THOUSANDS of alleged pirates' addresses to be handed to Dallas Buyers Club A few thousand Australians will get a cease-and-desist of some kind from the owners of the film Dallas Buyers Club after local internet service provider (ISP) iiNet and its co-defendants lost a Federal Court case. As a result of the loss, Dallas Buyers Club LLC will be able to get the names and addresses of subscribers it …
And this is one of the reasons I support ISPs giving residential customer carrier-grade NAT. Some copyright holder attempts to get a consumer's ID based on an IP and all they'll get is shrug saying that it could've been one of thousands of customers.
Even in a DHCP environment, you can point to exactly who used that IP at the time by just looking at the logs. Its how they do it now and its so simple that ISP can't say 'no' to requests for it. Now a large NAT, you'd have to log every single packet...
It should be the judge okaying the IP addresses of the alleged infringers, the ISPs sending the letters, and Dallas Buyers Club LLC (not that they're trying to avoid taxes or anything) footing the bill because now that their lawyers have got their names and addresses they'll have a bunch of lawyers with nothing better to do put in a room and working out how to get round the judgement.
You'd to forensically examine everyone's pc to prove this. Otherwise you run the risk of someone's WiFi router being hacked and used (unlikely but possible). There is simply no way IP matching meets the standard of prove required. Speculative invoices is being kind. Demanding with menaces would be more accurate.
>someone's WiFi router being hacked and used (unlikely but possible)
I imagine quite a few people run open wifi networks out of lack of tech ability to secure them, plus in commercial places like Starbucks or even some hippie types giving everyone nearby a guest network to share the resources man.
"Otherwise you run the risk of someone's WiFi router being hacked and used (unlikely but possible)."
It's not that unlikely. When I used to live in Australia, a friend used to boast about using his neighbours internet (Wifi) for downloading stuff. Mostly to get around bandwidth quotas at the time I think. (it was a while ago)
Here in the UK on unlimited broadband, people with a hacked Wifi router probably wouldn't even notice if their connection was being used in this way. :(
What movie? I once tried a BitTorrent client called Azureus. As soon as I started it, I started getting a bunch of e-mails claiming I'd been pirating The Sims. Do I look like I'd play The Sims?
False positives are a major flaw of all of these so called anti-piracy tools.
"False positives are a major flaw of all of these so called anti-piracy tools."
Now that could be fun ... they can speculative invoice the account holder all they want, but any such attempt automatically counts as libel if there isn't proof against the individual to whom the letter is addressed (to the standard required for bringing an individual infringement case to court)?
So, if I go to a public WiFi spot, connect to a tor server via an obfuscated VPN, and then download this video, who gets the nastygram? Judges who don't understand the tech should not be allowed to preside over or rule in such cases.
"Judges who don't understand the tech should not be allowed to preside over or rule in such cases."
Yes they should, there is plenty of support for them. Lawyers that don't know how to make an argument shouldn't be employed by ISPs.
You mean the movie about the guy that violated so many tenets of proper drug testing a scientific study? The data from the drug trials can never be used, and given the cost of the trials themselves, it is likely that the drug company would just axe the project and potentially deny the world a life-saving drug. Then there is the hammer that would come down from the FDA in the form of fines and sanctions. And that is ignoring the possibility of accidentally killing or injuring the people he was attempting to help as the side-effects / interactions and proper dosages haven't been determined yet.
I would have framed it another way to point out the delicious irony of the case.
The movie, about a guy who bucks the system, in order to address an inadequacy inherant in the system.
Now, why does the plotline sound so familiar? Maybe it has something to do with home users, bucking the system, to address the inherant inadequacy of the system.
I could understand at least a little pirating things a decade plus ago when the stupid media companies often didn't even give you a legal digital option but in the age of Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, etc pirating media these days really is almost the equivalent of taking a shit in the middle of a public restroom. I am no fan of corporate media and they do lots of things to screw over the public (ie. Comcast lobbying to buy everyone, 3 companies in the US allowed to own the news etc) but they really have no obligation to entertain people for free. Really the only pirating exception I can see is perhaps getting a rip of a DVD/BR you already own because someone else can do it better/smaller.
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