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WhaleOilBee
What a long strange trip it's been
join:2011-08-02
Manotick, ON

WhaleOilBee to Torabo

Member

to Torabo

Re: Copyright - are you affected?

said by Torabo:

If someone steals your car and runs a few lights, I'm pretty sure you're not responsible for the fines either.

OTOH if your car was involved in a hit and run, and then you claimed it was stolen, but didn't report it until some time after the accident, would they believe you?
said by Torabo:

Also, MAC address? that's a joke since you can change the wireless adaptor MAC address very easily, both on your computer or on a router. Heck, mine are all randomly generated since that's what I did to get get different IP addresses as the "dynamic IP" that's assigned to cable internet connections is damned far from dynamic, at least from what I can tell. The MAC address (assuming you even have such a log... I've never seen one on consumer routers) is just as meaningless if not more so than the IP address they have.

At any given time I can see the MAC addresses of every connection to my consumer grade router. Heck, I can even grant or refuse access to my WiFi based on this MAC ( Wireless MAC filter). I'm pretty sure that's a common feature, but I might be wrong. The best protection would be not to broadcast your SSID, to enable WPA:AES, and only grant access to known MAC addresses. Unless you live next door to super hackers, I doubt that anybody would get unauthorized access to your internet connection.
said by Torabo:

Also, if you're on a cable connection.... there do still exist modems with cloned MAC address out in the wild..... so while the IP address will resolve to your modem's mac and be traced to you at a cursory glance... it'd be hard to prove, and I really don't think teksavvy could do this sort of tracking anyway without going through rogers (maybe somebody can prove me wrong? but that's my understanding anyway)

I'm thinking more of the legal defense to a copyright suit that someone connected to your WiFi without your knowledge. Even if you had unprotected access, but somehow were still diligent enough to log all the MAC addresses of every device that was ever connected to your router, it would be practically impossible to prove it wasn't one of your own machines, because as you said, MACs can be changed.

Bottom line. If you did torrent the movie and are trying to weasel out of it by claiming that it wasn't your fault ( dog ate my homework defense ) good luck with that. If you really really didn't torrent it, you're just as screwed trying to prove that they're mistaken.
Torabo
join:2009-09-01

Torabo

Member

said by WhaleOilBee:

OTOH if your car was involved in a hit and run, and then you claimed it was stolen, but didn't report it until some time after the accident, would they believe you?

Considering I was just pointing that out to show how that example doesn't really fit, but either way, by the same logic, its is WAY easier to convince someone that you had no idea your wifi was being stolen, esp if you have a high, or no usage cap, than that you didn't notice your car was missing from your garage for days.
said by WhaleOilBee:

At any given time I can see the MAC addresses of every connection to my consumer grade router. Heck, I can even grant or refuse access to my WiFi based on this MAC ( Wireless MAC filter). I'm pretty sure that's a common feature, but I might be wrong. The best protection would be not to broadcast your SSID, to enable WPA:AES, and only grant access to known MAC addresses. Unless you live next door to super hackers, I doubt that anybody would get unauthorized access to your internet connection.

Oh sure you can SEE the mac address connecting to your router at any given time.. but a LOG of it? I don't know of any consumer grade router that actually LOGS it, and I don't know a single person that's going to periodically log into their router ever few moments and manually log that. SSID hiding and MAC filtering isn't as useful as you think... (read »www.zdnet.com/blog/ou/th ··· s-lan/43 if you feel like), WPA-AES is secure... depending on your actual pass phrase, and if its not unique enough there's automated softwares and guides around the net easily googled for cracking it. You don't need to be a super-hacker, and tbh, not everyone would use a long chain of random alpha numeric numbers that they can't remember as the password anyway... and nor should they be expected to. Its like your house, you don't "deserve" to be robbed, nor is it your fault of you're not using whatever the latest and greatest locks are on the market for securing your house. The fault should always be on the person committing the actual crime.... though judging from the track record of these.... people, their methodologies used in the past (and maybe now) aren't exactly flawless.. I mean, claiming a printer downloaded something just because a spoofed ip was inserted into a tracker?
said by WhaleOilBee:

I'm thinking more of the legal defense to a copyright suit that someone connected to your WiFi without your knowledge. Even if you had unprotected access, but somehow were still diligent enough to log all the MAC addresses of every device that was ever connected to your router, it would be practically impossible to prove it wasn't one of your own machines, because as you said, MACs can be changed.

Bottom line. If you did torrent the movie and are trying to weasel out of it by claiming that it wasn't your fault ( dog ate my homework defense ) good luck with that. If you really really didn't torrent it, you're just as screwed trying to prove that they're mistaken.

That's exactly the point... you really shouldn't have to be the one to prove this... it should be up to the accuser... unfortunately because not everyone understands technology to the same degree, not to mention not everyone can afford court fees, you're stuck with just rolling over and taking it up the behind.

drjp81
join:2006-01-09
canada

drjp81

Member

said by Torabo:

said by WhaleOilBee:

I'm thinking more of the legal defense to a copyright suit that someone connected to your WiFi without your knowledge. Even if you had unprotected access, but somehow were still diligent enough to log all the MAC addresses of every device that was ever connected to your router, it would be practically impossible to prove it wasn't one of your own machines, because as you said, MACs can be changed.

Bottom line. If you did torrent the movie and are trying to weasel out of it by claiming that it wasn't your fault ( dog ate my homework defense ) good luck with that. If you really really didn't torrent it, you're just as screwed trying to prove that they're mistaken.

That's exactly the point... you really shouldn't have to be the one to prove this... it should be up to the accuser... unfortunately because not everyone understands technology to the same degree, not to mention not everyone can afford court fees, you're stuck with just rolling over and taking it up the behind.

In court it would take me all of 20 minutes to demonstrate to the judge that :

a) I can replace a bunch of bytes in any log (the one's representing anything from IP to MAC addresses.
b) that I can pop a router in front of an entire infra structure, slap a "clone MAC address" on the "wan" side and then just forward the packets along behind it, and voila, I've proven that a MAC is meaningless.

I'm sure someone else will do much better than I could.
MaynardKrebs
We did it. We heaved Steve. Yipee.
Premium Member
join:2009-06-17

MaynardKrebs to WhaleOilBee

Premium Member

to WhaleOilBee
said by WhaleOilBee:

Bottom line. If you did torrent the movie and are trying to weasel out of it by claiming that it wasn't your fault ( dog ate my homework defense ) good luck with that. If you really really didn't torrent it, you're just as screwed trying to prove that they're mistaken.

Exactly.

Downloaded the file - you're guilty.
Since can't prove a negative, that you didn't download it - you're guilty too.

For this reason alone the court should find everyone not guilty.