said by HiVolt :

What gets me, is that how can they for sure know that a shared file is an actual copyright violation. I can put 700mb worth of garbage in a text file, rename it latestharrypottermovie.avi and share it.

Also, bit torrent and most other P2P send little pieces of info to their peers. You almost never download the complete file from a single source, unless its just one seeder and you the one leecher.

How do they determine if what you're sharing is copyrighted and warrants prosecution? Do they download the entire file from you (and you only) with some concrete proof? Or is it just based on what appears listed as shared in your list, and they have no idea what the content actually is?

said by HiVolt :

What gets me, is that how can they for sure know that a shared file is an actual copyright violation. I can put 700mb worth of garbage in a text file, rename it latestharrypottermovie.avi and share it.

said by cypherstream :

Good point. Wow could you imagine Malware that behind the scenes generates random data with popular music and movie titles, all connected to a Gnutella style network? The RIAA / MPAA could sue you, but in all honesty it could of been garbage data generated by Malware with the intent to flood the internet with fake files and frustrate everyone from the RIAA/MPAA to the users.

said by Jason Levine :

Except, from what I understand, they haven't been downloading and confirming these things. They just have screenshots of alleged copyright infringement. Screenshots could easily be manipulated or, as HiVolt point out, show files that aren't really infringing despite their titles.

Combine this with Media Sentry (the source of much of the RIAA's evidence) apparently acting illegally in some states and the RIAA's blunders of suing people who are obviously innocent (don't own computers, own Macs when the software allegedly used was Windows only, are dead, etc). The RIAA doesn't care so much whether they actually target copyright infringers as they want some nice big numbers in their press releases ("400 more lawsuits filed") and nice settlement money flowing back into their pockets ("settle now or our price goes up").

said by jester121 :

In a nutshell, and without excuciating detail because I'm not a mathemetician, P2P software works by creating an MD5 hash based on the contents of the file. There's a very high degree of certainty that files with identical hashes are the same, regardless of what the file is called on each user's storage medium.

They're "assuming" that if they find files on a peer that match the hash of their known copyrighted file, the contents of that file is the same as the content of their "control" and they can nab you for distributing.

I have no idea what the chances are of two files of identical size having different contents but the same MD5 hash. I'm thinking it's infintessimally small, like smaller than DNA-match-certainty type numbers. I do know if you download a movie, use editing software to clip a second off the front or the back, and re-hash it, you'll get a completely different result.

said by geowil :

i would rejoice, not because im a pirater (well not entirely true, i pirate what im considering buying and progs that are over priced [way over priced, like photoshop, not paying over 900 bucks for that **** lol], but i dont go crazy like most people do and pirate everything i see), but that we could get the riaa off everyone backs by screwing with their data (similar to the NoobAd data maker that the one poster has in his sig.). Maybe even open up the riaa for a few (or many more preferably) lawsuits for false accusations.

and it would be one of the very few helpful malware's that get made (so long as it didnt screw over the infected pc as well).

said by SlickEnW :

You wouldn't pay for photoshop?

said by SlickEnW :

You wouldn't pay for photoshop?