To Media Companies, BitTorrent Implies Guilt 381
kripkenstein writes "The big media companies immediately assume you are guilty by your mere presence on a BitTorrent swarm, an investigation by a university security worker reveals. Turns out companies like BayTSP (which the media companies employ) will send shutdown notices to ISPs without any evidence of copyright infringment; all they feel they need is an indication that you are reported by the tracker to be in the swarm." From the post: "For my investigation, I wrote a very simple BitTorrent client. My client sent a request to the tracker, and generally acted like a normal Bittorrent client up to sharing files. The client refused to accept downloads of, or upload copyrighted content. It obeyed the law... With just this, completely legal, BitTorrent client, I was able to get notices from BayTSP. To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs."
Re:Absolutely (Score:1, Interesting)
Anyway, being targeted for notices based on appearance in a swarm is more like being arrested for being in a neighbourhood frequented by drug users, not necessarily hanging out with drug dealers.
Reminds me of .. (Score:4, Interesting)
A couple of weeks later I received a copyright infringement notice from my ISP for this fake file. They had been contacted by one of Microsoft's agents who obviously conducted their analyses using a method of similar incompetence to BayTSP's.
Weak (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a really weak legal angle for them to take, and if it's all they have going for them, most people have very little to worry about (except really long and boring lawsuits that cost way too much money and only enrich the lives of lawyers).
Meh.
Re:Just like VCRs (Score:3, Interesting)
I placed this client on a number of torrent files that I suspected were monitored by BayTSP
Its not like they block everyone going to thepiratebay.org, only people who appear to be partaking in the sharing of a copyrighted work. I'm not saying this tactic is a good one, just not quite as bad as its being made out to be.My BayTSP experience (Score:2, Interesting)
My repeated emails to my ISP (explaining BayTSPs idiocy) were not acknowledged, so I chose to ignore the entire thing.
Re:Absolutely (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't know if it's true or not, but it seems somewhat plausible.
What defines a "Client"? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The important part is the proof! (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree, but it probably won't have that much affect. Remember, in a civil suit, the plaintiff doesn't need to prove it's case "to a moral certainty and beyond a reasonable doubt" as the prosecution does in a criminal case. The standard is the more simple "preponderance of evidence." That means that if the jury feels it's more likely that the plaintiff is right than that the defendant is, they vote for the plaintiff even if they're not completely sure. This would make their claims less believable, but probably wouldn't be enough in and of itself to disprove them.
Re:The important part is the proof! (Score:4, Interesting)
The harder part would more likely be convincing the judge that the user was using a torrent client in this manner, rather than for downloading. Its a good thing we're all "innocent until proven guilty." IANAL, but this should establish that the plaintiffs need to demonstrate that defendants actually distributed content. Presence in the swarm is clearly not enough for a conviction, so it certainly should not be enough for an ISP takedown.
The article's author would make for a great expert witness in any of these cases. If the only evidence being shown is the defendant's IP address in the cloud, they have nothing.
Re:Not missing anything (Score:1, Interesting)
We are talking about a civil rather than criminal offense here and "suspicion that you might possibly have been uploading a file we may or may not own copyright to, to some one who may or may not be authorized to receive a copy" is pretty weak evidence to send out DMCA takedown notices on.
More importantly this demonstrates the extremely lax standards on which such notices, even legitimate ones, are based. The company in question obviously does not verify if a particular client is uploading to the swarm. Do they even verify the contents of the torrent file in question to make sure it is something they own?
Why should we tolerate legal action on such a flimsy basis? Even if the copyright holder's complaint is genuine is it really too much to ask that they collect some evidence of wrong doing?
If I find that you connected to a ftp server containing only copyrighted work but cannot show that you accessed any of it would that be sufficient to send a notice to your isp?
You forget that people hate this crap! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is even more a possibility due to the fact that TFA gives a number of features by which one can detect them. And when you further factor in the fact that they do such a poor job of figuring out whether or not they actually own whatever content they complain about people sharing, well...
Re:Just like VCRs (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, their assumptions are correct almost all of the time. Though some researchers might use modified clients to connect to trackers without up/downloading, the overwhelming majority of people who connect to the trackers will be people who are in the process of committing copyright infringement. Any court would say that the MPAA/RIAA filed the suit in good faith. If a person is doing research, they probably have evidence to back that up. The case would probably be dismissed or even dropped once that evidence was provided. For the remaining 0.0001% that might get tagged... well frankly, even the US government doesn't always get it right[1], so why should we expect a corporation to be any better?
Now there will be some detractors. Some people will make the broad claim that, "Why don't they just sue everyone on the Internet? You're allowing them some error, how much will they take?" These people don't understand the concept of "gray areas." The RIAA/MPAA know that they cannot sue everyone on the Internet. They also know that, legally, they have to have a reasonable belief that infringement is occurring before they file suit. The definition of "reasonable" in this case is left to the courts, and it's probably a situation where the judge will know it when he sees it. That may not be much consolation, but maybe you can rest assured that if the RIAA started wrongly suing people en masse, the massive backlash and numerous lawsuits that would result would be devastating. They know this, which is why they aren't going to do this sort of thing.
[1] Meaning that the US government and the court system has convicted and imprisoned people who were innocent of the charges against them. DNA evidence sometimes proves this years after the fact.
Civil Disobedience (Score:3, Interesting)
In any case, I'm mostly with you. I don't care much for alcohol, but I do plenty of things that are illegal -- mostly filesharing, also speeding (on occasion). I do take steps to ensure I'm not caught, but I also am prepared to defend my actions: Where the law and my ethics are at odds, I follow what's right, not what's legal.
Re:The important part is the proof! (Score:2, Interesting)
If you read the transcripts from the Supreme Court Grokster appeal [eff.org], you can isolate the exact moment when Justice Scalia realizes what Grokster does. And you can taste the immediacy of his determining that it was very, very illegal.
Fortunately, Grokster's advertising campaign, which featured the ability to get new releases for free, kept the justices from rendering a ruling that affected all P2P sharing. While a big supporter of P2P file sharing, I fear for its future.