You Could Be Kicked Offline For Piracy If This Music Industry Lawsuit Succeeds

vtqhtr413

Level 26
Thread author
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Aug 17, 2017
1,448
As it currently stands, if you download a copyrighted file via BitTorrent or another platform, you’re risking a copyright violation warning from your ISP. These warnings are generated by investigators hired by the entertainment industry to track and combat online piracy, often by monitoring BitTorrent swarms.

Unfortunately, the warnings are often based on flimsy evidence, and the presumption that if a downloaded file is traced to your IP address, you’re automatically guilty. Of course that’s not always the case, the most common example being if someone decided to download the latest episode of Game of Thrones while sitting in your driveway using your WiFi hotspot.

ISPs are required to pass these copyright infringement notices on to end users under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). But since users frequently ignore these warnings, and there’s no real penalty for repeat offenses, the entertainment industry has spent years trying to dramatically up the ante, often to a ridiculous degree.

For example, the music industry has attempted to turn copyright infringement into a revenue model by hiring companies tasked with scaring potential pirates into paying up to avoid a trial. Industry organizations like Rightscorp send “pre-settlement” letters to pirates informing them they can avoid any prolonged, nasty legal headaches simply by paying a fine.

But the practice is legally sketchy, and as this Reddit thread illustrates, paying up is often a bottomless rabbit hole of ever-steeper penalties. Rightscorp, routinely accused of being a “copyright troll,” has subsequently been forced to ease off the practice in recent years in the wake of terrible publicity. But using Rightscorp as an intermediary, the entertainment industry has also taken to suing ISPs it claims aren’t doing enough to thwart piracy.

The entertainment industry has long misrepresented an integral part of the DMCA to mean that ISPs should be forced to kick pirates offline permanently. Supreme Court precedent ( Packingham v North Carolina ) has been interpreted by copyright experts to indicate that booting users offline for piracy is a violation of the First Amendment.

But the entertainment industry has taken sustained legal action against smaller ISPs that disagree.

Full Story You Could Be Kicked Offline For Piracy If This Music Industry Lawsuit Succeeds
 

upnorth

Moderator
Verified
Staff Member
Malware Hunter
Well-known
Jul 27, 2015
5,457
The problem is when it's not Pirates that gets kicked offline but as usual a few collateral won't hurt in the eyes of the entertainment industry. It's anyway nice to see a few of the copyright rats squeal when they now have to taste there own medicine. Karma maybe.
Paul Hansmeier, one of the lead attorneys behind the controversial law firm Prenda, has pleaded guilty to mail, wire fraud, and money laundering. The Pirate Bay provided important evidence in the case, where Hansmeier and his colleague were found creating and uploading porn movies to file-sharing sites to extract settlements from alleged pirates.
Prenda Lawyer Pleads Guilty in Pirate Bay Honeypot Case - TorrentFreak
 
  • Like
Reactions: vtqhtr413

show-Zi

Level 36
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Jan 28, 2018
2,463
In Japan, countermeasures against sites that distribute pirated goods such as comics are discussed.

"Instead of blocking pirated sites, rights holders will launch DoS attacks directly on pirated sites" - at the Study Group on Piracy Measures on the Internet held by the Government's Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters on August 10 , The topic was that the Japan IT Federation Federation (Chairman: Mr. Kentaro Kawabe, president of Yahoo!) that made up of IT related organizations made this proposal.The proposal materials have been released ( PDF ) on the government's Web site recently, and are discussing on the Internet.

In the material, as a technical countermeasure for pirated sites, we propose that "access concentration method" will be an alternative to blocking. It is a proposal of a "DoS attack on a pirate site by a right holder," so to speak, that the right holder himself concentrates the access to the illegal site and it is difficult to connect to the site.
Regarding this "access concentration method", in the document, "Compared with blocking where there are not a lot of people getting sacrificed at the expense of 100 million people, only the operator of the pirate site is affected, and cost is required to take avoidance measures It is superior that it is structurally superior "" If it is a policy that right holders can adopt by themselves even now without overcoming cooperation such as ISP ", we emphasize merit.
Denial of service caused by DoS attack is a crime, but there is a concept that "in view of the idea that even if it interferes with the management of a drug sales site does not fall under the false charge interruption crime, it does not correspond to a business obstruction crime at all" Although judgment is based on the court, it is also possible to organize that it is to defeat illegality as a legitimate defense against illegal act of infringement, "he said, mentioning the possibility not to be illegal.
In addition, the Federation is "an organization that represents the largest domestic engineers in the country with 5,000 participating companies and 4 million employees, and has various expertise, so implementing more effective access concentration measures We can also provide technical assistance ".
Looking at the response of the net to this proposal, although some evaluation such as "It is interesting as a thought experiment" and "Mashi rather than blocking" are some, it is "criminal act", "if it does not become legitimate defense" "Using the same server There are many critical opinions such as "There are other sites affected.
As a countermeasure against piracy at the study meeting on October 10, the legal issues of blocking, strengthening of filtering, possibility of litigation against CDN operators, etc. are organized, and the respective documents are released .Discussions were also made based on materials, but the minutes are unpublished as of 15th.
「海賊版サイトにDoS攻撃」政府の勉強会で叩日本IT団体連盟の資料公開
 

RoboMan

Level 34
Verified
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
Jun 24, 2016
2,399
Perfectly fine, I support this law. Piracy breaks the internet at its best. I pay less than 10 bucks for Netflix and less than 3 bucks for Spotifiy. I bought a bunch of games that last forever and some MS licenses. It's not that expensive, but people just want the best of the best, but for free. They think they deserve it, and therefore they must obtain it, even if it's malware-bundled or they make companies go bankrupt.
 
  • Like
Reactions: vtqhtr413

About us

  • MalwareTips is a community-driven platform providing the latest information and resources on malware and cyber threats. Our team of experienced professionals and passionate volunteers work to keep the internet safe and secure. We provide accurate, up-to-date information and strive to build a strong and supportive community dedicated to cybersecurity.

User Menu

Follow us

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to know first about the latest cybersecurity incidents and malware threats.

Top