Court Orders Telegram To Disclose Personal Details of Pirating Users (torrentfreak.com) 30
The High Court in Delhi ordered Telegram to share the personal details of copyright-infringing users with rightsholders. The messaging app refused to do so, citing privacy concerns and freedom of speech, but the court waved away these defenses, ordering the company to comply with Indian law. TorrentFreak reports: Telegram doesn't permit copyright infringement and generally takes swift action in response. This includes the removal of channels that are dedicated to piracy. For some copyright holders that's not enough, as new 'pirate' channels generally surface soon after. To effectively protect their content, rightsholders want to know who runs these channels. This allows them to take action against the actual infringers and make sure that they stop pirating. This argument is the basis of an infringement lawsuit filed in 2020.
The case in question was filed by Ms. Neetu Singh and KD Campus. The former is the author of various books, courses, and lectures, for which the latter runs coaching centers. Both rightsholders have repeatedly complained to Telegram about channels that shared pirated content. In most cases, Telegram took these down, but the service refused to identify the infringers. As such, the rightsholders asked the court to intervene. The legal battle culminated in the Delhi High Court this week via an order compelling Telegram to identify several copyright-infringing users. This includes handing over phone numbers, IP addresses, and email addresses.
The order was issued despite fierce opposition. One of Telegram's main defenses was that the user data is stored in Singapore, which prohibits the decryption of personal information under local privacy law. The Court disagrees with this argument, as the ongoing infringing activity is related to Indian works and will likely be tied to Indian users. And even if the data is stored elsewhere, it could be accessed from India. Disclosing the personal information would not be a violation of Singapore's privacy law either, the High Court adds, pointing out that there is an exception if personal details are needed for investigation or proceedings.
Telegram also brought up the Indian constitution, which protects people's privacy, as well as the right to freedom of speech and expression. However, that defense was unsuccessful too. Finally, Telegram argued that it is not required to disclose the details of its users because the service merely acts as an intermediary. Again, the Court disagrees. Simply taking infringing channels offline isn't good enough in this situation, since infringers can simply launch new ones, as if nothing had happened.
The case in question was filed by Ms. Neetu Singh and KD Campus. The former is the author of various books, courses, and lectures, for which the latter runs coaching centers. Both rightsholders have repeatedly complained to Telegram about channels that shared pirated content. In most cases, Telegram took these down, but the service refused to identify the infringers. As such, the rightsholders asked the court to intervene. The legal battle culminated in the Delhi High Court this week via an order compelling Telegram to identify several copyright-infringing users. This includes handing over phone numbers, IP addresses, and email addresses.
The order was issued despite fierce opposition. One of Telegram's main defenses was that the user data is stored in Singapore, which prohibits the decryption of personal information under local privacy law. The Court disagrees with this argument, as the ongoing infringing activity is related to Indian works and will likely be tied to Indian users. And even if the data is stored elsewhere, it could be accessed from India. Disclosing the personal information would not be a violation of Singapore's privacy law either, the High Court adds, pointing out that there is an exception if personal details are needed for investigation or proceedings.
Telegram also brought up the Indian constitution, which protects people's privacy, as well as the right to freedom of speech and expression. However, that defense was unsuccessful too. Finally, Telegram argued that it is not required to disclose the details of its users because the service merely acts as an intermediary. Again, the Court disagrees. Simply taking infringing channels offline isn't good enough in this situation, since infringers can simply launch new ones, as if nothing had happened.
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Telegram really wanted to protect users' privacy, they wouldn't have tied account creation to telephone numbers.
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This 10000%. It's all a sham when you require accounts to be tied to physical devices.
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It's the only way anyone has come up with to prevent spam and harassment. I really wish there was a better option, but so far nobody has thought of one.
You can get a disposable SIM card and register a Telegram account anonymously. It just needs to be able to receive SMS for the validation code. After that you can discard it, and as long as you maintain at least one device signed in to telegram you won't need it again.
The only alternative I know of that doesn't need a phone number at all is Cwtch.
Re: Well... (Score:3)
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Sounds very similar to Cwtch, which is also no phone number, e2e encryption, and uses Tor as a transport layer. Cwtch makes a lot of its metadata resistance too.
The only advantage I see to Cwtch is that it supports groups, not just 1 to 1 messaging. That does require a server, but it is an untrusted one. 1 to 1 does not require a server at all.
Hard to pick between them. Both seem like battery killers. TBH Telegram with a disposable phone number that can't be linked to me is enough for my needs. It can be us
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You can get a disposable SIM card
Why bother with that? There are SS7/SIP gateways that one can use to spoof phone numbers, forward SMS messages and spam the phone systems (land line or cellular) with telemarketing crap. For free. And script the whole thing. It wouldn't take much work to generate all the bot accounts you want on Telegram. Or any other service stupid enough to rely on telco identification/security protocols.
The phone companies sold their soul to scammers for a few extra bucks. They'll have to live with the consequences of u
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The phone companies sold their soul to scammers for a few extra bucks. They'll have to live with the consequences of us not trusting any incoming calls or messages.
This is one reason I really enjoy my Pixel phone. The phone assistant has all but ended bot/spam calls.
not secure? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
It's almost like if you try to start an actually secure messenger app in 2022 you get shut down by mysterious entities...
Re: not secure? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, if you want real security, then go with Tox. No phone number in use, but it's not that trivial to set up and get connected. Also, it's still in active development.
Confusing Security with Anonymity (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a common point of confusion.
Encryption security protects the content of the data from prying eyes. It does nothing for anonymity, meaning sender and receiver(s) are readily available and potentially identifiable. Most of the web functions here, content protection not identity protection.
Anonymity is protecting the identities of the users. In general anonymity is a far more difficult problem.
There are approaches that do both but they can become unwieldly, Tor being the most prominent example.
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Taxes and copyright (Score:2)
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How will they get people on copyright?
Are you assuming a majority of people violate copyrights?
Most people wouldn't even know how and unlike screwing up your taxes (whether or not intentionally) nothing requires anyone to come into contact with copyright infringement.
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If they force you to suppress your natural human instinct to share with other people, then they've got you.
Though you can make similar observations about any sort of capital. All capital is about inequality.
Court should Telegram an option (Score:1)
It should guarantee the content that was pirated, proven to be pirated is never shared again in Telegram. If it monetizes pirated content, it is an accessory to the pirate. The court has chosen not to prosecute it as one. So it should be thank ful.
Doing It Wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
If you are pirating on Telegram you are doing it wrong.
Unusual swift response (Score:4, Insightful)
And now they suddenly get off their fat asses within two years, there must be serious money involved.
How about you make your content (Score:3)
Two things that mutli-billion dollar companies get beaten at by a couple of people in a basement/garage somewhere.
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
There goes a *lot* of work in a book, and the author usually doesn't see that much of a profit from it (20% per copy, *if* he's lucky). Expect a single book to see two years of work by the author, and, when finished, then the book needs to get promoted (which the author also needs to give quite some attention).
So, yeah, those who upload original works, of which the author is not dead and he still owns the rights, should face the music. No pity from me.
If you don't have the money to buy a new book each time, get a library membership card and get your books from there.
Also, if people want security and privacy, they shouldn't be using telegram. Use signal or tox (even more secure) instead.
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... So I would guess that you are not in favor of measures such as
I might be wrong, especially since you apparently support libraries (point 2).
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Yes, I do support that owners of books can do whatever they want with books they bought (or been given), short of duplicating it (through some means) and distributing those duplicates.
However, authors deserve to be compensated for their work. I feel this should be done for life (unless they make it some form of free at some point).
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I don't think you're ever going to succeed in stamping out basic human sharing from 100% of the population, where only getting 99.99% isn't enough. If you want authors to get paid, you need to be advocating a different system.
(Also, the current system can never fund writing by authors who don't actually want to prevent poor people from reading their books. Which is unsurprising, the only people who matter to our economic system are the rich, and you don't become rich by being a reasonable person.)
bull (Score:2)
The court is bending over backwards to serve telegram up on a silver platter.
The opinion of the court is, basically, "we don't care what defenses you have, you're wrong because we say so, and btw shut up or we'll just hold you in contempt"