[Bradford] Fw: It Happened

[Steve Wilson]

Probably biased - "other" signature used for transparency. 

There's lots of issues with copyright and file sharing. Plenty of the
filesharing problems get highlighted frequently on torrentfreak. 

We've seen the "speculative invoicing" business start out here in the UK
with ACS law making it famous after davenport lyons using copyright laws
to have any criticism of their business model removed. To know how this
works you need to know how bittorrent works. trying to keep it simple
enough to understand, each "torrent" has a hash and people sharing this
join a swarm. Anyone can join this swarm and IP addresses are shared so
others know where they may be able to get other parts of the torrent
they're trying to download. This is where the business model really
starts to get flaky. 

The IP taken from the swarm then has it's ISP identified, and a court
orders them to identify the customer using the IP at the given
date/time. 

Then the letters normally show up on the doorstep, usually threatening
legal action but you can make it go away for a couple of hundred quid. 

This has moved over to the US, where adult entertainment companies now
send threats for sharing titles with dubious names, would you want to be
taken to court for downloading something with a dodgy title? 

The real problem with this is that an IP address does not identify a
person, there's a pretty good chance the account holder is probably the
offender but there's also the possibility that someone's using your wifi
or maybe a friend came round at that time and had left their torrent
program running on their laptop without realising. Based on the IP
address alone there is no proof that it was the account holder. 

The UK has some wierd laws round this, the common tactic against sites,
oink was a good example, is to use fraud laws as the sites are "passing
off" copies as legitimate downloads. I don't believe anyone downloading
from torrent sites believe their getting a legitimate copy personally. 

Site blocking's a joke and so easy to circumvent with proxies/vpn etc,
but beware of the multi billion dollar industry if you show them it is. 

Steve Wilson 

IT Team Leader - Pirate Party UK

 Pirate Party UK is a political party registered with the Electoral
 Commission. 

On 25/02/2015 10:24, Nick Rhodes wrote: 

> And don't forget the abuse of power that certain legal entities show.
> 
> I have personally received 3 legal threats, incorrect allegations of breach of copyright for trying to resell retail boxed software :/
> 
> Cheers, Nick. 
> 
> On 25 February 2015 at 10:00, Robert Burrell Donkin <robertburrelldonkin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 9:43 AM, Nick Rhodes <nick at ngrhodes.co.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> <snip>
>> lots of good stuff
>> </snip>
>> 
>>> In both UK and US as soon as money gets involved it becomes a more completed
>>> situation (including profiting from add on tracker listing sites),
>>> potentially criminal, but I've never been able to fathom the exact
>>> legalities for UK or US in for-profit circumstances.
>> 
>> Digital Britain was *really* close to being lost during wash-up (I
>> think if a few more people with Labour MPs had contact them, Labour
>> would have been forced to withdrawl it), and many of the technical
>> criticisms we made over the drafting appear to have been taken into
>> account by the civil service when drawing up regulations and by their
>> glacial implementation of some provisions. In the country, it is often
>> easier to force through poorly thought-through legislation than it is
>> to get the enforcement to stick.
>> 
>> I suspect that the current state of UK law is now deeply ambiguous at
>> best. Given DB did not attempt to reconcile it's innovations with
>> existing bodies of statues and case law, my best guess is that the Law
>> Lords will one day need to clarify a lot stuff including the issues
>> raised by Nick.
>> 
>> So yes, the authorities much prefer to be able to use the clear,
>> well-tested, predictable criminal law. Given current budget
>> constraints at the Crown Prosecution service - and the wide
>> confiscation powers enjoyed by the police - I would think very
>> carefully before choosing using a criminal case to clarify the law.
>> 
>> In theory, I could be banned for download software to which I own the
>> copyright. In this case, I might consider contesting the case but I
>> would first need to dispose of all my movable assets, quite my job and
>> defend myself in person.
>> 
>> Robert
> 
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