Torrent users beware

Gone West · 11-04-2005 6:51pm

It would not be profitable for the record industry to sue everyone. In short term costs, the riaa, mpaa etc. lost money in the first few rounds of suing that they made. It's just a scare tactic.

Filesharing is not a new thing. Anyone remember BBS from the 80s? or computer conventions, where people met up and copied disks in the 80s? It's just more popular now, as every tom dick and harry has an internet connection.

ronan001 · 11-04-2005 6:51pm

well, i hope here is the first place we will hear it if anyone did get one of these letters!!

I would imagine eircom or any other isp would be concerned about loss of customers to other untargetted isp, if the courts make them give up names!!!

oscarBravo · 11-04-2005 7:19pm

digitaldr wrote:

How about the likes of allofmp3.com. I think it's illegal to buy MP3s off them if your outside Russia (and maybe even if you're not!) but who's to know?

What makes you think it's illegal?

Nermal · 11-04-2005 7:20pm

seamus wrote:

file-sharing will slowly die out, and people find it's less hassle to buy online, and it doesn't twang their moral fibres quite so much.

ahahaha not going to happen. they can shut down public trackers, we'll move to private. they can block ports, we'll tunnel. they can inspect packets, and we'll wrap it in ssh.

my moral fibres are untwanged. this is what my computer was made to do, replicate digital information at zero cost. it's invention was the beginning of the end of copyright.

Gone West · 11-04-2005 7:31pm

Nermal: bit of an anarchist, are we!

I would have no problem buying CD's/movies if the artists / crew got >75% of the money I pay. But as it stands, most of the money spent on cds etc goes to Record company execs and so on.

Terra · 11-04-2005 7:32pm

download all your files in a virtual machine and have it encrypted

The more the persue the better filesharing gets and the more people will use advanced technologies

pete · 11-04-2005 7:33pm

I trust i'm not the only one that remembers the old days?

And surprise surprise, it didn't.

Capt'n Midnight · 11-04-2005 7:49pm

Is%20copy%20protection%20constitutional%20riaa%20watching%20you.jpg

Allowing newspapers to give out free CD's isn't exactly helping to justify the high price of music.

Gryzor · 11-04-2005 7:59pm

ronan001 wrote:

I would imagine eircom or any other isp would be concerned about loss of customers to other untargetted isp, if the courts make them give up names!!!

could the courts force them to give up info...under irish law??

penexpers · 11-04-2005 8:00pm

There's a press conference in some hotel into Dublin tomorrow where IRMA are launching the "crackdown". It's going to be pretty ineffective, tbh.

Infini · 11-04-2005 8:43pm

pete wrote:

I trust i'm not the only one that remembers the old days?

And surprise surprise, it didn't.

Heh,heh.

DannyD · 11-04-2005 8:51pm

I remember the good old days before a lame 12 year old downloading torrents was considered elite. I remember the 0day ftp sites and the fxp boards. <snip>

Giblet · 11-04-2005 9:03pm

Just removed the name of the groups mentioned, it's slightly bending the rules, but better to be safe than sorry.

Makaveli · 11-04-2005 9:08pm

What can IRMA actually do? Are ISPs even allowed disclose information to them or is that in violation of the Data Protection Act? And even then, do ISPs log all bittorrent traffic, and what if you use private trackers, how can IRMA trace what gets sent?

OfflerCrocGod · 11-04-2005 9:34pm

Thanks to all this furore I decided to go and get the new peer guardian and I must say this version is a good bit better then the old one - yes it crashed and screwed up my PC but once I got it up and running it's actually quite stable (crosses fingers) and it also blocks trojans and ads and other nasty stuff......nice stuff. It also doesn't seem to be overheating my PC any more

Recommended!

Infini · 11-04-2005 9:40pm

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

Thanks to all this furore I decided to go and get the new peer guardian and I must say this version is a good bit better then the old one - yes it crashed and screwed up my PC but once I got it up and running it's actually quite stable (crosses fingers) and it also blocks trojans and ads and other nasty stuff......nice stuff. It also doesn't seem to be overheating my PC any more Recommended!

Got a link?

Dcully · 11-04-2005 10:10pm

OK i only have broadband the past month or so.
Im new to all this torrent talk.
Ill be honest it has me a wee bit worried,since i got bb i admit to dloading 2 divX format movies about 700 mb each,the rest has been game patches and mods.
This kind of talk i must say has given me a reason to decide to stay away from the torrent site i have just become a member of.
Am i over-reacting?

M03 · 11-04-2005 10:16pm

<Rev. Lovejoy>short answer yes with an if, long answer no with a but</Rev. Lovejoy>

kasintahan · 11-04-2005 10:20pm

digitaldr wrote:

Has anyone actually tried Freenet?

I've run a Freenet server for a number of years now.

Infini · 11-04-2005 10:20pm

Dcully wrote:

OK i only have broadband the past month or so.
Im new to all this torrent talk.
Ill be honest it has me a wee bit worried,since i got bb i admit to dloading 2 divX format movies about 700 mb each,the rest has been game patches and mods.
This kind of talk i must say has given me a reason to decide to stay away from the torrent site i have just become a member of.
Am i over-reacting?

The IRMA only covers MUSIC and really only the sharing of RIAA owned music is what they're aiming at. So far videos aren't affected.

Pa ElGrande · 11-04-2005 10:31pm

IRMA will be suing Kazaa, Edonkey, Gnutella and WinMX users, just like the BPI (British Phonographic Industry). The ISP's in the UK did not put up much of a fight ,so expect exactly the same here.

If you do get caught expect a demand for several thousand Euro or the threat of a court appearance. You will need to wipe your hard disk and dispose of any burned copies of cd's you don't legally own to IRMA's satisfaction.

Will the ISP's advise their customers that IRMA have requested their specific details?
Going to court may not be a bad idea - if IRMA can't produce a hard disk or cd-rom seized from you in court with the offending material.

Was equipment seized from you in a lawful manner? (Judge Curtin defence)
Are the courts going to accept the ISPs logs as the sole basis of proof?
Will the courts even understand the concept of IP addresses, subnet masks, frames and packets, UDP and TCP?
How accurate are the ISP's logs?
How often do you change the hash codes on your MP3 files?
Can IRMA prove that the material in question is copyrighted (remember its 50 years in Europe, so its legal to share some of the early Elvis Presley stuff and public domain material)
If you share personal data (e.g. your C.V.) and copyrighted material at the same time this can be used against you as well. Hint: Check what you are sharing.
There are loads of other possible defences as well.

If the Gardaí don't seize your equipment I reckon you can mount a credible defense and same yourself a few thousand Euro.

OfflerCrocGod · 11-04-2005 10:36pm

Infini wrote:

Got a link?

First link in Google when you type in Peer Guardian :: http://www.methlabs.org/

oscarBravo · 11-04-2005 10:37pm

...or, you could just stop illegally sharing music.

Infini · 11-04-2005 10:51pm

oscarBravo wrote:

...or, you could just stop illegally sharing music.

Or boycott music from RIAA record labels.

ronan001 · 11-04-2005 10:53pm

you cany pay for better privileges on some file sharing programs!! I would imagine these are the people who would be hit first?

As far as i know Paying with your credit card stands up in court as strong enough evidence!!

It wudnt be in a short enough time frame to claim it was stolen!

MrPinK · 11-04-2005 10:56pm

It hasn't really happened yet, but P2P will kill off CD sales. Just as CD killed off cassettes, and cassettes killed off vinyl. That's not a bad thing, it's a natural evolutionary process. At the moment, Artists aren't making any money off of P2P. This is a bad thing, and those to blame for this are the record companies. It's impossible for them to stop P2P, all their attempts so far have led to better P2P systems. They will eventually have to realise this, and work out a way so that people are properly compensated. Their current online attempts are pretty pathethic. They tried to transfer their existing model over and it's not working nearly as well as it should. In the few years that it has been running, iTunes has made about $250m iirc. But there are over a billion songs traded on P2P networks every month. If they worked on getting a cut of this, even just 1c per song, then everybody is happy. Artists get their money, no overheard costs for the record companies other than those associated with collecting money from users, users can pretty much afford to download as much music as they like.

oscarBravo · 11-04-2005 11:06pm

MrPinK wrote:

It hasn't really happened yet, but P2P will kill off CD sales. Just as CD killed off cassettes, and cassettes killed off vinyl. That's not a bad thing, it's a natural evolutionary process. At the moment, Artists aren't making any money off of P2P. This is a bad thing, and those to blame for this are the record companies. It's impossible for them to stop P2P, all their attempts so far have led to better P2P systems. They will eventually have to realise this, and work out a way so that people are properly compensated. Their current online attempts are pretty pathethic. They tried to transfer their existing model over and it's not working nearly as well as it should. In the few years that it has been running, iTunes has made about $250m iirc. But there are over a billion songs traded on P2P networks every month. If they worked on getting a cut of this, even just 1c per song, then everybody is happy. Artists get their money, no overheard costs for the record companies other than those associated with collecting money from users, users can pretty much afford to download as much music as they like.

It seems to me you're mixing two completely separate issues. The point that new technologies tend to eliminate older ones is correct. The reason for this is that the new technologies tend to deliver specific benefits that supercede the features of the old. CDs offered vastly superior sound quality to cassettes - that's why they superceded them.

Online delivery of music doesn't have the same overwhelming set of distinct advantages. The sound quality tends to be somewhat lower (if not always noticeably so to the casual listener), and there's no value-add like inlay booklets, multimedia content etc. There's one distinct advantage to the P2P delivery mechanism: it's free.

The growth of P2P is not a part of the natural evolution of delivery mechanisms; it simply shows that people want something for nothing. Maybe when commercial music download services reduce their costs, P2P will fizzle out. Somehow, I doubt it.

Infini · 11-04-2005 11:15pm

MrPinK wrote:

LOL this one's quite funny too.

Infini · 11-04-2005 11:32pm

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

First link in Google when you type in Peer Guardian :: http://www.methlabs.org/

Nice. It's got anti-ad and anti-spyware features too. Great find.

MrPinK · 11-04-2005 11:34pm

oscarBravo wrote:

The sound quality tends to be somewhat lower (if not always noticeably so to the casual listener), and there's no value-add like inlay booklets, multimedia content

A feature of the current setup alright, but there's no reason it would have to be if done right. Record companies could release official torrents with lossless format files, pdf booklets, multimedia content.

The growth of P2P is not a part of the natural evolution of delivery mechanisms; it simply shows that people want something for nothing.

Even if it wasn't free, getting the content deliveried directly over the interent without any physical medium was always going to be the next step.

PaddyofNine · 12-04-2005 12:06am

So at the heart of it, if I use Shareaza to download American TV programs (like I am now, via torrents) am I screwed?

Ernie Ball · 12-04-2005 12:18am

PaddyofNine wrote:

So at the heart of it, if I use Shareaza to download American TV programs (like I am now, via torrents) am I screwed?

Completely, totally, utterly, deeply.

dahamsta · 12-04-2005 12:22am

You're right of course Paul, but I think we might see a move towards downloading-as-the-norm quicker than you think. First of all there's the rapidly increasing download speeds, which we're just starting to see here in Ireland, as a shadow of what's happening elsewhere in the world. Although the major speed increases are happening in big urban areas - and they are major increases, as you know - that's where most of the music-buying public probably live anyway, and let's be honest, that's where most of the people are. The faster those connections get, the closer to perfect digital copies we get without being a burden on our connections.

Now the phrase "perfect digital copies" is one that strikes fear into the label's hearts (or it would if they had any), but as you've argued yourself in our previous discussion, nothing can stop physics. Connections will get faster as scientists push the limits of technology, and people have already proven that they want faster connections. If people want, ISPs will deliver, and the labels on their own - no matter how powerful - aren't going to be able to stop that. This means that, in time, people are going to download music - perfect digital copies of music - and the label's will have but two choices: Piss or get off the pot.

Right now, they're trying to do both, and the metaphor covers this nicely too: They're pissing all over themselves with everything they try. Every DRM solution they've come up with has been broken, or has broken people's computers. Every downloader they've sued has created ten more. Every Wilco they screw with pushes another ten bands to the indies. And it's this last screwup that's most likely to kill them: the indies know that CDs are becoming the exception; the indies know that the big money for artists is in performance, and they aren't fighting that; the indies know about the long tail, and are already leveraging it.

Most importantly the indies know that the distribution networks that define big labels are going to be on the way out in five years, and will be dead in ten. By then the minority of people that still want to buy CDs will be ordering them from terminals in their local supermarket, and having the entire thing delivered over the Internet, and produced and printed right in front of their eyes. The majority will be happy with their electronic copies of artwork and inserts, and even if they aren't, there's nothing stopping those self-same machines taking their downloaded copy and swapping it for the "real thing"; for a fee of course.

On price, well, perhaps I'm old-fashioned but I believe that most people ultimately want to be honest. So I believe that if the prices were reasonable and no barriers are put in the way of my using my music fairly, the majority of people will take the honest route.

adam

Infini · 12-04-2005 12:24am

PaddyofNine wrote:

So at the heart of it, if I use Shareaza to download American TV programs (like I am now, via torrents) am I screwed?

Not yet, the IRMA only represents the music industry here and so far the only lawsuits in other countries have mostly been against BT tracker operators, music and movie filesharers. Have heard nothing so far on TV shows.

aidan_walsh · 12-04-2005 12:27am

Mr. Pink wrote:

A feature of the current setup alright, but there's no reason it would have to be if done right. Record companies could release official torrents with lossless format files, pdf booklets, multimedia content.

Which would work, to a point. Afterall, BT trackers can pick and choose what IPs they want to allow to download, so if someone was issued a digital reciept on purchase, they could use this access the files. The tracker will know when the entire file has been downloaded, so the download code embedded in the reciept can be retired at that point. If handled properly, a keychain of reciepts can be kept on a users machine if they need to prove purchase for redownload, and the tracker can be set to require manual validation for redownloading, so that the system can't(!!) be abused.

The only problem here is how you would sign a reciept to an individual, and not a machine, which is the root of all modern DRM issues...

Infini · 12-04-2005 12:31am

dahamsta wrote:

On price, well, perhaps I'm old-fashioned but I believe that most people ultimately want to be honest. So I believe that if the prices were reasonable and no barriers are put in the way of my using my music fairly, the majority of people will take the honest route.

True I'd be happy to pay for music (if they even sold what i'm interested in here) but tbh unless they 1) get rid of the restrictive and pain in the arse DRM and 2) people don't need a credit card to pay for music they're just wasting their time. They can't beat the P2P networks so if they wan't to get anywhere they'll either have to work with them or offer something that the p2p networks can't (ie. something physical).

Infini · 12-04-2005 12:34am

doodle_sketch wrote:

The only problem here is how you would sign a reciept to an individual, and not a machine, which is the root of all modern DRM issues...

And how would they solve the problem if say a persons machine died (ie.HD failure). If DRM is tied to a machine then it can't be backed up properly to another system in the case of system failure.

aidan_walsh · 12-04-2005 12:36am

Infini wrote:

And how would they solve the problem if say a persons machine died (ie.HD failure). If DRM is tied to a machine then it can't be backed up properly to another system in the case of system failure.

Therein lies the enigma... The only way I could see that it could be would be to require the user to register all devices that the file would work on. But of course, how many people are willing to do that? Its hard enough to get people to register one machine...

digitaldr · 12-04-2005 1:29am

oscarBravo wrote:

What makes you think it's (allofmp3)illegal?

Apparently it operates under Russian copyright law and therefore they pay tiny royalties. I think it says somewhere on their that they can't comment on the legality of downloading from outside Russia - I don't know if it has been ever tested in the courts though.

Tiffany · 12-04-2005 1:49am

U2 and Paddy Casey? Good thing I listen to foreign music. :cool:

Stalfos · 12-04-2005 3:01am

Yeah, thought i was in serious trouble there but i dont download music anyway, especially irish music.

seamus · 12-04-2005 9:56am

dahamsta wrote:

On price, well, perhaps I'm old-fashioned but I believe that most people ultimately want to be honest. So I believe that if the prices were reasonable and no barriers are put in the way of my using my music fairly, the majority of people will take the honest route.

Good post Adam, quite in line with what I'm thinking. The above though, I think is true too. Particularly now that it's been made clear that it's illegal, ultimately most people will pay simply because it's the right thing to do. It needs to be made easy though. For Joe Soap, it *is* easier to sign up to a website, punch in some credit card details, and start downloading what they want. Downloading a BitTorrent client, going searching for torrents, tweaking your settings and getting frustrated when you're not getting any downloads isn't the realm of the ordinary user. Regardless of what anyone thinks, using BitTorrent isn't easy for Joe Soap.
All they need to do is drop the price (like AllofMP3.com), add some incentives such as having a physical album, say a memory stick with inlay cover, or a bonus DVD snail-mailed to your house when you download certain songs/albums, or getting 10 free tunes for every 100 you download. How music is delivered to the end-user needs to be redefined and reinvented to cope with the technology. People don't want to download an mp3 that will only play on their computer anymore than they want to buy a DVD that'll only play on Sony players.

There will always be the fringe few who think it's OK, simply because they're "big, evil corporations, stifling the free movement of data, and killing the music industry".

cazeone · 12-04-2005 11:16am

from a moral standpoint I see nothing wrong with downloading music.

people often compare it with stealing a cd out of a shop, but it isn't the same thing at all. downloading is not stealing because stealing requires that something be taken away from the party stolen from (the RIAA often say that sales are down since p2p arrived on the scene, but there is not a shred of independant evidence to support this), making a digital copy of something does not take anything away from anybody.

now, if someone were to soley take art for free and not support the artists they like (by buying the occasional CD, attending gigs, sending them a cheque in the mail) then there is an obvious moral problem with this, but I don't see any evidence that this is how most downloaders act. the people with prodigious collections requiring terrabytes of storage would hardly have bought the same collection if it weren't available for free.

There's also an obvious problem with people making a profit from other peoples efforts, whether it's asian/russian DVD/CD pirates, allofmp3, or even KazzAA and the likes who no doubt make a tidy profit in advertising.

Music Industry types constantly try and confuse the three issues, and they seem to get away with it too. The majority of news coverage seems to take a very uncritical view of their position. Even Jim Caroll of the Irish Times was on Morning Ireland this morning saying the coming lawsuits were a good idea and they had every right (not in the legal sense) to do so.

I really don't know why they are bothering though, the lawsuits have had no impact in the states.

The majors need to realise they're never going to make money with cumbersome DRM technology, they need to implement something simple like bleep or maybe some mix of regular p2p program with audio fingerprinting (though there isn't the technology available to make that a viable option at the moment).

-Al- · 12-04-2005 11:25am

who the hell would waste there bandwidth on paddy casey???? :eek:

you use shareaza for tv shows paddyofnine, is it not ****??? used to use it for torrents and it was just bad.

Jonnie_Onion · 12-04-2005 11:39am

So does IRMA only represent Irish music?

the_syco · 12-04-2005 11:43am

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

surely there is a quick and easy way to block suspect addresses?

Its not so much as blocking suspect addresses, its more for hiding your own IP.

gsand wrote:

everyone who is engaging in similar activities should really think about using protowall or peer guardian or anohter peer protection utility

Neither gets on well with the Eircom routers... so I've been told :rolleyes:

seamus wrote:

the days of pirate digital information are coming to an end

...only for Napster Users, and for those who expect it on a silver plate. For those who know how, this will be not but a glitch in the line.

norbert64 wrote:

Granted it's good for all you P2P & BT users, but why Xactly are they bothering suing just 20 ppl.
What makes them different to the rest of y'all.

Each of thos 20 could be seeding an album to 500 n00bs. Each of those 500 n00bs woulnd't know how to set up a seed, so if you gut off the head (jail the main seeder), the body will die (the n00bs will go back to buying the music).

cazeone · 12-04-2005 12:16pm

the_syco wrote:

Its not so much as blocking suspect addresses, its more for hiding your own IP.

Well, you can't hide your own IP with p2p programs (aside from freenet and the like, which require too much bandwidth to be of much use at the moment) and proxies are either too slow or expensive, the only solution is to block incoming IP connections from known baddies, though even this isn't much use as they could just keep change their IP ranges (though at least this would cost them, hastening their downfall :cool:).

Neither gets on well with the Eircom routers... so I've been told

I don't see how their routers could know what firewall software you have installed on your PC. One problem I have noticed is that their blocklists contain loads of perfectly valid ranges, my email stopped working after I installed PeerGuardian for example.

Each of thos 20 could be seeding an album to 500 n00bs. Each of those 500 n00bs woulnd't know how to set up a seed, so if you gut off the head (jail the main seeder), the body will die (the n00bs will go back to buying the music).

Well, when most people in ireland are downloading from ppl in the US or UK then suing irish sharers isn't going to accomplish much, and as the numbers in the US and UK are so large, legal action is never going to be effective.

Altheus · 12-04-2005 1:08pm

Most important part of all of this is that downloading is not distribution. Uploading is the issue.

Also screw the 'precedents' in the states. What Irish judge is going to prosecute someone for downloading stuff?

I mean the police dont proactive go after the people who buy pirated goods do they? It's the the distro, that's why I never seed, but I'll try and keep a high ratio.

-Al- · 12-04-2005 1:15pm

was just listening on the news there. there going after 17 seeders who where seeding something like 3000 songs maybe, cant really remember, but there only going after the uploaders, for now anyway.

Gryzor · 12-04-2005 1:30pm

off irishnews.com

The Irish Recorded Music Association has announced plans to take legal action against 17 Irish people who illegally make copyrighted music available over the internet.

IRMA said the Irish music industry was losing €3.8m annually because of illegal downloading and had seen its revenue fall from €146m annually to €118m over the past three years.

It also said legal action against music fans worldwide had led to a 21% decline in downloading.

IRMA said the 17 "file-sharers" it was targeting had made hundreds if not thousands of tracks available over the internet and were “effectively stealing the livelihood of the creators of music”.

Torrent users beware

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