[Bradford] Fw: It Happened

Wed Feb 25 13:53:36 UTC 2015

I may have missed it but I didn't see the word 'proxy' anywhere.Brian

     On Wednesday, 25 February 2015, 13:26, Nick Rhodes <nick at ngrhodes.co.uk> wrote:

 Cheers for that Steve.

I think its worth pointing out that joining a swarm is nothing more than that; does not automatically imply downloading and uploading, which is are activities that MAY happen after joining and are instigated direct with other ip addresses.

On 25 February 2015 at 12:06, Steve Wilson <bradford-lug at swsystem.co.uk> wrote:

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 WilsonIT 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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