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."
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.
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:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:5, Informative)
It still doesn't make it legal to redistribute it...
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.
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:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:4, Informative)
It is with hacked clients.
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, 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: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.
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.
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.
Re:So they are uploading the movie? (Score:4, Informative)
We have methods of detecting hacked clients and banning them from the seed cloud.