Posts by Stephen Judd
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Gael galled: glee ganged agley.
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Bruce: spot-on. This excerpt from their concluding paragraph is exactly what I was thinking:
Although content providers are increasingly relying on systematic monitoring of P2P networks as a basis for deterring copyright infringement, some currently used methods of identifying infringing users are not conclusive. Through extensive measurement of tens of thousands of BitTorrent swarms and analysis of hundreds of DMCA complaints, we have shown that a malicious user can implicate arbitrary network endpoints in copyright infringement, and additional false positives may arise due to buggy software or timing effects.
Also, their paper suggests that the logical next step for recording companies is to pressure ISPs to start intrusive logging. I think they're right, and the next big policy thing in this space, probably in conjunction with aligning with ACTA, will be requiring network operators above a certain size to keep detailed records of user behaviour.
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TracyMac: for sure, you can do that, but not with the low-end kit that most consumers and small businesses will buy or the sysadmin time/skill they can afford. Eg my tiny router at home in its default state will hand out addresses happily without any logging or login process in its default state.
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PS: a thing called Network Address Translation also makes identifying computers by IP number very problematic. NAT allows a network operator to "share" one IP number across many computers, and lots of organisations use it for various valid technical reasons. Any system that relies on IP numbers to identify file sharers will fail if the end user is behind a NATed network. Eg, a computer in a lab at your kids' secondary school.
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"ip address violation" should read "ip address allocation" above.
I CAN HAZ EDIT BUTTON PLZ.
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I found this story in Computerworld very illuminating.
RIANZ says its evidence is “highly reliable, well-tested and accepted worldwide”. The evidence is synched to a trusted atomic time source, and based on ICANN (APNIC) information on the allocation of IP address spaces, RIANZ continues.
Folks, it's pretty hard to actually identify someone who is sharing a file through something like Bittorrent. The best attempts overseas have involved hiring 3rd party investigation services to go undercover, sign up, and then record the IP numbers of users. No doubt such a service is what RIANZ has in mind. That's what the talk of IP address violation and timestamps suggests.Now, some organisations, including commercial ISPs, do log who has what IP number when, but usually not in a very accessible form. And they don't usually keep such logs for very long, because obviously they are huge. So it's expensive and annoying to say which person had which IP number at what time, if you even logged it. And of course just because you can say that user stephenj was using IP number X.X.X.X two months ago on a Friday night, it doesn't follow that I was actually the person committing the copyright infringement - it might be someone else using my home network, or it might be someone else in another location who stole my password.
RIANZ' overseas counterparts have had to get really heavy to extract this information from network operators, and some, notably big universities, have told them to get bent. And when they have obtained log information, the record companies often screwed it up and made mistakes so that they identified the wrong actual person and couldn't meet the standard of evidence for a court. And when they have won, judges have not generally agreed with their estimates of the loss they have suffered.
With this in mind you can see why RIANZ are so keen to try to avoid due process. They obviously don't have a highly reliable solution, and so due process would be onerous and expensive, often unsuccessful, lead to bad publicity, and not pay for itself.
You can also see why any organisation that operates a network would fight tooth and nail to retain the status quo, because any sort of logging that was actually fair to end users and reliable enough to be evidence in court would be a giant pain in the arse.
Personally, I think music rights holders should be lobbying for the same approach they take to getting monies from broadcasters and venue owners - charge everyone according to a fixed scale and allocate to artists based on statistical sampling. A small charge on broadband data would more than cover any realistic estimate of lost sales due to sharing. However this would require them to acknowledge that the war against copying has been lost.
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Oops, that first link should have gone here.
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Paul: robots.txt wouldn't fall under the definition of "a work", I would think, but if it did, S43A would probably let a spider off.
However, that brings up the interesting issue that under the TCF model, only you, the complaintant, could assess that - the ISP to whom you complained would only be empowered to judge the technical process used to identify the infringer. So then they'd terminate the supposed offender, and it would be up to that party to lawyer up and sort you out.
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Reading the TCF proposal one thing that's interesting is that it creates two classes of rights holders, essentially them and us - the 'recognised rights holders' (the rich guys) who will pay less every time they report an infringement, and us who will have to pay more...
As far as the two-tier approach to rights holders goes: if the approach to music were extended to ordinary folk, Stuff and the NZ Herald would be offline or scrabbling to generate their own content for their cute online funnies/photos columns.
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I actually have known quite a few who have done time!
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Have you actually BEEN inside a prison Lucy? I have, several of them.
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I had experiences during eleven years working in the oil drilling industry in several different countries that most middle class people have not had.That's what I was thinking about. You're not being labelled a redneck - your claims to special standing are being mocked.
Actually, in its current form, I don't find too much to object to in the bill - I wonder whether the SST will feel short-changed. If you actually read through what other people have said, you'd notice that the consensus seems to be mild surprise that it's not too bad and far from resembling the American laws that go by the "three strikes" moniker.