An IP Address Does Not Point To a Person, Judge Rules 293
AffidavitDonda writes with this excerpt from Torrentfreak:
"A possible landmark ruling in one of the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the US may spell the end of the 'pay-up-or-else-schemes' that have targeted over 100,000 Internet users in the last year. District Court Judge Harold Baker has denied a copyright holder the right to subpoena the ISPs of alleged copyright infringers, because an IP-address does not equal a person. Among other things, Judge Baker cited a recent child porn case where the US authorities raided the wrong people, because the real offenders were piggybacking on their Wi-Fi connections. Using this example, the judge claims that several of the defendants in VPR's case may have nothing to do with the alleged offense either. ... Baker concludes by saying that his Court is not supporting a 'fishing expedition' for subscribers' details if there is no evidence that it has jurisdiction over the defendants."
Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pity this'll never survive through the appellate courts, since the MafiAA bought off all the appellate judges long ago.
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Re:Wow. (Score:4, Informative)
Pity this'll never survive through the appellate courts, since the MafiAA bought off all the appellate judges long ago.
All 687 of them? [wikipedia.org]
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If they only have a handful, they need the right handful, and a way of guaranteeing they appear before the right handful.
Re:Right Handful (Score:2)
Don't all those IP cases go through East Texas? So what's the appellate court for that?
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Pity this'll never survive through the appellate courts, since the MafiAA bought off all the appellate judges long ago.
That is pretty cynical, federal judges are appointed for life and get a pension after retirement. Could the MafiAA offer a bribe that is worth more than guaranteed income for life, plus a high likelihood of a professorship at a lawschool, or partnership at a big law firm, after retirement? Pretty unlikely.
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Re:Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Funny)
And the number of the beast shall be IPv666?
1 Hurdle Down, A Few More to Go (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:1 Hurdle Down, A Few More to Go (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. IMHO, bar none one of the most important court decisions in a good while now.
Re:1 Hurdle Down, A Few More to Go (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously, this won't be settled until it reaches the Supreme Court
Or the more likely scenario is the circuit court will strike down this judge and the case will be refused hearing by the Supreme Court.
Re:1 Hurdle Down, A Few More to Go (Score:4, Informative)
It's quite rare for the Supremes to hear a case until contradictory rulings have been issued on the same subject by two separate Appellate Courts.
If this case is upheld in its own District, then you've pretty much got your contradictory Appellate Court rulings in place, which means that either the Supremes hear it and rule one way or the other, or the people in that particular Appellate Court District have got that ruling to fall back on forever....
What parallel universe have I fallen into... (Score:5, Insightful)
...where Judges are applying an understanding of the technical issues, common sense, and considering the situation of ordinary citizens?
Re:What parallel universe have I fallen into... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What parallel universe have I fallen into... (Score:5, Insightful)
...where Judges are applying an understanding of the technical issues, common sense, and considering the situation of ordinary citizens?
The same world where bin Ladin is dead, democracy is sweeping the middle east like a sandstorm, Duke Nukem Forever will ship in June and the NDP are the official opposition in Canada.
2011 is pretty interesting so far.
Re:What parallel universe have I fallen into... (Score:4, Funny)
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... Duke Nukem Forever will ship in June ...
chickens = eggs.
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...where Judges are applying an understanding of the technical issues, common sense, and considering the situation of ordinary citizens?
The same world where bin Ladin is dead, democracy is sweeping the middle east like a sandstorm, Duke Nukem Forever will ship in June and the NDP are the official opposition in Canada.
2011 is pretty interesting so far.
Its all just a trap to lull us into a false sense of happiness before 2012 brings worldwide destruction and devastation.
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...where Judges are applying an understanding of the technical issues, common sense, and considering the situation of ordinary citizens?
The same world where bin Ladin is dead, democracy is sweeping the middle east like a sandstorm, Duke Nukem Forever will ship in June and the NDP are the official opposition in Canada.
2011 is pretty interesting so far.
Its all just a trap to lull us into a false sense of happiness before 2012 brings worldwide destruction and devastation.
Did you all miss the tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes and nuclear meltdowns? 2011 hasn't been all kittens and puppies.
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...where Judges are applying an understanding of the technical issues, common sense, and considering the situation of ordinary citizens?
The same world where bin Ladin is dead, democracy is sweeping the middle east like a sandstorm, Duke Nukem Forever will ship in June and the NDP are the official opposition in Canada.
2011 is pretty interesting so far.
Its all just a trap to lull us into a false sense of happiness before 2012 brings worldwide destruction and devastation.
Did you all miss the tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes and nuclear meltdowns? 2011 hasn't been all kittens and puppies.
Sorry, it wasn't in my MyFaceTwit feed, so I didn't hear about them. ... did those things impact many people? Why didn't my parents mention it when they brought me dinner? I mean, why else would I be^H^H ... I mean ... HAVE THEM living with me.
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2011 is pretty interesting so far.
And this is just another sign on the end of the world in 2012...
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yeah, that LHC thing worked out pretty well !
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official opposition doesn't mean shit when there is a majority. They can stomp their feet all they want. Harper is preparing to sell us to American big business in 3...2...1....
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The selling happened a LONG time ago... now is time for the delivery...
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The same world where bin Ladin is dead, democracy is sweeping the middle east like a sandstorm, Duke Nukem Forever will ship in June and the NDP are the official opposition in Canada.
2011 is pretty interesting so far.
You seem to forget that democracy in the middle east (outside Iraq and Israel) boils down to one MAN, one vote, ONE TIME.
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Hold tight everyone! Space time is about to rip itself apart!
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When you take down the figurehead of the crusade to put us in Terror from our own government, this is what happens! You get the single biggest break in the file-lawsuit in years! /hoping
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...where Judges are applying an understanding of the technical issues, common sense, and considering the situation of ordinary citizens?
I'm going with "The Twilight Zone" - I've seen some pretty weird, implausible or downright impossible crap on that show.
Finally!! (Score:3)
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Won't do a bit to prevent anyone from "sharing" their IP a la open wireless or a Tor exit node.
Commercial interests would love fixed IPv6 addrs (Score:5, Interesting)
There are several reasons ISPs would rather give you dynamic addresses - DHCP is easier than keeping track of address assignments, and it lets them charge you more if you care about static. (And most ISPs are planning 256 subnets per house, not just 256 host addresses.)
But the commercial interests who do advertising or who do geolocation or other tricks to sell to advertisers would *love* to have user information tracked by static IP addresses and ideally even per-device MAC addresses that can be encoded into IPv6 addrs, because that's better consumer data.
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Can you imagine the personal information gathering and targeted advertising you could do with fixed IPs?
Imagine how much Google and Apple could compile... the targeted ads they could send you... the lists they could make available for sale to advertisers...
IPv6 Address Privacy Mode is Limited (Score:3)
Windows does this, but only within the same /64 subnet - the network bits (typically /56 or /48) and the subnet bits (any more bits to get to /64) stay the same. IPv6 address privacy hides which computer on the subnet you're using (and because it's hiding the MAC address, also hides what manufacturer of Ethernet chip you have), but it's still giving away a lot of information, especially if you've got different subnets for wired and wireless networks (typical.) You could get fancy and modify DD-WRT to swit
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advertisers would *love* to have user information tracked by static IP addresses and ideally even per-device MAC addresses that can be encoded into IPv6 addrs
But they already do have majority of that information. When you get your "dynamic" IP address, it is not really dynamic. It is quite static to the area you live in. Secondly, MAC address have no value. Thirdly, MAC addresses are NOT required to be part of IPv6 address - Windows 7 picks a random number, AFAIK.
On the other hand, static IP addresses allow users to actually participate in the internet as a network of peers. Skype, SIP, and ability to access your data remotely are all possible if you have static
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I just found an interesting blog post on this topic: http://www.christopher-parsons.com/blog/technology/ipv6-and-the-future-of-privacy/ [christopher-parsons.com]
To get you interested here's a snippet:
Fortunately, the good engineers that develop Internet Protocols were aware of the potentially devastating consequences that static IP addresses for each device would have on anonymity online and, as a result, privacy. The Internet Protocol next generation (IPng) working group crafted a solution that involved creating;
pseudorandom interface identifiers and temporary addresses using an algorithm The temporary address would not derive from a completely random generation process, which might result in two computers generating the same number, but instead would produce a temporary pseudo-random sequence dependent on both the globally unique serial number and a random component. The number would be globally unique because it would derive from the interface identifier and from the history of previously generated addresses, but would be difficult for an external node to reverse engineer to determine the source computer. [3]
In layman’s terms, this means that the engineers responsible for IPv6 were mindful of the surveillance capacities of the new Internet Protocol, and built privacy into a system that would otherwise lend itself to surveillance and authoritarian tendencies. The catch, however, is that is requires the parties responsible for assigning IP addresses to participate in the pseudo-anonymization process itself: it’s possible for ISPs to forcibly assign particular address to each and every device on their network.
Re:Finally!! (Score:4, Informative)
Note that having a IP==Computer also doesn't change the ruling from the Judges reasoning either, they did raid the right place, he did have that IP number when the offense was committed. Getting a new IP number every few hours from the ISP does *not* give you extra privacy and NAT does not give you any security.
And if you really want, there is the "get a random IPv6 address" option anyway.
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I keep a dedicated cable modem hooked up, but there are several unsecured routers around my home and the city provides free wireless just a few blocks away if I chose to use a laptop.
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Re:Finally!! (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the recommended minimum subnet to allocate for ipv6 is /64 ..
And yes, that does mean you can host the whole internet on your next LAN. Several times.
To be exact, you'd have 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 adresses. (ref http://www.bind.com/?path=netmasks6 [bind.com] )
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subnetwork#IPv6_subnetting [wikipedia.org]
An RFC 4291 compliant subnet always uses IPv6 addresses with 64 bits for the host portion. It therefore has a /64 routing prefix (128â'64 = the 64 most-significant bits). Although it is technically possible to use smaller subnets, they are impractical for local area networks networks based on Ethernet technology, because 64 bits are required for stateless address auto configuration. The Internet Engineering Task Force recommends to use /64 subnets even for point-to-point links, which consists of only the two hosts.
Re:Finally!! (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that it can be hacked and there exists a strong motive for a criminal to do so means it's still not adequate as a personal identifier.
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Finally (Score:2)
I'm not one to trumpet common sense (because it usually isn't as common as we think), but I'm here to play you all a song on my trumpet.
Now if we can eliminate speeding tickets based on license plate numbers...
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Now if we can eliminate speeding tickets based on license plate numbers...
Where do you live that speeding tickets are based on license plate numbers? Everywhere I've gotten a ticket involved a cop actually handing me a ticket or having a photograph of my plate and my face on the ticket (actually - this happened to some friends, not me. They borrowed someone's car. Got busted by a speed camera. Ticket came in the mail to the car's owner. Owner noted that the photographed driver wasn't him. Driver was actually on their way to the airport and has left the country. End of tick
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Germany, UK for sure (because I got a ticket from both of those places), and I think I've read that Maryland and DC have speed cameras, as well as several other Eastern states that take a picture of your license plate and then the owner of the vehicle is mailed the citation, regardless of who was driving.
We have red light cameras in Austin, TX, but since I'm not an asshole driver, I don't know what kind of proof they get with those (i.e. can you tell it's me driving?)
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Yeah, that's my point. OCR is great, but what if I wasn't the one driving the car?
er this is a bit silly (Score:3, Interesting)
Surely the police raided the right people, the owners of the wireless device that facilitated the downloading. How they handled them after that however is debatable, but how would the police have been expected to solve the crime with out doing that?
Car analogy! If my car is caught on a video camera running over children, shouldn't they be allowed to go to the DMV with my license details, get my address and interview me?
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Not really, unless you are saying we need to register our computers with the state and acquire a license before we take them out on the information super highway...
Re:er this is a bit silly (Score:5, Informative)
Surely the police raided the right people, the owners of the wireless device that facilitated the downloading
Actually, it turned out the downloader had been downloading using half a dozen access points, and they eventually caught him by tracing back his login from where he had downloaded at a university through the U's secured wireless.
So the raid was not just worthless, it was a waste of time and involved the needless trampling and horrific treatment of innocent people.
In other words, whoever collected the "evidence" and authorized the raid were being a couple of lazy fuckasses, which we should never allow law enforcement to be, and which is why it's so important to enshrine into precedent that an IP address IS NOT A PERSON and should not be enough to authorize a raid.
Re:er this is a bit silly (Score:4, Insightful)
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Surely the police raided the right people, the owners of the wireless device that facilitated the downloading. How they handled them after that however is debatable, but how would the police have been expected to solve the crime with out doing that?
Car analogy! If my car is caught on a video camera running over children, shouldn't they be allowed to go to the DMV with my license details, get my address and interview me?
Then again, there is the question of severity. Violation of traffic laws can point to willing risk to other members of society (speeding, running lights) or, in your example, (analogous) murder. File sharing is, more or less, victimless*. I would put it more on par with police going to the DMV, then your house, because they caught you not wearing your seatbelt on camera, and I would think that, legal or no, such a reaction is well out of line.
* Yes, I am aware of the economic impact of a failure to sell a p
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Surely the police raided the right people, the owners of the wireless device that facilitated the downloading...
You'll note that the judge isn't blaming the police, but rather the plaintiffs here as they are seeking a "fishing expedition" which has already resulted in innocent folks getting violated. Raising the bar on the MAFIAA as to when they can seek a no-knock warrant is the best way to resolve these issues.
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Car analogy! If my car is caught on a video camera running over children, shouldn't they be allowed to go to the DMV with my license details, get my address and interview me?
Yes.
They should not, however, be allowed to use the capture of the license plate as proof that you were driving the car...
... especially not if the car was found in a ditch 20 miles outside of town with the ignition lock popped from the steering column -- which is essentially the equivalent of trying a filesharer with an open AP on the basis of an IP match.
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Totally agreed, but that kind of rights violation is more related to how the police handle searching a premises and the whole 'innocent until proven guilty' line, which they seem to forget quite readily.
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They'd still need to subpoena the ISP to determine the owner of the IP address in order to progress the case with an interview request.
I'd like to hope that good judgement would be used by the police to determine whether an interview request or a raid would be the next course of action, but I have a feeling they tend to go over the top to stop people destroying evidence?
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IP addresses aren't exactly unlimited, unregistered, untrackable or identical. If they were the IPv6 roll out would be going even slower than it is now ;)
Finally (Score:2)
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since when is a MAC per-person either?
might be a NAT, might be a server, might be spoofed.
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since when is a MAC per-person either?
might be a NAT, might be a server, might be spoofed.
Look at the sibling comment to yours. quiksand has been making this argument all over this story.
I am a not a number. I am a free man. (Score:2)
Obvious reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Six_(The_Prisoner)#I_am_not_a_number.2C_I_am_a_free_man [wikipedia.org]
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What bad persons? *Really* bad persons launch all their bad stuff from hacked computers of ordinary people anyways. Or they're dumb not to do so.
Re:So slashdotters (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, you mean the police might have to do actual police work rather than relying on shoddy "evidence" that doesn't point to the right place, raiding innocent people's houses, trampling all over civil liberties...
Gee. I must be insane to think we could agree that the cops should be required to do their due diligence...
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Wait, you mean the police might have to do actual police work rather than relying on shoddy "evidence" that doesn't point to the right place, raiding innocent people's houses, trampling all over civil liberties...
Gee. I must be insane to think we could agree that the cops should be required to do their due diligence...
Good thing the only thing in the courts are criminal cases and nobody ever has to bring a civial suit.
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You mean like "civil suits" where the MafiAA are using unlicensed, illegal "investigators"? [p2pnet.net]
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What do you propose we do to continue enforcement against these pieces of human waste? What if you can no longer get a warrant based on an IP?
Uh, get more evidence? The IP could be used as a starting point, but shouldn't be used as the only reason to kick down doors.
Re:So slashdotters (Score:4, Insightful)
It's better to let 10 guilty men free than to put one innocent man behind bars.
Re:So slashdotters (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'll bite. If you're doing something that bad, as in 'criminal trial' bad the police are involved. They can get warrants, do observation, and build a case on more than an IP. It won't stop them, if anything it forces them to build a stronger case that will lead to a guilty verdict or to the target never being indicted in the first place.
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I'm thinking of this scenario:
Say the police have some sort of evidence that a person is sharing illegal material, such as a torrent containing child.. material. Previously the IP probably would have been enough to get a warrant to search the premises.
If that isn't probable cause anymore, how exactly are they supposed to catch this person?
Re:So slashdotters (Score:5, Insightful)
It wouldn't be probable cause for a warrantless search, but it would be enough for a bench warrant or enough to justify further actions. Perhaps something as complicated as stopping near the residence and checking to see if they have an open wireless AP.
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The wrong person's door getting kicked down is not good, but you'll accept it anyway?
Who the hell are you to decide whether or not its acceptable, as an innocent in a FREE society, to be treated in such a matter as this? Yes it makes it harder for the good guys to catch the bad guys but thats how it will ALWAYS be.
Law enforcement will always be at a disadvantage because criminals, by definition, have already decided they don't have to play by the rules. Courts, judges, and cops are restricted by things call
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I don't think this ruling applies to normal police work.
from the order:
"the imprimatur of this court will not be used toadvance a “fishing expedition by means of a perversion of the purpose and intent” of classactions."
The police can still get the address of the suspect and than do some their job by observation to collect evidence. I think if they can proof, that the suspect is at home every time the IP was used for some criminal activity, this would be enough.
Re:So slashdotters (Score:4, Insightful)
Surveillance. Any contact with children? Does any of it look inappropriate? Look at financial transactions. Any payment to known pornographers or their agents?
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One thing is for sure, if someone wants to really hide behind a computer, he can. Unless the investigation team has influence beyond national borders.
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Wait for them to steal something that has actual value.
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This ruling affects the ability of corporations/lawyers using subpoenas to identify individuals for civil suits when the only evidence is an IP address that they are equating to a John Doe. Cops requesting a subpoena for ISP details so that they have probable cause to get a search warrant which in turn *may* lead to hard evidence that will allow prosecution is a completely different manner and shouldn't (in theory) be affected by this precedent.
Disclaimer: IANAL
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Re:So slashdotters (Score:5, Insightful)
(Should I feed the troll? Awww, c'mon, it'll be fun!)
An IPv4 address typically identifies a single household, not a single individual.
And while sometimes the activity that leads to a search warrant based on an IP address rates the term "pieces of human waste", it's usually not child pornography, it's usually just music or movie downloading, and maybe the person trying to have sex with the "13-year-old girl" in the chat room is actually the 13-year-old teenage boy in the household, not the 40-year-old adult who's paying for the IP address.
Getting a warrant for a guns-drawn SWAT raid should require an extremely high amount of certainty and a lot of information about the suspect, not just the simple "we've seen him dealing weed and don't want him flushing it" level. Even a warrant for a normal polite knock on the door by an officer with a search warrant or arrest warrant ought to require higher standards than police have been getting away with lately, and if the alleged "crime" is "copyright violation", that's something that ought to be dealt with by a process server, not a cop.
Re:So slashdotters (Score:5, Insightful)
But this probably will close the door on the 99 cases out of 100 where an IP actually does equal a bad person who needs to be caught.
I'm not sure about the 99/100 figure. However, even if that's true, I'd argue that just because something is a 99% accurate indicator of crime, it doesn't justify a forfeiture of rights for the other 1%. Is having an IP address linked to an illegal activity justification to open an investigation? Sure. Enough to break in and confiscate property of an individual who has an open WAP living in a populated area? Probably not. Keep in mind people committing internet crimes are "crafty" and know that its important to hide their own identities (often, masking them as the identities of others)
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I agree that IP != person is a good ruling.
But this probably will close the door on the 99 cases out of 100 where an IP actually does equal a bad person who needs to be caught.
Unless you have something to back up the "99 cases out of 100" figure, we'll just throw that out off-hand as a WAG to draw attention your point. The real point is what do we do to catch Bad People. Build a case on more than an IP address. A case is not built on a street address. Nor is a case based on a license plate number. And these are much more static in nature than IP addresses. While all this might be part of a the chain that leads to an arrest and consequently part of the case, it's going to ta
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>What if you can no longer get a warrant based on an IP?
This is only saying a business can't subpoena private details of another private party on IP alone, I don't know how that would apply to a warrant. I assume the RIAA, could still use IP data to have a investigation opened by the police, and they could get a further search warrant that could allow a address given to the police... I would think a warrant for the address to be given to police would have a lower burden than for a private party. I hop
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-Sigh-
modded troll?
I was honestly not trolling. I just wanted to discuss was the unintended consequences might be of this ruling.
Why do people have to mod you "troll" just for asking the question? I honestly wanted the answer.
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Re:So slashdotters (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this straight. You're saying, because crap evidence can be used to nail child pornographers, the fact that it's crap evidence ought to be overlooked?
I don't think anyone is saying outright that an IP address can't be used to determine if someone at a specific geographical location is doing bad things. But rather than being some absolute identifier like RIAA and the MPAA have for so long claimed, it's more like blood tests in the pre-DNA days, a way of narrowing things down, but not in and of itself sufficient evidence to indicate wrongdoing.
Re:So slashdotters (Score:5, Insightful)
One fine day when the cops break your door down without warning, "drive stun" your crotch with a Taser and then destroy everything in your house (including the sheet rock, carpets, and floorboards) because as far as they're concerned, you are a "piece of human waste" and it's good enough for you, remember that you advocated that IP address=personal identity.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for compensation, an apology, or even a note to your neighbors that you're not actually a perv, because you'll get none of that without a years long bankrupting court battle.
Or, we could simply insist that they do actual followup police work to see if there's a GOOD reason to believe they have the right person first. They can look for things like financial transactions between the suspect and a known bad guy, or physical evidence of the crime taking place. If they find none of that, they should just move on. If they DO find it, then I'm sure a judge will be glad to sign the appropriate warrants.
Re:So slashdotters (Score:4, Insightful)
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My printer's IP doesn't represent a person.
It either represents no-one, or everyone with rights to access it. Either way it disproves the hypothesis that IP == person.
-nB
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How do you classify an automated bot net with your proposition (one person -> (exist-at-least one IP)) && (one ip -> (exist-at-least one person)) true ) ?
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Re:An IP Address can be a person in some cases (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm...no. You were able to tie an IP address to a MAC address. A MAC address does not equal a person. Especially in the case of a wifi router being the MAC address you found, you have no idea who might have actually been directing the offending internet traffic.
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If contracts were as clear as you pretend, we wouldn't need attorneys, lawyers, and most civil court proceedings.
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Most routers have a "change MAC address" setting. A college near here asks students for their ethernet and wifi MAC addresses when giving them network access, and it only gives DHCP addresses to MAC addresses is recognizes. So every student living in the dorms knows how to spoof a MAC address with their router, ipad, phone, or any other device they want to put on the network. And this ain't MIT, it's a small liberal arts college. So I'd guess anyone young enough to be interested in pirating music, soft
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In linux, you can change your mac address with 3 simple lines:
ifconfig {device} down
ifconfig {device} hw ether 01:02:03:04:05:06
ifconfig {device} up
Where {device} is the device name (usually wlan0 or eth0) A simple google search will tell any user this information. When you reboot, your MAC address is reset back to the hardware default.
Plus, Setiguy already explained that it is even easier to change a router's MAC address.
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but unfortunately the judge failed
Stipulate for a moment that the ruling is rock solid, will stand up to every challenge and forever precludes IP addresses as evidence. Law enforcement will just adopt some other technique to relate network activity to households and/or individuals. Broadband services usually have an authentication phase between the modem and the service. If this isn't already sufficient it could be extended with a TPM chip and a key-pair. That requirement might appear with 'net neutrality debacle round II' and will be t