Major ISPs Help Fund BitTorrent User Tracking Research: Via Slashdot YRO.

An anonymous reader writes "I was scanning conference proceedings to come up with ideas for a reading group I run at my workplace, and I noticed an interesting paper from the new IEEE WIFS forensics conference. Researchers from the University of Colorado have published a technique for tracking BitTorrent users (PDF) by joining and actively probing torrent swarms using low-cost cloud computing services. They claim their methods allowed them to monitor the entire Pirate Bay torrent set for as little as $13/mo using EC2. But that's not even the interesting part. Their work appears to have been 'funded in part through gifts from PolyCipher' — a broadband ISP consortium. That's right; three major national ISPs funded this round of BitTorrent tracking research, not the MPAA/RIAA. Could this be evidence of ISP support for ACTA and a global three-strikes law?"

Read Original Article:(Via Slashdot.)

Feds Can Search, Seize P2P Files Without Warrant: Via Threat Level.

The authorities do not need court warrants to view and download files trading on peer-to-peer networks, a federal appeals court says.

Wednesday’s 3-0 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concerned a Nevada man convicted of possessing child pornography as part of an FBI investigation. Defendant Charles Borowy claimed the Fourth Amendment required court authorization to search and seize his LimeWire files in 2007.

The San Francisco-based appeals court, however, cited the nation’s legal standard, reiterating that warrants are required if a search “violates a reasonable expectation of privacy.” (.pdf)

Borowy, the court noted, “was clearly aware that LimeWire was a file-sharing program that would allow the public at large to access files in his shared folder unless he took steps to avoid it.”

The defendant, however, claimed he had a reasonable expectation of privacy because he thought he had turned off LimeWire’s share feature. [ Read more ... ]

ShmooCon: P2P snoopers know what's in your wallet: Via Computerworld Privacy News.

People send their most sensitive personal information out over P2P networks, and the bad guys are watching.

Being security researchers and all, Larry Pesce and Mick Douglas thought it would be a hoot to take a look at some of the information people send out over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. They were taken aback by what they found.

At the 2010 ShmooCon security conference Friday, the duo showed off the extremely sensitive information they've been able to intercept, including driver's licenses and passports, tax return forms with Social Security numbers; someone's last will and testament and information on one man's secret activities that could potentially be exploited by terrorists. [ Read more ... ]

Anti-RIAA Site Folds: Via Threat Level.

Provocative website p2pnet.net, the online voice to one of the world’s most blistering and perpetual attacks on the Recording Industry Association of America, is shuttering amid financial doldrums. It was 9 years old.

“I can’t claim p2pnet has been protecting the world, but I’ve done my best to unspin some of the vested interest corporate spin, and expose a few of the lies and corruption,” the site’s voice and founder Jon Newton said in his “last post” Wednesday.

The Vancouver Island, British Columbia huckster is looking for donations or even a partnership in hopes of reviving the site that has become infamous for its mocking portrayal of the RIAA, which consists of Vivendi Universal, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner Music.

While Newton mocked the Motion Picture Association of America, the site is best remembered for referring to the RIAA as the “Big 4 Organised Music Cartel,” [ Read more ... ]

Census of Files Available via BitTorrent: Via Freedom to Tinker.

BitTorrent is popular because it lets anyone distribute large files at low cost. Which kinds of files are available on BitTorrent? Sauhard Sahi, a Princeton senior, decided to find out. Sauhard's independent work last semester, under my supervision, set out to measure what was available on BitTorrent. This post, summarizing his results, was co-written by Sauhard and me.

Sauhard chose a (uniform) random sample of files available via the trackerless variant of BitTorrent, using the Mainline DHT. The sample comprised 1021 files. He classified the files in the sample by file type, language, and apparent copyright status.

Before describing the results, we need to offer two caveats. First, the results apply only to the Mainline trackerless BitTorrent system that we surveyed. [ Read more ... ]

EU has doubts as ISP rolls out DPI for copyright enforcement: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

Back in November, UK ISP Virgin Media announced that it would start using deep packet inspection gear to start riffling through user traffic. The goal was to search some of the leading P2P networks in order to measure copyrighted material passing through them. Today, the European Commission indicated that the plan is problematic, and it will keep a close eye on the trial. [ Read more ... ]

Privacy Network Tor Suffers Breach: Via InformationWeek.com .

The virtual network, Tor, designed to provide private and secure Web browsing to people around the world had a number of servers hacked recently. The Tor anonymous network is helpful to those living in nations that oppress free speech, such as China and Iran, and need unfettered access to information.

The virtual network, Tor, designed to provide private and secure Web browsing to people around the world had a number of servers hacked recently. The Tor anonymous network is helpful to those living in nations that oppress free speech, such as China and Iran, and need unfettered access to information.

According to this post in the (Simple End-User Linux) SEUL.org discussion list, three of Tor's severs were compromised earlier this month, two were part of the network's directory structure:

In early January we discovered that two of the seven directory authorities were compromised (moria1 and gabelmoo), along with metrics.torproject.org, a new server we'd recently set up to serve metrics data and graphs. The three servers have since been reinstalled with service migrated to other servers.

The breach appears to have been for CPU capacity, according to the post. And the infiltrators were using the server to launch other attacks. [ Read more ... ]

12 Trends to Watch in 2010: Via EFF.org Updates.

It's the dawn of a new year. From our perch on the frontier of electronic civil liberties, EFF has collected a list of a dozen important trends in law, technology and business that we think will play a significant role in shaping online rights in 2010.

In December, we'll revisit this post and see how it all worked out. [ Read more ... ]

"Three Strikes" and Verizon: Not Happening: Via Public Knowledge.

Yesterday’s CNET report that Verizon had secretly adopted a “three strikes” policy towards alleged copyright infringers had our office all atwitter last night - how could a charter member of our ad hoc copyright reform coalition be engaging in such radical activity? Well, it turns out they weren’t.

As their misquoted spokesperson explains here, what Verizon employs is a process for passing on warning notices to alleged infringers, but that process does not include automatic termination. My guess is that to the extent that she was talking about infringers having their internet access terminated, she was referring to people who had been adjudicated by a court to be infringing, and as such, they would be violating Verizon’s terms of service.

Passing on warning notices that do not involve deep packet inspection is a process for limiting infringement that PK wholeheartedly supports and which appears to be quite effective. [ Read more ... ]

Court Reduces ‘Shocking’ File Sharing Award: Via Threat Level.

A federal judge on Friday reduced a $1.92 million file sharing verdict to $54,000 after concluding the award for infringing 24 songs was “shocking.”

A federal jury in June found Jammie Thomas-Rasset liable in what at the time was the nation’s only Recording Industry Association of America file sharing case against an individual to go to trial. The Minnesota federal jury dinged her $1.92 million for infringing 24 songs. She asked the judge to set aside or reduce that $80,000 per song in damages.

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis agreed on Friday, and said the RIAA may have a retrial if it does not accept his ruling.

“The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music,” Davis wrote. “Moreover, although plaintiffs were not required to prove their actual damages, statutory damages must bear some relation to actual damages.” [ Read more ... ]

Skeptical judges ask FCC if Comcast P2P smackdown was legal: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

Comcast has had its day in court over the issue of "network management." News accounts suggest that the three-judge panel from the DC Court of Appeals was plenty skeptical that the FCC had the proper authority to sanction Comcast's BitTorrent blocking in 2008. [ Read more ... ]

Senator Demands IP Treaty Details: Via Threat Level.

That a U.S. senator must ask a federal agency to share information regarding a proposed and “classified” international anti-counterfeiting accord the government has already disclosed is alarming. Especially when the info has been given to Hollywood, the recording industry, software makers and even some digital-rights groups.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) is demanding that U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk confirm leaks surrounding the unfinished Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, being negotiated largely between the European Union and United States. Among other things, Wyden wants to know if the deal creates international guidelines that mean consumers lose internet access if they are believed to be digital copyright scofflaws.

He also wants to know whether internet service providers could lose “safe harbor” protection for failing to police their customers’ digital content for copyright infringement violations. Such a move would heap copyright liability onto the ISP, and fundamentally alter U.S. copyright law.

What “legal incentives,” Wyden asked Kirk in a Wednesday letter, would “encourage Online Service Providers (OSPs) to cooperate with copyright owners to deter the unauthorized storage or transmission of copyrighted materials.”

The questions came weeks after leaked documents from the European Union suggested the United States was taking those positions on the accord’s draft internet section. [ Read more ... ]

Et Tu, U2? Bono, Net Surveillance and the Developing World: Via EFF.org Updates.

We feel compelled to add our comments about Bono's recent New York Times column, in which he appeared to express a strange hope that ISPs would start spying on their users in the name of protecting America's intellectual property. "We know," says Bono, "from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content." He continues by hoping that "movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product."

But Bono's new-found embrace of tracking Internet activity is in direct conflict with his own positions (expressed in the same article) about global freedom and equity. [ Read more ... ]

Will they ever learn? Hollywood still pursuing DRM: Via Freedom to Tinker.

In today's New York Times, we read that Hollywood is working on a grand unified video DRM scheme intended to allow for video portability, such as, for example, when you visit a hotel room, you'd like to have your videos with you.

What's sad, of course, is that you can have all of this today with very little fuss. I use iTiVo to extract videos from my TiVo, transcoding them to an iPhone-compatible format. I similarly use Fairmount to rip DVDs to my hard drive, making them easy to play later without worrying about the physical media getting damaged or lost. But if I want to download video, I have no easy mechanism to download non-DRM content. BitTorrent gives access to many things, including my favorite Top Gear, which I cannot get through any other channel, but many things I'd like aren't available, and of course, there's the whole legality issue. [ Read more ... ]

Most Pirated Movie of 2009 ... Makes Heaps of Money: Via EFF.org Updates.

According to TorrentFreak, last summer's Star Trek movie was the "most pirated movie of 2009." So it seems that Paramount Pictures was prescient when it gave testimony before the FCC that used Star Trek as an illustrative example of how "Internet piracy" is poised to devastate Hollywood and (though the nexus here is less than clear) undermine residential broadband in America.

Funny thing is, Star Trek is on course to make more than $100 million in profits. [ Read more ... ]

Torrent Search Engines Unlawful, U.S. Judge Says: Via Threat Level.

The operator of a popular BitTorrent search site said Monday he will likely challenge last week's landmark decision by a U.S. judge declaring such sites unlawful and no different from conventional peer-to-peer piracy services.

"We do think from our preliminary review there are a number of issues for appeal," said Ira Rothken, attorney for popular torrent search engine ISO Hunt, the defendant in the case.

The long-awaited decision, while not unexpected, was the first in the United States in which a federal judge found that BitTorrent search engines are an unlawful avenue (.pdf) to free movies, music, videogames and software. A contrary ruling likely would have sparked a gold rush of BitTorrent prospectors in the United States.

Targeted in the case was Gary Fung, a Canadian who operates ISO Hunt and other torrent search engines. Among other things, he argued that U.S. laws did not attach to him, and if they did, that his websites were protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. [ Read more ... ]

Comcast settles P2P throttling class-action for $16 million: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

Comcast has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit over the throttling of P2P connections that had users up in arms in late 2007 and 2008. The company still stands behind its controversial methods for "managing" network traffic, but claims that it wants to "avoid a potentially lengthy and distracting legal dispute that would serve no useful purpose." [ Read more ... ]

Erroneous DMCA notices and copyright enforcement, part deux: Via Freedom to Tinker.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a deluge of DMCA notices and pre-settlement letters that CoralCDN experienced in late August. This article actually received a bit of press, including MediaPost, ArsTechnica, TechDirt, and, very recently, Slashdot. I'm glad that my own experience was able to shed some light on the more insidious practices that are still going on under the umbrella of copyright enforcement. More transparency is especially important at this time, given the current debate over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Given this discussion, I wanted to write a short follow-on to my previous post. [ Read more ... ]

The VPA drops Nexicon

USA Technologies Attempts to Out Anonymous Online Critics, Runs Into New California Fee Statute: Via EFF.org Updates.

A Pennsylvania publicly-traded company has become the latest corporate entity to use the legal system in an attempt to out an anonymous online critic, and EFF is defending the critic with the help of the First Amendment as well as an important new California statute. USA Technologies, based in Malvern, Pennsylvania, recently filed a federal lawsuit against two Yahoo! message board posters who roundly criticized what they claim is the consistently poor performance of USA Technologies' management. The criticism highlighted plummeting stock prices of the company as well as the high compensation rates for management of the company that has been consistently unprofitable. [ Read more ... ]

UK Alert: Stop the Pirate-Finder General!: Via EFF.org Updates.

In the UK, the Labour administration's impatience to pass its "Digital Economy" agenda risks throwing balanced, deliberate reform of copyright law utterly out of the window. With no warning or consultation, the draft Digital Economy bill now includes a provision granting the Secretary of State — currently Lord Peter Mandelson — the power to make statutory instruments that can re-write Britain's Copyright, Design and Patents Act with almost no Parliamentary debate.

Once the Digital Economy Bill is passed by Parliament, the Secretary of State could use sweeping powers to effect wide-ranging changes to the copyright system to swiftly meet the needs of one set of interest holders: [ Read more ... ]

It’s Alive! Hollywood Claims Pirate Bay Tracker Lives: Via Threat Level.

Did The Pirate Bay really shutter its tracker, as claimed on Tuesday?

The Motion Picture Association doesn’t think so.

Hollywood’s overseas lobbying organization claims OpenBitTorrent, billed as an independent “open tracker project,” was actually established by one of The Pirate Bay’s founders.

“OpenBitTorrent is used for file sharing, and we suspect that it is the Pirate Bay tracker with a new name. It is added by default on all of the torrent tracker files on Pirate Bay,” Hollywood attorney Monique Wadsted told Swedish media.

Wadsted, TorrentFreak notes, said the tracker’s domain was originally registered by Fredrik Neij, one of the four Pirate Bay co-founders.

On its website, OpenBitTorrent denies it’s The Pirate Bay’s tracker: [ Read more ... ]

MPAA Says Copyright-Treaty Critics Hate Hollywood: Via Threat Level.

If you don’t back a copyright treaty being negotiated in secret, you must want to destroy Hollywood, its blockbuster movies and all the jobs they create.

At least that’s the message from the Motion Picture Association of America.

It’s spelled out in a Thursday memo to the Senate Judiciary Committee, urging lawmakers to support the Obama administration’s efforts toward negotiating an intellectual property agreement with more than a dozen countries.

Dan Glickman, the MPAA’s chairman, informs lawmakers that millions of film-related jobs are in peril because of internet piracy. Simply put, those who don’t back the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting and Trade Agreement don’t support intellectual property rights, he wrote. [ Read more ... ]

Pirate Bay Retires the World’s Largest BitTorrent Tracker: Via Threat Level.

Operators of the The Pirate Bay shuttered the site’s BitTorrent tracker on Tuesday, six years after it was founded.

Trackers — the servers that bootstrap each BitTorrent download – are no longer necessary with enhancements like DHT and PEX that allow peers to locate one another without accessing a central server, site operators wrote in the Bay’s blog.

“Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down!” reads the announcement. “It’s the end of an era.” [ Read more ... ]

Verizon to forward RIAA warning letters (but that's all): Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

If you're a copyright owner who has gone to the trouble and expense of tracking down online copyright infringers, don't send warning letters to Verizon without striking a deal first; Verizon simply chucks them in the bin.

Do a deal with the "big V" and Verizon is willing to forward warning letters on to its subscribers, but that's it. No customer information is exchanged and no sanctions are implemented—and Verizon has been handling the issue this way for years.

Read Original Article:(Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.)

Setback for malicious prosecution lawsuit against RIAA: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

Although the RIAA has decided to stop initiating new legal actions against music fans as part of its war on piracy, there are still a few cases in which the wheels of justice are rolling ahead slowly. One such case is Andersen v. Atlantic, where exonerated former RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen is suing the record labels for malicious prosecution, negligence, and conspiracy. That lawsuit hit a speed bump when a federal judge dismissed some of the claims in Andersen's lawsuit. [ Read more ... ]