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 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 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 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?

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 Nightfall :

I don't know why the RIAA is trying to fast track this so hard. It should be an open and shut case.

1. See the material shared on P2P sites.

said by knightmb :

This isn't a stab at you Nightfall, you have a very precise statement, just poking holes that could hurt innocent users is all.

Provided they aren't sueing the site hosting the torrent file.

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2. Download the material and confirm it is copyrighted material.

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Fair enough, but you'll have to download all 100% from a single IP otherwise, all the other bits and pieces from other IP invalidate your data collection.

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3. Look at the peers list and determine who is sharing the file and who you can download from.

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Maybe this should have been step 2 ?

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4. Download from those peers.

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You'll have to log every pack to make sure they didn't get mixed up.

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5. Turn in results to the proper authorities.

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True enough, hope they have someone who understands the data you turn in.

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6. Let the authorities track the person down just based on their IP address and when it happened.

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Here's where things can get sticky. BitTorrent allows you to begin a download, stop it and come back later. So, if you are a residential customer, you probably have a dynamic IP address that probably shifts around every 1 or 2 days.
So if you started to download "NextHarryPotter.avi" and stopped half way through it. Then the next day, you have a new IP address, you rejoin the BT swarm and download the rest.

So, now you have half a file at one IP and half of file at another IP. To top it off, you always download faster than you upload. So unless your leave your BT running 24/7, it would probably take them days or even a week to get the "entire" file from you for evidence. You would have probably deleted the torrent after you watched the movie before they even could finish. BT and the other clients don't really do "fast" one on one when in a swarm on purpose I might add I've verified that by simply loading two machines up on a fast torrent, two different IP address, and everything. They connect to each other of course in the swarm, but they don't rocket any 10 MBps of data between each other. It kind of trickles along at 25 to 80 Kbps depending on what other clients they are connected to and sending data.

Not impossible to get the whole file, but too much time, which is what they don't want to do is wait. Otherwise, the data they have would be something like:
Started "NextHarryPotter.avi" download at 6/20/2008 6:00AM IP 127.0.0.1
Finished "NextHarryPotter.avi" download at 6/23/2008 7:43PM IP 127.0.0.1

They may have 9 or 10 GBps of bandwidth at their command, but that doesn't mean all the clients they connect have this kind of bandwidth to send a file over in a few minutes or a few days.

said by NOCMan :

It's a bit funny. My credit card gets stolen. We get the addresses where this guy routinely went into this gas station in Manhattan and charges exactly 200.00 dollars. The police would not touch it. Charging 200.00 dollars 4 times a day every other day tells me the gas station was in on it too.

Same happens for online fruad. There's a record of the transaction and the police/fbi would not touch it either.

Not supporting the RIAA, but in all honestly all the crime that takes place over the internet, probably .001% is what the RIAA even picks up on and messes with people. There's nothing the police can do about it. If 500 million people worldwide steal music is it a crime? Seems those 500 million people deem the value of the music at 0. RIAA needs to tune into that fact.

Plus that people steal because they hate the RIAA too.

said by jadebangle :

Either you are with us the people or you're with the greedy few who plans to destroy sharing so that everyone is forced to buy movies that are limited in quantity and most will not be able to watch most of it.

said by Jason Levine :

Sorry, but I don't buy into that "Us or them" mentality. There is a middle of the road approach (which I take) which allows for Intellectual Property rights and the ability to say "I don't want my song shared freely on P2P networks", yet also realizes that 1) copyright periods are too long and 2) copyright penalties (for non-commercial infringers) are too high.

In my view, putting a song on a P2P network without permission from the copyright owner *should* be illegal, but the penalties for doing it shouldn't be 750 - 150,000 times the value of the song ($0.98 - the typical legal download price), but should be more like 10 - 100 times the value of the song.