine for downloading some music is also getting fired over it.
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Well, I haven't heard anyone admit to it but receiving C&D letters was the reason filtering was turned on at a previous employer of mine. And there was no witch hunt tone, just a "This is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it, please remember that what you do on the company network can be tracked back to us and reflect poorly on the company." Never heard of anyone getting punished for it, then again I of course didn't have access to anyone's HR files. That said, I don't live in the US...
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Fortunately people never do anything stupid.
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Yeah, no kidding. My cable modem is way faster than my employer's measly little 10 Mbit link!
Re:This story is somewhat confused or editing was (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it's pretty much a story if it's low-level employees doing it.
Come on! the MPAA and RIAA are always trying to get ISPs to police their customers and make sure nobody is using their connection to pirate stuff.
But then they can't even block their own freaking employees from going to torrents and pirating copyrighted works?
I mean, it should be easier to control employees than customers, no? So this makes the point of the ISPs that have long said that they can't monitor their customers and make sure they don't pirate.
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But I think I remember the general consensus on /. when a normal human gets accused of pirating is that IP addresses don't prove anything.
No. The consensus is that IP addresses don't prove that a particular person downloaded something. But it can definitively prove that it was done by a machine in a particular network, which in this case is the network of those RIAA members. Nobody is claiming a specific employee has downloaded them.
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Re:This story is somewhat confused or editing was (Score:4, Interesting)
It is possible that an employee of a studio is downloading via torrents without permission.
I'm flabbergasted that this is actually possible, unless the employee in question is privileged in particular ways, such as by being a network administrator.
After all, how many people do you know use their work networks to download pirated content.
None. Those who use torrents do so at home.
Reputable companies which are large enough to have an IT department will have strict enforcement of many network policies, especially those which are related to commercial risk. Where I work, everything other than ports 80 and 443 must be opened on a per-node and per destination basis. If you need ftp or ssh, you have to state the specific need and how it relates to the business. Also, even ports 80 and 443 are heavily filtered so that social media sites (youtube, facebook, etc.), name redirection sites (dyndns and its ilk), file lockers (megaupload, etc.), webmail (gmail, hotmail, etc.) and all sites hosting questionable activities are blocked. I suspect running a client for IRC or BitTorrent would get you nowhere. There are probably some ways around this, but looking for them would be stupid and might set off career-threatening alarm bells.
Re:This story is somewhat confused or editing was (Score:4, Insightful)
It is possible that an employee of a studio is downloading via torrents without permission
Well yes, naturally. The thing is these companies are the same ones telling courts that an IP address connected to a swarm constitutes positive identification and proof of guilt for whoever the IP address was assigned to at the time.
If someone from the legal/copyright department is doing so to verify that their content is on the internet, that's well within the scope of their jobs.
Again, true. And more evidence that an IP address does not equal proof of infringement.
They deserve to squirm on the hook for this one. Totally a newsworthy story.
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It is possible that an employee of a studio is downloading via torrents without permission.
Indeed, one of the people with whom we pass around "The Hard Drive" is an IP lawyer for one of the big media companies.
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It's a TRAP! (Score:5, Insightful)
"In a response Buma/Stemra issued a press release stating that their IP-addresses were spoofed. A very unlikely scenario, but one that will be welcomed by BitTorrent pirates worldwide. In fact, they’d encourage Sony, Universal and Fox to say something similar. After all, if it’s so easy to spoof an IP-address, then accused file-sharers can use this same defense against copyright holders."
This is quite a smart move. Getting these big organisations to explain this away will only add credence to the valid reasons that the public should be able to use to protect themselves. It doesn't matter what your personal opinion is on the morals of the situation the plain fact is an IP is not a person and the clearer this is made to the judges the better. Of course there is a the chance that the IPs were added manually by the guys who set the project up, they already admitted that there is still test data in there (do a check for 192.168.*.*) so it's far from perfect.
Re:It's a TRAP! (Score:4, Insightful)
This has always been my problem with these lawsuits. An IP address has never been equal to a person. NAT and wifi are two reasons that it could be anyone in the area or household. Then when you throw malware into the mix it could literally be anyone. As you've pointed out, spoofing could also be done to frame someone.
This is also the reason I won't run tor here. I don't think a judge or prosecutor would understand that anyone can be downloading through my IP address.
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Of course an IP address is not equal to a person. A fingerprint found at a crime scene does not prove the person committed the crime either. Both are starting points for further investigation and collection of evidence. The only way you are legally going to be able to do the further investigation and collection of evidence is by initiating legal action via a lawsuit.
Head of household is under contract with the ISP (Score:3)
NAT and wifi are two reasons that it could be anyone in the area or household
Within the household, the head of household is under contract with the ISP not to allow any copyright infringement to happen over the ISP's wire. Within the area, the head of household is under contract with the ISP to use WPA2 with a strong password.
Military folks love porn! (Score:5, Interesting)
I did a search on some IP addresses assigned to overseas US military facilities. Let's just say it turns out US soldiers like transsexuals and big girls. And possibly big transsexual girls.
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I did a search on some IP addresses assigned to overseas US military facilities. Let's just say it turns out US soldiers like transsexuals and big girls. And possibly big transsexual girls.
Give us the IPs or it didn't happen.
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I did a search on some IP addresses assigned to overseas US military facilities. Let's just say it turns out US soldiers like transsexuals and big girls. And possibly big transsexual girls.
The military: fighting for our right to spank it to almost any kind of porn we like. I say "you can have your fat transvestite porn, if you want, soldier. You've earned it!"
Irony (Score:5, Funny)
Quick pass PROTECTIP or SOPA and then we can catch these companies pirating content then shut them down for a felony pirating offense since Company=Person=IP address.
Re:Irony (Score:4, Informative)
As someone else has stated, as long as the person at the company is downloading the items on the behalf of the company who is the copyright holder, neither PROTECTIP nor SOPA will apply because the company and by extension the person have the legal right to make copies while people who are not authorized to make copies do not have a legal right to make copies.
And, if an employee is downloading without permission and thus making unauthorized copies of a work, said employee is almost guaranteed to be violating corporate use policies and can be fired for such use.
Really, it is that simple.
Different studios (Score:3)
as long as the person at the company is downloading the items on the behalf of the company who is the copyright holder
But has any evidence come to light that, say, Warner Bros. employees have permission from Universal?
They have the right (Score:3)
If they're from the studios, they own the copyright to the properties so they have the legal right to download them. Sure, people make the argument that if they're on a BT tracker they're "distributing" the file so they're giving everyone else the legal right to download it, but that's not how IP law works. Besides, they'll say they were only downloading them to support their enforcement actions against other downloaders.
Someone has never worked in corporate IT (Score:2)
Well, actually, in a corporate environment, that is almost always false and in every single corporate behavior policy involving computer and network access I have ever seen it has stated that one is responsible for anything done under one's ID and from one's computer if one is logged into one's computer.
Also, I wonder if the IP addresses are for an open guest internet co
Re:Someone has never worked in corporate IT (Score:5, Insightful)
LOL spoofed IP (Score:3)
In a response Buma/Stemra issued a press release stating that their IP-addresses were spoofed.
A spoofed IP address does not receive return packets unless you hijack the address or PAT the specific traffic on the router/firewall responsible for the address. I doubt Buma/Stemra had an outage long enough for someone to snag some files. If someone malicious owns their router/firewall there would be more mischief than this.
Scanning for pirates (Score:2)
They could have been looking for IP addresses to send DMCA notices to.
Re:Dumb argument (Score:5, Informative)
So their point is if IPs change, and it is hard to figure out who broke the law, law enforcement might as well just give up?
I'm all for sharing of information and media freely. Hell! I pirate the shit out of everything, but this is the worst argument for it I have ever heard.
The argument is equivalent to: A murderer used many cars during his escape, since it is hard to pinpoint which one is his we should give up.
Then obviously we should ban cars.
Re:Dumb argument (Score:4, Funny)
Banning cars would make more sense.
Unlike bittorrent, cars actually kill people and are a huge environmental problem.
Re:Dumb argument (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me it's not so much about giving up enforcement than pointing out that ip isn't a good way to identify law breakers.
It more like, a murderer used a stolen cars ( Or the murderer give/sell the car away) and the police arrest the owner of the car...
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I think a better analogy would be:
A car manufacturer rails for a couple decades against the use of certain lithium batteries for its negative eco-impact.
Car manufacturer is found to be using those batteries in their cars, and their cars to produce more eco-damage than the batteries.
Car manufacturer says "See, the battery's not so big of a deal. There are more important considerations for a car."
Basically, they reversed completely their opinion on prosecuting based on IP. That is their primary means of going
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Sorry, I posted before reading your post. I had the exact same analogy, except that the murderer was seen in a taxi six months ago. You are in that same taxi, today. Therefore, you must be the murderer.
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Name a case where the ONLY evidence was an IP address, and the plaintiff won.
Re:Dumb argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Good grief, are you really that dumb? Presumption of innocence means you are not guilty until proven otherwise (ie at trial). It does NOT refer to what the police do or who they consider guilty (a suspect). The stuff that happens BEFORE the trial is based on 'probable cause'. If your car is seen fleeing a crime scene, there is good reason (probable cause) to think you were involved. No, you have not been PROVEN to be involved yet, that would occur at trial. Same thing with an IP address. No, it does not mean the owner of the address is the guilty party, but there is probable cause to think he is, and that probable cause opens the door to the collection of further evidence and legal action. Nobody has been convicted or successfully sued based solely on an IP address.
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Keep in mind that they only need to show there is a 51% chance it was you to win in court.
In your analogy, at least 51% of the time a murderer probably uses their own car.
So if the MPAA lawyers show up in court with a printout from your ISP saying that you were using X IP at a particular time, and they have a log from a hacked client showing that X IP downloaded a movie they own at that time....bam, automatic win.
Because a rational, scientific view of the evidence would be that this method of data collectio
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Bullshit. There's no "percentage" required to convict, nor any such way to quantify that. And even as an approximation, 51% doesn't match what happens (at least, what's supposed to happen). The game isn't whether or not they "probably" did it, for which 51% would be the minimum (but not at all meaningful); it's that they did it "beyond a reasonable doubt," i.e., assuming reasonable circumstances and given the evidence, it should be very likely that they did it.
51% is idiotic. It's not meaningfully diffe
Re:Dumb argument (Score:4, Informative)
Most civil actions are "Preponderance of the Evidence", which means more likely than not.
Some civil issues require "Clear and Convincing" evidence, which is a higher burden, this is often used for counter claims that involve having legal fees covered (for example, I sue the insurance company, claiming they need to pay, they counter sue, saying I acted fraudulently in getting the policy, I would generally only need Preponderance, they would likely need Clear and Convincing, but if they one the counter suit, I would owe them for all of their legal fees).
I've actually never heard the words "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" in a civil case, except for during jury instruction where the judge tries to explain that it is a lower burden than a criminal case.
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Preponderance of the evidence does not mean more likely than not. It means the plaintiff has presented a stronger case than the defense. 'More likely than not' is a simple probabilities statement, and preponderance of the evidence has nothing to do with probabilities.
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I don't know where you came up with that crap, but it is entirely false. Perhaps you could point us to this 51% law?
I suspect you are referring to the different standards between civil and criminal cases, but your interpretation is way off.
In a criminal case, the standard is 'reasonable doubt'. That is, if the jury has any reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty, they must acquit. The defense does not even have to put on a case, and the jury can still decide the prosecutions case was too weak.
In a
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"preponderance" means 51%. What else would it mean?
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Nobody has been convicted or successfully sued based solely on an IP address.
You lost it in the last sentence there, nobody's been convicted in a criminal case. Plenty of people have been sued and lost in civil cases, where you don't have the presumption of innocence. A civil case is looked on as a dispute where both parties are equal and a simple preponderance of evidence is sufficient.
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Name one case where someone lost a civil case based solely on an IP address.
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Who has lost a civil case based only on an IP address?
Perhaps a new type of troll should be named? (Score:3)
Good grief, are you really that dumb? Presumption of innocence means you are not guilty until proven otherwise (ie at trial). It does NOT refer to what the police do or who they consider guilty (a suspect).
Answering your question? Yes, he is.
Shit like this is why you see memes spring out of places like 4chan. An apt, pejorative nickname that describes the behavior of an internet denizen. A good example could be the "White Knight." "Troll" is so well known and obvious that the metaphor contained therein is completely dead; it quite literally means "asshole on the internet who derives increasing satisfaction from the emotional degree of a response solicited by provoking others."
I suggest we coin a new on
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Their point is that an IP is a terrible basis for an accusation. It is. It's still a good starting point for a real investigation.
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So their point is if IPs change, and it is hard to figure out who broke the law, law enforcement might as well just give up?
I'm all for sharing of information and media freely. Hell! I pirate the shit out of everything, but this is the worst argument for it I have ever heard.
The argument is equivalent to: A murderer used many cars during his escape, since it is hard to pinpoint which one is his we should give up.
How about
People ride cabs all the time. I know, you saw the criminal get in that cab, six months ago. That doesn't mean that whoever is in that cab right now is the criminal
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Those major could have asked some of their employees to test if there was some of their own movies being pirated, acting like pirates for a few moments...
Yep. Fox was making sure that Sony movies were being pirated, by downloading them.
No doubt they were trying to help Sony's legal case by making their downloading problem look even worse.
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Whatever. It's still hilarious.
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Haha, I checked it out and found that it fakes results when you hit the homepage. It showed some British-looking women for the IP of an area with no women like that (the closest IRL version of the "women in Low Earth Orbit!" experiment). Also it allows you to sign in with Facebook credentials. What could possibly go wrong?
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Not necessarily true. It is possible to download a torrent without seeding.
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So? They could upload their entire catalogue to an open website, it doesn't mean that you have *permission* to copy it, view it, burn it to a DVD - that's not how copyright licensing works.
I can request an install disk of a site-licensed piece of software from a company - it doesn't mean they have "given" me a license to use it on my entire site. The license and content are entirely separate and without the license, the content cannot be legally used. Similarly, I can read a book and even own a copy, it
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They could upload their entire catalogue to an open website, it doesn't mean that you have *permission* to copy it, view it, burn it to a DVD - that's not how copyright licensing works.
Hang on. If the owner chooses to upload the content to a open website you absolutely have the right to download it. You do not require permission to download it or view it. That's not how copyright licensing works.
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Which they (and only they) have the right to do, as they own the copyright.