 |
Games firms are accusing innocent people of file-sharing as they crack down on pirates, a Which? Computing investigation has claimed.
The lawyers in the Atari case turned to anti-piracy firm Logistep, which finds those people illegally sharing files via their IP address – the unique numbers which identify a particular computer.
In the case of the Murdochs, a letter was sent giving them the chance to pay £500 compensation or face a court case.
Gill Murdoch and her husband, aged 54 and 66 respectively, told Which: “We do not have, and have never had, any computer game or sharing software. We did not even know what ‘peer to peer’ was until we received the letter.”
Pirate Bay makes no secret of the fact that it inserts the random IP addresses of users, some of who may not even know what file sharing is, to the list of people downloading files, leading investigators up a virtual garden path.
Do you think that may have had something to do with this? And shouldn’t corporations have to come up with something more than the unproved record of an IP address?
Caley Thistle rules!
All your file are belong to us.
The current model of identifying pirates is obviously flawed and needs to be struck down with vengeance in a court of law. Hit the RIAA, MPAA and the Atari lawyers where it hurts, in the wallet! Fine them large and give the money to charity or, better yet, back to government with a ruling that it has to be reinvested in high tech research.
Well, it seems to me that my IP address is assigned to my router. Now, since I have 2 wireless AP’s, both secured, but I can claim otherwise in a pinch, how could they tell which computer the offending files are located on.
Has there been any case law yet determining if you are liable for any crimes committed on your IP address? If someone steals your car, are you liable if they get in an accident with it? If someone puts your return address on an envelope with white powder in it, are you going to jail for the rest of your life?
Don
Soap box.
What happened to “Innocent till proven guilty?”
Why not just send a legal notice to every computer user on the planet? Obviously the tactic is to sue first and have the defendant prove their innocence instead of the prosecutor prove they are guilty.
The only way I can think of to straighten this out is to have every person unjustly accused of theft bring a class-action lawsuit against the RIAA, MPAA, etc. for millions and millions of dollars.
That would go a long way against further frivolous anti-piracy lawsuits.
#4 Don, to address the 2nd part of your question: if someone puts your return address in an envelope with white powder in it, are you going to jail for the rest of your life?
The answer is: yes, very likely. The FBI will investigate you. They will leak your name as a “person of interest” to CNN. Nancy Grace will do 3 months of non-stop coverage of you. You will have to hire 5 lawyers and sell your house (at a loss) in order to pay them. You will lose your job. You will be placed on the do-not-fly list. And if they don’t convict you, then 12 years later the FBI will release a brief statement indicating that although they believe you are a child-molesting terrorist, they have decided to put the investigation on hold.
I am a different DON to #4
They cannot tell which computer the files are on. Davenport Lyons – the law firm threatening court action in the UK in this case – claim that the internet subscriber (bill payer) is responsible for the security of their network. This is true, but you are not liable for any unauthorised actions performed on your network.
Nasty lawyers love to make you draw wrong conclusions to scare you into paying.
They also state in writing that they do not necessarily think it was YOU who shared the content, but that they are holding you responsible.
I have quite a lot of experience with these ambulance chasing lawyers
They look more like Dangerous Dems…
#6 is on the money..
alot of the piracy cases get overturned
because of the weak methods the RIAA and
company use to frame their cases.. they’re main tactic is to just bleed the accu$ed into submission..
its already been shown the media industries provided false data to make their case for money loss due to piracy in the first place..
its almost impossible to prove how much income you lost due to file sharing..
and on IP adresses… i’m constantly changing the mac address of my router because after a while, i start getting bombarded with port scans and the like from China. its a 1 minute ordeal to go into your routers setup and select
“use this mac address” to force an IP change from your isp..
-so using IP adresses as “proof” is weak at best
lastly.. IMO, this article was ONLY posted to try and gain more public “outcry” towards Pirate Bay, who to date, has managed to thwart all attempts to get it shutdown.. they had nothing to do with this case, yet the BBC makes a weak attempt to finger them for “the crime”
nice to see the BBC is just as corrupt as our mainstream media here in the usa..
-s
If someone steals your car, are you liable if they get in an accident with it? If someone puts your return address on an envelope with white powder in it, are you going to jail for the rest of your life?
Er, ah, Quite likely yes, what rock have you been hiding under?
They have certainly been known to confiscate the cars driven by johns in prostitution stings, even if the car wasn’t theirs. Think Janet Reno!
#4, Don,
Generally you are responsible for any civil damages. Yes, your insurance would pay for the damages caused by your stolen car.
Sending a white powder with your return address would certainly get someone’s attention and look at you as a suspect, but generally they would need more proof that YOU sent the letter.
Stealing electronic intellectual property is a whole new area. Courts have just started re-evaluating this. Again, generally, if they have your IP address, they may get a search subpoena and search your HD looking for the music / games / or whatever. Some courts are reluctant though to give private people search warrants.
If you are ever accused of file sharing, dump the HD on your computer. Not the whole computer, just the HD which holds the “stuff”. That could save you a ton of grief down the road.
okay so what happen was there was some evidence that the person that was assign that ip address was violating copyright. it was investigated and found to be not so. case dismissed.
so what is the problem?
meanwhile people at pirate bays and other site are violating copyright left and right and don’t even care that innocent people may be convicted and have to pay huge fines.
yeah the bad guys are the RIAA…….
oh
#12 Sweety “If you are ever accused of file sharing, dump the HD on your computer. Not the whole computer, just the HD which holds the “stuff”. That could save you a ton of grief down the road.”
that is really bad advice (unless of course you are violating copyright)
why act like you are guilty if you haven’t done anything?
#10 wins for nailing the attempt to get people against Pirate Bay.
Thing is that IP address DO NOT identify a particular computer. It can only identify an access point, since 90% of broadband users use some sort of access-point/firewall/router (wireless or not) not an “particular computer”
Changing your IP address won’t throw off these people, since your ISP keeps a log of every IP address that’s given to your cable modem anyway; you can’t change the MAC address of you cable modem. It does help clear up if you’re getting attacked by these cyber do-gooders who get your IP address off a torrent swarm.
And if pirate bay is indeed putting in random bogus IP addressed into a torrent swarm just proves how clueless these lawyers are, yet it does put innocent people at risk. It also explains why my torrent downloads are slow.
I’m also really sick and tired of these claims of how much money these publishers are losing money when they can’t even measure how my times their material gets copied. These numbers are plucked out from thin air, since they probably don’t take into account of failed downloads, incomplete downloads, downloads that don’t work (corrupted), or even fake/bogus downloads posing as copyrighted material. Plus they probably count the number times the .torrent file is download, as if THAT constitutes a successful complete download of said material.
I’m very positive that if piracy didn’t exist in the first place, their sales figures wouldn’t be as high as they are now.
#15: “Changing your IP address won’t throw off these people, since your ISP keeps a log of every IP address that’s given to your cable modem anyway; you can’t change the MAC address of you cable modem.”
I hate to burst your bubble, but a lot of cable modems these days DO allow you to force a MAC address of your own choosing. Also, most of them have Bridge Mode, allowing any router/device sitting behind them to use it’s MAC instead.
Wow I didn’t even know TPB did that.
As long as you can fake IP addresses or stick bogus IP addresses on lists this is crap.
#18, Crap or not, the RIAA is still trying to get money out of people.
(too tired to spell check, ‘xcuse the typos)
#13
[quote]
[b]okay so what happen was there was some evidence that the person
that was assign that ip address was violating copyright. it was investigated and
found to be not so. case dismissed.
so what is the problem? [/b]
[/quote]
the problem, grasshopper, is that the person accused has to take the time
out from daily activities (you know things like WORK, and/or if with a
toddler now has to possibly pay a sitter etc..) while they seek legal
council. -which may not always be free (and free council rarely is adequate)
then additional time and money is spent to travel to and from court during the
hearings or trial. -regardless if they are full reimbursed if innocent, they could
potentially lose their job because of the time(s) used to achieve the above.
to take it one step further..as we all know, almost all States now have
major hangups over explicit sexual content..you know, porn..to protect all
those innocent children or some other crap excuse.
I have many clients (i fix PC’s in NYC, -mostly private housecalls)
that have mountains of self created, personal hard core sexual acts
on their PC’s. now, say the accused is actually 100% innocent of any copyright
infringement. however, during the “legal exploration” of the content on their
hard drive to establish whether the accused is innocent or not, they find
the defendants private collection of home-made S&M movies or pics etc.
-right off the bat, it now opens them up to a whole new can of legal worms.
-and god forbid if any of the participants in the movies/pics look a bit on the
young side. now the State will go on a fishing expedition to try hang this poor
sole out to dry while they establish whether his personal activities is endangering
the welfare of a minor, or considered child porn. -not to mention the super vague
“national security” umbrella of laws (esp here in the USA) that give the State
even more excuses to drill down into your data.
this means dragging more people (and their hard drives) under
the warped and distorted magnifying glass of the States (very public) courts.
this results in more legal costs to the original defendant -and now unrelated
parties to the original infringement accusation get to experience loss of time,
money and work not to mention the potential (and most likely) public
embarrassment of ALL parties involved having their private activities
put on public display.
this is no exaggeration. this an extreem source of aggravation and anxiety
for my clients (not to mention cost) who are doing nothing legally wrong.
they have all resorted to using high-grade encryption to protect their
privacy, -should a similar situation ever put them under the magnifying glass.
whats really F’d up is the record and movie companies (with the riaa/mpaa’s blessings)
used blatantly false data to push congress to pass the vague, overbearing laws they
use to harass anyone with an IP adress.. the intial claims presented to congress stated
they were losing potentially 40-45% of sales per year to piracy. however,
-AFTER they got the (vague) laws passed, they claimed they “made a mistake” in
calculating their losses and the actual amount was closer to 10%, -15% at most.
if they (congress/courts etc) had properly investigated how they arrived
at the numbers given, this would most likely had resulted in extremely increased
burdens of proof being required on the part of the prosecuting companies,
-not only to get just get a law bill on the floor of the house in the first place,
but also to have any resultant laws passed with the same
burdens of proof, accountability and costing that are required
for say, the crime of burglary or theft of property. -not the sham laws
currently in play.
-always in question and conveniently buried or glossed over in psuedo-techobabble,
is the method of just how they figured out how to quantify the sales losses due to
“bits travling over a wire” -if the courts went over their methods and truly applied the
rules of Law, they would be laughed out of court. -the amount of “real” variables
involved make it almost impossible to ever be able to quantify the losses with
truly accurate and especially **repeatable results**.
go through the news archives of arstechnica.com. -you find the articles
which back 45% loss claim along with a plethora of related articles about
the methodology issues, along with many lawsuits by the magacoprs/riaa
being reversed or thrown out, due to the dubious at best methods their
lawyers use to try and prove guilt.
research how much money all the corporate and private entities
invloved that stand to gain from these laws have donated
to the political coffers connected to all those writing and passing
piracy laws. -you’ll not only find conflicts of interest all over the
place, but also a vey good understanding of how such vague
and dare i say, oppressive laws managed to get into the law books…
#13
[quote]
[b]meanwhile people at pirate bays and other site are violating copyright left and
right and don’t even care that innocent people may be convicted and have
to pay huge fines.
yeah the bad guys are the RIAA…[/b]
[/quote]
-sorry to say, but your a case in point.
your the perfect patzi. you ate up the BBC’s “want” to foster
public hate, support and outcry for those “mean uncaring people
at pirate bay” (see all of the above for what the RIAA and
company amounts to these days)
the BBC had no right to invoke Pirate Bay by name in the
context of this article. what they did is paramount to
slander. Period.
-but hey, its the BBC, -they’d never pull our leg, right?
-the RIAA was born with good intentions, but now
as with almost all regulatory bodies and enforcers, they have been
seduced and influenced by megacorp monies and gratuities to
the point that they hardly even a shadow of their former selves.
—
P2P piracy laws and especially child porn laws have been specially
crafted and exploited to open the door for broad and sweeping
internet censorship across all nations. for the first time in human history,
the general populous of the entire connected planet have been able
to share not only whats happening around the globe and in their
backyards in realtime, but their thoughts, opinions, ideas and facts
as well.
history has shown united peoples in locality is a force to be reckoned with
and not to be taken lightly. -now, with virtually the entire globe of “the people”
having the abilty to share unfiltered truths and unite in common cause(s),
as it were.. -this is poses a grave threat to all those who have controlled
with great granularity, what the people see, hear and think.
in the past months, many nations have been drafting legislation
to start wholesale fracturing and censorship of the internet.
within the next year, you’ll see the “global internet” reduced to
“national internet” with the governments starting to blot out any and all
“content” that doesnt jive with their “national security” agendas.
-greatly limiting communications outside its borders to boot..
-and for what? to protect us from all those horrible pirates? -or those
thousands of sexual predators just waiting to pounce on your oh so
innocent child at an intent chat room near you?
or omg, heavens ta bid, the MacDaddy of’em all.. the hundreds of terror
cells around the globe and in your backyard using the internet to
plot their next dastardly jihadic deed..?
please..
The People have become empowered.
-this simply cannot be.
-s